Louis IX’s tangled legacy
not bound by the ordinary
rules. When a sacred object
moves, it drags the world with it
and makes re-ordering possible.
And so Louis and his supporters
could argue that the centre of
the Christian world – that
Christ himself, that Jerusalem
itself – had come with those
relics to reside in Paris.
About a year after its pur-
chase, the Crown of Thorns was
welcomed into Paris in 1239
with a solemn procession led
by the king. One of his early
biographers, Geoffrey of
Beaulieu (as translated by Larry
F Field), wrote of the event:
“And with what joy did our
devout king journey out to
reverently take possession of these said
relics! And again, with what solemn devo-
tion did all the clergy and populace receive
in procession at Paris these valuable relics,
when the king himself, barefoot, bore on his
own shoulders for some way this sacred
treasure!” The procession stopped at Notre
Dame, but only briefly. It had a different final
destination: the king’s private chapel in his
palace, at that time dedicated to St Nicholas.
The “holy chapel”, which is what Sainte-
Chapelle means, was a special place in all
ways. Legally, the pope had exempted it from
the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. It was
the private chapel in the palace, but the
general public celebrated special feasts in the
palace courtyard and inside. Within, on the
upper floor, the medieval people of Paris and
beyond would have seen walls almost entirely
made of stained glass. Brilliant blues and reds
made the gold of the reliquaries sparkle,
illuminating on their own the vibrant
paintings that adorned the walls.
And of course the paintings were not
random or decorative; they told a story
about God and kingship. They told the
biblical story of Israel, beginning with
Genesis and continuing through the Gospels.
The story of the crucifixion appears directly
above the altar where the relics were kept.
But then the narrative continues on the south
wall to tell a story of kings – those from
ancient Israel, and then Louis IX himself
and the story of the arrival of the relics to
Paris. Every window is adorned with the
fleur-de-lis of the kingdom of France. The
message wasn’t subtle. Kings, not priests,
are closest to God here.
In 1240, the sentence against the Talmud
was pronounced. But the burning that would
occur over a year later almost didn’t happen.
All history is about contingency, about
decisions that might not have been made, or
how things could have
gone differently. The
archbishop of Sens, the
most powerful among the
judges at the “trial”,
interceded. The papacy
said that now the Talmud
was to be censored of
“offending” material, but
not banned, nor burned.
But Louis was set on
his course. Cartloads of
the Talmud arrived at the
Place de Grève in 1242.
Louis IX seems to have
believed that a “most
Christian” king had a
special responsibility to
God to care for his people
and that responsibility
required zeal. The king
was to be zealous in
caring for the poor and
ensuring that justice was
done. For example,
according to one of his hagiographers, “when
a famine once befell parts of Normandy, he
designated such a large supply of money for
the poor of that area that, just as from there
was usually brought to Paris a treasure of
revenues in coffers and wagons, now by
contrast just as much money was carried back
from Paris in boxes and vehicles for distribu-
tion to the poor”. That hagiographer further
explained that Louis himself washed “the feet
of the... poorer and older men who could be
found, which he did on bended knee, humbly,
piously, and in a most secret place... In
similar fashion he brought water to wash
their hands, which he kissed in the same way.
He then provided a certain sum of money to
each, and he himself waited upon them as
they ate.”
Being zealous meant not only helping his5 Louis receives the Crown of Thorns in a
14th-century manuscript. With such sacred
objects in his possession, the king now claimed
Paris was the centre of Christendom6 Florid accounts of Louis feeding the
poor and washing their feet – as depicted in
a 1 5 th-century chronicle – burnished his
reputation as a “good” Christian king7 Louis is brought before his captors during
his disastrous military expedition to Egypt. The
French king eventually bought his freedom but
his next crusade, in 1270, would end in his death8 The Apotheosis of King Louis IX stares out
over the city of St Louis in Missouri. To some,
this monument is a source of pride; to others,
it’s a symbol of violence and bigotry5
6
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