Saint Louis

 No, I'm not talking about the city in Missouri. I'm talking about the saint named Louis, after whom the city of Saint Louis was named.

Unlike some of the early martyr-saints (even Christopher has been dropped by the Catholic church -- no! not Christopher!), Saint Louis was totally real. He is usually better known as Louis IX, king of France (1226-1270).  He was part of the Capetian dynasty, descended from the tenth-century King Hugh Capet. Louis's grandfather, King Philip II "Augustus" (1180-1223), had essentially unified what we now think of France for the first time since the days of Charlemagne, and he drove the English out of most of the French territory (primarily Normandy) they had held since 1066, so young Louis was able to rule over a fairly peaceful kingdom.

We know quite a bit about Louis from the biography written about him by his friend, Jean de Joinville.  Not surprisingly, Louis always looks good in this account, but other sources tend to confirm the impression of a pious and conscientious king. 

He became king when he was only twelve, because his father, Louis VIII, died young, from dysentery, after only three years as king.  Young Louis IX was promptly crowned after his father's death in 1226, but for the next eight or nine years his mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled France as regent. When he was twenty (1234), Louis married Margaret of Provence, which marked the official end of his mother's regency. However, there are indications that Blanche was jealous of her son paying so much attention to his new wife and tried to keep them apart—ultimately unsuccessfully.

(One may note that Blanche had twelve children, and Louis was the first one to survive childhood.  An older sister and two older brothers (twins) had died in infancy. An older brother had been designated as heir to the throne but had died at the age of nine.   Perhaps we should not be surprised that Blanche wanted to cling to the first son who was perfectly healthy.)

(Louis and Margaret did not start having children until they had been married for six years, but they went on to have eleven. Of these two died in infancy, but the rest lived at least until their teen years and mostly well into adulthood.) 

Louis, Blanche, and Margaret were all highly religious people, and Louis genuinely tried to live as a Christian monarch.  He fully embraced chivalric ideals of gentleness toward the weak, generosity to the poor, and kindness to each other.  Knights at his court had to agree to fight fairly and not kill each other, not even a little bit, just because they felt insulted.  Louis outlawed trial by ordeal in his kingdom (which the organized church was also trying to end) and insisted that anyone, even of humble status, should have access to royal justice.  He also founded churches and was responsible for building the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, a gorgeous Gothic church built to house the Crown of Thorns (it's still there and has amazing stained glass; I recommend a visit).

He also sought to make sure that his younger brothers (more of those born after him lived at least until their teens than those born before him) and all his sons were well provided for.  At a time when aristocratic brothers were often at each others' throats over the inheritance, he made sure that everyone in his family was well provided for.

This was known as the apanage system, where a royal son or brother would receive an important county or duchy as his own, within the kingdom.  Most notably, he gave his youngest brother Charles the county of Anjou as an apanage, one of the territories Philip II had taken from the English crown.  Charles went on to become king of Sicily, but that's a different story.

But Louis's most notable activity was going on Crusade, not once but twice.  Although the numbering of Crusades gets a little vague in the thirteenth century, his are usually called the Seventh and the Eighth.  The Muslims had retaken Jerusalem and most of the Holy Land in the 1180s, and Europeans repeatedly launched efforts, all unsuccessful, to get it back.

Even by disastrous-crusade standards, Louis's efforts turned out really badly.  It was not due to a lack of planning.  For the Seventh (1249), the plan was to establish a base camp in Egypt from which to attack Jerusalem, rather than heading right there.

It didn't even vaguely work. Louis was immediately captured, along with much of his army, and was only freed after France paid a large ransom.  But this didn't make him lose faith in Crusading! Twenty years later, when he was in his mid-50s (and hence getting up there by medieval standards), he set out on Crusade again. This time they had the brilliant idea of setting up a base camp in Tunisia to attack Egypt from there, and then once they'd conquered Egypt....

You can tell what's coming.  But it was even worse than that. Louis almost immediately fell ill and died in 1270, and his army attempted nothing more.   (Louis's son John Tristan also died.) They boiled up Louis's bones so they could take the bones back to France, to be interred at the abbey of St.-Denis, where his father was already buried.

The monks of St.-Denis knew a saint-in-waiting when they saw one, and they had his relics right there! By this time one had to be formerly declared a saint by the pope, and in 1294 Louis's grandson, Philip IV, who was in a tense standoff with the pope, got the pope to declare Louis officially a saint.  Louis is not the only king to become a saint, but the list of king-saints is extremely short.

© C. Dale Brittain 2026

For more on medieval rulers, see my new ebook, Still Medieval After All These Years, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms. Also available in paperback.