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Louis IX of France reigned as king from 1226 to 1270 and was widely considered an exemplary Christian ruler, renowned for his piety, justice, and charity toward the poor. After his death on crusade, he was proclaimed a saint in 1297, and today Saint Louis is regarded as one of the central figures of early French history and the High Middle Ages. In The Sanctity of Louis IX, Larry F. Field offers the first English-language translations of two of the earliest and most important accounts of the king’s life: one composed by Geoffrey of Beaulieu, the king’s long-time Dominican confessor, and the other by William of Chartres, a secular clerk in Louis’s household who eventually joined the Dominican Order himself. Written shortly after Louis’s death, these accounts are rich with details and firsthand observations absent from other works, most notably Jean of Joinville’s well-known narrativeThe introduction by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field provides background information on Louis IX and his two biographers, analysis of the historical context of the 1270s, and a thematic introduction to the texts. An appendix traces their manuscript and early printing histories. The Sanctity of Louis IX also features translations of Boniface VIII’s bull canonizing Louis and of three shorter letters associated with the earliest push for his canonization. It also contains the most detailed analysis of these texts, their authors, and their manuscript traditions currently available.
Cecilia Gaposchkin is Associate Professor of History and Assistant Dean of Faculty for Pre-Major Advising at Dartmouth College. She is the author of The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages and coeditor of The Sanctity of Louis IX, both from Cornell.
Sean Field is Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont. He is the author most recently of The Beguine, the Angel and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart.
Larry Field holds doctorates in Classics and Law and is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at Western New England University.
"It is high time that the 'lives of Saint Louis' of Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres be made available in translation, since they played a critical role in the development of the cult ofLouis IX, the most famous thirteenth-century crusading king and the only one to be made a saint. These texts take us to the heart of Capetian France and help illuminate both what constituted royal sanctity and the process of medieval canonization. This accessible collection of primary documents, lucidly translated and contextualized in a superb introduction, will make it possible for readers to explore the making of Saint Louis themselves."—Adam J. Davis, Denison University, author of The Holy Bureaucrat: Eudes Rigaud and Religious Reform in Thirteenth-Century Normandy
"The Sancitity of Louis IX is an invaluable addition to our understanding of this saintly king. The Lives of Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres—translated into English for the first time— and the detailed introduction shed new light on Capetian court culture, Louis's crusade expeditions, and political and devotional life at the end of Louis's reign. A wonderful complement to Jean de Joinville's biography, these Lives offer a different vantage point from which to understand Louis as a man and a king. And the afterlife of these texts—in liturgies and books of hours—demonstrates powerfully how Saint Louis was esteemed, remembered and venerated by his family and his kingdom in the decades after his death and canonization. This volume will be of great benefit to the teacher and specialist alike."—Anne E. Lester, University of Colorado at Boulder, author of Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women's Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne
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