Canonized in 1297 as Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France (r. 1226–1270) was one of the most important kings of medieval history and also one of the foremost saints of the later Middle Ages. As a saint, Louis became the centerpiece of an ideological program that buttressed the ongoing political consolidation of France and underscored Capetian claims of sacred kingship. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reconstructs and analyzes the process that led to the monarch's canonization and the consolidation and spread of his cult.
Differing political and religious ideals produced competing images of the sanctity of Louis in late-thirteenth and early fourteenth-century France. Drawing on hagiography, sermons, and liturgical evidence—the latter a rich but little-explored historical source—Gaposchkin shows how various groups (including Dominicans, Cistercians, and Franciscans) and individuals (such as Philip the Fair and Joinville) used commemoration of the saint-king to sanctify their own politics and notions of identity and religious virtue. Louis' cult was disseminated to a wider, nonelite public through sermons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and then revived by the Bourbon kings in the seventeenth century. In deepening our knowledge of this royal saint, this elegantly written book opens the curtain on the religious sensibilities and secular politics of a transitional period in European history.
M. Cecilia Gaposchkin is Assistant Dean of Faculty for Pre-Major Advising and Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix List of Maps, Diagram, and Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 Areas of Inquiry 4 Sources 12 Plan of Inquiry 18 The Making of a Saint, 1270-1297 21 1270: The Death of Louis IX and the Rhetoric of Saintliness 25 1275: Official Requests for Canonization 30 Hagiography: Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres 33 St.-Denis and the Canonization Inquest 36 Canonization and the Constraints of Interpretation 43 The Canonization of 1297 48 The Political Context: The First Phase of the Conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip IV (1296-1297) 50 Boniface's Interpretation of Louis' Sanctity: The Texts 51 Politics, Sanctity, and the Interpretation of Virtue 57 James of Viterbo and the Duties of Kingship 60 Philip's Response 63 Constructing the Cult: Bones, Altars, and Liturgical Offices 67 Philip at St.-Denis 69 Philip at the Ste.-Chapelle 72 Philip and the Dominicans 77 OtherPrincely Courts 82 Saint Louis in the Kingdom of Sicily 85 The Scope of Commemoration 86 Excursus: A Short Primer on the Structure of the Liturgical Office 93 Royal Sanctity and Sacral Kingship 100 The Dominican Contribution 101 Constituency 102 Modes of Composition: Mapping Louis onto Scripture 103 The Precepts of Good Kingship: Humility and Justice 106 Sacral Kingship 107 Typology 111 The Liturgical Readings: Beatus Ludovicus quondam Rex Francorum 115 Dominicans Redux 119 The Sanctity of Kingship 123 The Monastic Louis: Cistercians and Dionysians 125 Cistercian Liturgical Commemoration and the Capetians 126 Lauda Celestis 1: The Cistercian Office 128 The Image of Kingship in the Cistercian Office 129 Monastic Spirituality and the Liturgy 131 Lauda Celestis 3 in Paris 137 Saint Louis at St.-Denis 139 Liturgy and Institutional Identity 151 The Franciscans' Saint Louis and the Specter of Saint Francis 154 William of Saint-Pathus 156 The Franciscan Liturgical Office for Louis 158 Imitatio Christi, Renunciation, Stigmata, and the Crusades 169 Alms, Charity, and Religious Patronage 175 Authority and Crusade among the Franciscans 179 Joinville 181 Chronology and Composition 182 The Portrait of Louis in the Crusading Narrative 185 The Hagiographic Frame: Louis as Secular Saint 188 Piety, Kingship, Crusading, and Sanctity 192 Private Devotion, Saintly Lineage, and Dynastic Sanctity 197 The Translation Office (Exultemus Omnes) 198 Books of Hours and the "Hours of Louis" (Sanctus Voluntatem) 206 Dynasticism, Crusade, and Legitimacy 230 Louis, Capetians, Valois 237 Conclusion 240 Sources for the Liturgical Tradition 245 Liturgical Offices for Saint Louis of France 250 Sermons in Honor of Saint Louis (IX) 284 Sermons Misidentified as in Honor of Louis IX in Schneyer's Repertorium 290 Bibliography 293 Index 317
The Making of Saint Louis is one of the most important books on French history in years. It is a brilliant reconstruction and description of the way Louis IX was conceived as a saint in the two centuries after his death—I say brilliant and I mean it. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin exploits her sources with an admirable sophistication and mastery.
Joan A. Holladay
"M. Cecilia Gaposchkin's beautifully written, wide-ranging book examines the ways in which different constituencies—Saint Louis's descendants, other elites, members of various monastic orders, and others—constituted the memory of the king to serve their different, sometimes conflicting interests. Her evidence is primarily liturgical and homiletic, but she also musters images, documents, letters, ceremony, even coins in this subtle investigation of the perception of sanctity and sacral kingship in the half century after the king's death in 1270."
Sharon Farmer
"Through a close analysis of sermons, liturgical sources and books of hours, M. Cecilia Gaposchkin demonstrates that in the years following the canonization of King Louis IX of France, different constituencies constructed different versions of the same saintly king. Franciscans remembered his charity and humility; Cistercians remembered his asceticism and defense of the faith. Capetian, Angevin, and Valois kings drew on Louis's memory to legitimize their own power, but others drew on that same memory in order to criticize the current king. This is truly an outstanding demonstration of the malleable qualities of sacred memory and the multiple purposes it could serve in medieval society."
