JOINVILLE, JEAN de. - French statesman and historian, b. in 1224, d. on 11 July 1319. A scion of a noble family of Champagne, and invested with the title of seneschal of that county, he spent his youthful years at the court of the count of Champagne Thibaut IV, poet and king of Navarre, and of the kings of France. He took part in the sixth Crusade (1248-50), sharing with St. Louis IX (v.) the hardships of the war and the captivity. After the ransom (1251), he advised St. Louis to remain in the East, and with him returned to France in 1254, continuing to assist him in the affairs of government. Entrusted by St. Louis's successor, Philip III, with the administration of the county of Champagne (governed by Joan I of Navarre, later queen of France through her marriage to Philip IV), he held that office until a very advanced age.

JOINVILLE, JEAN de. - J. offers Louis X his history of St. Louis. Miniature of the 14th century - Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, mss. français 13568, f. 1.(from C. Coudrec, Les enluminures des manuscrits du moyen des. Paris 1887, inv. 38)

At the request of Joan I herself he composed (1305-1309) the Histoire de saint Louis. For this most celebrated of the chronicles of the time he is considered the second of the great historians of the French Middle Ages, after Villehardouin and before Froissart. He avails himself for it of his own recollections as a companion of the King and as a witness (1282) at the trial for his canonization, and also of the documents of the archive of St-Denis and of the recollections of others, written and oral, working the whole up with a most marked vein of freshness and sincerity, attentive to every detail of life, to every shade of the feelings of chivalry and faith of his time, for which the Histoire remains a document of the first order.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: Works: the Histoire de St Louis was first published at Poitiers in 1457, and critically by N. de Wailly at Paris in 1868 and 1874. Studies: A. F. Didot, Etudes sur la vie et les travaux de J. de J., ibid. 1870; H. F. Delaborde, J. de J. et les seigneurs de Joinville, ibid. 1894; G. Paris, J. de J., in Histoire littéraire de la France, XXXII, Paris 1898, pp. 291-454.

Enzo Bottasso

@incollection{ec7_joinville_jean_de, author = {Bottasso, Enzo}, title = {Joinville, jean de}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {586--587}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/joinville-jean-de} }

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Joinville, Jean de

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