LUIGI IX, king of FRANCE, saint. - Born April 25, 1214, perhaps at Poissy, died near Tunis August 25, 1270.
Raised by his mother Blanche of Castile, a strict Catholic, St. L. was characterized by his cult of justice and respect for the rights of others.
In France the Parliament began, under the reign of s. L., to render judgments in particularly difficult cases brought on appeal. The prince, seated in the shade of a chestnut tree at Vincennes, loved to listen to the arguments of the litigants and decide their controversies. Men trusted by the king, chosen for their probity, were sent throughout France to discover and repress the abuses committed by the crown's officials. The treasury accounts were strictly audited at the "Temple". A sound currency was put into circulation that soon supplanted all others minted by the various feudal lords. As for his charity and goodness, it suffices to mention his care for plague victims and lepers, the founding of the Filles-Dieu for fallen women, of the Quinze-Vingts for the unfortunates struck by blindness, and the hospitals he founded at Pontoise, Compiègne, etc. The king's piety was further manifested in that admirable jewel which is the Ste-Chapelle, built in honor of the Savior's crown of thorns.
In foreign policy L. IX tended to eliminate — once and for all — the causes of friction between France and neighboring countries. The Treaty of Corbeil (11 May 1258) secured for the House of Aragon the possession of Catalonia, in exchange for the renunciation of all rights in Provence and Languedoc. The Treaty of Paris of 28 May 1258, ratified in Dec. 1259, which was heavily criticized in its time, ceded to the king of England Guienne, the dioceses of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux, in exchange for the renunciation by the
king of England of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou.
The appeal launched by Innocent IV to Christendom in favor of the Crusade was taken up by the king of France. On 7 June 1249 an army entered Damietta. Instead of waiting for the arrival of the main body of troops, Robert of Artois attacked the enemy at Al-Mansurah. S. L. rushed to the aid of his endangered brother, but after a furious combat he fell prisoner into the hands of the Saracens (5-6 Apr. 1250) and had to pay a very considerable sum for his ransom.
On 17 July the king landed again on the African coast with the intention of joining forces with the bands of the Sultan of Tunis, who were said to be ready to break into Egypt. But the deadly climate decimated the Christian forces and s. L. himself, stricken with the plague, lost his life there. He was canonized by Boniface VIII on 11 Aug. 1297 [note: year printed as 1207 in error in Italian text]. He is venerated as the principal patron of the Franciscan Third Order.