medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Phyllis Jestice wrote:
> Louis IX (d. 1270) Louis became king of France in 1226 (at the age of 12).
> His piety (and love of crusading) caught the attention of his age, and
> Louis was made the model Christian king. Although both of Louis' crusades
> were disasters, he was certainly famous for his attention to impartial
> justice, honesty, and devotion to the passion. Louis was canonized in 1297
> by Boniface VIII (does anyone know the story behind this? Isn't this the
> year after the bull Clericis laicos was promulgated? It's hard to imagine
> Boniface VIII doing the French royal family a favor).
The canonization occurred as one of a spate of concessions to Philip the
Fair during a period of rapproachement engineered by Philip's minister,
Pierre Flotte. Boniface found himself between a rock and a hard place in
early 1297 (the rock being the French and the hard place being the Itlian
Colonnas), and at the time it seemed to him wiser to placate the former,
though I'm sure in hindsight he realized what a disaster that was.
For what it is worth, I have an article coming out in the Journal for
Medieval History in which I argue that in the canonization documents
(bull, sermons) Boniface uses Louis to set up an ideal of good kingship
which stands, essentially, as a criticism of Philip the Fair. It
backfires, of course. A pro-french document of 1302 or 3 then argues that
Louis himself exemplified the royalist position, and that the very fact
that the papacy canonized him proved the legitimacy of the royalist
position.
Cecilia Gaposchkin
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