medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Many thanks to Dr. Field for reminding us all that Louis IX was not the only
royal saint the Capetians produced -- just the only one who got the official
recognition of the pope!
The question this poses for me -- just what exactly was it about Blanche of
Castille that produced suchh children? And more so, how both Isabelle and
Louis, but also Charles of Anjou?
M.C.Gaposchkin, Ph.D.
History, Dartmouth College
----Original Message Follows----
From: Sean Field <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious
culture <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] 31 August, Isabelle of France
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:45:03 -0400
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
As Professor Gaposchkin has reminded us, August 31 marks the third in a trio
of Capetian feast days--August 19 for Louis of Toulouse, August 25 for Louis
IX, and August 31 for his sister, Isabelle of France (1225-1270).
Isabelle, surely--if unjustly!--the least known of the three, refused
several marriages arranged by her family, dedicating herself instead to
charity and virginity. In the 1250s Popes Innocent IV and Alexander IV
wrote to her praising her piety. Utilizing this support, Isabelle founded
the Abbey of the Humility of Our Lady, better known as Longchamp, just west
of Paris in 1260. Together with a team of leading Franciscans, including
St. Bonaventure, she helped author a new rule for the abbey that balanced
strong institutional links to the male Franciscan order with increased
autonomy for the abbess and nuns. It was approved by Alexander IV in
February 1259, making Isabelle only the second woman after Clare of Assisi
to compose an approved monastic rule. In July 1263, with Louis IX's help,
she gained Urban IV's acceptance of a revised rule which fulfilled her
demand that her nuns be known as Sorores minores, a previously denied female
analogue to the male Franciscan Fratres minores. At least a dozen other
houses in France, England, Spain, and Italy adopted this rule by the
fourteenth century. Isabelle resided at Longchamp during the last decade of
her life, but did not become a nun. Agnes of Harcourt, third abbess of
Longchamp, composed a vernacular biography around 1283 which detailed
Isabelle's life and miracles. In 1521 Leo X approved celebration of her
office at Longchamp, the feast was later adopted by the entire Franciscan
Order.
Cheers to reaching the end of this Capetian pub crawl.
Sean Field
>---
>
>It may not surprise anyone that I must weigh in here.
>
>We are in the midst of a week of Capetian events. Louis of Toulouse on the
>19th, Louis of France today, and next week, Isabelle of France (on whom I
>dare not presume to write, since I know Sean Field is on our list) on the
>31st.
>
>On August 25, 1270, Louis IX of France died, probably of dysentery, outside
>Tunis, while beseiging the city on his second attempt at crusade. There was
>quite quickly a move afoot to have him canonized. This was prompted by the
>wishes of the royal family, but Pope Gregory X, who'd known Louis before he
>was pope, essentially started the canonization process when he asked, in
>1272, Louis' dominican confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, to write a vie.
>Elite churchmen in France pressed for the canonization in 1275 in a series
>of letters that made the claim that Louis was a martyr for the faith -- an
>idea that they must surely have known did not meet canonical requirements
>of martyrdom but which seemed to have wide appeal. The royal family -
>particularly Louis' son and grandson, pressed for the canonization, which
>kept being delayed for one reason or another, though a 14 month-long
>canonization inquest was held in 1282 and 83 at Saint Denis, where Louis
>was buried and where miracles were occurring. During the first phase of
>the conflict between Louis' son, Philip the Fair, and Boniface VIII, the
>pope sought to mend fences with the French king, who'd proven himself to be
>rather more able to interfere with the smooth operations of papal finance
>than Boniface had first assumed, and the pope did this by canonizing the
>king's grandson. This was of note, since no king had been canonized for
>well over a century -- and not one since Francis had hit the scene and
>defined sanctity in ways that fit ill with power. The canonization was
>political in one sense, but the evidence that people thought it was only
>political is very slim indeed, since there was a widespread sense that
>Louis had achieved sanctity and certainly merited papal recognition of this
>fact through canonization. But this didn't mean that the canonization
>itself wasn't political, and it may well not have happened had politics not
>eased the weight of the the many burdens of the technical, procedural and
>institutional impediments that existed to snappy canonization. Boniface
>duly canonized Louis -- he'd used the promise and the threat not to in
>earlier negotiations with the king -- and while he praised Louis (I have
>suggested elsewhere), he used this praise to subtly dig at Philip. This
>was fine with the king, really, since once canonized Philip could couch
>everything he did within the tradition of his saintly forebears, which he
>did.
>
>Far more to say, of course, but I will leave it there. For iconography,
>there was a great deal more than there is now -- frescos, glass, mss,
>altars, and so forth, that we know of existing that we have lost. But for
>the two principal strands of representation, one might want to look at the
>Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux (at the Clositers) which shows Louis as a saint of
>service, and compare it to the Hours of Jeanne de Navarre (at the BN) which
>shows Louis above all as a sacral king. The Evreux cycle is easily
>available on the web. Jeanne de Navarre's Hours less so, but there are good
>publications of it.
>
>Cheers to Saint Louis, to whom I wil give a toast with my glass of wine
>this evening, since, among other things (such as putting the French kingdom
>on solid foundation, trying to go crusading, and building the most
>beautiful building in the world (as I tell my students), the
>Ste.-Chapelle), he also gave me my present research agenda.
>
>All best,
>Cecilia Gaposchkin
>
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Sean Field
Assistant Professor
University of Vermont
Department of History
Wheeler House
133 S. Prospect
Burlington, VT 05405
802-656-4408
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