The only French king made a saint was also a harsh enforcer
Louis IX abolished trial by ordeal, let subjects appeal straight to the crown, and was trusted to settle quarrels between foreign rulers. The same devout king ordered French Jews to wear a yellow badge and oversaw a public burning of the Talmud. In 1297 the Church canonised him.
Louis was born at Poissy in 1214 and became king at 12 when his father, Louis VIII, died in November 1226. His mother, Blanche of Castile, governed as regent, faced down rebellious barons and in 1229 ended the long Albigensian Crusade through a settlement with Raymond VII of Toulouse. Her piety was fierce: she reportedly told her son she would prefer to see him dead than guilty of a mortal sin. Historians usually date his personal rule from 1234, the year he married Margaret of Provence, though Blanche stayed influential until 1252 and resented the couple's closeness.
As an adult king he beat back powerful nobles such as Peter I of Brittany and defeated Henry III of England at Taillebourg, ending English hopes of recovering Angevin lands. His legal reforms were far-reaching. He created a system of royal appeals, tried to stamp out private wars, built the presumption of innocence into criminal cases, and appointed provosts and bailiffs to carry the new rules into the provinces.
After vowing to take the cross during a serious illness, Louis led two crusades, the Seventh and the Eighth. Both went badly. He was captured and ransomed on the first and died of dysentery during the second in 1270, leaving the throne to his son Philip III. His admirers called him a monk king, and he enforced orthodoxy severely, including strict penalties for blasphemy.
France under Louis stood at a political and economic peak, commanding the largest army of any European kingdom. His patronage pushed Gothic art forward, above all in the Sainte-Chapelle, his private chapel in Paris, famous for its stained glass. The theology college that grew into the Sorbonne was founded around 1257. Much of what is known about him comes from Jean de Joinville, a close friend whose admiring Life of Saint Louis drew on personal experience.
Source: Louis IX of France
