ABSTRACT
Writing from Carthage to the French church and people in September 1270, the new king of France, Philip III, announced the holy death of his father Louis IX as an inestimable loss to Christendom. The view of Louis IX, presaging his canonisation in 1297 as Saint Louis, has proved highly compelling. After a period of eclipse, the ancien régime celebrated him as a national and political saint, emblematic of absolute monarchy: the name of Louis was given to their heirs by all the Bourbon kings. The opening and closing sections of Joinville’s account were clearly written long after Louis IX’s death, in the roseate glow of his canonisation. The first years of Louis IX’s reign, from 1226 to 1234, were crucial in determining how durable the gains made by Philip Augustus and Louis VIII would be. The chronicle sources for Louis IX’s reign all portray Blanche as a woman of great ability, of strength and of piety.
