ABSTRACT
“ THE King of France” wrote the poet of the Gestes de Louis VIII, “ is, at all times, the shield of Holy Church.” 1 The kings of the period we are studying, Philip Augustus, Louis VIII, and Louis IX, to whom we must add Blanche of Castile, were faithful servants of the Catholic Church although they always fought against it for what they considered the rights of the temporal power. Even the most material of them, the least subject to mystical ecstasy, Philip Augustus, was a believer who had suffered for Christ in the Holy Land. There was united to this sincere faith a practical sense which led him to appreciate the value of the alliance between the monarchy and the Church. Contemporaries have called him “ the very pious patron of clerks ”, 2 and have attributed these words on his death bed, “ My son, I beg you to honour God and Holy Church as I have done. I have gained considerable profit from it and you equally will enjoy many advantages.” 3 We cannot explain his religious policy better than by this quotation. To describe it in terms of the measures he had to take against over-ambitious bishops and to assess it as anticlerical is to do it some injustice. 4 As for Louis VIII he died during a crusade against the heretics. His wife, Blanche of Castile, who played a leading role in politics both as regent and queen mother, was austere in her devotion. She reconciled piety with a determined opposition towards bishops who displayed undue independence. 1 From the beginning of this chapter, however, the figure who demands our chief attention is Louis IX. This saint went even farther than Philip Augustus in defence of the temporal power. It is essential to understand in what way and for what basic reasons this spirit of resistance, which we should be wrong to call “ secular ”, could be allied with the most ardent piety and the most devoted respect for the Church. Then we shall have really appreciated what was the religious policy of the Capetians at the apogee of the feudal monarchy.
