ABSTRACT
It has long been recognized that, during what the author have elsewhere called the penitential phase of Louis IX's reign following his captivity in 1251 while on his first crusade, the king became committed to maintaining peace among the Catholic powers of Europe. This commitment arose from both psychological/ideological causes his well-documented desire to play the role of the Christian peacemaker in this period, and for strategic reasons, namely his desire, also well-documented, to concentrate the resources of the Catholic states on their wars with Islamic polities. Louis actually appears to have reached two conclusions from the cogitations that led him to arrange the marriage between Isabelle and Thibaut V. The first, already alluded to and to be taken up later, was the utility of a cluster of Spanish marriages to effect a long-lasting peace in the south. The second conclusion appears to have been to refocus marriage policy in the east, so that principalities situated beyond already tightly bound Champagne might also be drawn into firm friendship with France.
