Chapter VI: Part 6

It is not till we come to the reign of Charles V. (1364-80) that Joinville’s book occurs in the inventory of the royal library, drawn up in 1373 by the King’s valet de chambre, Gilles Mallet. It is entered as “La vie de Saint Loys, et les fais de son voyage d’outre mer;” and in the margin of the catalogue there is a note, “Le Roy l’a par devers soy,”—“The King has it by him.” At the time of his death the volume had not yet been returned to its proper place in the first hall of the Louvre; but in the inventory drawn up in 1411 it appears again, with the following description:(30)—

“Une grant partie de la vie et des fais de Monseigneur Saint Loys
que fist faire le Seigneur de Joinville; très-bien escript et
historié. Convert de cuir rouge, à empreintes, à deux fermoirs
d’argent. Escript de lettres de forme en françois à deux
coulombes; commençant au deuxième folio ‘et porceque,’ et au
derrenier ‘en tele maniere.’ ”

This means, “A great portion of the life and actions of St. Louis which the Seigneur de Joinville had made, very well written and illuminated. Bound in red leather, tooled, with two silver clasps. Written in formal letters in French, in two columns, beginning on the second folio with the words ‘_et porceque_,’ and on the last with ‘_en tele maniere_.’ ”

During the Middle Ages and before the discovery of printing, the task of having a literary work published, or rather of having it copied, rested chiefly with the author; and as Joinville himself, at his time of life, and in the position which he occupied, had no interest in what we should call “pushing” his book, this alone is quite sufficient to explain its almost total neglect. But other causes, too, have been assigned by M. Paulin Paris and others for what seems at first sight so very strange,—the entire neglect of Joinville’s work. From the beginning of the twelfth century the monks of St. Denis were the recognized historians of France. They at first collected the most important historical works of former centuries, such as Gregory of Tours, Eginhard, the so-called Archbishop Turpin, Nithard, and William of Jumièges. But beginning with the first year of Philip I., 1060-1108, the monks became themselves the chroniclers of passing events. The famous Abbot Suger, the contemporary of Abelard and St. Bernard, wrote the life of Louis le Gros; Rigord and Guillaume de Nangis followed with the history of his successors. Thus the official history of St. Louis had been written by Guillaume de Nangis long before Joinville thought of dictating his personal recollections of the King. Besides the work of Guillaume de Nangis, there was the “History of the Crusades,” including that of St. Louis, written by Guillaume, Archbishop of Tyre, and translated into French, so that even the ground which Joinville had more especially selected as his own was preoccupied by a popular and authoritative writer. Lastly, when Joinville’s History appeared, the chivalrous King, whose sayings and doings his old brother in arms undertook to describe in his homely and truthful style, had ceased to be an ordinary mortal. He had become a saint, and what people were anxious to know of him were legends rather than history. With all the sincere admiration which Joinville entertained for his King, he could not compete with such writers as Geoffroy de Beaulieu (Gaufridus de Belloloco), the confessor of St. Louis, Guillaume de Chartres (Guillelmus Carnotensis), his chaplain, or the confessor of his daughter Blanche, each of whom had written a life of the royal saint. Their works were copied over and over again, and numerous MSS. have been preserved of them in public and private libraries. Of Joinville one early MS. only was saved, and even that not altogether a faithful copy of the original.

The first edition of Joinville was printed at Poitiers in 1547, and dedicated to François I. The editor, Pierre Antoine de Rieux, tells us that when, in 1542, he examined some old documents at Beaufort en Valée, in Anjou, he found among the MSS. the Chronicle of King Louis, written by a Seigneur de Joinville, Sénéchal de Champagne, who lived at that time, and had accompanied the said St. Louis in all his wars. But because it was badly arranged or written in a very rude language, he had it polished and put in better order, a proceeding of which he is evidently very proud, as we may gather from a remark of his friend Guillaume de Perrière, that “it is no smaller praise to polish a diamond than to find it quite raw” (_toute brute_).

This text, which could hardly be called Joinville’s, remained for a time the received text. It was reproduced in 1595, in 1596, and in 1609.

In 1617 a new edition was published by Claude Menard. He states that he found at Laval a heap of old papers, which had escaped the ravages committed by the Protestants in some of the monasteries at Anjou. When he compared the MS. of Joinville with the edition of Pierre Antoine de Rieux, he found that the ancient style of Joinville had been greatly changed. He therefore undertook a new edition, more faithful to the original. Unfortunately, however, his original MS. was but a modern copy, and his edition, though an improvement on that of 1547, was still very far from the style and language of the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The learned Du Cange searched in vain for more trustworthy materials for restoring the text of Joinville. Invaluable as are the dissertations which he wrote on Joinville, his own text of the History, published in 1668, could only be based on the two editions that had preceded his own.

It was not till 1761 that real progress was made in restoring the text of Joinville. An ancient MS. had been brought from Brussels by the Maréchal Maurice de Saxe. It was carefully edited by M. Capperonnier, and it has served, with few exceptions, as the foundation of all later editions. It is now in the Imperial Library. The editors of the “Recueil des Historiens de France” express their belief that the MS. might actually be the original. At the end of it are the words, “Ce fu escript en l’an de grâce mil CCC et IX, on moys d’octovre.” This, however, is no real proof of the date of the MS. Transcribers of MSS., it is well known, were in the habit of mechanically copying all they saw in the original, and hence we find very commonly the date of an old MS. repeated over and over again in modern copies.

The arguments by which in 1839 M. Paulin Paris proved that this, the oldest MS. of Joinville, belongs not to the beginning, but to the end of the fourteenth century, seem unanswerable, though they failed to convince M. Daunou, who, in the twentieth volume of the “Historiens de France,” published in 1840, still looks upon this MS. as written in 1309, or at least during Joinville’s life-time. M. Paulin Paris establishes, first of all, that this MS. cannot be the same as that which was so carefully described in the catalogue of Charles V. What became of that MS. once belonging to the private library of the Kings of France, no one knows, but there is no reason, even now, why it should not still be recovered. The MS. of Joinville, which now belongs to the Imperial Library, is written by the same scribe who wrote another MS. of “La Vie et les Miracles de Saint Louis.” Now, this MS. of “La Vie et les Miracles” is a copy of an older MS., which likewise exists at Paris. This more ancient MS., probably the original, and written, therefore, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, had been carefully revised before it served as the model for the later copy, executed by the same scribe who, as we saw, wrote the old MS. of Joinville. A number of letters were scratched out, words erased, and sometimes whole sentences altered or suppressed, a red line being drawn across the words which had to be omitted. It looks, in fact, like a manuscript prepared for the printer. Now, if the same copyist who copied this MS. copied likewise the MS. of Joinville, it follows that he was separated from the original of Joinville by the same interval which separates the corrected MSS. of “La Vie et les Miracles” from their original, or from the beginning of the fourteenth century. This line of argument seems to establish satisfactorily the approximate date of the oldest MS. of Joinville as belonging to the end of the fourteenth century.

Another MS. was discovered at Lucca. As it had belonged to the Dukes of Guise, great expectations were at one time entertained of its value. It was bought by the Royal Library at Paris in 1741 for 360 livres, but it was soon proved not to be older than about 1500, representing the language of the time of François I. rather than of St. Louis, but nevertheless preserving occasionally a more ancient spelling than the other MS. which was copied two hundred years before. This MS. bears the arms of the Princess Antoinette de Bourbon and of her husband, Claude de Lorraine, who was “Duc de Guise, Comte d’Aumale, Marquis de Mayence et d’Elbeuf, and Baron de Joinville.” Their marriage took place in 1513; he died in 1550, she in 1583.

There is a third MS. which has lately been discovered. It belonged to M. Brissart-Binet of Rheims, became known to M. Paulin Paris, and was lent to M. de Wailly for his new edition of Joinville. It seems to be a copy of the so-called MS. of Lucca, the MS. belonging to the Princess Antoinette de Bourbon, and it is most likely the very copy which that Princess ordered to be made for Louis Lasséré, canon of St. Martin of Tours who published an abridgment of it in 1541. By a most fortunate accident it supplies the passages from page 88 to 112, and from page 126 to 139, which are wanting in the MS. of Lucca.

It must be admitted, therefore, that for an accurate study of the historical growth of the French language, the work of Joinville is of less importance than it would have been if it had been preserved in its original orthography, and with all the grammatical peculiarities which mark the French of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. There may be no more than a distance of not quite a hundred years between the original of Joinville and the earliest MS. which we possess. But in those hundred years the French language did not remain stationary. Even as late as the time of Montaigne, when French has assumed a far greater literary steadiness, that writer complains of its constant change. “I wrote my book,” he says in a memorable passage (“Essais,” liv. 3, c. 9)—

“For few people and for a few years. If it had been a subject that
ought to last, it should have been committed to a more stable
language (_Latin_). After the continual variation which has
followed our speech to the present day, who can hope that its
present form will be used fifty years hence? It glides from our
hands every day, and since I have lived it has been half changed.
We say that at present it is perfect, but every century says the
same of its own. I do not wish to hold it back, if it will fly
away and go on deteriorating as it does. It belongs to good and
useful writers to nail the language to themselves” (_de le clouer
à eux_).

On the other hand, we must guard against forming an exaggerated notion of the changes that could have taken place in the French language within the space of less than a century. They refer chiefly to the spelling of words, to the use of some antiquated words and expressions, and to the less careful observation of the rules by which in ancient French the nominative is distinguished from the oblique cases, both in the singular and the plural. That the changes do not amount to more than this can be proved by a comparison of other documents which clearly preserve the actual language of Joinville. There is a letter of his which is preserved at the Imperial Library at Paris, addressed to Louis X. in 1315. It was first published by Du Cange, afterwards by M. Daunou, in the twentieth volume of the “Historiens de France,” and again by M. de Wailly. There are, likewise, some charters of Joinville, written in his _chancellerie_, and in some cases with additions from his own hand. Lastly, there is Joinville’s “Credo,” containing his notes on the Apostolic Creed, preserved in a manuscript of the thirteenth century. This was published in the “Collection des Bibliophiles Français,” unfortunately printed in twenty-five copies only. The MS. of the “Credo,” which formerly belonged to the public library of Paris, disappeared from it about twenty years ago; and it now forms No. 75 of a collection of MSS. bought in 1849 by Lord Ashburnham from M. Barrois. By comparing the language of these thirteenth century documents with that of the earliest MS. of Joinville’s History, it is easy to see that although we have lost something, we have not lost very much, and that, at all events, we need not suspect in the earliest MS. any changes that could in any way affect the historical authenticity of Joinville’s work.(31)

To the historian of the French language, the language of Joinville, even though it gives us only a picture of the French spoken at the time of Charles V. or contemporaneously with Froissart, is still full of interest. That language is separated from the French of the present day by nearly five centuries, and we may be allowed to give a few instances to show the curious changes both of form and meaning which many words have undergone during that interval.

Instead of _sœur_, sister, Joinville still uses _sereur_, which was the right form of the oblique case, but was afterwards replaced by the nominative _suer_ or _sœur_. Thus, p. 424 E, we read, _quant nous menames la serour le roy_, _i.e._ _quand nous menâmes la sœur du roi_; but p. 466 A, _l’abbaïe que sa suer fonda_, _i.e._ _l’abbaïe que sa sœur fonda_. Instead of _ange_, angel, he has both _angle_ and _angre_, where the _r_ stands for the final _l_ of _angele_, the more ancient French form of _angelus_. The same transition of final _l_ into _r_ may be observed in _apôtre_ for _apostolus_, _chapitre_ for _capitulum_, _chartre_ for _cartula_, _esclandre_ for _scandalum_. Instead of _vieux_, old, Joinville uses _veil_ or _veel_ (p. 132 C, _le veil le fil au veil_, _i.e._ _le vieux fils du vieux_); but in the nom. sing., _viex_, which is the Latin _vetulus_ (p. 302 A, _li Viex de __ la Montaingne_, _i.e._ _le Vieux de la Montagne_; but p. 304 A, _li messaige le Vieil_, _i.e._ _les messagers du Vieux_.) Instead of _coude_, m., elbow, we find _coute_, which is nearer to the Latin _cubitus_, cubit. The Latin _t_ in words like _cubitus_ was generally softened in old French, and was afterwards dropped altogether. As in _coude_, the _d_ is preserved in _aider_ for _adjutare_, in _fade_ for _fatuus_. In other words, such as _chaîne_ for _catena_, _roue_ for _rota_, _épée_ for _spatha_, _aimêe_ for _amata_, it has disappeared altogether. _True_ is _voir_, the regular modification of _verum_, like _soir_ of _serum_, instead of the modern French _vrai_; _e.g._, p. 524 B, _et sachiez que voirs estait_, _i.e._ _et sachez que c’était vrai_. We still find _ester_, to stand (“_Et ne pooit ester sur ses pieds_,” “He could not stand on his legs”). At present the French have no single word for “standing,” which has often been pointed out as a real defect of the language. “To stand” is _ester_, in Joinville; “to be” is _estre_.

In the grammatical system of the language of Joinville we find the connecting link between the case terminations of the classical Latin and the prepositions and articles of modern French. It is generally supposed that the terminations of the Latin declension were lost in French, and that the relations of the cases were expressed by prepositions, while the _s_ as the sign of the plural was explained by the _s_ in the nom. plur. of nouns of the third declension. But languages do not thus advance _per saltum_. They change slowly and gradually, and we can generally discover in what is, some traces of what has been.

Now the fact is that in ancient French, and likewise in Provençal, there is still a system of declension more or less independent of prepositions. There are, so to say, three declensions in old French, of which the second is the most important and the most interesting. If we take a Latin word like _annus_, we find in old French two forms in the singular, and two in the plural. We find sing. _an-s_, _an_, plur. _an_, _ans_. If _an_ occurs in the nom. sing. or as the subject, it is always _ans_; if it occur as a gen., dat., or acc., it is always _an_. In the plural, on the contrary, we find in the nom. _an_, and in all the oblique cases _ans_. The origin of this system is clear enough, and it is extraordinary that attempts should have been made to derive it from German or even from Celtic, when the explanation could be found so much nearer home. The nom. sing. has the _s_, because it was there in Latin; the nom. plur. has no _s_, because there was no _s_ there in Latin. The oblique cases in the singular have no _s_, because the accusative in Latin, and likewise the gen., dat., and abl., ended either in vowels, which became mute, or in _m_, which was dropped. The oblique cases in the plural had the _s_, because it was there in the acc. plur., which became the general oblique case, and likewise in the dat. and abl. By means of these fragments of the Latin declension, it was possible to express many things without prepositions which in modern French can no longer be thus expressed. _Le fils Roi_ was clearly the son of the King; _il fil Roi_, the sons of the King. Again we find _li roys_, the King, but _au roy_, to the King. Pierre Sarrasin begins his letter on the crusade of St. Louis by _A seigneur Nicolas Arode, Jehan-s Sarrasin, chambrelen-s le roy de France, salut et bonne amour_.

But if we apply the same principle to nouns of the first declension, we shall see at once that they could not have lent themselves to the same contrivance. Words like _corona_ have no _s_ in the nom. sing., nor in any of the oblique cases; it would therefore be in French _corone_ throughout. In the plural indeed there might have been a distinction between the nom. and the acc. The nom. ought to have been without an _s_, and the acc. with an _s_. But with the exception of some doubtful passages, where a nom. plur. is supposed to occur in old French documents without an _s_, we find throughout, both in the nom. and the other cases, the _s_ of the accusative as the sign of the plural.

Nearly the same applies to certain words of the third declension. Here we find indeed a distinction between the nom. and the oblique cases of the singular, such as _flor-s_, the flower, with _flor_, of the flower; but the plural is _flor-s_ throughout. This form is chiefly confined to feminine nouns of the third declension.

There is another very curious contrivance by which the ancient French distinguished the nom. from the acc. sing., and which shows us again how the consciousness of the Latin grammar was by no means entirely lost in the formation of modern French. There are many words in Latin which change their accent in the oblique cases from what it was in the nominative. For instance, _cantátor_, a singer, becomes _cantatórem_, in the accusative. Now in ancient French the nom., corresponding to _cantator_, is _chántere_, but the gen. _chanteór_, and thus again a distinction is established of great importance for grammatical purposes. Most of these words followed the analogy of the second declension, and added an _s_ in the nom. sing., dropped it in the nom. plur., and added it again in the oblique cases of the plural. Thus we get—

SINGULAR. PLURAL. Nom. Oblique Cases. Nom. Oblique Cases. _chántere_ _chanteór_ _chanteór_ _chanteórs_ From _baro, _baron_ _baron_ _barons_ baronis_ (O. Fr. _ber_) _latro, _larron_ _larron_ _larrons_ latronis_ (O. Fr. _lierre_) _senior, _seignor_ _seignor_ _seignors_ senioris_ (O. Fr. _sendre_) (sire)

Thus we read in the beginning of Joinville’s History:—

_A son bon signour Looys, Jehans sires de Joinville salut et amour;_

and immediately afterwards, _Chiers sire_, not _Chiers seigneur_.

If we compare this old French declension with the grammar of modern French, we find that the accusative or the oblique form has become the only recognized form, both in the singular and plural. Hence—

[Corone] [Ans] [Flors] [Chántere] le chantre. Corone An Flor Chanteór le chanteur. [Corones] [An] [Flors] [Chanteór]. Corones Ans Flors Chanteórs.

A few traces only of the old system remain in such words as _fils_, _bras_, _Charles_, _Jacques_, etc.

Not less curious than the changes of form are the changes of meaning which have taken place in the French language since the days of Joinville. Thus, _la viande_, which now only means meat, is used by Joinville in its original and more general sense of _victuals_, the Latin _vivenda_. For instance (p. 248 D), “_Et nous requeismes que en nous donnast la viande_,” “And we asked that one might give us something to eat.” And soon after, “_Les viandes que il nous donnèrent, ce furent begniet de fourmaiges qui estoient roti au soliel, pour ce que li ver n’i venissent, et oef dur __ cuit de quatre jours ou de cinc_,” “And the viands which they gave us were cheese-cakes roasted in the sun, that the worms might not get at them, and hard eggs boiled four or five days ago.”

_Payer_, to pay, is still used in its original sense of pacifying or satisfying, the Latin _pacare_. Thus a priest who has received from his bishop an explanation of some difficulty and other ghostly comfort “_se tint bin pour paié_” (p. 34 C), he “considered himself well satisfied.” When the King objected to certain words in the oath which he had to take, Joinville says that he does not know how the oath was finally arranged, but he adds, “_Li amiral se tindrent lien apaié_,” “The admirals considered themselves satisfied” (p. 242 C). The same word, however, is likewise used in the usual sense of paying.

_Noise_, a word which has almost disappeared from modern French, occurs several times in Joinville; and we can watch in different passages the growth of its various meanings. In one passage Joinville relates (p. 198) that one of his knights had been killed, and was lying on a bier in his chapel. While the priest was performing his office, six other knights were talking very loud, and “_Faisoient noise au prestre_,” “They annoyed or disturbed the priest; they caused him annoyance.” Here _noise_ has still the same sense as the Latin _nausea_, from which it is derived. In another passage, however, Joinville uses _noise_ as synonymous with _bruit_ (p. 152 A), _Vint li roys à toute sa bataille, à grant noyse et à grant bruit de trompes et nacaires_, _i.e._ _vint le roi avec tout son corps de bataille, à grand cris et à grand bruit de trompettes et de timbales._ Here _noise_ may still mean an annoying noise, but we can see the easy transition from that to noise in general.

Another English word, “to purchase,” finds its explanation in Joinville. Originally _pourchasser_ meant to hunt after a thing, to pursue it. Joinville frequently uses the expression “_par son pourchas_” (p. 458 E) in the sense of “by his endeavors.” When the King had reconciled two adversaries, peace is said to have been made _par son pourchas_. “_Pourchasser_” afterwards took the sense of “procuring,” “catering,” and lastly, in English, of “buying.”

To return to Joinville’s History, the scarcity of MSS. is very instructive from an historical point of view. As far as we know at present, his great work existed for centuries in two copies only, one preserved in his own castle, the other in the library of the Kings of France. We can hardly say that it was published, even in the restricted sense which that word had during the fourteenth century, and there certainly is no evidence that it was read by any one except by members of the royal family of France, and possibly by descendants of Joinville. It exercised no influence; and if two or three copies had not luckily escaped (one of them, it must be confessed, clearly showing the traces of mice’s teeth), we should have known very little indeed either of the military or of the literary achievements of one who is now ranked among the chief historians of France, or even of Europe. After Joinville’s History had once emerged from its obscurity, it soon became the fashion to praise it, and to praise it somewhat indiscriminately. Joinville became a general favorite both in and out of France; and after all had been said in his praise that might be truly and properly said, each successive admirer tried to add a little more, till at last, as a matter of course, he was compared to Thucydides, and lauded for the graces of his style, the vigor of his language, the subtlety of his mind, and his worship of the harmonious and the beautiful, in such a manner that the old bluff soldier would have been highly perplexed and disgusted, could he have listened to the praises of his admirers. Well might M. Paulin Paris say, “I shall not stop to praise what everybody has praised before me; to recall the graceful _naïveté_ of the good Sénéchal, would it not be, as the English poet said, ‘to gild the gold and paint the lily white?’ ”

It is surprising to find in the large crowd of indiscriminate admirers a man so accurate in his thoughts and in his words as the late Sir James Stephen. Considering how little Joinville’s History was noticed by his contemporaries, how little it was read by the people before it was printed during the reign of François I., it must seem more than doubtful whether Joinville really deserved a place in a series of lectures, “On the Power of the Pen in France.” But, waiving that point, is it quite exact to say, as Sir James Stephen does, “that three writers only retain, and probably they alone deserve, at this day the admiration which greeted them in their own,—I refer to Joinville, Froissart, and to Philippe de Comines?” And is the following a sober and correct description of Joinville’s style?—

“Over the whole picture the genial spirit of France glows with all
the natural warmth which we seek in vain among the dry bones of
earlier chroniclers. Without the use of any didactic forms of
speech, Joinville teaches the highest of all wisdom—the wisdom of
love. Without the pedantry of the schools, he occasionally
exhibits an eager thirst of knowledge, and a graceful facility of
imparting it, which attest that he is of the lineage of the great
father of history, and of those modern historians who have taken
Herodotus for their model.” (Vol. ii. pp. 209, 219.)

Now, all this sounds to our ears just an octave too high. There is some truth in it, but the truth is spoilt by being exaggerated. Joinville’s book is very pleasant to read, because he gives himself no airs, and tells us as well as he can what he recollects of his excellent King, and of the fearful time which they spent together during the crusade. He writes very much as an old soldier would speak. He seems to know that people will listen to him with respect, and that they will believe what he tells them. He does not weary them with arguments. He rather likes now and then to evoke a smile, and he maintains the glow of attention by thinking more of his hearers than of himself. He had evidently told his stories many times before he finally dictated them in the form in which we read them, and this is what gives to some of them a certain finish and the appearance of art. Yet, if we speak of style at all,—not of the style of thought, but of the style of language,—the blemishes in Joinville’s History are so apparent that one feels reluctant to point them out. He repeats his words, he repeats his remarks, he drops the thread of his story, begins a new subject, leaves it because, as he says himself, it would carry him too far, and then, after a time, returns to it again. His descriptions of the scenery where the camp was pitched, and the battles fought, are neither sufficiently broad nor sufficiently distinct to give the reader that view of the whole which he receives from such writers as Cæsar, Thiers, Carlyle, or Russell. Nor is there any attempt at describing or analyzing the character of the principal actors in the crusade of St. Louis, beyond relating some of their remarks or occasional conversations. It is an ungrateful task to draw up these indictments against a man whom one probably admires much more sincerely than those who bespatter him with undeserved praise. Joinville’s book is readable, and it is readable even in spite of the antiquated and sometimes difficult language in which it is written. There are few books of which we could say the same. What makes his book readable is partly the interest attaching to the subject of which it treats, but far more the simple, natural, straightforward way in which Joinville tells what he has to tell. From one point of view it may be truly said that no higher praise could be bestowed on any style than to say that it is simple, natural, straightforward, and charming. But if his indiscriminate admirers had appreciated this artless art, they would not have applied to the pleasant gossip of an old general epithets that are appropriate only to the masterpieces of classical literature.

It is important to bear in mind what suggested to Joinville the first idea of writing his book. He was asked to do so by the Queen of Philip le Bel. After the death of the Queen, however, Joinville did not dedicate his work to the King, but to his son, who was then the heir apparent. This may be explained by the fact that he himself was Sénéchal de Champagne, and Louis, the son of Philip le Bel, Comte de Champagne. But it admits of another and more probable explanation. Joinville was dissatisfied with the proceedings of Philip le Bel, and from the very beginning of his reign he opposed his encroachments on the privileges of the nobility and the liberties of the people. He was punished for his opposition, and excluded from the assemblies in Champagne in 1287; and though his name appeared again on the roll in 1291, Joinville then occupied only the sixth instead of the first place. In 1314 matters came to a crisis in Champagne, and Joinville called together the nobility in order to declare openly against the King. The opportune death of Philip alone prevented the breaking out of a rebellion. It is true that there are no direct allusions to these matters in the body of Joinville’s book, yet an impression is left on the reader that he wrote some portion of the Life of St. Louis as a lesson to the young prince to whom it is dedicated. Once or twice, indeed, he uses language which sounds ominous, and which would hardly be tolerated in France, even after the lapse of five centuries. When speaking of the great honor which St. Louis conferred on his family, he says “that it was, indeed, a great honor to those of his descendants who would follow his example by good works, but a great dishonor to those who would do evil. For people would point at them with their fingers, and would say that the sainted King from whom they descended would have despised such wickedness.” There is another passage even stronger than this. After relating how St. Louis escaped from many dangers by the grace of God, he suddenly exclaims, “Let the King who now reigns (Philip le Bel) take care, for he has escaped from as great dangers—nay, from greater ones—than we; let him see whether he cannot amend his evil ways, so that God may not strike him and his affairs cruelly.”

This surely is strong language, considering that it was used in a book dedicated to the son of the then reigning King. To the father of Philip le Bel, Joinville seems to have spoken with the same frankness as to his son; and he tells us himself how he reproved the King, Philip le Hardi, for his extravagant dress, and admonished him to follow the example of his father. Similar remarks occur again and again; and though the Life of St. Louis was certainly not written merely for didactic purposes, yet one cannot help seeing that it was written with a practical object. In the introduction Joinville says, “I send the book to you, that you and your brother and others who hear it may take an example, and that they may carry it out in their life, for which God will bless them.” And again (p. 268), “These things shall I cause to be written, that those who hear them may have faith in God in their persecutions and tribulations, and God will help them, as He did me.” Again (p. 380), “These things I have told you, that you may guard against taking an oath without reason, for, as the wise say, ‘He who swears readily, forswears himself readily.’ ”

It seems, therefore, that when Joinville took to dictating his recollections of St. Louis, he did so partly to redeem a promise given to the Queen, who, he says, loved him much, and whom he could not refuse, partly to place in the hands of the young princes a book full of historical lessons which they might read, mark, and inwardly digest.

And well might he do so, and well might his book be read by all young princes, and by all who are able to learn a lesson from the pages of history; for few kings, if any, did ever wear their crowns so worthily as Louis IX. of France; and few saints, if any, did deserve their halo better than St. Louis. Here lies the deep and lasting interest of Joinville’s work. It allows us an insight into a life which we could hardly realize, nay, which we should hardly believe in, unless we had the testimony of that trusty witness, Joinville, the King’s friend and comrade. The legendary lives of St. Louis would have destroyed in the eyes of posterity the real greatness and the real sanctity of the King’s character. We should never have known the man, but only his saintly caricature. After reading Joinville, we must make up our mind that such a life as he there describes was really lived, and was lived in those very palaces which we are accustomed to consider as the sinks of wickedness and vice. From other descriptions we might have imagined Louis IX. as a bigoted, priest-ridden, credulous King. From Joinville we learn that, though unwavering in his faith, and most strict in the observance of his religious duties, the King was by no means narrow in his sympathies, or partial to the encroachments of priestcraft. We find Joinville speaking to the King on subjects of religion with the greatest freedom, and as no courtier would have dared to speak during the later years of Louis XIV.’s reign. When the King asked him whether in the holy week he ever washed the feet of the poor, Joinville replied that he would never wash the feet of such villains. For this remark he was, no doubt, reproved by the King, who, as we are told by Beaulieu, with the most unpleasant details, washed the feet of the poor every Saturday. But the reply, though somewhat irreverent, is, nevertheless, highly creditable to the courtier’s frankness. Another time he shocked his royal friend still more by telling him, in the presence of several priests, that he would rather have committed thirty mortal sins than be a leper. The King said nothing at the time, but he sent for him the next day, and reproved him in the most gentle manner for his thoughtless speech.

Joinville, too, with all the respect which he entertained for his King, would never hesitate to speak his mind when he thought that the King was in the wrong. On one occasion the Abbot of Cluny presented the King with two horses, worth five hundred _livres_. The next day the Abbot came again to the King to discuss some matters of business. Joinville observed that the King listened to him with marked attention. After the Abbot was gone, he went to the King, and said, “ ‘Sire, may I ask you whether you listened to the Abbot more cheerfully because he presented you yesterday with two horses?’ The King meditated for a time, and then said to me, ‘Truly, yes.’ ‘Sire,’ said I, ‘do you know why I asked you this question?’ ‘Why?’ said he. ‘Because, Sire,’ I said, ‘I advise you, when you return to France, to prohibit all sworn counselors from accepting anything from those who have to bring their affairs before them. For you may be certain, if they accept anything, they will listen more cheerfully and attentively to those who give, as you did yourself with the Abbot of Cluny.’ ”

Surely a king who could listen to such language is not likely to have had his court filled with hypocrites, whether lay or clerical. The bishops, though they might count on the King for any help he could give them in the great work of teaching, raising, and comforting the people, tried in vain to make him commit an injustice in defense of what they considered religion. One day a numerous deputation of prelates asked for an interview. It was readily granted. When they appeared before the King, their spokesman said, “Sire, these lords who are here, archbishops and bishops, have asked me to tell you that Christianity is perishing at your hands.” The King signed himself with the cross, and said, “Tell me how can that be?” “Sire,” he said, “it is because people care so little nowadays for excommunication that they would rather die excommunicated than have themselves absolved and give satisfaction to the Church. Now, we pray you, Sire, for the sake of God, and because it is your duty, that you command your provosts and bailiffs that by seizing the goods of those who allow themselves to be excommunicated for the space of one year, they may force them to come and be absolved.” Then the King replied that he would do this willingly with all those of whom it could be _proved_ that they were in the wrong (which would, in fact, have given the King jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters). The bishops said that they could not do this at any price; they would never bring their causes before his court. Then the King said he could not do it otherwise, for it would be against God and against reason. He reminded them of the case of the Comte de Bretagne, who had been excommunicated by the prelates of Brittany for the space of seven years, and who, when he appealed to the Pope, gained his cause, while the prelates were condemned. “Now then,” the King said, “if I had forced the Comte de Bretagne to get absolution from the prelates after the first year, should I not have sinned against God and against him?”

This is not the language of a bigoted man; and if we find in the life of St. Louis traces of what in our age we might feel inclined to call bigotry or credulity, we must consider that the religious and intellectual atmosphere of the reign of St. Louis was very different from our own. There are, no doubt, some of the sayings and doings recorded by Joinville of his beloved King which at present would be unanimously condemned even by the most orthodox and narrow-minded. Think of an assembly of theologians in the monastery of Cluny who had invited a distinguished rabbi to discuss certain points of Christian doctrine with them. A knight, who happened to be staying with the abbot, asked for leave to open the discussion, and he addressed the Jew in the following words: “Do you believe that the Virgin Mary was a virgin and Mother of God?” When the Jew replied, “No!” the knight took his crutch and felled the poor Jew to the ground. The King, who relates this to Joinville, draws one very wise lesson from, it—namely, that no one who is not a very good theologian should enter upon a controversy with Jews on such subjects. But when he goes on to say that a layman who hears the Christian religion evil spoken of should take to the sword as the right weapon of defense, and run it into the miscreant’s body as far as it would go, we perceive at once that we are in the thirteenth and not in the nineteenth century. The punishments which the King inflicted for swearing were most cruel. At Cesarea, Joinville tells us that he saw a goldsmith fastened to a ladder, with the entrails of a pig twisted round his neck right up to his nose, because he had used irreverent language. Nay, after his return from the Holy Land, he heard that the King ordered a man’s nose and lower lip to be burnt for the same offense. The Pope himself had to interfere to prevent St. Louis from inflicting on blasphemers mutilation and death. “I would myself be branded with a hot iron,” the King said, “if thus I could drive away all swearing from my kingdom.” He himself, as Joinville assures us, never used an oath, nor did he pronounce the name of the Devil except when reading the lives of the saints. His soul, we cannot doubt, was grieved when he heard the names which to him were the most sacred, employed for profane purposes; and this feeling of indignation was shared by his honest chronicler. “In my castle,” says Joinville, “whosoever uses bad language receives a good pommeling, and this has nearly put down that bad habit.” Here again we see the upright character of Joinville. He does not, like most courtiers, try to outbid his sovereign in pious indignation; on the contrary, while sharing his feelings, he gently reproves the King for his excessive zeal and cruelty, and this after the King had been raised to the exalted position of a saint.

To doubt of any points of the Christian doctrine was considered at Joinville’s time, as it is even now, as a temptation of the Devil. But here again we see at the court of St. Louis a wonderful mixture of tolerance and intolerance. Joinville, who evidently spoke his mind freely on all things, received frequent reproofs and lessons from the King; and we hardly know which to wonder at most, the weakness of the arguments, or the gentle and truly Christian spirit in which the King used them. The King once asked Joinville how he knew that his father’s name was Symon. Joinville replied he knew it because his mother had told him so. “Then,” the King said, “you ought likewise firmly to believe all the articles of faith which the Apostles attest, as you hear them sung every Sunday in the Creed.” The use of such an argument by such a man leaves an impression on the mind that the King himself was not free from religious doubts and difficulties, and that his faith was built upon ground which was apt to shake. And this impression is confirmed by a conversation which immediately follows after this argument. It is long, but it is far too important to be here omitted. The Bishop of Paris had told the King, probably in order to comfort him after receiving from him the confession of some of his own religious difficulties, that one day he received a visit from a great master in divinity. The master threw himself at the Bishop’s feet and cried bitterly. The Bishop said to him,—

“ ‘Master, do not despair; no one can sin so much that God could not forgive him.’

“The master said, ‘I cannot help crying, for I believe I am a miscreant: for I cannot bring my heart to believe the sacrament of the altar, as the holy Church teaches it, and I know full well that it is the temptation of the enemy.’

“ ‘Master,’ replied the Bishop, ‘tell me, when the enemy sends you this temptation, does it please you?’

“And the master said, ‘Sir, it pains me as much as anything can pain.’

“ ‘Then I ask you,’ the Bishop continued, ‘would you take gold or silver in order to avow with your mouth anything that is against the sacrament of the altar, or against the other sacred sacraments of the Church?’

“And the master said, ‘Know, sir, that there is nothing in the world that I should take; I would rather that all my limbs were torn from my body than openly avow this.’

“ ‘Then,’ said the Bishop, ‘I shall tell you something else. You know that the King of France made war against the King of England, and you know that the castle which is nearest to the frontier is La Rochelle, in Poitou. Now, I shall ask you, if the King had trusted you to defend La Rochelle, and he had trusted me to defend the Castle of Laon, which is in the heart of France, where the country is at peace, to whom ought the King to be more beholden at the end of the war,—to you who had defended La Rochelle without losing it, or to me who kept the Castle of Laon?’

“ ‘In the name of God,’ said the master, ‘to me who had kept La Rochelle with losing it.’

“ ‘Master,’ said the Bishop, ‘I tell you that my heart is like the Castle of Laon (Montleheri), for I feel no temptation and no doubt as to the sacrament of the altar; therefore, I tell you, if God gives me one reward because I believe firmly and in peace, He will give you four, because you keep your heart for Him in this fight of tribulation, and have such goodwill toward Him that for no earthly good, nor for any pain inflicted on your body, you would forsake Him. Therefore, I say to you, be at ease; your state is more pleasing to our Lord than my own.’ ”

When the master had heard this, he fell on his knees before the Bishop, and felt again at peace.

Surely, if the cruel punishment inflicted by St. Louis on blasphemers is behind our age, is not the love, the humility, the truthfulness of this Bishop,—is not the spirit in which he acted toward the priest, and the spirit in which he related this conversation to the King, somewhat in advance of the century in which we live?

If we only dwell on certain passages of Joinville’s memoirs, it is easy to say that he and his King, and the whole age in which they moved, were credulous, engrossed by the mere formalities of religion, and fanatical in their enterprise to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land. But let us candidly enter into their view of life, and many things which at first seem strange and startling will become intelligible. Joinville does not relate many miracles; and such is his good faith that we may implicitly believe the facts, such as he states them, however we may differ as to the interpretation by which, to Joinville’s mind, these facts assumed a miraculous character. On their way to the Holy Land it seems that their ship was windbound for several days, and that they were in danger of being taken prisoners by the pirates of Barbary. Joinville recollected the saying of a priest who had told him that, whatever had happened in his parish, whether too much rain or too little rain, or anything else, if he made three processions for three successive Saturdays, his prayer was always heard. Joinville, therefore, recommended the same remedy. Seasick as he was, he was carried on deck, and the procession was formed round the two masts of the ship. As soon as this was done, the wind rose, and the ship arrived at Cyprus the third Saturday. The same remedy was resorted to a second time, and with equal effect. The King was waiting at Damietta for his brother, the Comte de Poitiers, and his army, and was very uneasy about the delay in his arrival. Joinville told the legate of the miracle that had happened on their voyage to Cyprus. The legate consented to have three processions on three successive Saturdays, and on the third Saturday the Comte de Poitiers and his fleet arrived before Damietta. One more instance may suffice. On their return to France a sailor fell overboard, and was left in the water. Joinville, whose ship was close by, saw something in the water; but, as he observed no struggle, he imagined it was a cask. The man, however, was picked up; and when asked why he did not exert himself, he replied that he saw no necessity for it. As soon as he fell into the water he commended himself to _Nostre Dame_, and she supported him by his shoulders till he was picked up by the King’s galley. Joinville had a window painted in his chapel to commemorate this miracle; and there, no doubt, the Virgin would be represented as supporting the sailor exactly as he described it.