Great Christians of France: Saint Louis and Calvin

Chapter VI Christian Europe And Mahometan Asia In The Thirteenth Century.

A just and peaceful policy throughout Christendom was the great need of Christianity in the thirteenth century, for it had to struggle with two enemies, and was exposed to two very formidable dangers.

The Crusaders had inaugurated a fierce and bitter struggle with the Mahometans in Asia; and towards the middle of the thirteenth century, in the very heat of the conflict, and from the depths of Asia itself, a barbarous and almost pagan people—the Mongol Tartars—spread like a foul flood over Eastern Europe. They swept over Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany, ravaging and threatening with total destruction every province through which they passed. M. Abel Rémusat has studied all the documents relating to these terrible invasions, which he describes with the accuracy of a scholar. He writes as follows:—

'According to the laws established by their first great chief Tchinggis Khan, the Mongols were commanded to show mercy to those princes and nations that gave proof of their submission by surrendering their towns and consenting to pay tribute. All others were given up to the fury of the soldiers, and massacred without distinction of age or sex, the very animals being often included in an indiscriminate slaughter. It was impossible to negotiate with the Tartars in their early invasions; men had either to submit or die, and countless pyramids of human bones, which they erected on the sites of ruined cities, testified to the danger of resistance. These ghastly monuments were to be seen long afterwards, and were the terror of our travellers who passed through the regions which the Tartars had swept over and made desolate.'

The chronicles of the thirteenth century describe the Tartars as—

'A terrible race rushing down from the mountains of the North; an impious multitude who fear nothing, believe nothing, and worship nothing but their king—him they call the great King of kings and Lord of lords; men, or rather brutes, who are relentless; monsters having nothing human about them; greedy for blood, and drinking it with delight; tearing and devouring the raw flesh of animals, of dogs—nay, even of human beings; having an enormous head on a misshapen body, huge chests, large arms and short strong legs; clothed in the skins of cattle, and armed with iron lances; untiring warriors, unequalled archers, and of astounding courage, riding on great and strong horses which are so swift that they can go three days' journey in one day, and require no other food than leaves and the bark of trees. These horses they mount by means of three stirrups suspended one from the other, for they need this ladder on account of the shortness of their legs; crossing the broadest and most rapid rivers without delay or difficulty by means of boats made of ox-hide which they carry about with them: and for the matter of that, it gives them no more trouble to swim than to eat' [Footnote 11]

[Footnote 11: M. Felix Faure has also very ably collected the characteristic features of the Mongol portraits, and put them together so as to form a striking picture. He has taken his materials from the chronicles of the time, and especially from the works of Matthew Paris and Albéric des Trois Fontaines.]

The name and description of these barbarians, the report of their devastations, and the terror which they inspired, were soon spread throughout Christendom. The princes of Eastern Europe wrote to their relatives and allies in the West, warning them of the danger which threatened them, relating their own troubles, and imploring help against the common enemy.

'What must be done in so sad a case?' said Queen Blanche to her son the King of France. Louis answered, the chronicles say, 'with mournful voice, and yet not without a certain divine inspiration.' 'My mother,' he said, 'there is one heavenly consolation in which we may find support. If these Tartars, as we call them, come here, either we shall send them back to Tartarus, the place from whence they come, or they will send us up to Paradise.'

M. Abel Rémusat says: 'This play upon the words Tartarus (the infernal regions) and Tartar, which is here attributed to St. Louis, is found in almost all the documents of the period, and it is just possible that it affords the true explanation of the change made in the word Tatars by all the nations of the West. These tribes are called Tatari in the Russian chronicles, Tattari by Christophorus Manlius, and Tatari or Tattari in a letter written by Ives of Narbonne to Giraud, Archbishop of Bordeaux. But, as a rule, we find that they were called Tartars from the very first, and "Tartari, imò Tartarei"—Tartars from the depths of Tartarus—as the Emperor Frederick called them, became a favourite expression. There was certainly a very general impression that these Mongols were either demons sent to chastise mankind, or men who had dealings with demons.' [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, tome vi. p. 408.]

Another incident of less importance for Europe had, however, a more personal interest for Louis, and had already turned all the ardent piety of his inquiring spirit more and more towards the East. In the summer of 1237 he was at Compiègne, celebrating the marriage of his brother Robert, whom he had invested as knight and endowed with the province of Artois for an appanage. In the midst of the festivities people remarked with surprise that four strangers were present, men of foreign race and unfamiliar appearance, whom the King seemed to treat with great consideration. These, say the chronicles, were emissaries from the Old Man of the Mountain, the chief of an Arab sect and tribe which had sprung up in the midst of the religious, political, and warlike agitations of Islamism. This tribe had established itself in the mountains of Anti-Lebanon, between Antioch and Damascus, and its members had been known in the East for more than a century under the name of Assassins. It is said that they owed this name to the blind fanaticism with which they executed the orders of their sheikh (a word which means both chief and old man), who insured their passionate devotion to himself by all kinds of material indulgences, and made use of them to get rid of his enemies, near and far, Christian and Saracen. In 1190 they assassinated Conrad, Marquis of Montserrat, then about to ascend the throne of Jerusalem, and the great Saladin himself, in spite of all his victories over the Christians, had twice nearly fallen a victim to their blows.

The fame of the young King's piety and valour had reached Syria, and it was said that Louis was about to start for the East at the head of a new crusade, and to re-establish the kingdom of Jerusalem. This report caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send two of his fanatical followers to France, with orders to kill the future enemy of their country. But, on the receipt of further information, he renounced the design, and sent other two of his followers to France to prevent the execution of the murder. In this they succeeded: they not only warned Louis of his danger, but had time to return and meet the first emissaries of their master, with whom they went back to Compiègne. 'Louis, who had taken every precaution against their attempt, received them well,' say the chronicles, 'and sent them home to the Old Man of the Mountain with rich gifts.'

Voltaire ridicules the whole story with that levity and shallow common sense which so often led him to place blind confidence in his own scepticism, and made him ready to reject as absurd fables any facts which he could not easily explain. 'The great Prince of the Assassins,' says he, 'fearing lest the King of France, Louis IX., of whom he had never heard, should journey to the East at the head of a new crusade, and snatch away his dominions, sent two noble adherents from his court in the caverns of Anti-Lebanon to assassinate the King in Paris. But next day he was told what an amiable and generous prince this was; so he sent two other nobles by sea to countermand the assassination.' [Footnote 13]

[Footnote 13: Œuvres de Voltaire, tome xxvii. Edit, de Beuchot.]

But, in order to disprove the records of the thirteenth century, something more is necessary than merely to burlesque them in the language of the eighteenth. The chronicles of the time give numerous and detailed accounts of these early transactions between the Old Man of the Mountain and St. Louis. The accounts agree with all the documents of the time which refer to the relations existing between the East and West after the commencement of the Crusades. They are confirmed by other and almost contemporaneous testimony, which shows the Old Man of the Mountain, four years later, asking the help of St. Louis against the Mongol Tartars, from whose invasions Western Asia suffered as much as Eastern Europe. Without thinking of any difference of race or religion, the foes of yesterday eagerly sought each other's help against the common enemy of to-day. Such a complication of nations, princes, and events would give rise to many improbable and contradictory facts, and the true history of the period lies hidden under the many legends which exaggerate and disfigure it.

Another apprehension and another temptation were added about this time to those which already attracted the thoughts and heart of Louis to the East. The dangers of the Latin empire of Constantinople increased daily. It was assailed alike by Greek, Mussulman, and Tartar. In 1236 the young Emperor Baldwin II. resolved to solicit in person the help of the princes of the West, more especially of the young King of France, who was already renowned for his piety and his chivalrous zeal.

Baldwin was the possessor of a treasure which fascinated the imagination of the Christians of those days—the crown of thorns worn by Christ during His passion. He had pledged it at Venice as a security for a considerable loan from the Venetians, and he now offered to make it over to Louis in return for efficient help either in men or money. Louis accepted the offer with rapture. Not long before he had been greatly alarmed at the reported loss of another precious relic, one of the nails said to have fastened the body of our Lord to the cross. It had been deposited in the Abbey of St. Denis, and disappeared one day during a religious ceremony. When it was found, Louis said: 'I would rather that the earth had opened and swallowed up one of the chief cities of my kingdom than have lost it.'

He took every care to avoid the disgrace which would attend any kind of traffic in so sacred a matter, and ultimately obtained the crown of thorns for a sum which, including all expenses, would equal about 54,000l. of our money. [Footnote 14]

[Footnote 14: 12,000 livres Parisis, about 1,350,000 francs in modern French money. The French livre (like the English pound) was formerly a pound's weight of silver. Charlemagne ordained that a silver sou should be precisely the twentieth part of twelve ounces of silver, and in this way twenty sous came to be looked upon as a livre. Both weight and value have been very greatly reduced in the course of time. Again, the weight of the livre, and consequently its value, varied in different parts of France. The livre Parisis was the livre of Paris, the livre Tournois (p. 19) the livre of Tours, &c.]

We cannot, in the present day, sympathise with the eager credulity which Christian faith does not require and sound criticism entirely condemns; but we ought to and we can understand it in an age when men contemplated every fact and every tradition of the Gospel with a deep, poetic faith, and when the belief that they were in the presence of any fragment or relic of sacred times was sufficient to call forth emotion and reverence as deep as their faith.

It is to such feelings that we owe one of the most perfect and graceful monuments of the Middle Ages, the Sainte Chapelle, built by Louis between 1245 and 1248, to contain the precious relics which he had accumulated. The architect, Pierre de Montreuil, comprehended and glorified the piety of the King in a marvellous manner, and no doubt his own genius was kindled by the same strong religious feeling which animated St. Louis.

Chapter VII.
Origin Of The Passion Felt By St. Louis For The Crusades.
His Sickness In 1244.
His Vow.
His Departure On His First Crusade In 1248.

At the close of the year 1244, in the midst of all these European troubles, and when his sympathy with them was so great, Louis fell ill at Pontoise and was soon in extreme danger. The alarm and grief of his realm reached the highest point. Bishops, abbots, priests, barons, knights, citizens, and peasants hurried, some to Pontoise and some to their churches, to learn 'how it would please the Lord to deal with the King.' Louis himself thought that his last hour was come. He caused all the members of his household to be summoned, thanked them for their services to himself, bade them serve God faithfully, and 'did all that a good Christian ought to do' in sight of death. His mother, wife, brothers, and all those who were about him, prayed for him incessantly; 'his mother more than all the others,' say the chronicles, 'and she added to her prayers great austerities.'

At one time the King lay motionless and without sign of breath, so that those around him thought he was dead. 'One of the ladies watching him,' says Joinville, 'wished to cover his face, saying that he was dead; but another lady on the opposite side of the bed would not allow it, for she said that the soul had not yet left the body. The King heard these ladies speaking, and, by the grace of our Lord, he began to breathe again; he stretched out his arms and legs, and said in a voice as hollow as that of one who has risen from the grave, "The dayspring from on high hath visited me, and by the grace of God recalled me from among the dead."'

No sooner had he regained consciousness and the power of speech, than he sent for William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, and Peter of Cuisy, Bishop of Meaux, in whose diocese he then was, and asked them to affix the holy cross to his shoulder, as a sign that he should journey beyond the seas to the Holy Land. The two bishops tried to dissuade him from this idea, and the two queens, Blanche and Margaret, implored him on their knees to wait until he was well, and after that to do whatsoever he would. But he persisted, and said that he would touch no food until he had received the cross, and at length the Bishop of Paris yielded and bestowed it upon him. The King received his cross with the deepest emotion; 'he kissed it, and laid it down very gently upon his breast.'

'When the Queen, his mother, knew that he had taken the cross,' says Joinville, 'she showed as much sorrow, according to his own account, as if she had seen him lying dead.' [Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: Joinville, chap. xxiv.; 'Vie de St. Louis, par le Confesseur de la Reine Marguerite,' in Bouquet's 'Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France,' vol. xx. pp. 66, 67; Tillemont, 'Vie de St. Louis,' vol. iii.; Faure, 'Histoire de St. Louis,' vol. i.]

More than three years passed away before Louis was able to fulfil the engagement to which he had thus pledged himself. We might almost say that he was pledged to himself and by himself alone, and against the will of nearly every one about him.

The Crusades still possessed great fascination for the public mind, and were still the object of religious and chivalric enthusiasm; but, at the same time, they were dreaded and discouraged from a political point of view, and there were many men of very considerable standing, both among the clergy and laity, who would not have dared to say so, but who had no desire whatever to take part in a new crusade. Under the influence of this state of public feeling, not the less seriously entertained because it shrank from showing itself openly, Louis continued for the next three years to busy himself with the affairs of France and Europe. He tried to mediate in his neighbours' quarrels, and attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the Pope and the Emperor, as if it had been the one object of his life. His mother and the wisest of his advisers had once for a short time entertained some hope of being able to induce him to abandon his enterprise. The Bishop of Paris, the same who in the crisis of his illness and at his urgent request had given him the Crusader's cross, one day said to him: 'My lord the King, bethink you that when you received the cross, when suddenly and without due consideration you made this portentous vow, you were very feeble, and, to confess the truth, of clouded mind; your words, therefore, had not the weight of royal authority and verity. Our lord the Pope knows the requirements of your kingdom and the weakness of your bodily health, and he will very willingly grant you a dispensation. Consider how many dangers threaten us: the power of the schismatic Frederick, the snares of the rich King Henry of England, the treason of the Poitevins, only just crushed out, and the subtle disputes of the Albigenses. Germany is agitated; Italy has no peace. The Holy Land is difficult of access; you may never reach it, and, if you do, you leave behind you the implacable hatred for each other of the Pope and the Emperor.'

Queen Blanche made an appeal of a different kind. She reminded her son of the good counsel she had always given him, and told him that a son who obeyed and trusted his mother was well pleasing in the sight of God. She promised that if he would be content to give up his project, the Holy Land should not suffer, for more troops should be sent thither than he would have marched at the head of. The King listened attentively to all that was said, and was deeply moved by it. Then he answered:

'You tell me that I was not in the possession of all my faculties when I took the cross. Therefore, since it is your wish I renounce the cross, I restore it to you.' And with his own hands he unfastened the cross from his shoulder: 'There, my lord bishop, I place the cross with which I was invested in your hands again.'

All present were full of joy, and began to congratulate each other, when, with a sudden change of countenance and of manner, the King said: 'My friends, at this present time I am assuredly in possession of my reason and of all my senses. I am neither weak in health nor of clouded mind. I now ask to have my cross given back to me. He who knows all things knows that not one morsel of food shall enter my lips until it is once again affixed to my shoulder.' 'These words plainly showed that the finger of God was in this matter, and therefore no one ventured to raise a single objection to the will of the King.' [Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: Matthew Paris, p. 407.]

Louis proclaimed his resolve openly, and urged forward the preparations for a new crusade. He announced that he would start after Pentecost in the following year, 1248.

His brothers first, and then the majority of his vassals, knights as well as great barons, also took the cross. The enthusiasm of Louis was contagious, and many were kindled by it, whilst others for very shame could not forsake their king and lord, who was so noble a prince and so faithful a Christian. On Friday, the 12th of June, 1248, the King went to St. Denis, and there received the oriflamme, and then the pilgrim's wallet and staff. After this, he returned to Paris, and went barefooted to Notre Dame to hear mass, followed by a great crowd of people. Queen Margaret was to accompany him to the East, and she went through the same farewell ceremonies, sometimes with and sometimes after her husband. Queen Blanche waited for her son at Corbeil, and Louis there took leave of her, having first appointed her Regent of France, and granted her the fullest powers during his absence. Some say, however, that she accompanied him as far as Cluny.

'O my fair son, my fair and gentle son!' she said when he bade her adieu. 'O my most tender son, my heart tells me that I shall never see thee more!' And one account adds that, in spite of her high spirit and great courage, she fainted twice when she saw her son finally depart.

The King went on his way, and at Lyons received the benediction of the Pope Innocent IV.; he there put a stop to the brigandage of the wicked lord of one of the castles on the banks of the Rhone, and at length reached Aiguesmortes, in Provence, as some say in July, according to others in the beginning of August. He was to set sail from thence, and had requested all the Crusaders who intended to cross the sea with him to meet him there. He took up his abode in a very humble house, which, as it was the King's residence, was dignified by the name of 'palace;' it would not accommodate his own suite and the retinue of his brothers, tents were therefore erected for them outside the town, and in the neighbouring hamlets. A great number of Crusaders, vassals or allies of the King of France, arrived in rapid succession, and these had separate camps distinguished by their standards. There were thirty-eight large ships in the port hard by, and a whole host of vessels of transport. The preparations of the fleet were completed on the 20th of August, and on Tuesday, the 25th, Louis went to the humble church, Notre Dame des Sablons, to invoke the protection of God for his enterprise, and on the same day he embarked. A young writer of the present age, who has collected local details full of interest with regard to this solemn event, says:—

'It was left entirely to the master-mariners to decide when the wind would be favourable for setting sail, and on Friday the 28th, after careful deliberation, they were all agreed. They then summoned the pilot. "Are you ready?" said they. "Yes, masters," he answered. One of them stepped up to the King of France: "Sire, call up your parsons and priests, for the weather is fair and fine." Chaplains, monks, and bishops came on deck, and the same master-mariners called out, "Sing, good fathers; sing, in the name of God!" Whereupon they chant the "Veni Creator," which is taken up in vessel after vessel, until it is heard from one end of the fleet to the other. This pious canticle ended, the pilots call out to the sailors, "Hoist your sails in God's name!" And first from one ship and then from another you hear the captain calling, "Weigh your anchor, for you are too near, and may do us harm."

'Before long the wind filled our sails, and bore us out of sight of the land; we saw nothing but sky and sea, and every day the wind carried us farther away from the places of our birth. And I think this will show you that a man must be very foolhardy if he will run into such danger with other people's goods, or when he is in a state of mortal sin, for he goes to bed at night in a place which may be at the bottom of the sea the next morning.' [Footnote 17]

[Footnote 17: Topin, 'Aiguesmortes' (1865); Joinville, chap, xxviii.]

Thus thought and wrote the companion and historian of St. Louis, the Sire de Joinville, when, a few days after the King had left Aiguesmortes, he sailed from Marseilles to join him at Cyprus, the general rendezvous of the Crusaders.