St. Louis

St. Louis was born at Poissy, near Paris, in 1214, and became King Louis IX of France at the age of twelve on the death of his father. His formidable and devout mother, Blanche of Castile, governed as regent and formed him in a faith he never abandoned; she famously taught him to fear sin more than any earthly loss. He married Marguerite of Provence, with whom he had eleven children, and ruled France for more than four decades during the height of the medieval era. Louis proved that sanctity and kingship could go together. He reformed the administration of justice, curbing private wars, discouraging trial by ordeal, and welcoming the petitions of the poor, whom tradition remembers him hearing personally beneath an oak at Vincennes. He founded hospitals, fed the hungry at his own table, and cared for lepers and the destitute with his own hands. A Franciscan tertiary in spirit and by long tradition, he lived with striking personal austerity for a monarch. To house the relic of the Crown of Thorns he built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, one of the jewels of Gothic architecture. Twice he took the crusader's cross in hopes of recovering the Holy Land. On the Seventh Crusade he was captured in Egypt in 1250 and ransomed, then spent four years strengthening the Christian settlements in the Levant. Setting out again in 1270, he fell ill with an epidemic disease that swept his camp near Tunis and died there on August 25, 1270, having counseled his son in a final testament to love God and deal justly with the poor. Louis was canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII and remains the only king of France to be canonized. His remains were interred in the royal basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris, though most of his relics were later dispersed. His feast is kept on August 25, and he is honored as a patron of France and of the Secular Franciscan Order, a lasting model of Christian statesmanship and charity.