At another time they were talking of the duties of a layman towards Jews and Infidels. “Let me tell you a story,” said St. Louis. “The monks of Cluny once arranged a great conference between some learned clerks and Jews. When the conference opened, an old knight who for love of Christ was given bread and shelter at the monastery, approached the abbot and begged leave to say the first word. The abbot, after some protest against the irregularity, was persuaded to grant permission, and the knight, leaning on his stick, requested that the greatest scholar and rabbi among the Jews might be brought before him. ‘Master,’ said the knight, ‘do you believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus and held Him at her breast, and that she is the Virgin Mother of God?’ The Jew answered that he believed it not at all. ‘Then,’ said the knight, ‘fool that thou art to have entered God’s house and His church, and thou shalt pay for it.’ Thereupon he lifted his stick, smote the rabbi under the ear and felled him to the ground. The terrified Jews fled, carrying their master with them, and so,” said St. Louis, “ended the conference. And I tell you, let none but a great clerk dispute: the business of a layman when he hears the Christian religion defamed is to defend it with his sharp sword and thrust his weapon into the miscreant’s body as far as it will go.”
Louis, however, did not apply the moral in practice. Although severe in exacting tribute from the Jews, he spent much money in converting them and held many of their orphan children at the font. To others he gave pensions, which became a heavy financial burden to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. “I have heard him say,” writes Joinville, “with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say, ‘Verily it is so, or verily it is not so.’ Before going to bed he would call his children around him and recite the fair deeds and sayings of ancient princes and kings, praying that they would remember them for good ensample; for unjust and wicked princes lost their kingdoms through pride and avarice and rapine.” The good king essayed to deal with some social evils at court, but in vain:[53] he could only give the example of a pure and chaste life. When he was in the east he heard of a Saracen lord of Egypt who caused all the best books of philosophy to be transcribed for the use of young men, and he determined to do the like for the youth of Paris. Scribes were sent to copy the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers, preserved in various abbeys in France. He had a convenient and safe place built at the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle, where he housed the books. Scholars had free access to them, and he himself was wont in his leisure time to shut himself up there for study, reading rather the Holy Fathers than the writings of the best doctors of his own time.
Louis was a steadfast friend to the religious orders. On his return from the Holy Land he brought with him six monks from Mount Carmel and established them on the north bank of the Seine, near the present Quai des Celestins; they were subsequently transferred to the University quarter, on a site now occupied by the Marché aux Carmes. The prior of the Grande Chartreuse was also prayed to spare a few brothers to found a house in Paris; four were sent, and the king endowed them with his Château de Vauvert, including extensive lands and vineyards. The château was reputed to be haunted by evil spirits, and the street leading thither as late as the last century was known as the Rue d’Enfer. Louis began a great church for them, and the eight cells, each with its three rooms and garden, were increased to thirty before the end of his reign; in later times the order became one of the richest in Paris and occupied a vast expanse of land to the south of the Luxembourg. The fine series of paintings illustrating the life of St. Bruno, by Le Sueur, now in the Louvre, was executed for the smaller cloister of the monastery. The Grands Augustins were established on the south bank of the Seine, near the present Pont Neuf, and the Serfs de la Vierge, known later as the Blancs Manteaux, from their white cloaks, in the Marais. They were subsequently amalgamated with the Guillelmites, or the Hermits of St. William, and at no. 14 of the street of that name some remains of their monastery may yet be seen. The church of the Blancs Manteaux, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, also exists in the street of that name.
In 1217 the first of the Preaching Friars were seen at Paris. On the 12th of September seven friars, among whom were Laurence the Englishman and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a house near the parvis of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave them a home near St. Genevieve, opposite the church of St. Etienne des Grez (St. Stephen of the Greeks), and in the following year, when St. Dominic came to Paris, the brothers had increased to thirty. The saint himself drew up the plans of their monastery in the Rue St. Jacques, and always cherished a particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was opened in 1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans were known as Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a school; they soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the religious orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and princes. The Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his deep affection for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a house of his order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin, sent in 1216 a few of his disciples. These early friars, true poverelli di Dio, would accept no endowment of house or money, and supporting themselves by their hands, carried their splendid devotion among the poor, the outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the Cordeliers, as they were called,[54] accepted the loan of a house near the walls in the south-western part of the city. St. Louis built them a church, and left them at his death part of his library and a large sum of money.[55] They too became rich and powerful and their church one of the largest and most magnificent in Paris. St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at their school of theology. Their monastery in the sixteenth century was the finest and most spacious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which still exists. The king also founded the hospital for 300 blind beggars, known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 × 20) now in the Rue de Charenton, and left them an annual rente of thirty livres parisis, that every inmate might have a mess of good pottage at his meals. Until Cardinal de Rohan, of diamond-necklace fame, effected the sale of the buildings in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators, an act of jobbery which brought his eminence a handsome commission, the hospital was situated between the Palais Royal and the Louvre. Originally it was a night shelter, whither the poor blind might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. The king subsequently gave them a dress on which Philip le Bel ordered a fleur-de-lys to be embroidered, that they might be known as the “king’s poor folk.” They were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was put up to auction every year, and those who promised to pay the highest premium to the funds of the hospital were adjudicated the privilege of begging there. This curious arrangement was in full vigour until the latter half of the eighteenth century, when the foundation was removed. Twelve blind brothers and twelve seeing brothers—husbands of blind women who were lodged there on condition that they served as leaders through the streets—had a share in the management of the institution. Luxury seems to have sometimes invaded the hostel, for in 1579 a royal decree forbade the sale of wine to the brethren and denounced the blasphemy with which their conversation was often tainted. In 1631 they were forbidden to use stuffs other than serge or cloth for their garments, or to use velvet for ornament.
The establishment of the abbey of St. Antoine, of the Friars of the Holy Cross and of the Sisters of St. Bega or Béguines, were also due to the king’s piety, and the whole city was surrounded with religious houses. “Even as a scribe,” says an old writer, “who hath written his book illuminates it with gold and silver, so did the king illumine his kingdom with the great quantity of the houses of God that he built.”