61. And whereas, for the honor of God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that How the charter was to be enforced has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these things aforesaid. Willing to render them firm and lasting, we do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security, namely, that the barons may choose five and twenty barons of the kingdom, whom they think convenient, who shall take care, with all their might, to hold and observe, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by this our present Charter confirmed....[445]
63. ... It is also sworn, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without evil duplicity. Given under our hand, in the presence of the witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June, in the 17th year of our reign.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE REIGN OF SAINT LOUIS
56. The Character and Deeds of the King as Described by Joinville
Louis IX., or St. Louis, as he is commonly called, was the eldest son of Louis VIII. and a grandson of Philip Augustus. He was born in 1214 and upon the death of his father in 1226 he succeeded to the throne of France while yet but a boy of twelve. The recent reign of Philip Augustus (1180-1223) had been a period marked by a great increase in the royal power and by a corresponding lessening of the independent authority of the feudal magnates. The accession of a boy-king was therefore hailed by the discontented nobles as an opportunity to recover something at least of their lost privileges. It would doubtless have been such but for the vigilance, ability, and masculine aggressiveness of the young king's mother, Blanche of Castile. Aided by the clergy and the loyal party among the nobles, she, in the capacity of regent, successfully defended her son's interests against a succession of plots and uprisings, with the result that when Louis gradually assumed control of affairs in his own name, about 1236, the realm was in good order and the dangers which once had been so threatening had all but disappeared. The king's education and moral training had been well attended to, and he arrived at manhood with an equipment quite unusual among princes of his day. His reign extended to 1270 and became in some respects the most notable in all French history. In fact, whether viewed from the standpoint of his personal character or his practical achievements, St. Louis is generally admitted to have been one of the most remarkable sovereigns of mediæval Europe. He was famous throughout Christendom for his piety, justice, wisdom, and ability, being recognized as at once a devoted monk, a brave knight, and a capable king. In him were blended two qualities—vigorous activity and proneness to austere meditation—rarely combined in such measure in one person. His character may be summed up by saying that he had all the virtues of his age and few of its vices. No less cynical a critic than Voltaire has declared that he went as far in goodness as it is possible for a man to go.
Saint Louis being thus so interesting a character in himself, it is very fortunate that we have an excellent contemporary biography of him, from the hand of a friend and companion who knew him well. Sire de Joinville's Histoire de Saint Louis is a classic of French literature and in most respects the best piece of biographical writing that has come down to us from the Middle Ages. Joinville, or more properly John, lord of Joinville, was born in Champagne, in northern France, probably in 1225. His family was one of the most distinguished in Champagne and he himself had all the advantages that could come from being brought up at the refined court of the count of this favored district. In 1248, when St. Louis set out on his first crusading expedition, Joinville, only recently become of age, took the cross and became a follower of the king, joining him in Cyprus and there first definitely entering his service. During the next six years the two were inseparable companions, and even after Joinville, in 1254, retired from the king's service in order to manage his estates in Champagne he long continued to make frequent visits of a social character to the court.
Joinville's memoirs of St. Louis were completed about 1309—probably nine years before the death of the author—and they were first published soon after the death of Philip the Fair in 1314. They constitute by far the most important source of information on the history of France in the middle portion of the thirteenth century. Joinville had the great advantage of intimate acquaintance and long association with King Louis and, what is equally important, he seems to have tried to write in a spirit of perfect fairness and justice. He was an ardent admirer of Louis, but his biography did not fall into the tempting channel of mere fulsome and indiscriminate praise. Moreover, the work is a biography of the only really satisfactory type; it is not taken up with a bare recital of events in the life of the individual under consideration, but it has a broad background drawn from the general historical movements and conditions of the time. Its most obvious defects arise from the fact that it comprises largely the reminiscences of an old man, which are never likely to be entirely accurate or well-balanced. In his dedication of the treatise to Louis, eldest son of Philip IV., the author relates that it had been written at the urgent solicitation of the deceased king's widow.
The biography in print makes a good-sized volume and it is possible, of course, to reproduce here but a few significant passages from it. But these are perhaps sufficient to show what sort of man the saint-king really was, and it is just this insight into the character of the men of the Middle Ages that is most worth getting—and the hardest thing, as a rule, to get. Incidentally, the extract throws some light on the methods of warfare employed by the crusaders and the Turks.
Source—Jean, Sire de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis. Text edited by M. Joseph Noël (Natalis de Wailly) and published by the Société de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1868). Translated by James Hutton under title of Saint Louis, King of France (London, 1868), passim.