Who could be more avid for relics? He seemed possessed by the need, as lesser men vanish into their need of extravagant fabric or the bodies of women. He acquired a vial of our Lord’s precious blood, His swaddling clothes, the Virgin’s blue mantle together with a bottle of her milk, the Holy Sponge, a fragment of the Shroud, three Holy Nails. Surely this testifies to a mind perfecting itself.
Rigorous of speech, averse to coarse and equivocal language, such constraint bespoke purity within. Every sense he held in strictest bondage. Licentious poetry trumpeted on the street filled him with loathing. Popular songs he despised. Should some thoughtless menial give voice to a ballad of the day King Louis would advise him to sing Ave Maris Stella. I think this hardness hung like chain mail about his presence, mayhap an unwonted gift from his grandfather Philip who counseled the boy to abjure familiarity. Nonetheless, high or low, all that knew Louis the king succumbed to his gracious manner.
I am told he was a virtuous, unshadowed youth, and marriage to the affectionate princess Marguerite but lifted his chastity into high relief, albeit they would have eleven children. He appeared little touched by his wife, nor had she much influence. She struggled to obey him and I think made life happy enough, so much as a saint might understand it. She would have him dress more elegantly until he, tiring of this complaint, agreed to do so, considering that the law of marriage urges a man to please his wife. Yet she, in exchange, must wear humble robes. And very quickly Marguerite let the subject wither. She feared him somewhat. When their first child was born she dared not tell him he had a daughter but called in Bishop William of Paris to break the news. Throughout his life he sought to avoid temptations of the flesh. When he tired of work he used to sit with her and the children, but she observed that he would avoid looking at her while they talked and thought he must be offended or displeased. She asked if that were true. No, said he, adding that a man should not gaze upon what he could not possess. It may be that he detested every soft thing in life.
He was lean, tall enough, his countenance sweet. Yet toward the end when he undertook that last mad journey to convert the emir Mustansir from which none could dissuade him, thinking to light a flame on the invidious coast of Barbary, I saw not the king whose trusted seneschal I was but a bent old man in quest of martyrdom.
Scribes illuminate pages of their books with azure, gold, red, and other glorious colors. So did King Louis illuminate the Frankish kingdom with glorious abbeys, such as that of Sainte Chapelle, which he built to house relics purchased from Emperor Baldwin. When he despatched aid to provinces in need, or himself attended the feeble and sick, comforting those pocked with fulsome disease, abasing his office for the sake of ministration, then certainly did he illuminate the greatest of Christian precepts. I have watched him at hospital tend the putrefying and like a nurse carry out pails of excrement. God help me, I myself could not.
Some faulted him for lavish spending on benefactions. Sooner would I give alms for the love of God, said he, than waste a sou on empty vanities. He built Quinze-Vingts, that asylum for the blind. He built that establishment for common whores, Maison des Filles-Dieu, allotting four hundred livres a year to maintain it. He built the nunnery of Franciscan sisters at Saint-Cloud, which my lady Isabel had founded by his sanction. Throughout the realm he built houses for lay sisters who took no vows, béguines, stipulating that they live chaste. Liberal as he might be with alms, he was not less so with food. Each day six score decrepit old men were summoned to eat what he ate. During Lent and Advent he summoned yet more to be fed. At great vigils here were two hundred ravenous beggars. Wednesday and Friday throughout the year he brought thirteen into his own room to feed them by his own hand, without disgust at their filth. Often did I watch him cut bread for the starving. If any was blind King Louis would put bread into one hand, guiding the other toward the bowl that held his portion. Should it be fish, King Louis would remove the bones and dip it into sauce and place a morsel in the blind man’s open mouth. Saturday he would choose three of the worst afflicted and lead them to his quarters in which towels and basins of water had been readied so he might wash their feet. Reverently would he bathe and dry and kiss those feet, however coarsened by usage, however deformed. He knelt to offer these odious vagrants water to clean their hands. He kissed those hands, gave forty deniers to each.
Seneschal, he once said to me, do you wash the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday?
Nay, said I, for I think it indecorous.
Whereupon he rebuked me, pointing out that our Lord had done so. Then he continued, wondering if I would follow the example of the king of England who washed and kissed the feet of lepers. Some faint trace of levity I discerned in his voice, albeit none in his eye.
I am told that when he first assumed his father’s crown he would disguise himself as a squire and go out early each morning, followed by a servant carrying
