XdOUXS
369
LOUIS
It was one of St. Louis's chief characteristics to
cany on abreast his administration as national sover-
dgn and the performance of his duties towards Chris-
tendom; and taking advantage of the respite which
the Peace of Bordeaux afforded, he turned his thoughts
towards a crusade. Stricken down with a fierce
m^ady in 1244, he resolved to take the cross when
news came that the Turcomans had defeated the
Christians and the Moslems and invaded Jerusalem.
(On the two crusades of St. Louis [1248-1249 and
1270] see Crusades.) Between the two crusades he
opened negotiations with Henry III, which, he thought
would prevent new conflicts between France and Eng-
land. The Treaty of Paris (28 May, 1258) which
St. Louis concluded with the King of England after
five years' parlev, has been very much discussed. By
this treaty St. Louis gave Henry III all the fiefs and
domains belonging to the King of France in the Dio-
ceses of Limoges, Cahors, and Pdrigueux; and in the
event of Alphonsus of Poitiers dying without issue,
Saintonge and Agenais would escheat to Henry III.
On the other hand Henry III renounced his claims
to Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Poitou, and
promised to do homage for the Duchy of Guyenne. It
was generally considered, and Joinville voiced the
opinion of the people, that St. Louis made too many
territorial concessions to Henry III; and many histon-
ans held that if, on the contrary, St. Louis had carried
the war against Henry III further, the Hundred
Years' War would have been averted. But St. Louis
considered that by making the Duchy of Guyenne a
fief of the (>own of France he was gaining a moral
advantage; and it is an undoubted fact that the
Treaty of Paris, was as displcasine to the English as
it was to the French. In 1263, St. Louis was chosen as
arbitrator in a difference which separated Henrv III
and the English baxons: by the *'Dit d' Amiens (24
January, 1264) he declared himself for Henry III
against Uie liarons, and annulled the Provisions of Ox-
ford, by which the barons had attempted to restrict
the authority of the king. It was also in the period
between the two crusades that St. Louis, by the
Treaty of ()orbeil, imposed upon the King of Aragon
the aoandonment of his claims to all the fiefs in Lan-
euedoc excepting Montpellier, and the surrender of
his rights to Provence (11 May, 1258). Treaties and
arbitrations prove St. Louis to have been alx)ve all a
lover of peace, a king who desired not only to put an
end to conflicts, but also to remove the causes for
fresh wars, and this spirit of peace rested upon the
Christian conception,
St. Louis's relations with the Church of France and the papal Court have excited widely divergent inter- pretations and opinions. However, all historians agree that St. Louis and the successive popes uuitecT to protect the clergy of France from the encroachments or molestations of Uie barons and royal officers. It is equally recognized that during; the absence of St. Louis at the crusade, Blanche of Castile protected the clergy in 1251 from the plunder and ill-treatment of a mysterious old maurauder called the "Hungarian Master " who was followed bv a mob of armed men — call^ the *' Pastoureaux ". 'the ' ' Hungarian Master " who was said to be in league ^lith the Moslems died in an engagement near Villaneuve and the entire Imnd
Eursued m every direction was dispersed and annihi- kted. But did St. Louis take measures also to defend the independence of the clergy against the papacy? A number of historians once claimed he did. They attributed to St. Louis a certain '^pragmatic sanction^' of March, 1269, prohibiting irregular collations of ecclesiastical benences, prohibiting simony, and inter- dicting tlie tributes wmch the papal Court received from me French clergy. The Gallicans of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries often made use of this measure against the Holy See; the truth is that it was « foigeiy fabricateil in the fourteenth centur>' by juris- IX.— 24
consults desirous of giving to the Pragmatic Sanction
of Charles VII a precedent worthy of respect. ITiis
so-called pragmatic of Louis IX is presented as a royal
decree for the reformation of the Church; never would
St. Louis thus have taken upon himself the right to
proceed authoritatively with this reformation. When
m 1246, a great number of barons from the north and
the west leagued against the clergy whom they accused
of amassing too great wealth and of encroaching upon
their rights. Innocent IV called upon Louis to dis-
solve this league; how the king acted in the matter is
not definitely known. On 2 May, 1247, when the
Bishops of Soissons and of Troyes, the archdeacon of
Tours, and the provost of the cathedral of Houen,
despatched to the pope a remonstrance against his
taxations, his preferment of Italians in the distribution
of benefices, against the conflicts between papal juris-
diction and the jurisdiction of the ordinaries. Marshal
Ferri Past^ seconded their complaints in the name of
St. Louis. Shortly after, these complaints were reit-
erated and detailed in a lengthy memorandum, the
text of which has been preserved by Mathieu Paris, the
historian. It is not known whether St. Louis affixed
his signature to it, but in any case, this document was
simply a request asking for the suppression of the
abuses, with no pretensions to laying aown principles of
public right, as was claimed by the Prannatic Sanction.
Documents prove that St. Louis did not lend an ear
to the grievances of his clergy against the emissaries
of Urban IV and Clement IV; he even allowed Clement
IV to generalize a custom in 1265 according to w^hich
the benefices the titularies of which died while so-
journing in Rome, should be disposed of by the pope.
Docile to the decrees of the I^ateran Council (1215),
according to which kings were not to tax the churches
of their realm without authority from the pope, St.
Louis claimed and obtained from successive popes,
in view of the crusade, the right to levy quite heaiy
taxes from the clergy. It is a^ain this fundamental
idea of the crusade, ever present m St. Louis's thoughts,
that prompted his attitude generally in the struggle
between the empire and the pope. While the Em-
peror Frederick II and the successive popes sought
and contended for France's support, St. Louis's atti-
tude was at once decided and reserved. On the one
hand he did not accept for his brother Robert of Ar-
tois, the imperial crown offered him by Gregorv IX in
1240. In his correspondence with Frederick he con-
tinued to treat him as a sovereign, even after Fred-
erick had been excommunicated and declared dis-
possessed of his realms by Innocent IV at the Council
of Lyons, 17 July, 1245. But on the other hand, in
1251 , the king compelled Frederick to release the French
archbishops taken prisoners by the Pisans, the em-
geror's auxiliaries, when on their way in a Genoese eet to attend a general council at Rome. In 1245, he conferred at length, at Cluny, w^ith Innocent IV who had taken refuge in Lyons in December, 1244, to escape the threats of the emperor, and it was at this meeting that the papal disi>ensation for the marriage of Charles Anjou, brother of Louis IX, to Beatrix, heir- ess of Provence was granted, and it was then that Ijouis IX and Blanche of Castilo promisoil Innocent IV their support. Finally, when in 1247 Frederick II took steps to capture Innocent IV at Lyons, the meas- ures Louis took to defend the pope were one of the reasons which caused the emperor to withdraw. St. Louis looked upon ever}' act of hostility from either power as an ol)stacle to accomplishing the crusade. In the quarrel over investitures, the king kept on friendly tenns v;ith Iwth, not allowing the emperor to harass the pop^ and never exciting the pope against the emperor. In 1262 when Urban offered St. Louis, the Kingdom of Sicily, a fief of the Apostolic See, for one of his sons, St. Louis refused it, through consitlera- tion for the Swabian dvTiasty then reigning; but when Charles of Anjou accepted Urban IV's offer and went
