Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Wednesday, 25 August 2021

The death of St Louis


Today is the Feast of St Lous - King Louis IX - of France. It is the anniversary of his death 751 years ago whilst on Crusade in North Africa.



The seal of St Louis as King

Image: Wikidata

A report in the Mail Online from 2019 sets out research that had been done on part of the Saint’s jaw bone which survives in a reliquary at Notre Dame in Paris. The cathedral also holds not only the Crown of Thorns which he brought back to France but also one of his shirts - both mercifully rescued from the cathedral during the recent fire.

Analysis of the jaw bone clearly suggested that  the cause of the King’s death was scurvy, not plague as is usually stated. The research and the medical as well as the military context of the King’s death is set out in the article at French Crusader King Louis IX died of SCURVY, expert claims

I have posted about St Louis and his times in several previous posts on or about this date. They can be read - and I urge readers so to do - at Commemorating St Louis from 2012, at St Louis and his Bible from 2014, at St Louis in medieval art from 2015 and at Commemorating St Louis from 2020.

As can be seen from those articles I have a considerable affection and regard for St Louis and for the Cspetians.

File:First écu, issued by Louis IX of France in 1266.jpg

An évu d’or of 1266 or 1270 issued by St Louis ( enlarged ). This was the first gold coin minted by the Capetian kings and less than ten are known to survive. 

Image: Wikimedia

Probably the most accessible relatively modern biography in English is St Louis by Margaret Wade Labarge, but more recent and more detailed is the major biography St Louis by Jacques Le Goff. However the eminently readable memoir written by the Saint’s companion on Crusade Jean de Joinville for the instruction of the sons of King Philip IV is to be highly recommended. Both as a source and for its vignettes of the King it is a delightful portrait. It can be found in Two Chronicles of the Crusades: Villhardouin and Joinville and is published by Penguin. 

St Louis Pray for us


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