Deus Lo Volt!

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Deus Lo Volt! Page 40

by Evan S. Connell


  He wished to see the mosque of Omar. When he had climbed the steps he saw a Christian priest seated beside the footprint of Mahomet, Bible in hand, begging alms. Frederick threatened him with death, struck him, cursed him for a pig. Going round the Dome of the Rock he stopped to read a mosaic scription placed there by Saladin after every trace of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had been expunged. With a smile he asked who these polytheists might have been. He wondered about gratings over the windows and learned they kept out sparrows. Now, said he, instead of sparrows God Almighty has sent you pigs. By which he meant Christians.

  He did not stay long, less than two days before returning to Joppa, thence to Acre. Perhaps for no reason but to demonstrate authority he launched an attack upon the Templar fortress of Chastel-Pelèrin. So he roused up enemies like scorpions on every side, Templar, Hospitaler, Venetian, Genoese, baron, knight, merchants at their stalls. It was known that he would soon quit the Holy Land, yet all knew he would exercise power from a distance.

  Before sunrise on the first of May he went furtively and quickly to the port of Acre. What tumult played within his soul, no chronicle relates. But the citizens had learned he would depart and stored up pails of slop, filth, sheep guts, and other garbage, which they flung at his head. Butchers shouted insults, chased him, pelted him with entrails and shit. Constable Odo de Montbéliard, hearing such a racket, came and arrested those who abused the emperor and called out to him, commending him to God. Frederick’s voice was heard across the water although he could not be understood. Thus did he embark, scorned, repudiated. Who could believe this deformation of spirit? How is it that when we see the beginning of things we do not guess their end? Yet not fortuitously but designedly does each achieve its goal, as a stone once hurled must drop to earth.

  God is just. On that December day in our year of grace 1244 when King Louis took the cross, on that day was the spirit of Jesus Christ reborn.

  I knew King Louis well. When his younger brother Alphonse was knighted I served at table carving meat, the first time ever I stood next to his majesty. I was seventeen. Thenceforth, excluding residence at Joinville, I attended court. Forty years afterward I testified on the matter of his canonization. And in the year of our Lord 1298, thanks to almighty providence, I was present at the exhumation of his body.

  I have heard it said that King Louis, withal the excellence of his heart, lacked that strength of understanding which becomes a useful sovereign. He was no more than thirteen when his father Louis VIII gave up the ghost. Thus he knew as regent during his minority the inflexible hand of his mother, Queen Blanche of Castille, virtuous, godly, ardent, with an uncommon taste for politics. Frankish nobility liked her not much, calling her Dame Hersent after that she-wolf in the fable of Renard. I believe she nurtured Louis none too gently, as though he were destined for the Church. Perhaps such filial devotion exceeded the limit proposed by nature and exposed the king to mockery. That he passively accepted her restraint cannot be doubted. As to his weakness, I do not presume to know, unless it be called faith or trust.

  His first counselors were experienced, wise and prudent, veterans from the court of his grandfather Philip Augustus. Later, as though to sound the depth of spirituality, he brought to advise him such clerics as Eude Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, and Bishop William of Paris. I think his preoccupation with the salvation of souls conformed easily, as the glove conforms to the hand, to his concept of sovereign power. Now since what is not true cannot be beautiful, the truth that our sainted king sought in all things must be the measure of his worth. Otherwise no enduring likeness of him could be traced.

  He seemed to live for God alone. Not once did I hear him address the devil by name. Countless hours day and night he devoted to prayer, oppressed by the knowledge that our Lord was neither adequately served nor loved, grieved by the existence of infidels, certain that he himself did not honor God deeply enough. Offices he had read in the king’s chapel as though it were the chapel of a monastery. There also he had the Hours sung. By his request was the Office for the Dead included. He would hear two masses, at times three. Very little would he study but Scripture and the Fathers. He would ask that a candle as high as his waist be lighted and while it burned he would read the Bible. So long did he remain on his knees at prayer that sight and wit intermingled and he would rise up dazed, murmuring, not certain where he was, unable to find his bed. At midnight he was up to hear matins sung by his chaplain, rising so quietly that equerries failed to note or got up late and chased after him barefoot. Each Friday he made confession after which his confessor must apply the discipline with five iron chains his majesty carried in an ivory box. Similar boxes he ordered, with similar little chains, giving them to his children and to friends, and counseled them to make good use of scourging. Should the confessor strike him gently he would demand harder blows. One such did strike with force enough to lacerate his majesty’s sensitive flesh, yet the king held his peace, nor afterward mentioned it save with amusement. Most were less tenacious. Indeed, they reproved him for austerities that imperiled his health, persuading him to give up a hair shirt he wore during Advent and Lent and on the vigil of numerous feasts. In its place he adopted a horsehair girdle. Good Friday he walked to church barefoot. Which is to say, he wore shoes for the sake of appearance but had the soles removed. Before approaching the cross he took off his upper garments excepting vest and coat. On his knees he would advance a short distance, stopping to pray, advancing further. Beneath the cross he would prostrate himself as though crucified, arms outflung, weeping. And if during litanies he heard that verse appealing for a fountain of tears he would respond.

  O Lord, I dare not ask so much, but a few drops to water my parched and sterile heart.

  I do not doubt that he hoped to achieve a state of ecstasy. He took visible pleasure from sermons, and liked discussing nuances of morality with theologians whose minds he valued. In that respect he differed from his pious cousin Henry who felt quite content to hear sundry masses. Chaste, temperate in appetite, mystic, opposed to deceit, such was our sainted King Louis. Few men in any age have discerned so clearly the principles of our faith.

  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 a sack of pennies. With his own hand he would distribute pennies to miserable beggars who waited in the palace court, taking care to give the most to the neediest. Now it is usual for serfs to pay a four-penny tribute each year to their lord, and it is usual for serfs of a church to place this money atop their heads before depositing it on the altar. So each year on the feast of Saint Denys the king betook himself to the abbey, and on his knees, bereft of the crown, he laid four gold coins atop his head before depositing them on the altar. In this way he declared himself bound to Saint Denys. Such gestures of humility were, I think, but half intelligible to less devout monarchs.

  The preoccupation of his mind was to lead and guide men heavenward. He charged Vincent de Beauvais, author of Speculum, to provide moral and religious instruction for princes, knights, ministers, and others resident at court. He himself composed Enseignement, that pious text regarding the duty of a Christian king. Each night he summoned his children before they went to bed and spoke with them about good emperors and good kings. He caused them to memorize the Hours of Our Lady.

  He caused Muslim children from the Orient to be educated at Royaumont abbey. Similarly, with gifts he persuaded many Jews to accept baptism. Little enough did he like Jews. Their very presence on earth disturbed him. With much difficulty did counselors persuade him to let Jews go about their affairs because they were shrewd at commerce, thus benefiting the realm. He once told me how a debate was scheduled between Christians and Jews at the monastery of Cluny. There was present some injured knight who asked permission to speak. So he got up, leaning on his crutch, and asked to confront the wisest Jew. To this Jew he put one question.

  Do you believe that Blessed Mary, who was virgin, bore God in her womb and gave birth to Him?

  The Jew answered that he believed no such thing. Then said the knight, you are a fool to enter her church and her house since you neither love her nor believe in her. Whereat he lifted his crutch and fetched the Jew a blow on the skull so he dropped to the floor. Then did all the Jews run away. Now came the abbot to reproach this knight and said he had been foolish. Nay, it had been foolish of you to hatch this, replied the knight, for if it continued there would be many good Christians deceived by the wicked argument of Jews.

  His majesty told me he agreed with the knight, and none but a learned cleric should presume to argue with Jews.

  Persecution of Cathari and Albigenses, which marked his father’s reign, had much abated when he came to manhood. Nevertheless, when His Holiness Gregory proposed to root them out through inquisition King Louis thought it advisable. With his mother Queen Blanche, zealous as himself, they defrayed the cost. And the king with his mother provided guards for these inquisitors, who were much hated. Heretic, apostate, recreant Catholic, no matter. Few escaped the net. It is good, his majesty said, to thrust a sword as far as it will go into the belly of whosoever vilifies or abandons the faith of our Lord. Nor would any at court dispute him since confiscation of heretic property tended to the king’s advantage.

  He told me how certain men of Albi approached the count of Montfort, requesting him to come see the body of our Lord that manifested itself as flesh and blood. You that are faithless, the count replied, you go and see it. For myself, I believe in what the Holy Church teaches us concerning the Sacrament. And do you know my reward for accepting the word of God and His saints? I shall wear a finer crown in heaven than any I might have worn on earth. King Louis thought this a very fine reply.

  As surely as did Godfrey de Bouillon he considered himself God’s advocate. Nor would he hesitate to punish unruly tongues. A goldsmith was heard to use vile words, so the king had him bound to a ladder in drawers and shirt, pig guts and harslet wound round and round his neck up to his nose. And here a blasphemous Parisian whose lips the king ordered seared with glowing red iron. He said he would quite willingly have himself branded if every oath were banished from the realm. I never did hear him swear by God, by the mother of Christ, nor by any saint. Never did he cite the devil, unless that name could rightfully be mentioned. Devil take it! How often we hear such turn of speech, which is sinful because we have no right to maledict what the Lord God has created. On my faith and deed, foul words at Joinville castle merited a blow. Yet that is by the way.

  During summer his majesty liked to go and sit in the forest of Vincennes. There, resting his back against an oak, he would listen to complaints or whatever related to his subjects. They would come and talk without hindrance. Or he might enter the gardens of Paris wearing a plain wool tunic and sleeveless surcoat, his hair neatly combed but without a quoif, and white swansdown hat, black taffeta cape about his shoulders. There on a carpet we would seat ourselves around him. And he would pat the ground, addressing me. Seneschal, you sit here. At first I equivocated. My lord, I said, I dare not sit so close. But he would have it no other way and my garment touching his.

  Sickness followed him like a tiresome guest. Fever, chills, his skin mottled red. While battling
the English in a noxious marsh near Saintonge he contracted some disease that almost cost his life. Mortification he inflicted upon himself for the sake of our Lord further weakened him. When news came of Muslim victory at Gaza he lay ill, so near death that one of two ladies attending him made as if to draw the sheet across his face. Another who was present intervened, objecting that the king’s soul hovered within his body. He could hear them while they talked. And the Lord caused him to regain his power of speech, whereas until that moment he could not whisper a word. He asked for the Cross, which was given him. When the queen mother Blanche learned that he had spoken she was overcome with joy. But when she learned that he had vowed to go on pilgrimage she wept as though he were dead.

  His three brothers took the cross, followed by the duke of Burgundy, the count of Flanders, Count Hugh of Saint-Pol and his nephew Gautier, to say nothing of other high lords. Yet nearly four years would pass before they embarked. There was reason. Our king left little to chance. He did not think any port acceptable, hence he ordered the building of Aigues-Mortes, by which is meant dead waters.

  I myself took the cross with our beloved king. But since I did not know how long I would be oversea, the enterprise attending with danger, I wished to make a settlement of my affairs before I left Joinville. It seemed to me that I should leave everyone satisfied with my conduct so that I might honorably enjoy the fruits and pardons merited by crusaders through concessions of the sovereign pontiff. Therefore I gathered neighbors and friends, giving all to understand that if any felt censorious or the least misemployed I stood ready to make amends. Afterward I traveled to Metz in Lorraine to mortgage my estates because at that time my mother Béatrice was alive and enjoying the great part of my fortune as her dower.

 

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