To be a pilgrim is to journey to a place on a religious quest. We were pilgrims in Paris looking for the heart of France.
As part of that pilgrimage we determined to find all we could regarding the namesake of our oldest child. We were on a quest for Saint Louis of France. (Our son Lewis Dayton was named for my father, who was named for his great-grandfather, with a nod from us to C.S. Lewis and with the great King looming benevolently in our thinking behind it all.)
In his capital city surely that would be easy. Surely the flower of French manhood and the model king would be honored at every turn. It might have been easier to find Saint Louis in Missouri than in Paris. If France suffers arrhythmia, then this failure to honor the great man is one missed beat.
Where was Saint Louis? For the English speaking pilgrim at least, it was hard to find the legendary Flower of France.
Who was this image of Christian nobility? If Arthur existed outside of myth, then he was no greater than Saint Louis whose life equals that noble monarchs in every way save one: the good King Louis did not see the Grail, though he talked with Thomas Aquinas which may have been compensation enough.
Crowned Louis IX in 1226, it is said of him that he “was the noblest king that ever reigned on earth. For in him greatness of mind and high courage were united with discipline of life, passion for God, and generous consideration of human needs.” As a young man he failed to recapture Jerusalem from its Islamic conquerors and suffered as a prisoner. This seems to have deepened him and he helped rescue many Christians from slavery. His personal life was unblemished and his piety real.
Under his patronage, his father-confessor Robert Sorbonne founded a great center of learning which still bears the name Sorbonne.
Most important, he was a just king. He reorganized the courts and gave justice with mercy to the poorest member of his kingdom. Other kings, including the English, turned to him to adjudicate their problems. King Louis would feed the poor from his own table and wash their feet. His building program included many churches and monastic centers.
He died of a fever on his last crusade saying, “I will come into thine house; I will worship toward thy hold temple.” His people honored him as a saint even before his official canonization. Like Arthur, his life is a mirror of virtue for each person called to rule. Unlike Arthur, his triumphant reign and glorious death is certainly historical.
(Much of the information here is from the Anglican Breviary.)
We hurried to the church of Saint Denys hoping to find his tomb. There we saw the ruin and wreck of the Revolution. Revolutionaries dumped the bodies of France’s great rulers into a common grave. The church itself is a jumbled collection of desecrated graves and royalist attempts at restitution over the centuries. The whole effect is awful . . . producing both awe and horror.
Walking through the lower level of the church was moving. Deep under the alter we prayed where Saint Denys, the early Christian martyr, may wait the Last Trump. We saw the tomb of the last kings of France, including the sad remains of Louis XVI and his Queen. All through the shattered church the commentary provided by the government droned in the ear, explaining all the desecration dryly. The Church of Saint Denys was a sad ruin which smelt of decay, mold, and ruin. Walking from it in a smattering of rain, was the low point of my time in Paris.
Saint Louis was there, but lost in the jumble of the ages.
In Paris, surrounded by busy bureaucrats of France is the Sainte-Chapelle. It was here we began to hope again that we could still find the spirit of Saint Louis. Revolution and secularism had turned the surrounding palaces into long halls of fluorescent lit modernity.
And then we walked into the sagging and seemingly battered chapel Saint Louis had built to house his greatest triumph. Saint Louis bought holy relics from sharp Eastern Christians in Byzantium for his city. He paid a staggering price for them and then built a setting for his newly acquired jewels, especially the Crown of Thorns. The chapel cost more than the Crown, but both were bargains. The relics made Paris a place for pilgrimage and the chapel a place of eternal beauty.
The upper flour of the chapel, ruined as it was, burst on us in a splendor of light mixed with red and blue stained glass glory. Saints and apostles rose all around us. A battered alter stood before us, but it was the glass, the glorious glass with God’s sun honoring God’s king still that made us stand and gape.
Saint Louis will never die while the glass of Sainte-Chapelle shines.
The lower level was built to honor the Virgin and is full of the memory of the King’s mother who was a capable Regent and helper to the monarch in the early years of his reign. It is overwhelmingly blue with the royalist cross, the fleurs de lys, everywhere. It feels almost intimate, but the book tables and tourist junk purchased in the middle ruin it.
Finally, we rushed to Notre Dame to see the Crown of Thorns of Saint Louis, his shirt, and a few other relics of his time. There we met the nicest employee in all of Paris who let us into the treasury of the Cathedral though we were really too late. We told her of our pilgrimage and she let us into the room just as the mass began in the main church. Standing (ever so briefly) before the relics of Saint Louis in Notre Dame was the only moment in our trip what that great cathedral lived for us. The charity of the worker combined with the splendor of the music made what we saw lift out of the jumbled corner case in which they were jammed and grow splendid: a reliquaries, a shirt, and a medallion of the saint King.
The condition in which they are stored is a national disgrace, but they were there and we saw them.
Was this the Crown of Thorns? I don’t know, but cannot help (in my Socratic way) doubting it. If it is not the very crown of thorns, then it is surely an icon of it. The sharp Byzantine who sold it may have thought he got the better of the deal, but the faith of the pious king transformed it. Saint Louis thought he had Christ’s crown and was reminded of Christ’s rule. He was encouraged by it to rule with justice to the poor and in humble service to Christ’s church. Whatever it was, it is now the crown of thorns of a holy king indeed.
In a Paris ringed with seething Islamic suburbs, perhaps it is prudent to forget such a Frank, but it cannot be wise. Why? Saint Louis was a man of his times and times have changed, but there is still much to learn from his reign.
Of course, a leader like Saint Louis would have to change tone and tactics. Christians have learned much about God and government since his time. There should be no crusade, military force can never settle religious conflict. But there are three things our next great leader could learn
First, our rulers need not be philosophers, but should love those who seek wisdom. Saint Louis helped encourage the Age of Faith, a golden age of synthesis between the external wisdom of Greece and the internal wisdom of Revelation. Building schools, churches, and permanent things is a wise investment in the future. Even the Revolutionaries were awed enough to preserve the Bible message of the windows of Sainte Chapelle.
Second, our rulers must not be afraid to create common cultural and civic religious symbols. In bringing the Crown of Thorns to Paris, Louis created an icon for his reign. His ever act was almost calculated to create a common French identity in the wider world of Christendom. He was a universal Christian and a French man. In an age that applauds diversity, we run the risk of overlooking the need for common symbols to unite us. At the same time this particularity need not divide Christendom, as Louis rule shows.
Finally, any ruler could learn from Saint Louis the absolute courage of his convictions. Louis never sent his followers where he would not go. He died as he lived on the front line of the battle as he saw it.
After Notre Dame, we were dispirited. We had found fragments of memories of Louis IX in Paris, but not Saint Louis. It seemed no longer his city, but the stronghold of the Revolutionaries and the tyrant Bonaparte family.
As it had at the start of our trip, the Church of the Sacred Heart showed me that this was false. The spirit of the great King still lives in France. The second time I climbed the hill of the Sacred Heart, I stood beneath the great statue of the saintly King. It was a new statue by Parisian standards, but it was glorious and shining in the sun.
It was then I understood the strength of Christendom. Christ’s Kingdom is never really defeated, facing new foes, dying new deaths, but creating more legends as a result. Christendom seemingly has no power in France, but even its ruins were unforgettably beautiful. Even the dry bones are bones and there is nothing to replace them.
The legend of Saint Louis is more powerful than the man who happens to be President of France. The fragments remaining of his rule were better than utilitarian government projects without any soul that had overwhelmed me. The death of Christian Europe is impossible. There is simply too much Christianity in the fabric of even secular France. So long as a single Christian remains in France and continues over one hundred years of prayer for revival the heart of France cannot die.
