Saint Louis of Anjou

God tested him early on with afflictions that served to purify his heart. From the age of thirteen or fourteen, he was sent, along with two of his princely brothers, to Catalo nia to re Catalogne Region where the relics were transferred. main as a hostage in place of the King his father, whom Alfonso III, King of Aragon, held prisoner. Thus, he was the cause of the freedom of the one from whom he had received life. His constancy was admirable during his imprisonment. He remained there for seven years and received very poor treatment from his guards; they treated him not as a prince, but as a common captive. However, nothing could weary his patience or draw a word of anger or impatience from his lips. On the contrary, he considered himself extremely fortunate to suffer something in imitation of Jesus Christ, his sovereign Master, and he often said to his brothers and the gentlemen who were with him that, according to the spirit of the Gospel, since adversity is better than prosperity, they should cherish their state and rejoice that God gave them the means to show Him love through their sufferings. He further increased the rigors of his captivity with voluntary penances; for he ate little, fasted often, chastised his body until it bled with iron chains, and girded his loins very tightly with a rope knotted several times; finally, he would wear only coarse shirts to subdue his flesh. This austerity helped him greatly to keep his chastity intact. He was always seen with his eyes cast down; he never spoke to women without a witness. He had made his room a cloister; with him were two friars of Saint Francis of proven wisdom and integrity.

He took advantage of these seven years of seclusion to devote himself to the meditation of divine things and the mysteries of Jesus Christ, and to all other exercises of piety. He went to confession almost every day before hearing Mass, in order to attend that august sacrifice with greater purity of heart. He never failed to recite the entire Divine Office, which he did with no less attention and respect than if he had seen God Himself before him. He also recited the Office of the Cross every day, with arms outstretched, and many other prayers in honor of the Blessed Virgin, to whom he was very devoted, and of several Saints. If he could obtain a little freedom, he used it to visit the poor sick and to assist them in their miseries; one day, he even gathered all the lepers of Barcelona to wash their feet and serve them food, which he did with incredible humility and fervor. There was one among them whose leprosy appeared so horrible that it made the hearts of the other princes recoil; but he caressed him more than the others and applied himself particularly to washing and serving him. The next day, they searched for him in the city, and it was impossible to find him, which led to the belief that it was Our Lord who had taken the form of a leper to receive these good offices from young Louis, His faithful servant. When he gave his body a little rest, weary from the day's labors, he soaked his bed with his tears, preferring to be purified by this water than by fire. These devotional practices did not prevent him from applying himself seriously to study, and by this means, he became so skilled in philosophy and the holy letters, under the discipline of the friars of Saint Francis, that at the end of his captivity, he was capable of discussing the most subtle points of theology and preaching publicly the highest truths of Christianity.

During a severe illness, he vowed to embrace the Order of Friars Minor if he were to recover. This vow was the cause of his healing, and he ratified it in the castle chapel where he was a prisoner as soon as he saw himself restored to health. He was further confirmed in his purpose when, during a horse ride taken to please his brothers, the princes, the horse he was riding threw him to the ground and rolled over him three times without injuring him; this accident made him realize the misery and instability of all earthly satisfactions, and that his vocation was not for the exercise of arms. Finally, in 1291, affairs were settled between the King of Sicily, his father, and the King of Aragon, James II, surnamed the Just, on the condition that Blanche, daughter of the former and sister of our Saint, would marry this King of Aragon. The King of Sicily himself took his daughter, the princess, to Catalonia for the execution of this treaty, and by this means delivered his imprisoned children. At the same time, there was talk of marrying our Louis to the Princess of Majorca, sister of the Aragonese; but, despite the urgings of his father and all the lords of both courts who pressed him to consent to this marriage, which was to cement the perfect union of the two states, he remained unshakable in the resolution he had taken to keep chastity perpetually. Splendor and royalty were nothing to him: "Jesus Christ," he said then, "is my kingdom: in possessing Him alone I shall have everything; if, on the contrary, I do not possess Him, I lose everything."

He wished to execute his vow by entering the Franciscans of Montpellier; but they refused to receive him for fear of displeasing his family. Louis was therefore obliged to follow his father and brothers to Italy. But in Rome, he renounced the crown of Naples absolutely, which thus passed to Prince Robert, his younger bro ther; then, with his fat prince Robert, son cadet King of Naples and protector of Elzéar. her's permission, he received Holy Orders in the city of Naples. He opposed being shown more honor than the other clerics during his ordinations. This is why he thanked the Pope, who wished to confer the Order of the priesthood upon him himself. Some time later, the Sovereign Pontiff Boniface VIII appointed him to the bishopric of Boniface VIII Pope who appointed Louis to the bishopric of Toulouse. Toulouse, in place of Hugues Mascaron, who had just died in Rome, and commanded him to accept it. He had to submit to this command; but he nevertheless made the journey to Rome before his consecration; there, at the Friars Minor in the convent of Ara Coeli, he pronounced the vows that bind one to this Order. It was Christmas Eve of the year 1296. To spare the sensibilities of his family and friends at first, he had hidden the religious habit under his ecclesiastical attire. But he could not long resist the desire to publicly clothe himself in the poverty of Jesus Christ. On the day of Saint Agatha, dressed in a poor Friar Minor's robe and a cord, he walked barefoot through the streets of Rome, from the Capitol to Saint Peter's Church, where he was to preach: the crowd followed him with respect.

As soon as he had been consecrated bishop, he l eft for Toulouse Episcopal see of Erembert. Toulouse. Passing through Florence, he found that the religious of his Order had prepared for him a room hung with rich tapestries, marked with the arms of France and Sicily: "What is this, my brothers," he said to them, "is this how one lodges a poor Friar Minor? Do you not know that I have renounced the royalties of the earth, and that I have no other inheritance than the Cross of Jesus Christ?" He therefore had all this worldly apparatus removed to be lodged as a simple religious. One of the principal Fathers having told him that he had greatly honored their Order by choosing to enter it: "Do not speak so, my brother," he replied; "your Order, on the contrary, has done me great honor by giving me its habit."

He was given a magnificent welcome upon his entry into Toulouse; but his heart was so detached from it that he suffered it only with great reluctance. Having taken note of the income of his bishopric, he used only the smallest part for the subsistence of his household, and liberally distributed the rest to the churches and the poor. Every day he treated twenty-five of them at his table, whom he served on his knees, with as much devotion and humility as if he had rendered these offices to Jesus Christ himself. His vigilance for the salvation of his people was admirable; he applied himself to it without respect of persons, and with a charity that no difficulty could stop. Passing one day through a street in Toulouse, he learned that a poor sick woman was asking for the sacrament of Penance: he dismounted at that very hour from his mule and went to administer this Sacrament to her. When he came out from her bedside, those who accompanied him warned him that he was covered in vermin: "These are," he replied without being moved, "the pearls of the poor."

A year before he was appointed to the bishopric of Toulouse, which was not erected into an archbishopric until twenty years after his death, Pope Boniface VIII had detached the city and territory of Pamiers from it to make it a new diocese. The church of the monastery of the regular canons was taken to serve as a cathedral, and the canons remained there as before, under the Rule of Saint Augustine, to compose the chapter. Abbot Bernard de Saisset, whom the Pope held in high regard, was destined to be its first bishop. But King Philip the Fair, diss atisfied with this roi Philippe le Bel King of France who opposed the establishment of the diocese of Pamiers. erection, opposed the episcopate of Bernard, and wanted Pamiers to remain under the bishop of Toulouse. The Pope found an expedient to reconcile everything; it was to appoint Saint Louis to the new bishopric, whom he had already made bishop of Toulouse, giving him, under two different titles, the two dioceses to govern, and reserving Abbot Bernard to succeed him in that of Pamiers, in the event that he survived him.

Louis preached everywhere with an apostolic zeal that touched sinners, enlightened heretics, and even converted Jews. This zeal led him to make various journeys for the good of Christianity and for the preaching of the Gospel; and it is said that he went for this purpose to Paris, Spain, and Italy, and that he even returned once to Rome. There he gave a sermon in which he showed, in a very persuasive manner, that the prosperities of the earth are but pure vanities, and that one must seek only the happiness of eternal life. Although he was a great prelate and a great prince who could have inherited the crowns of the Two Sicilies, he was nevertheless, in all his ways, only a poor friar of the Order of Friars Minor. He wore its habit, kept its austerities, and observed its Rule as much as his prelacy would allow him. He lodged nowhere else, during his travels, than in their convents; he always had some of them with him; and above all, he took one with him to whom he had given the charge of rebuking him for his faults without any fear. This good Father did so one day quite freely before several people, who found it very bad and were angry with him for it; but the bishop excused him, saying that it was at his request that he had done so, to please him, because there is nothing more harmful than flattery, nor anything, on the contrary, more profitable than correction made by friends.

The administration of this holy prelate was short, but very fruitful for the diocese of Toulouse: he provided it with good priests and wise pastors for the guidance of souls; he banished from it many vices and disorders that the heretics had introduced there: he spread such an agreeable odor of holiness that many resolved to embrace the narrow path of virtue. Finally, people were so surprised to see the heir to two beautiful kingdoms and the successor of so many prelates despise everything that the world finds agreeable, that everyone felt moved to trample it underfoot and to attach their heart only to Jesus Christ. However, our Saint, believing he had still done nothing, formed the design of renouncing all ecclesiastical dignity to hide in a cell, where, unknown to men, he could think only of God alone; but, while he was preparing to go to Rome to make this resignation into the hands of the Pope, Our Lord revealed to him that the end of his life was near, and that he would soon have the kingdom of heaven for that of the earth, which he would have ceded to his brother.

He forgot nothing to prepare himself to die well: he was constantly in contemplation and prayer, and listened with joy to the exhortations of the pious persons who assisted him; he had Mass said every day in his room to participate in the inestimable fruits of this divine sacrifice. On the day of the Assumption of Our Lady, the Blessed Sacrament was brought to him as viaticum; although his illness had exhausted him, and he had nothing left but skin stretched over his bones, he did not fail to get out of his bed to go and meet Jesus Christ, in order to render Him the honor that all creatures owe Him. He therefore received Him on his knees before the altar of his room, with a devotion that drew tears from the eyes of all those present. He predicted the day of his death three days before it arrived. On the fifteenth day of his illness, having raised himself a little on his bed, and having his eyes lifted toward heaven, he often repeated this prayer: "We adore You, Jesus Christ, and we give You thanks for having willed to redeem the world by Your holy cross." He also said this verse from the 24th Psalm: "Remember not, O Lord, the sins of my youth, nor those I have committed through ignorance." Finally, he recited the Angelic Salutation almost incessantly, and, when asked why he recited it so many times, he replied: "I am going to die, and the Blessed Virgin will assist me." Upon finishing these words, he rendered his most pure spirit to God, on August 19, 1297, at the age of twenty-three. He was then in Brignoles, in Provence, where many believe he was born Brignoles Place of the saint's death. . His face, after his death, appeared as beautiful as during his life, and one would have taken him for a person asleep rather than a person dead. A religious saw his soul rise into heaven in the company of several blessed spirits who sang: "It is thus that those who have served God with innocence and purity are treated." It is also said that a perfectly vermilion rose came out of his mouth, to mark his incomparable chastity. His body was carried solemnly to the Cordeliers of Marseille, where he had ordered to be buried. On the way, rays of light were seen around his coffin, and the candles, which the wind extinguished, relit themselves by miracle. Some time later, persons very worthy of belief affirmed having seen him on top of the high altar, vested pontifically and with a resplendent face, marked by his eternal felicity.

An infinity of miracles took place at his sepulcher; Henri Sédulius left them in writing. More than ten dead were resurrected, the lame and the crippled recovered the use of their limbs; the gouty lost their gout, the blind, the deaf, and the mute were delivered from their infirmities; the insane returned to their right mind; persons who suffered from the falling sickness were cured, and all sorts of other sick people received perfect health. All these wonders led Pope John XXII to canonize our Saint in the year 1317, only a few years after his death. Surius transcribed the Bull of this Pope, and the Messrs. de S ainte-Mar Jean XXII Pope who placed the diocese of Rieux under the protection of Saint Cizy. the, in speaking of the bishops of Toulouse, report, after Frison, the letter he wrote to the Queen of Sicily, mother of the newly canonized, to congratulate her on having given to the world a son of such great merit.

On November 11 of the following year, his body was raised from the middle of the choir of the Cordeliers of Marseille, to be placed in a silver reliquary on the high altar: this was done in the presence of Robert, King of Naples and Sicily, to whom he had ceded his right to the royalty. Finally, in 1423, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon and Naples, after having taken Marseille by force, carried away these precious relics on his galley Valence Place of Ismidon's early studies. , which he had placed in Valencia, in Spain, where they are still held in very great veneration.

The Palace of Versailles museum possesses a remarkable portrait of Saint Louis of Toulouse. The ornaments of this painting are in relief and enhanced with gold. He is represented with a rose in his hand, because, it is said, this flower came out of his mouth after his death.

Acta Sanctorum, Ballett, Godescard.