ABSTRACT
One of the most compact and justly famous ideal visions of late-medieval government is owed to Jean, lord of Joinville, who, in his biography of his king, fellow-crusader, and friend, Louis IX, provides a veritable idyll of kingship. It begins in the chateau of Hyères, where, in 1254, Louis IX heard a sermon preached by the Franciscan friar Hugh of Dignes, who drew the lesson from scripture that ‘no realm was ever lost, nor passed to the lordship of another, except by default of right’. Louis took the lesson to heart. Good and swift justice was what he owed his subjects, and delivered to them, in Joinville’s opinion: ‘which is why Our Lord suffered him to hold his kingdom in peace for all his life’. According to Joinville it was Louis’ wont after mass to sit beneath an oak in the Bois de Vincennes, surrounded by his entourage but unencumbered by ushers or stewards, and so to make himself available to all who sought redress for their grievances. In other words, Louis held court, and Joinville describes him assigning the various pleas of his subjects to his officers and courtiers, two of whom Joinville names: Pierre de Fontaines and Geoffroi de Villette, charging them to hear a case (Jean de Joinville 1871: 199; Richard 1983: 264).
