Jean de Joinville (c. 1224 – December 24,
1317) was one of the great chroniclers of medieval France.
Son of Simon de Joinville and Beatrice d'Auxonne, he belonged
to a great noble family from Champagne. He received an education befitting a young noble at the court of Theobald IV, count of Champagne: reading, writing, and
the rudiments of Latin. On the death of his father, he became seneschal of Champagne (and was therefore personally connected to Theobald IV). He was a very pious man and
was concerned with the proper administration of the region.
In 1241, he accompanied Theobald to the court of the king of France, Louis IX (the future Saint Louis).
In 1244, when Louis organized the Seventh Crusade,
Joinville decided to abandon his family to join with the Christian knights just as his father had done 35 years earlier against
the Albigensians. At the time of the crusade, Joinville placed himself in the service of the
king and became his counsellor and confidant. In 1250, when the king and his troops were captured
by the Mameluks in al-Mansourah, Joinville, among the
captives, participated in the negotiations and the collection of the ransom. Joinville probably
brought himself even closer to the king in the difficult times that followed the failure of the crusade (including the death of
his brother Robert, Count of Artois). It was Joinville who advised the king to stay
in the Holy Land instead of returning immediately to France as the other lords had wanted; the king followed Joinville's advice.
During the following four years spent in the Holy Land Joinville was the constant advisor to the king, who knew that he could
count on Joinville's frankness and absolute devotion.
In 1270, Louis IX, although very weakened physically, undertook a new crusade with his
three sons. Any enthusiasm Joinville had for the previous crusade had been knocked out of him, and he refused to follow Louis,
recognizing the uselessness of the enterprise and convinced that the duty of the king was not to leave the kingdom that needed
him. In fact, the expedition was a disaster and the king died outside Tunis on August 25, 1270.
From 1271, the papacy carried out a long inquest on the subject of Louis IX, which ended with
his canonization, announced in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII. As Joinville had been a close friend of the king, his counselor and his
confidant, his testimony was invaluable to the inquest, where he appeared as a witness in 1282.
At the request of Jeanne of Navarre, the queen, he began work on the Histoire de
Saint Louis, which he completed in 1309. Joinville died on December 24, 1317, over 93 years
old, nearly fifty years after the death of Louis.
Life of Saint Louis
Commissioning of the work
Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip IV of
France, asked Joinville to write Louis' biography. He then put himself to the task of writing livre des saintes paroles
et des bons faiz de nostre saint roy Looÿs (as he himself called it), today known as the Life of Saint Louis. Jeanne
of Navarre died on April 2, 1305, while the work was not yet
completed. Joinville dedicated it in 1309 to her son, Louis, king of Navarre and count of Champagne, the future Louis
X of France.
Composition and date
As noted, the book was not completed when Jeanne of Navarre died in 1305. In addition, the oldest existing manuscript ends with this note: " Ce fu escript en l'an de grace mil .CCC. et .IX. [1309], ou
moys d’octovre ". This is not precisely the date of the writing of the manuscript, because it was obviously written
later. Therefore it is either the date of the completion of the work by Joinville, or the date of the manuscript which served as
the model to the surviving copies. The work was therefore written between 1305 and 1309. By other evidence, one can equally argue
that a passage at the very end of the book, relating a dream of Joinville, could not have been written before 1308. Joinville therefore finished his work a short time before giving it to Louis.
Tradition of the text
The surviving manuscripts consist of one old copy of the text and two later copies. The manuscript that was given to Louis has
not survived.
The oldest manuscript is obviously very close to the original. It is found in the inventory of 1373 of the library of Charles V of France. Furthermore, according to
the illuminations, it can be dated to the years 1330-1340, about 20 years after
the original manuscript. This copy remained in the royal library and then passed to Philip the
Good, Duke of Burgundy, before reaching Brussels, where it was lost. It was rediscovered only in 1746, when Brussels was
taken by French troops. This Brussels manuscript is now located in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is one volume of 391 pages in two columns. The
first page is decorated with gold and illuminations, and with a painting representing Joinville presenting his book to Louis. The
text is divided into paragraphs, each beginning with a gilded letter.
Two editions have been created from one translation of Joinville's text (which does not survive itself), created by
Antoine Pierre in 1547 and by Claude Ménard in 1617 respectively. Pierre's text is corrupted from the modifications of the original text and from fanciful
additions, while Ménard's is an excellent scholarly work.
Finally, a third copy of the text comes from two manuscripts which appear to date from the second quarter of the
16th century. These are modernized transcriptions with systematic renovation of the
language, from one older manuscript and the Brussels manuscript.
General perspectives on the work
Joinville was a knight. He was neither a cleric skilled in composing books, nor a chronicler informed by researching written
or oral information. Nevertheless, his writing is sincere and neutral. He wrote about everything he personally experienced during
the reign of Saint Louis, essentially the crusade in Egypt and their stay in the Holy Land. His
narrative is full of life, anecdotes and even humour. It is more of a personal testimony about the king than a history of his
reign.
The freshness and precision of his memories are impressive, especially since he wrote his work some decades after the fact.
Certain medievalists explain this by supposing that Joinville had often recounted his past orally or that he had previously
committed it to writing before beginning his work.
Joinville speaks almost as much about himself as he does about the king, the subject of his book, but he does it in such a
natural manner that he never gives the impression that he wants to place himself above the king. Thus we have an incomparable
clarity about the ways of thinking of a 13th century man. For this reason, modern editors
have sometimes said the work is more of a memoir than a history or a biography of Saint Louis.
The holy words
The first part of Joinville's work is dedicated to the holy words of the king. Joinville writes about the edifying words of
the king and his Christian virtues.
Speeches are very important among Louis' court. His speech is moral and didactic, reflecting the speech of the preachers
(Dominicans and Franciscans) who surround him. It
transmits a moral and religious teaching and often aims to strengthen the faith of the recipient. An intimacy exists between the
king and his followers (his family, confidants, and counselors, among whom are Joinville and Robert de Sorbon) who express themselves particularly in the conversation: the king invites his
audience to respond to his questions, often with the aim of instructing them with moral and religious plans. This importance of
the royal speech is particularly well rendered by Joinville, who often has his characters speak. He is one of the first
memoirists to integrate reconstructed dialogue into a tale. He most often uses a direct style and marks the interventions of his
characters with "he said" or "he did." And Joinville never has his characters speak in long monologues: the lessons are always
shown from dialogue.
In addition, it is through the words of the king that his profound faith and sanctity are shown. For Joinville, Louis IX
embodies the ideal prud'homme - pious, courageous, kind, intelligent and wise, a man who defends the Christian faith by
his courage. And in fact, in Joinville's work he shows the king to have an ardent love of God, benevolent to his people, humble,
moderate and courteous, wise and just, peaceful, loyal and generous. In some respects Joinville is sometimes not far from writing
a hagiography.
Joinville, like his king, was obviously very attached to the Christian religion, to its doctrines, its morality and its
practices. For proof of this there is a small work of edification, composed in 1250, titled li romans as ymages des poinz de
nostre foi, where Joinville makes a brief commentary on the Credo. But his deep and sincere
faith contrasts with the almost exalted Christian heroism of the king. The Christianity of Joinville is closer to that of the
common people.
The crusade
Joinville recounts equally the high deeds of Saint Louis, in particular the unfolding of the Seventh Crusade and the following
stay in the Holy Land, which occupies most of the book.
Value of the testimony of Joinville
If Joinville's work is not that of an historian, it is nevertheless completely sincere. When he must mention deeds which he
did not witness, he expresses reservations about what he reports by hearsay and he recognizes the debt he owes to other
chroniclers. Admittedly, when he talks about the beginning of the reign of Saint Louis, there is some confusion as he did not
witness this period personally, but, from the departure of the crusade in 1248, there are few faults where Joinville's memory is
concerned, except for a few errors in the particular details.
That being said, it can be asked if the general presentation of the facts is not conditioned by Joinville's own personality,
by his conceptions and by his admiration for the king. Perhaps his position as a noble and his distrust for the government of
Philip IV were able to amend Louis' memory to give Louis' governance an image closer to that which Joinville considered ideal.
But the work does not serve as an organized lesson that envisions the diverse qualities and diverse duties of a sovereign.
Joinville leaves the person of the king, the subject of his book, and explains clearly that the successors of the king would be
well to follow Louis' example, but he goes no further; he is not writing a work of morality.
The work was influential on Capetian politics, as the Capetians were anxious to
exploit the prestige of the king who had died on crusade. But the passage of time and, especially, the neutrality of Joinville
and his naïve roughness give his memories an exceptional value.
External links
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