SOURCE: “When Did Joinville Write His Vie de Saint Louis?,” The Romantic Review, Vol. XXXII, No. 3, October, 1941, pp. 233–43.

In the following essay, Foulet dates the various sections of Joinville's Vie de Saint Louis, and argues against the theory that a majority of the work consists of personal reminiscences composed as early as 1272-73.

While leading his second crusade against the Saracens, King Louis IX of France died of the plague near Carthage, August 25, 1270. Twenty-seven years later (August 1297), after three separate inquests into his saintly virtues and the miracles ascribed to him after his death, he was canonized by Pope Boniface VIII. Two Princesses of the Royal House, eager to spread the cult of the new saint, requested that his life be again made the subject of written accounts.¹ The first, Blanche de la Cerda, a daughter of Louis IX, commissioned her confessor, Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, who completed his...