In the long line of kings of France, called Most Christian Kings, only two, Charlemagne and Louis IX., have received the still more august title of Saint.  As for Charlemagne, we must not be too exacting in the way of proofs of his legal right to that title in the Catholic Church; he was canonized, in 1165 or 1166, only by the anti-pope Pascal III., through the influence of Frederick Barbarossa; and since that time, the canonization of Charlemagne has never been officially allowed and declared by any popes recognized as legitimate.  They tolerated and tacitly admitted it, on account, no doubt, of the services rendered by Charlemagne to the papacy.  But Charlemagne had ardent and influential admirers outside the pale of popes and emperors; he was the great man and the popular hero of the Germanic race in Western Europe.  His saintship was welcomed with acclamation in a great part of Germany, where it had always been religiously kept up.  Prom the earliest date of the University of Paris, he had been the patron there of all students of the German race.  In France, nevertheless, his position as a saint was still obscure and doubtful, when Louis XI., towards the end of the fifteenth century, by some motive now difficult to unravel, but probably in order to take from his enemy, Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, who was in possession of the fairest provinces of Charlemagne’s empire, the exclusive privilege of so great a memory, ordained that there should be rendered to the illustrious emperor the honors due to the saints; and he appointed the 28th of January for his feast-day, with a threat of the penalty of death against all who should refuse conformity with the order.  Neither the command nor the threat of Louis XI. had any great effect.  It does not appear that, in the Church of France, the saintship of Charlemagne was any the more generally admitted and kept up; but the University of Paris faithfully maintained its traditions, and some two centuries after Louis XI., in 1661, without expressly giving to Charlemagne the title of saint, it loudly proclaimed him its patron, and made his feast-day an annual and solemn institution, which, in spite of some hesitation on the part of the parliament of Paris, and in spite of the revolutions of our time, still exists as the grand feast-day throughout the area of our classical studies.  The University of France repaid Charlemagne for the service she had received from him; she protected his saintship as he had protected her schools and her scholars.

The saintship of Louis IX. was not the object of such doubt, and had no such need of learned and determined protectors.  Claimed as it was on the very morrow of his death, not only by his son Philip III., called The Bold, and by the barons and prelates of the kingdom, but also by the public voice of France and of Europe, it at once became the subject of investigations and deliberations on the part of the Holy See.  For twenty-four years, new popes, filling in rapid succession