Constructing the memory of Saint Louis and the battling biographies of 1688

In 1688 two new biographies of Saint Louis (Louis IX, king of France from 1226 to 1270) were completed in Paris. The appearance of the first, originally sponsored by the educators of the heir to the throne of Louis XIV and composed by the Jansenist Filleau de la Chaise, nearly caused a riot at the bookstore due to the heavy influx of eager buyers. The second, by the cross-dressing abbe de Choisy, was specially commissioned by the Court of Louis XIV to drive the first into oblivion. This thesis explores why such interest arose in Saint Louis in 1688, analyzing these competing biographies as the culmination of the struggle for custody of memory of Saint Louis over the four centuries following his death. The specific choice of author by the various sponsors of each of these 1688 biographies is closely analyzed. We show how the Jansenist was chosen by tracing the long connection of Port-Royal with the veneration and biography of Saint Louis. Consideration of his life and literary and historical works shows that the seemingly surprising choice of the transvestite courtier Choisy was in fact a natural one under the circumstances.;The long sequence of biographical texts concerning Saint Louis upon which the 1688 biographers based their work is examined with respect to their roles in shaping the saint's legacy as a function of the preoccupations of the time of their composition. The most important of the texts surrounding the canonization of Louis IX in 1297, the vernacular memoirs by Joinville, effectively disappeared for two centuries after their composition. Thus part of the focus of this thesis concerns the effect on the custody of memory of Saint Louis of Joinville's absence and his rediscovery by Lasserre in 1541. The combination of Joinville's secular work with the early Latin hagiographies finally allowed composition of a complete scholarly study as well as of a genuinely popular but well-grounded life of the saint. This thesis analyzes how the competing 1688 biographies accomplished these goals while playing their own roles in the struggle for custody of memory of Saint Louis.