William of Chartres (Dominican)

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William of Chartres (

Latin: Guillelmus Carnotensis) was a royal chaplain under King Louis IX of France from 1254 and then a Dominican friar from 1264. He took part in two crusades in 1248 and 1270
and wrote a biography of Louis. This last work contains the earliest surviving collection of miracles attributed to Louis after his death in 1270. William died between 1277 and 1282.

Life

Royal courtier and chaplain

Little is known about William. He or at least his family was presumably from

secular cleric.[1] He may have been brought to the king's attention by Robert of Douai, the queen's physician.[2]

William was a part of Louis's inner circle during the Seventh Crusade. He went into captivity along with the king in 1250.[3][4] In March 1251, Louis provided William's two sisters and their eldest sons with an income from rents.[3] He returned to France with Louis after a period in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1254.[5] That year William became a canon of Saint-Quentin. He is referred to in documents of this time as "Lord William" and was attached to the royal chapel. In 1254–1255, acting as a royal agent, he purchased properties on the left bank of the Seine for the Sorbonne.[3] One of the properties was a house of Robert of Douai.[2] In 1255–1256, he was rewarded with a horse and a cape.[3]

By February 1259, Louis had appointed William treasurer of Saint-Frambourg de Senlis. A document of 1261 calls him a priest. On 6 July 1262, William signed as a witness the treaty of friendship between Louis IX and James I of Aragon on the occasion of the marriage of Louis's son, Philip, and James's daughter, Isabella.[6]

Dominican crusader

According to his own account, William held the office of treasurer for five and a half years. He is last recorded in that capacity in December 1263 and must have entered the Dominican Order the following year.[7] He resided in the Parisian convent of Saint-Jacques on the left bank. In 1269–1270, he took part in the preparations of the Eighth Crusade.[8] He joined the expedition as a royal confessor, took possession of the royal seal after the death of the archdeacon of Paris on 20 August and was at Louis's side when the king died.[2][8]

Following Louis's death, William was sent back to France by Louis's successor,

parish priest.[11]

Death

William began work on his biography of Louis IX after January 1273, after the death of Geoffrey of Beaulieu, who had written his own biography of Louis, and seemingly while Pope

Abbey of Saint-Denis.[2][12] William was probably dead by 1282, since he did not testify at the inquiry for Louis's canonization.[13]

Works

Three sermon's preached by William are preserved. These were preached on 2 February 1273 at

Pierre Daunou considered them poor sermons and not worth publishing.[2] They are still unedited.[11] In the Archives Nationales, carton J 1030, document no. 59 is the autograph of William's letter to his brother-in-law.[14]

On the Life and Deeds of Louis, King of the Franks of Famous Memory, and on the Miracles That Declare His Sanctity, William's Latin biography of Louis IX, is preserved alongside Geoffrey of Beaulieu's in a single manuscript, BnF, MS lat. 13778, at folios 41v–64v.[15] William's work was never as widely cited as Geoffrey's.[16] It is also shorter and lacks chapter headings.[17] Both works are hagiography, intended to demonstrate Louis's sainthood.[18] Geoffrey's was the first and William's the second biography of Louis IX and both texts have often been printed together.[5][15]

William wrote his work as a companion piece of Geoffrey's. He enumerated four areas where he intended to complete Geoffrey's biography: "the good days of [Louis's] rule", his imprisonment, his death and the miracles that had occurred at his tomb and through his intercession. It is in the first of these areas that William's biography is most interesting to modern historians.

mirror of princes.[5] It is the only eyewitness account of Louis's captivity.[20]

Like standard hagiographies of the time, On the Life and Deeds consists of two basic parts: the life (vita) proper and the miracles (miracula).

footwashing, fasting, almsgiving, caring for lepers, building hospitals for the poor and endowing friaries and churches.[21]

William's seventeen miracles form the earliest collection of miracles attributed to Louis. All took place between October 1270 and August 1271.[23] William presents all the miracles as properly authenticated, usually dated, and apparently collected many of the accounts himself.[24][5] He may have had access to the list of miracles kept at Saint-Denis by Thomas Hauxton on Philip III's orders.[24] All seventeen recorded by William were later included in the Beatus Ludovicus, which assured them a wider audience than On the Life and Deeds received.[16]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 19.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Jordan 2012, pp. 17–18.
  3. ^ a b c d Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 20–21.
  4. ^ Richard 1992, p. 129.
  5. ^ a b c d e Le Goff 2009, pp. 258–259.
  6. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 21–22.
  7. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 23, but Le Goff 2009, p. 258, writes that he became a Dominican five and a half years after returning from the crusade, i.e., in 1259 or 1260.
  8. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 23–24.
  9. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 24–25.
  10. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 25 and n. 69, rejects the idea that Geoffrey and William subsequently returned to Africa to accompany the bones of Louis back to France. Le Goff 2009, p. 258, has William accompanying Louis's bones.
  11. ^ a b c Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 33.
  12. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 33–36.
  13. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 34, and Le Goff 2009, p. 258, concur, but Jordan 2012, p. 18, places his death in 1280.
  14. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 35, with photo.
  15. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 174, 177.
  16. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 42.
  17. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 49.
  18. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, p. 43.
  19. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 49–50, but Labarge 1968, pp. 253–254, calls William's "more verbose and repetitive" than Geoffrey's biography.
  20. ^ Richard 1992, p. 132.
  21. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 50–53.
  22. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 134–135.
  23. ^ Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 27–30, but Le Goff 2009, p. 259, puts them all in 1271–1272.
  24. ^ a b Gaposchkin & Field 2014, pp. 26–31.

Bibliography

  • Carolus-Barré, Louis (1995). "Guillaume de Chartres clerc du roi, frère prêcheur, ami et historien de saint Louis". Collection de l'École française de Rome. 204: 51–57.
  • Delisle, Léopold (1904). "Lettre de Saint Louis expédiée par Guillaume de Chartres". Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes. 65: 310–312.
  • Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia; Field, Sean L., eds. (2014). The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres. Translated by Larry F. Field. Cornell University Press.
  • Jordan, William C. (2012). Men at the Center: Redemptive Governance under Louis IX. Central European University Press.
  • Labarge, Margaret Wade (1968). Saint Louis: Louis IX, Most Christian King of France. Brown, Little and Company.
  • Le Goff, Jacques (2009) [1996]. Saint Louis. Translated by Gareth Evan Gollrad. University of Notre Dame Press.
  • Richard, Jean (1992) [1983]. Saint Louis: Crusader King of France. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge University Press.
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