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" Worldly saintliness: A study of Jean De Joinville's “Vie de Saint Louis” "
Darla K. Rudy-Gervais
F. Rigolot
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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54249
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TL24203
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| Call number
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3164951
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| Main Entry
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Darla K. Rudy-Gervais
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| Title & Author
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Worldly saintliness: A study of Jean De Joinville's “Vie de Saint Louis”\ Darla K. Rudy-Gervais
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| College
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Princeton University
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| Date
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2005
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2005
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| Page No
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292
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| Abstract
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The aim of this dissertation was to demonstrate the essential literary and ideological coherence of Joinville's account of the life of Saint Louis. Indeed, the author has left us with not only a carefully composed literary work, but one which might even be seen in its own way as a work of political theology (to use the term coined by Kantorowicz in The King's Two Bodies). This view of Joinville's book may be distinguished from that of earlier literary critics, in particular Gaston Paris, who thought it «naïve», but also from that of contemporary historian Jacques Le Goff who makes much of Joinville's «sincerity» in his 1996 biography of Saint Louis. In a first section, I examine Joinville's portrait of kingliness: the values underlying this portrait (preudomie; kingly virtues such as justice, peacemaking, wisdom, and loyalty; and the ability to learn from experience), as well as the way in which this portrait structures Joinville's book. Secondly, I explore the idea that Joinville was also aware that he was writing a work of hagiography and used and reworked all of the conventions of this type of text to create his portrait of a saint. Finally, I analyze the surprisingly polemical aspects of Joinville's work, particularly what I have called the notion of «worldly saintliness», which may be squarely opposed to clerkly views of Louis's saintliness. Clerkly accounts tended to associate saintliness with other wordliness, or at least withdrawal from the world; whereas Joinville explicitly takes issue with this view, and presents instead a very active king and saint. I also explore some possible sources for Joinville's personal interpretation of saintliness in various biblical passages. In conclusion, I attempt to show that Joinville's work is not simply ideological, but grapples with the problems posed by Louis's saintliness in a highly original fashion.
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Philosophy, religion and theology; Language, literature and linguistics; Crusades; France; Hagiography; Joinville, Jean, sire de; Vie de Saint Louis; Literature; Middle Ages; Romance literature; Religious history; 0297:Literature; 0320:Religious history; 0313:Romance literature; 0297:Middle Ages
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F. Rigolot
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Princeton University
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