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he celebrated the feast with his court at the only Parisian church dedicated to his ancestor, Saint-
Louis-des-Jésuites.
Between 1618 and 1630 Louis XIII’s enthusiasm for the cult was matched by a surge in
publication of panegyrics and biographies of St. Louis. 60 As Alain Boureau has shown, the texts
worked to present an image of the king as a model Christian prince, but the reasons for which the
individual authors did this varied considerably. In Pierre Matthieu’s Histoire de Sainct Louys
(1618), the king’s historiographer praised St. Louis for his preservation of the rights of the
Gallican Church. 61 On the other side Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit with strong ties to
Rome, published in 1619 his De Officio principis, which characterized Louis IX as an
ultramontanist king distinguished for his loyalty to the pope. 62
Two texts from this period, however, added the theory of absolutism to representations of
St. Louis. In the first, the Panégyrique du Roy Sainct Louys (1618), Etienne Molinier depicts St.
Louis as the prototype of the absolute sovereign in the moral sense, meaning that Louis had
absolute standards of morality that eventually paved the way for the monarch to have total
control of the government. 63 The second, Précepts du roi sainct Louys (1627) by Adam
Théveneau, was based on the Enseignements written by Louis IX to his son and heir Philip III
(1270-1285). In the text Théveneau argues that the monarchical government is based on a neofeudal
contract in which “God left the Kings all rights and profits,” and that the only function of
the nobles, Church, and Parlement is to council or execute royal prerogatives. 64
The publication of these works coincided with the growth of the absolute monarchy in
France. Although a government in which the king’s power was subject to no institutional
limitations other than divine law had existed in France since the early sixteenth century,
contributions by Cardinal Richelieu, one of Louis XIII’s highest ministers, to the theory of
kingship gave rise to a more secular form of absolutism wherein the interests of the state could
override the normal processes of law. 65 The publications claiming that the origins of absolutism
dated to the reign of Louis IX helped to justify the growing control of the seventeenth-century
monarch.
The depiction of St. Louis on the foundation medal bolsters the message found in the
works of Molinier and Théveneau. The crowned and haloed Louis IX, shown in profile to recall
the tradition begun by Roman emperors, rests a scepter over his right shoulder. The fleur-de-lis,
the emblem of French kings, enhances the royal dignity of the portrait through its repeated use
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