Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

246 ST. LOUIS.
rebellion against a lawful authority, a breach in the sacred
order of the home, the one household of Christendom, and
was to be put down as the rebellion of a presumptuous
child is
put down, swiftly and with the strong hand of
power. Louis, accordingly, not only accepted the legacy of
the conquered, the murdered, province, but shewed great
skill and energy in making his conquest complete ;
and thus
the kingdom grew under his hand. The King
of France
now became the great power in Europe, in the period when
the Empire and the Papacy had begun to decline, and
before the rise of England. To this monarchy,
really a new thing in Europe, the personal
which was
saintlioess of
Louis IX. gave, as we have said, a kind of consecration,
which in that age was of inestimable worth. Louis VII.
and VIII. had kindled a strong enthusiasm ;
under St. Louis
something touching on worship was added, something which
made a national King holy as Emperor or Pope.
There is generally to be observed a striking correspondence
between the great characteristic of the leading man of an
era, and the general tendencies of his times. St. Louis, the
leading man of his age, was a secular saint. The broad
feature of the thirteenth century is the growing dignity of
secular
life.
In that century the life of a man in the world emerged
from its former feudal narrowness and monotony. It had to
do with wider and more important interests ;
it was sanctified
by higher aims ;
and it is quite natural, nay,
in a sense
inevitable, that the transition should be marked by the life
of a great secular saint. The feudal age was, like the era
of the Judges in Israel, an age of the disintegration of political
society its disintegration
with a view to a reconstruction
on a higher and larger plan. Each castle for the time
became the centre of a petty state, and in the feebleness of
the royal power, everyone, as of old, did what was right in