Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

252 ST. LOUIS.
Crusade, he loved him with a passionate devotion, and
though no saint, was a man after his own heart. Joinville
set himself honestly to record what he saw and heard, with
all manner of minute loving* touches w r hich only his tender
reverence could have inspired. Moreover he wrote in the
vernacular French of the day, inditing no learned book for
an educated class, but a simple tale to be read by laymen,
and, it might be, to make his great master known in some
measure to the poor. Like Asser s life of Alfred, the work
is an invaluable portrait of one of the few greatest men
of the world by a friend and follower, written not to draw
attention to the skill and talent of the author, but honestly
to make the subject of it known to mankind. Alfred the
Great was a man worthy to be set in the same rank as
St. Louis, and it would be hard to find the third who can
be placed by their side. Our own great Alfred was probably
on the whole the nobler man and the greater king.
There w r as
the same moral dignity and purity in Alfred as in Louis,
the same justice, the same absolute devotion to the good
of his people, but in the former there seems to have been
greater moral and mental robustness, a stronger mind, a
firmer will, and a larger capacity for ruling men. Alfred
was free from that touch of fanaticism which appears in
St. Louis ;
not even in the thirteenth century, we may
think, could Alfred have been induced to invoke the Inqui
sition or to lead a Crusade. But there is a special delicacy
and beauty in the character of St. Louis which perhaps
even Alfred cannot rival, but these were connected with
certain saintly qualities in his nature which were an element
of weakness to him in the management of practical affairs.
From these Alfred was absolutely free.
St. Louis was probably the most purely just-minded man
whom we meet with in history. Just all round, to friends,
kindred, vassals, enemies, and infidels, he had the simplest