Jean de Joinville

He was a voluminous writer and no mean artist, illustrating many of his manuscripts with his own hand.

Equally noteworthy in the biographical line is Joinville's "Life of Louis IX," written by a man who knew that saintly king intimately, was, indeed, his personal friend, and who was by his side in the Crusades.

Poetry and prose, each played its part in forming and reflecting national characteristics.

The limitations of space have forbidden more than the merest mention of the names of works and writers.

As we saw today, one of the most important figures of the crusading period was Saladin, or Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, and his reputation for sound wisdom was legendary in the Middle East and beyond.

I came across this quote, which was attributed to Saladin in a later crusader account, that of Jean de Joinville.

In a discussion between Joinville and a Muslim emir about people who renounce their faith under pressure, the emir quotes Saladin as having said, "Never did one see a bad Christian become a good Muslim or a bad Muslim become a good Christian." Whether or not Saladin actually said this, it definitely rings true.

It's the person you are on the inside who dictates how well you show up in the world.

This comes from the translation of Jean de Joinville's chronicle by Sir Frank Marzials.

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Cloth, spices, wine, and silver changed hands, and with them moved ideas, news, and money.

Joinville himself came from Champagne, from this very world of fairs and merchants and growing wealth, and the money that paid for much of the Crusade flowed, in the end, from the quiet labor of farmers and the busy bargaining of townsfolk.

This was the kingdom that would have to be governed in the king's absence, and it could not simply be left to drift.

Louis placed the regency once more in the capable hands of his mother, Blanche, now older but no less sharp.

His brothers came with him, chief among them Robert of Artois, hot-tempered and brave, and Charles of Anjou and Alphonse of Poitiers, who would follow later.

Knights came from across France and beyond, drawn by faith, by loyalty, by the hope of glory, and by the very real expectation of plunder.

Among them was a young lord from Champagne named Jean de Joinville, who would become Louis' close companion and, decades afterward, the writer who preserved more of this story in living detail than anyone else.

He left his own lands deep in debt to come, mortgaging much of what he owned to equip his small band of knights, because that is what taking the cross actually cost an ordinary lord.

Some of them tried, gently and not so gently, to talk the king out of it.

One of his most trusted advisors, the loyal nobleman Jean de Joinville, who had been with Louis on the first crusade and who would later write a famous account of his life, flatly refused to go on the second one.

He said openly that those who had advised the king to take the cross again had committed a grave sin, because the king was too weak to travel and the kingdom would suffer in his absence.

It is a remarkable thing that the man who loved Louis most and wrote most warmly about him also believed, and said, that this final crusade was a mistake.