a
bold step for one so devoted to the Church. The prohibition of the
barbarous custom of duelling to decide personal quarrels was another of
his humane laws. These, and divers other ordinances, founded in a like
spirit of equity, are known in a collected shape as the _Institutes of
St. Louis_. His enactment touching appeals from the Church to the Crown,
and the prohibition which he likewise issued against the levying of
money in France for the use of the Pope without the king's license, are
known as a _Pragmatic Sanction_--a term applied to any especially
important national decree. Louis set the example of enforcing the laws
personally, and none was fitter to administer them than he. Under an oak
in the forest of Vincennes, near Paris, often sat the good king to hear
appeals and petitions from his poor subjects. His social and foreign
relations were as fully attended to as his political reforms. He first
placed the French navy on a substantial footing. To him Paris owed a
public library, a hospital for the blind, and the establishment of a
body of police. Under his sanction, also, his confessor, Robert de
Sorbon, founded the famous theological college called by his name. So
scrupulously just and honorable was Louis, that he appointed a
commission to ascertain what restitution of territory should be made to
nations which had been mulcted by the conquests of his predecessors, and
he thus more than once sacrificed extensive possessions for the sake of
a principle. By a treaty in 1255, made with Henry III., Louis restored
to the English crown the provinces of which Philip Augustus had deprived
it, and obtained in return the surrender of Henry's rights in Normandy
and other fiefs. The reputation which Louis thus acquired among his
fellow-monarchs led to his being asked to act as mediator in several
quarrels, and gave him many opportunities of exhibiting his peaceful and
loving policy.

[Illustration: Louis IX. opens the Jails of France.]

The mental blindness of which we have spoken led him to commit errors,
which, if his misled conscience had not sanctioned them, would deserve
the name of crimes. Toward Jews and heretics he showed no mercy,
issuing severe and unjust laws against them "for the good of his soul."
The duty of the historian is to record these failings of a noble nature
as impartially as its beauties; but the evil must, in all fairness, be
credited to the Church and system which taught, and not to the believer