Jean, sire de Joinville
born c. 1224, Joinville, Champagne
died Dec. 24, 1317, Joinville
author of the famous Histoire de
Saint-Louis, a chronicle in French
prose, providing a supreme account of
the Seventh Crusade (1248–54).
A member of the lesser nobility of
Champagne, Joinville first attended the
court of Louis IX at Saumur (1241),
probably as a squire. The young
Joinville took the crusader’s cross at
the same time as the King (1244) and set
out with him (August 1248) on his
expedition to Egypt, from where the
crusaders planned to attack Syria.
Captured with the entire army, Louis and
Joinville were ransomed, and Joinville
became friends with Louis during the
King’s subsequent stay at Acre. They
returned to France in 1254. While in
Syria, Joinville wrote the first draft
of a minor work, his Credo, a rather
naive statement of belief that was
probably revised later. Made seneschal
of Champagne on his return, he became an
expert in court procedures and seems to
have divided his time between the royal
court and his fief of Joinville. He
refused to accompany the King on his
fatal crusade to Tunis (1270), having
previously told him that it was folly.
Joinville lived to testify for the
canonization of the King (1282) and to
see it enacted (1298); he controlled his
domain until his death at 93.
Preliminary drafts of Joinville’s major
work, the Histoire de Saint-Louis (The
History of St. Louis, or The Life of St.
Louis), may have been begun as early as
the 1270s, but the final form was
commissioned by Jeanne of Champagne and
Navarre, wife of King Philip IV the
Fair. It was not completed at the time
of her death (1305) and so was presented
in 1309 to her son Louis X. The Histoire
is a personal account, which, in the
course of setting forth the exploits of
his idol, King Louis IX, reveals
Joinville himself as a deeply moving
man: simple, honest, straightforward,
affectionate. He makes no attempt to
conceal his occasional cowardice, his
lack of piety, his tactlessness, or his
garrulity. Although the short narratives
of Louis’s early life and of his later
reign, death, and canonization are
valuable because of the author’s
proximity to them, the heart of the book
lies in its lengthy central section, the
account of the Crusade. Besides telling
the financial hardships, the dangers of
sea voyages, and the ravages of disease,
he vividly describes the confusion and
lack of discipline in the crusading
army. A blunt adviser, Joinville paints
his king’s sublime unworldliness against
his own frank humanity. In addition, the
book describes Muslim customs.
The original manuscript of the work
disappeared from all records shortly
after its composition. The Histoire was
first printed and modernized from an
inferior manuscript in 1547.
