Place, Status, and Experience in This contribution explores the relationship between social status and the experience of the miraculous at the tomb of Louis IX d. By contrast, elite men and women remembered Louis, often making reference to the reputation of the sanctity of his life. They were able to experience Louis as a miracle worker without having to travel to St.
The result is that for the non-elite, Louis was essentially unindividuated as a saint, whereas he retained an individualized saintly identity for the comparatively fewer elite who testified to miracles.
Thus, for all intents and purposes, it was only the social elite who experienced and remembered Louis as a «royal» saint. As had been established over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the commission sought to examine the evidence of both his character in life and his miracles after death to establish whether or not Louis was a saint. Associates of the king testified to the exceptional character, charity, devotion, and humility that he displayed during his life.
Elsewhere, I have looked at the different ways different constituencies Cistercians, Franciscans, the royal court, etc. Three of these did so only after their cure. It was, thus, the less economically fortunate who tended to spend time at the tomb in hope and expectations, and it was their experiences that created the culture of the miraculous at St. There is no evidence at all that devotion to Louis or belief in his sanctity had anything to do with his biographical identity —his royalty, his reputation as a crusader, or his humble devotion to the poor.
For these, what mattered was rather, and merely, that he was local and that he was effective. The non-elite who testified to miracles lived in or near St. Their interest or awareness in Louis did not precede the need for a miracle, and their devotion was not necessarily rooted in the aspects of his life that people had associated with his sainthood.
