Louis IX Quotes

When they had despoiled all the country near to Damascus, they advanced to Jerusalem, took it by storm, and put all the Christians to the sword. The women and girls, having suffered every insult from a brutal disorderly soldiery, were loaded with chains. They destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; and when they found nothing among the living, to glut their rage, they opened the tombs of the Christians, took out the bodies, and burnt them.

Those who make war unjustly shall perish

You have but one method to avoid the tempest that threatens you. Receive priests, who will teach you the Christian religion, embrace it, and adore the Cross; otherwise I will pursue you everywhere, and God shall decide whether you or I be master of Egypt.

I am the prince of those who follow the religion of Jesus Christ, as you are of those who obey the laws of Muhammad. Your power inspires me with no fear. How should it? I who make the Muslims in Spain tremble!

Are you ignorant that we know the use of arms, and that we inherit the valor of our ancestors? No one has ever attacked us without feeling our superiority. Recollect the conquests we have made from the Christians; we have driven them from the lands they possessed; their strongest towns have fallen under our blows.

You have landed in Egypt, thinking to take possession of it. You have imagined that it was only peopled with cowards ! you who are a drum filled with wind….The death of the servants of the Messiah has been the reward given to you by God….What now remains of the seventy thousand who accompanied you? Dead, wounded, and prisoners !

In 1255, Louis IX of France presented an elephant to Henry III of England to add to the menagerie of exotic animals he kept in the Tower of London.

We have reason to believe that when, during the crusades, Europe at last began to establish hospitals, they were inspired by the Arabs of near East....The first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was founded by Louis IX after his return from the crusade 1254-1260.