Louis IX has long been known both as a saintly crusader and as the founder of effective royal administration in France. But, in spite of a vast amount of research, the details of what happened under his rule and why it happened have been little understood. Synthesizing this research from a thematic perspective, William Chester Jordan integrates the various facets of the king's reign from 1226 to 1270 to show how the monarch's reforms were inextricably...