The question of the difference between a confessor saint,

and a martyr saint frames Joinville's hagiographic biography.

For we have already seen in paragraph five,

that Louis came out of the process of canonization,

classified only as a confessor and not as a martyr.

The confessor is someone who is worthy of being a saint,

and a martyr is someone who not only is worthy,

but who died because of his or her worthiness,

who died in the service of the cause.

The distinction takes us back to the early days,

of the persecution of Christians,

when Christianity was a cult and not,

as it would become in the early Fourth Century,

the official religion of state.

Joinville's claim is that Louis did not receive his due, and it seemed to me,

he writes, that he was not adequately recognized when they

failed to set him among the number of the martyrs.

Considering the great suffering he endured,

on the pilgrimage of the cross over the course of the six years I was in his company,

and especially because he followed Our Lord as far as the cross,

for if God died on the cross so did he.

For he was signed with the cross when he died at Tunis.

Now there is no doubt that Louis loved the cross.

Here is an image,

again from Guillaume d'Saint Petreus's Life of St. Louis with such a demonstration.

But Joinville, writing at the instigation of Joan of Navarre,

countess of Champagne and wife of Louis' grandson Philip IV of France, wants more.

Joinville's Life of St. Louis is a demonstration,

that Louis was not only a confessor but a martyr,

that he not only was good but that he was brave and his bravery cost him his life.

Note that the part that Joinville has actually witnessed is not a cushy life at court,

but the expedition of crusade, capture, and imprisonment, suffering,

and eventually re-enlistment as the ultimate sign of Louis' unswerving dedication,

through his crusade and fighting in the Middle East.

We have seen in the bringing of the instruments of Christ's passion to France,

the holy sponge, the Lance of Longinus, pieces of the True Cross,

but especially the Crown of Thorns.

We have seen that Louis associated himself,

and indeed all of France with the suffering and humiliated Christ,

so too he seeks to suffer even in the translation of the relics,

between Sance and Paris by walking barefoot.

23.2 Confessor or Martyr?