Saint Louis as a New David and Paris as a New Jerusalem in Medieval French Hagiographic Literature

Abstract

From the time of the royal anointing of Pepin the Short (751 and 754), intentionally fashioned after (or interpreted as) the biblical anointing of the prophets and kings of Israel, David becomes an ideal model for the kings of the Franks. According to Earlier Annals of Metz Charlemagne was anointed thrice: as a child and heir presumptive with his father, Pepin the Short, and younger brother Carloman in 754; after Pepin’s death in 768 as one of the two kings of Franks; finally after Carloman’s retirement to the monastery, when he became the one and only king of the entire Frankish Kingdom in 771.1 The Annalist does not compare Charlemagne directly to David, but the parallel seems to be manifest: David was also administered with triple anointment: the first one while still a boy, during Saul’s reign; the second as a king of Judah, and eventually as a king of Israel, uniting all the tribes of Israel.2 While in their literary correspondence the intellectuals from the Carolingian court – indulging in a kind of intellectual game – used to assign each other literary surnames borrowed from ancient Roman poets, Charlemagne was called by the name of David. Yet, for Alcuin of York, Charlemagne’s close advisor and one of the founders of the Carolingian royal ideology (he himself used to be called Flaccus), David is not indeed the king’s surname. In effect, Charlemagne is a modern-day David and this similarity between the Carolingian emperor and King David is justified by the analogy of the task assigned to both monarchs: like the king of Israel, Charlemagne was supposed to be responsible for the purity of the Church and of the divine worship in order to ensure the salvation of his subjects. Incidentally, for similar reasons, Charlemagne was also considered a new Josiah, the pious king of Judah who restored both the Temple and the Law to