Living in France

This chapter determines just how successful Louis IX's conversion project had been. It first asks how many converted Muslims and pagans had actually settled in France. All the chroniclers and thirteenth-century biographers of Louis IX who write about the conversion project appear to imply that the overwhelming proportion of converts were from Islam. The chapter, however, presents a more complicated picture through the use of documentary evidence, and creates a rough estimate of the converted population in northern France during the thirteenth century. In addition, the chapter explores the other logistical concerns of settling these immigrant converts in France, covering their royal stipends and endowments, occupations, population densities, how well they assimilated into French society, and similar.