JEAN, SIRE DE JOINVILLE

JEAN, SIRE DE JOINVILLE (1224-1319), French chronicler, seneschal of Champagne, born in Châlons-sur-Marne; author of the "Vie de St. Louis"; followed Louis IX. in the crusade of 1248, but refused to join in that of 1270; he lived through six reigns, and his biography of his sovereign is one of the most remarkable books of the Middle Ages; his "Vie de St. Louis" deals chiefly with the Crusade, and is, says Prof. Saintsbury, "one of the most circumstantial records we have of mediæval life and thought"; it is gossipy, and abounds in digressions.