Louis of Toulouse

Louis of Toulouse, also known as Louis of Anjou, was a prince of the Capetian House of Anjou and a Franciscan bishop of the late thirteenth century. He was born in 1274 as the second son of Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples, and Mary of Hungary, daughter of King Stephen V of Hungary. Through this parentage he belonged to one of the most powerful dynasties of the Mediterranean world, with claims and possessions in Naples, Provence, and Hungary. His elder brother was Charles Martel of Anjou, titular king of Hungary, and a younger brother, Robert, later reigned as King of Naples. The precise place of his birth is uncertain in the surviving sources, which variously name Brignoles in Provence or Nocera in Campania.

In the aftermath of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, Charles II was captured by the Aragonese. Under the terms arranged for his father's release, Louis and two of his brothers were sent as hostages to Catalonia in the late 1280s, when Louis was still an adolescent. He remained in Aragonese custody for about seven years. During this captivity he received a careful education and came under the lasting influence of Franciscan friars. He was drawn to a life of evangelical poverty and formed the intention of entering the Order of Friars Minor. After the diplomatic settlement of the mid-1290s he was released and returned to Italy.

Although the death of his elder brother in 1295 left Louis heir to the throne of Naples, he declined the succession in favor of his brother Robert and pursued a clerical and religious vocation. With papal dispensation for his youth, he was ordained, and in 1296 Pope Boniface VIII provided him to the bishopric of Toulouse. Louis was permitted to make his profession as a Franciscan around the time of his appointment and was consecrated bishop while still in his early twenties. He occupied the see of Toulouse only briefly in 1297. Contemporary accounts emphasize his personal austerity, his preference for a simple Franciscan manner of life even after his elevation, and his generosity toward the poor, to whom he directed substantial portions of his episcopal income.

While traveling in Provence later in 1297, Louis fell ill and died at Brignoles on 19 August, at about twenty-three years of age. He was buried in the church of the Friars Minor at Marseille. His brother King Robert of Naples and the Franciscan order promoted his cult, and Pope John XXII canonized him on 7 April 1317, less than twenty years after his death. The canonization reflected both Franciscan devotion to a royal saint of poverty and Angevin dynastic piety. In 1423 King Alfonso V of Aragon transferred Louis's relics from Marseille to Valencia, where they have since been kept in the cathedral; Louis became a principal patron of that city. His feast is observed on 19 August. In the eighteenth century Spanish Franciscans in California placed the mission of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa under his patronage, extending his cult to the Pacific coast of North America. He is remembered as a young prince who renounced a crown for the Franciscan life and as a short-lived bishop whose reputation for humility and charity spread widely after his early death.