Today in history, on June 6, Louis IX of France better known to posterity as Saint Louis scored a dramatic victory over the Islamic jihad.
It was late May, 1249, and the Seventh Crusade had begun..
‘A small, black, repulsive picture’ is not how most people today would describe Zurbaran’s haunting painting of ‘Saint Francis in Meditation’ (1635-9) in the National Gallery. But that was how one Protestant critic of its acquisition in 1853 described this image of an Italian saint satirised three centuries earlier by the German Lutheran cleric Erasmus
Professor Rebecca Rist and Nige Tassell consider the consequences for history had the Lionheart pushed on in with his forces, meaning that the Third Crusade returned the Holy City to Christian control