Such a clergy,' adds the historian, 'was unable to check the evil tendencies of the age, either by setting the example of a life of self-denial or by teaching a pure and enlightened religion.' Nor could such a period produce religious kings. The history of the thirteenth century gives a striking proof of this fact, for the grandfather and grandson of Louis IX., though able and energetic princes, who served both the throne and the nation well, showed much more tendency towards worldly policy and keen self-interest than towards Christian faith. Philip Augustus was no type of St. Louis, and Philip le Bel no imitation of him. Nor will the education he received from his mother, and her influence over him, both during a regency of ten years and even after he had attained his majority and assumed the reins of power, fully account for the profoundly Christian character of St. Louis, both in word and deed. Queen Blanche was a sincere believer and a pious woman, and she was very anxious to secure the moral and religious welfare of her son. We cannot doubt this, because it is proved by numerous facts, by many documents of the period, and by the testimony of the King himself. On the day of his birth, the 25th of April, 1215, when the feeble new-made mother noticed that the bells of the church of Poissy did not ring as usual, and was told they had been stopped that she might take repose, Blanche immediately commanded that she herself should be moved to a distance if necessary, but that nothing should hinder the summoning of the faithful to prayer. {13} She herself took charge of the early education of her boy 'as being the future ruler of so great a kingdom, and her own favourite child.' As soon as he entered his fourteenth year, she gave him a strict and careful preceptor, 'who followed him about everywhere, even in his amusements, by wood or stream, so that he might always be teaching him, and who even sometimes used to beat him--which he bore with patience,' say the contemporary chronicles. Later still, when the King related to his intimate friends his recollections of his mother: 'Madame used to say,' he often repeated, 'that if I were sick unto death, and could only be cured by committing some mortal sin, she would let me die rather than utterly offend my Creator.' [Footnote 3] [Footnote 3: 'Vie de Saint Louis,' by the Confessor of Queen Marguerite, in Bouquet's 'Recueil des Historians des Gaules et de la France;' Tillemont, 'Vie de Saint Louis,' &c. &c.]