The Crusades, what with the additional calls which they made on public charity, and the epidemic diseases which they brought, had rendered greater development of works of mercy absolutely indispensable. Works of charity are, in fact, the most marked characteristics of the reigns of Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. (1179–1270); most notably of the last, in which the saint-king set all his contemporaries such an example of Christian self-denial. We possess, under the title _Etablissements de Saint Louis_, a collection of the laws and ordinances framed by this great monarch, and forming an administrative code which displays wonderful sagacity, firmness, and forethought. His saintly mother, Blanche of Castille, to whose counsels he perhaps paid too little heed, seems to have taken a prominent part in the drawing up of this admirable code, which seems to breathe the true spirit of the Gospel. In St. Louis’s numerous and important charitable foundations, such as the Quinze-vingts, the Maison-Dieu, enlarged and endowed in Paris, the Hostelleries des Postes, in the chief towns of the kingdom, we recognise the collective work of this great king and his mother, who threw their love for humanity into the scale of politics (Fig. 271). The angel of charity spread its wings over the West and the East, and whatever might be the final result of so many distant wars which were on that account the more perilous, they could not fail to bring about an infinite increase of benevolent institutions. The most important, in point of utility, was the extension of the hospitaller order of St. Lazarus. [Illustration: Fig. 271.--St. Louis serving a Repast to the Poor.--Miniature from the “Petites Heures” of Anne of Brittany, which belonged to Catherine de Medicis (beginning of the Sixteenth Century), in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]