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On top of a hill in front of an art museum in the biggest park in St. Louis stands a statue of an anti-Semite.
The monument to the city’s namesake, the medieval French king Louis IX, depicts the king astride a horse, wearing a crown and a robe and holding a sword in his right hand. Erected 116 years ago in Forest Park, it is one of the city’s best-known monuments.
Now, a coalition of activists want it taken down because Louis IX persecuted Jews, presided over a notorious mass burning of the Talmud, issued an order of expulsion against his Jewish subjects and led two Crusader armies in unsuccessful offensives in North Africa.
At a time when statues of Confederate leaders and other figures condemned for racist actions are coming down across the country, activists in St. Louis want the Louis IX statue to come down too. A petition is calling on the city not only to take the statue down, but to change the city’s name.
A group of local Catholics is defending the statue.
“The impossible is becoming possible,” said Umar Lee, a local activist who started the petition and also took part in a successful drive to remove a nearby Confederate monument in 2017. Lee is not Jewish but started the petition because of Louis IX’s anti-Semitism.
“So we’re at this juncture in time when we’re reimagining things and also, we’re taking a hard look at the history,” he said. “Monuments don’t exist in the past. They exist in the present. It’s not necessary to have a monument glorifying the individual in order to recognize history. King Louis IX will be in the history books no matter what we do in
St. Louis.”
The petition calls Louis a “rabid anti-Semite” who inspired Nazi Germany, and the call for the statue’s removal is drawing Jewish support. Rabbi Susan Talve, the founding rabbi of the city’s Central Reform Congregation, said taking it down would help advance racial justice in the United States.
“We’ve been talking about that statue for a long time,” she said, adding that removing the statue would be “a very important part of reclaiming history, reclaiming the stories that have created the institutionalized racism that we are trying to unravel today. If we’re not honest about our history we will never be able to dismantle the systems of oppression that we are living under.”
But as in other cities where activists have sought to remove monuments, the removal effort has sparked a backlash. Every night, a group of several dozen Catholics gathers by the statue to recite the rosary. One of them, Anna Kalinowski, called the statue a “remarkable work of art.” She emphasized that she reveres Louis IX as “a man who really wanted to follow God and [who] really wanted to do the right thing.” She feels his persecution of the Jews should be viewed in historical context.
“He wanted people to be Catholic because the Catholic Church believed that when you’re Catholic that is the way to fully serve God,” she said. “He believed that with his whole heart and soul and he wanted that for the Jewish people. Do we think that the way he went about that is wrong now? Sure. I mean, everybody has a right to their opinion on that, but at the time we can’t be so sure because we have to be careful and look at the context of his actions.”
But Talve said that even at the time of Louis IX’s reign in the 13th century there were people who recognized that ordering the expulsion of Jews, burning their sacred texts and leading Crusades was wrong.
“I’m not exactly sure what people are meaning when they say that, when they say you can’t judge what was happening in the Middle Ages by today’s standards, but you know what? Pillaging and looting at any time I think was wrong,” she said. “Asserting that your way is the only way I think is always wrong.”
On June 27, hundreds gathered by the statue, for the dueling protests, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The newspaper called the protests “mostly peaceful except for a few brief skirmishes.”
The pro-statue rally was organized by Jim Hoft, the editor of the far-right website Gateway Pundit. He posted a call for “all Catholic and Christian men and their allies” to gather by the statue at noon to recite the rosary. Kalinowski said her group is not affiliated with the June 27 rally.
Lee said he sees the protest movement as an opportunity to be honest about history. “I don’t believe anyone should be free of critical historical analysis,” he said. “It’s very problematic if you say that because someone is a saint, they can’t be analyzed through a critical lens.”
Catholic archdiocese defends statue of King Louis IX
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis issued an emphatic defense of that city’s statue of King Louis IX, the Missouri city’s namesake, without mentioning his persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages.
The statement, issued Sunday, came one day after dueling protests at the base of the statue — for and against — drew hundreds of people. A group of activists in the city are calling for the statue to be removed because of Louis IX’s anti-Semitism and leadership of two Crusades during his reign in the 1200s. Louis IX presided over a notorious public burning of the Talmud, a Jewish sacred text, and issued an order to expel his Jewish subjects.
In its statement, the archdiocese explained why the Catholic Church canonized Louis IX, including his charitable work with the poor and his reforms to France’s judicial system. It did not mention his actions concerning Jews or his leading role in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades.
The statement said the archdiocese supports “programs and policies that will dismantle racism” and said, “We should not seek to erase history, but recognize and learn from it, while working to create new opportunities for our brothers and sisters.”
“The history of the statue of St. Louis, the King, is one founded in piety and reverence before God, and for non-believers, respect for one’s neighbor,” the statement said. “For Catholics, St. Louis is an example of an imperfect man who strived to live a life modeled after the life of Jesus Christ. For St. Louisans, he is a model for how we should care for our fellow citizen, and a namesake with whom we should be proud to identify.”
—Ben Sales
