The King Who Sat Beneath the Oak

In the summer of 1259, King Louis IX of France did something no European monarch was expected to do. He walked out of his palace at Vincennes, sat beneath an old oak tree, and invited anyone — peasant, widow, orphan — to bring their grievances directly to him. No court fees. No intermediaries. Just the king, listening.

His advisors were appalled. A king did not sit in the dirt with commoners. But Louis kept returning to that oak, season after season. He heard disputes between landlords and tenants, ruling for whoever was right regardless of rank. He established the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts for three hundred blind poor. He personally ladled soup for beggars at his own table and knelt to wash the feet of lepers with his own hands.

When asked why he would lower himself to such work, Louis reportedly said that the poorest person in his kingdom had as much right to justice as the wealthiest lord.

This is the vision the psalmist paints in Psalm 72 — a ruler who does not hoard power for comfort but spends it on those who have no advocate. "He will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help." The true measure of a kingdom was never its palaces or armies. It was whether the forgotten could find justice under its shade — and that is the kingdom our true King is still building.