The Bishop of Troyes was my lord Jean Laiguisé, son of Master Huet Laiguisé, one of the first to swear to the treaty of 1420.[1386] The Chapter had elected him without waiting for the permission of the Regent, who declared against the election, not that he disliked the new pontiff; Messire Jean Laiguisé had sucked hatred of the Armagnacs and respect for the Rose of Lancaster from his alma mater of Paris. But my Lord of Bedford could not forgive any slighting of his sovereign rights.
Shortly afterwards he incurred the censure of the whole Church of France and was judged by the bishops worse than the cruellest tyrants of Scripture—Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Artaxerxes[1387]—who, when they chastised Israel had spared the Levites. More wicked than they and more sacrilegious, my Lord of Bedford threatened the privileges of the Gallican Church, when, on behalf of the Holy See, he robbed the bishops of their patronage, levied a double tithe on the French clergy, and commanded churchmen to surrender to him the contributions they had been receiving for forty years. That he was acting with the Pope's consent made his conduct none the less execrable in the eyes of the French bishops. The episcopal lords resolved to appeal from a Pope ill informed to one with wider knowledge; for they held the authority of the Bishop of Rome to be insignificant in comparison with the authority of the Council. They groaned: the abomination of desolation was laying waste Christian Gaul. In order to pacify the Church of France thus roused against him, my lord of Bedford convoked at Paris the bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Sens, which included the dioceses of Paris, Troyes, Auxerre, Nevers, Meaux, Chartres, and Orléans.[1388]
Messire Jean Laiguisé attended this Convocation. The Synod was held at Paris, in the Priory of Saint-Eloi, under the presidency of the Archbishop, from the 1st of March till the 23rd of April, 1429.[1389] The assembled bishops represented to my Lord the Regent the sorry plight of the ecclesiastical lords: the peasants, pillaged by soldiers, no longer paid their dues; the lands of the Church were lying waste; divine service had ceased to be held because there was no money with which to support public worship. Unanimously they refused to pay the Pope and the Regent the double tithe; and they threatened to appeal from the Pope to the Council. As for despoiling the clergy of all the contributions they had received during the last forty years, that, they declared, would be impious; and with great charity they reminded my Lord of Bedford of the fate reserved by God's judgment for the impious even in this world. "The Prince," they said, "should beware of the miseries and sorrows already fallen upon a multitude of princes, who with such demands had oppressed the Church which God redeemed with his own precious blood: some had perished by the sword, some had been driven into exile, others had been despoiled of their illustrious sovereignties. Wherefore such as set themselves to enslave the Church, the Bride of God, may not hope to deserve the grace of his divine Majesty."[1390]
Jean Laiguisé's sentiments towards the English Regent were those of the Synod. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that the Bishop of Troyes desired the death of the sinner, or even that he was hostile to the English.[1391] The Church is usually capable of temporising with the powers of this world. Wide is her mercy, and great her longsuffering. She threatens oft before striking and receives the repentance of the sinner at the first sign of contrition. But we may believe that if Charles of Valois were to win the power and show the will to protect the Church of France, the Lord Bishop and the Chapter of Troyes would fear lest if they resisted him they might be resisting God himself, since all power comes from God who deposuit potentes.
King Charles had not ventured to enter Champagne without taking measures for his safety; he knew on what he could rely in the town of Troyes. He had received information and promises; he maintained secret relations with several burgesses of the city, and those none of the least.[1392] During the first fortnight of May, a royal notary, ten clerks and leading merchants, on their way to the king, were arrested just outside the walls, on the Paris road, by the Sire de Chateauvillain,[1393] a captain in the English service. This mission was probably fulfilled by others more fortunate. It is easy to divine what questions were discussed at these audiences. The merchants would ask whether Charles, if he became their Lord, would guarantee absolute freedom to their trade; the clerks would ask his promise to respect the goods of the Church. And the King doubtless was not sparing of his pledges.
The Maid, with one division of the army, halted before the stronghold of Saint-Phal, belonging to Philibert de Vaudrey, commander of the town of Tonnerre, in the service of the Duke of Burgundy.[1394] In that place of Saint-Phal, Jeanne beheld approaching her a Franciscan friar, who was crossing himself and sprinkling holy water, for he feared lest she were the devil, and dared not draw near without having first exorcised the evil spirit. It was Friar Richard who was coming from Troyes.[1395] It will be interesting to see who this monk was as far as we can tell.
The place of his birth is unknown.[1396] A disciple of Brother Vincent Ferrier and of Brother Bernardino of Sienna, like them, he taught the imminent coming of Antichrist and the salvation of the faithful by the adoration of the holy name of Jesus.[1397] After having been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he returned to France, and preached at Troyes, during the Advent of 1428. Advent, sometimes called Saint Martin's Lent, begins on the Sunday which falls between the 27th of November and the 3rd of December. It lasts four weeks, which Christians spend in making themselves ready to celebrate the mystery of the Nativity.
"Sow, sow your seed, my good folk," he said. "Sow beans ready for the harvest, for He who is to come will come quickly."[1398]
By beans he meant the good works to be performed before Our Lord should come in the clouds to judge the quick and the dead. Now it was important to sow those good works quickly, for the harvest-tide was drawing nigh. The coming of Antichrist was but shortly to precede the end of the world and the consummation of the ages. In the month of April, 1429, Friar Richard went to Paris; the Synod of the Province of Sens was then holding its final session. It is possible that the good Friar was summoned to the great city by the Bishop of Troyes who was present at the Synod; but at any rate it would appear that it was not the rights of the Gallican Church the wandering monk went there to defend.[1399]
On the 16th of April, he preached his first sermon at Sainte-Geneviève; on the next and the following days, until Sunday, the 24th, he preached every morning, from five until ten or eleven o'clock, in the open air, on a platform, erected against the charnel-house of the Innocents, on the spot whereon was celebrated the dance of death. Around the platform, about nine feet high, there crowded five or six thousand persons, to whom he announced the speedy coming of Antichrist and the end of the world.[1400] "In Syria," he said, "I met bands of Jews; I asked them whither they were going, and they replied: 'We are wending in a multitude towards Babylon, for of a truth the Messiah is born among men, and he will restore unto us our inheritance, and he will bring us again to the land of promise.' Thus spake those Syrian Jews. Now Scripture teaches us that He, whom they call the Messiah, is in truth that Antichrist, of whom it is said he shall be born in Babylon, capital of the kingdom of Persia, he shall be brought up at Bethsaida and in his youth he shall dwell at Chorazin. Wherefore our Lord said: 'Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida.' The year 1430," added Friar Richard, "shall witness greater marvels than have ever been seen before.[1401] The time draweth nigh. He is born, the man of sin, the child of perdition, the wicked one, the beast vomited forth from the abyss, the abomination of desolation; he came out of the tribe of Dan, of whom it is written: 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path.' Soon shall return to the earth the prophets Elijah and Enoch, Moses, Jeremiah and Saint John the Evangelist; and soon shall dawn that day of wrath which shall grind the age in a mill and beat it in a mortar, according to the testimony of David and the Sibyl."[1402] Then the good Brother concluded by calling upon them to repent, to do penance and to renounce empty riches. In short, in the opinion of the clerks, he was a man of worship and an orator. His sermons produced more devoutness among the people, it was thought, than those of all the sermonizers who for the last century had been preaching in the town. And it was time that he came, for in those days the folk of Paris were greatly addicted to games of chance; yea, even priests unblushingly indulged in them, and seven years before, a canon of Saint-Merry, a great lover of dice was known to have gamed in his own house.[1403] Despite war and famine, the women of Paris loaded themselves with ornaments. They troubled more about their beauty than about the salvation of their souls.