_et
seq._]

CHAPTER XVI

AFTER THE DEATH OF THE MAID (_continued_)--THE ROUEN JUDGES AT THE
COUNCIL OF BALE AND THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION--THE REHABILITATION
TRIAL--THE MAID OF SARMAIZE--THE MAID OF LE MANS

From year to year the Council of Bale drew out its deliberations in a
series of sessions well nigh as lengthy as the tail of the dragon in
the Apocalypse. Its manner of reforming at once the Church, its
members, and its head struck terror into the hearts of the sovereign
Pontiff and the Sacred College. Sorrowfully did AEneus Sylvius exclaim,
"There is assembled at Bale, not the Church of God indeed, but the
synagogue of Satan."[2684] But though uttered by a Roman cardinal,
even such an expression can hardly be termed violent when applied to
the synod which established free elections to bishoprics, suppressed
the right of bestowing the pallium, of exacting annates and payments
to the papal chancery, and which was endeavouring to restore the
papacy to evangelical poverty. The King of France and the Emperor, on
the other hand, looked favourably on the Council when it essayed to
bridle the ambition and greed of the Bishop of Rome.

[Footnote 2684: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. iii, p.
335.]

Now among the Fathers who displayed the greatest zeal in the
reformation of the Church were the masters and doctors of the
University of Paris, those who had sat in judgment on Jeanne the Maid,
and notably Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur and Maitre Thomas de Courcelles.
Charles VII convoked an assembly of the clergy of the realm in order
to examine the canons of Bale. The assembly met in the Sainte-Chapelle
at Bourges, on the 1st of May, 1438. Master Thomas de Courcelles,
appointed delegate by the Council, there conferred with the Lord
Bishop of Castres. Now in 1438 the Bishop of Castres was that elegant
humanist, that zealous counsellor of the crown, who, in style truly
Ciceronian, complained in his letters that so closely was he bound to
his glebe, the court, that no time remained to him to visit his
spouse.[2685] He was none other than that Gerard Machet, the King's
confessor, who had, in 1429, along with the clerks at Poitiers,
pleaded the authority of prophecy in favour of the Maid, in whom he
found nought but sincerity and goodness.[2686] Maitre Thomas de
Courcelles at Rouen had urged the Maid's being tortured and delivered
to the secular arm.[2687] At the Bourges assembly the two churchmen
agreed touchin