as so well
known that the name of the governor, jestingly vilified and fallen
into ridicule, was in common parlance bestowed on braggarts and
blusterers. A fool who posed as a wicked person was called _an
olibrius_.[272]

[Footnote 271: Gaston Paris, _La litterature francaise au moyen age_,
1890, in 16mo, p. 212.]

[Footnote 272: La Curne, _Dictionnaire de l'ancien langage francais_,
under the word _Olibrius_. Olibrius figures also in the legend of
Saint Reine, where he is governor of the Gallic Provinces. The legend
of Saint Reine is only a somewhat ancient variant of the legend of
Saint Margaret.]

Madame Sainte Catherine, whose coming the angel had announced to
Jeanne at the same time as that of Madame Sainte Marguerite, was the
protectress of young girls and especially of servants and spinsters.

Orators and philosophers too had chosen as their patron saint the
virgin who had confounded the fifty doctors and triumphed over the
magi of the east. In the Meuse valley rhymed prayers like the
following were addressed to her:

Ave, tres sainte Catherine,
Vierge pucelle nette et fine.[273]

[Footnote 273:

Hail, thou holy Catherine,
Virgin Maid so pure and fine.

_Bibliotheque Mazarine, manuscrit_, 515. _Recueil de prieres_, folio
55. This manuscript comes from the banks of the Meuse.]

This fine lady was no stranger to Jeanne; she had her church at Maxey,
on the opposite bank of the river; and her name was borne by Isabelle
Romee's eldest daughter.[274]

[Footnote 274: S. Luce, _loc. cit._, proofs and illustrations, xiii,
p. 19, note 2. E. de Bouteiller and G. de Braux, _Nouvelles recherches
sur la famille de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. xvi and 62. _Guide et souvenir du
pelerin a Domremy_, Nancy, 1878, in 18mo, p. 60.]

Jeanne certainly did not know the story of Saint Catherine as it was
known to illustrious clerks; as, for example, about this time it was
committed to writing by Messire Jean Mielot, the secretary of the Duke
of Burgundy. Jean Mielot told how the virgin of Alexandria
controverted the subtle arguments of Homer, the syllogisms of
Aristotle, the very learned reasonings of the famous physicians
AEsculapius and Galen, practised the seven liberal arts, and disputed
according to the rules of dialectics.[275] Jacques d'Arc's daughter
had heard nothing of all that; she knew Saint Catherine from stories
out of some history written in the vulgar tongue, in verse or in
prose, so many of which w