haec audisse recordata est et stupefacta fuit._]

On the banks of the Meuse, among the humble folk of the countryside,
some churchman, preoccupied with the lot of the poor people of France,
directed Jeanne's visions to the welfare of the kingdom and to the
conclusion of peace. He carried the ardour of his pious zeal so far as
to collect prophecies concerning the salvation of the French crown,
and to add to them with an eye to the accomplishment of his design.
For such an ecclesiastic we must seek among the priests of Lorraine
or Champagne upon whom the national misfortunes imposed cruel
sufferings.[293] Merchants and artizans, crushed under the burden of
taxes and subsidies, and ruined by changes in the coinage,[294]
peasants, whose houses, barns, and mills had been destroyed, and whose
fields had been laid waste, no longer contributed to the expenses of
public worship.[295] Canons and ecclesiastics, deprived both of their
feudal dues and of the contributions of the faithful, quitted the
religious houses and set out to beg their bread from door to door,
leaving behind in the monasteries only two or three old monks, and a
few children. The fortified abbeys attracted captains and soldiers of
both sides. They entrenched themselves within the walls; they
plundered and burnt. When one of those holy houses succeeded in
remaining standing, the wandering village folk made it their place of
refuge, and it was impossible to prevent the refectories and
dormitories from being invaded by women.[296] In the midst of this
obscure throng of souls afflicted by the sufferings and the scandals
of the Church may be divined the prophet and the director of the Maid.

[Footnote 293: Monstrelet, vol. iii, p. 180. Jean Chartier, _Chronique
latine_, ed. Vallet de Viriville, vol. i, p. 13. Th. Basin, _Histoire
de Charles VII et de Louis XI_, vol. i, pp. 44 _et seq._]

[Footnote 294: Alain Chartier, _Quadriloge invectif_, ed. Andre
Duchesne, Paris, 1617, pp. 440 _et seq._ _Ordonnances_, vol. xi, pp.
101 _et seq._ Viutry, _Les monnaies sous les trois premiers Valois_,
Paris, 1881, in 8vo, _passim_. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles
VII_, vol. i, ch. xi.]

[Footnote 295: Juvenal des Ursins and _Journal d'un bourgeois de
Paris_, _passim_. Letter from Nicholas de Clemangis to Gerson, in
_Clemangis opera omnia_, 1613, in 4to, vol. ii, pp. 159 _et seq._]

[Footnote 296: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres_,
Macon, 1897, in 8vo,