[1414-1424 A.D.] city for so many ages accumulated the remains of almost all its inhabitants had been at first both a cemetery and a laystall, haunted at night by robbers, and in the evening by wantons, who plied their trade among the tombs. Philip Augustus enclosed it with walls, and to purify it dedicated it to St. Innocent, a child crucified by the Jews. In the fourteenth century the churches were already very full, and it became the fashion among the good citizens to bury their dead in the cemetery. Such was the suitable theatre of the danse macabre. It was begun in September, 1424, when the heat had diminished, and the first rain had rendered the smell of the place less offensive. The performances lasted many months.

Whatever disgust both the place and the spectacle might inspire, it was matter suggestive of much thought to see in that fatal period, in a town so frequently and so cruelly visited by death, the hungry, sickly, scarce living multitude, merrily making death itself a matter of spectacle, attending with insatiable avidity to its moralising buffooneries, and enjoying them so heartily as to tread heedlessly upon the bones of their fathers, and on the gaping graves they were themselves about to fill.p

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE

A very different phase of life which demands at least a passing notice is that which clustered about the wonderful University of Paris.a As early as the thirteenth century, the university shone in all its glory. Born in the shadow of the cloister of the bishopric, and primarily confounded with the ancient cathedral college of the town, it had obtained, little by little, immunities and privileges by favour of which it had grown and had reached a point where it was dependent upon no one but the court of Rome. Among the popes who conferred the most important privileges may be cited Alexander III, Innocent III, and his successor Honorius III, all promoters of the progress of knowledge, all jealously seeking to retain for the church that superiority of studies and learning to which its power was bound. The University of Paris rose rapidly above the universities of Italy, the only ones with which it was then in serious rivalry. It became the most important ecclesiastical and scientific college of Europe, the school whence the high clergy of France was recruited, as well as that of a large part of Christianity. It belonged to the church by its creation, by its studies in which theology predominated, and by its object, which was to prepare the learned candidates for the obtention of livings. For all its rights it depended on the holy see, which subjected it to visits and regulations. Meanwhile it formed in the bosom of the church itself a vast corporation (universitas), governing itself by its own laws with an extended liberty.

It was divided into four faculties: arts or philosophy which comprised nearly all the known sciences; theology; decree or canonical law; and medicine. The faculty of arts had a particular celebrity; it is to it that the capital of France owes its appellation of the Modern Athens. The faculty of theology was not less celebrated after the lectures of Roscellinus and Abelard. That of law was incomplete, since civil law, which restored to honour the work of the great Italian jurists, was taught in Paris only subsidiarily. It even ceased to exist at the beginning of the year 1220, although the laws of Justinian had found able interpreters in France as well as in Italy. The decree of the pope, Honorius III, to suppress its instruction in Paris, had probably its entire concentration in the college of Boulogne for an object. In any case, that suppression was only

for a time, and a little later at Orleans a special university was founded, called the University of Law. As to the study and profession of medicine, it is well known that in the Middle Ages it was a prerogative of the religious orders almost exclusively.

Each faculty held special assemblies, in which the masters and graduates had deliberative voice. The four faculties met once a year to elect their rector, the formulæ of which elections, determined with infinite care, in order to guarantee liberty of vote and prevent intrigue, presented a great analogy to the election of a pope. Thus the University of Paris possessed a liberal government, with a regular hierarchy, where degrees conferred powers, and where superior intelligence ruled.

The pope gave it its highest protection. He made the rules of study, intervened in disputes with the civil authorities. The principal ecclesiastical privilege of the University of Paris was that of being dependent on no bishop, and having its own jurisdiction. Its members could not be excommunicated except by the court of Rome.g

It is one of the strangest contrasts of history that while France was at the lowest ebb of its national history, the University of Paris was attempting to carry out one of the greatest revolutions in the history of Europe. The conciliar movement in the church, which produced such great international gatherings as the councils of Constance and of Bâle, and which aimed to limit papal absolutism by something like a parliamentary system, was due to the work of men like Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, and Pierre D'Ailly, scholar and prelate. It was universally admitted that abuses had crept into the administration of the church. There was evidently something wrong when, while Frenchmen were perishing from famine, and France was on the verge of ruin, the papal court at Avignon luxuriated on a revenue that was more than royal, and a pope (John XXII) could accumulate a treasure of eighteen millions of gold florins, and jewels and vestments estimated at seven millions more.

But the evils which date from the residence at Avignon were increased twofold during the schism. All Christendom was in doubt how this would end. For the civil war in the church had divided the countries under rival obediences. France, Scotland, and Spain adhered to the pope at Avignon ; and England, Germany, and Italy obeyed the Italian pope.

At first they tried to induce the rivals to resign; and Pedro de Luna, who was elected pope at Avignon as Benedict XIII, won the high office by declaring that he would resign as easily as take off his hat. But the wily prelate, after his election, declared that no earthly power could dethrone him, and for more than a decade defied the attempts of reformers to achieve union. It was then that in the University of Paris the theologians began agitation for a universal council, as supreme over the pope. It is said that a German doctor began the movement, but the credit has gone to France. First at Pisa and then at Constance, the great parliaments of the church took in hand the reformation.

In the later council (1414-1418) union was achieved by the deposition of opposing popes and the election of Martin V (see volume on The Papacy), but the decree Frequens which demanded regular meeting of councils in the future, was gradually lost sight of in the following pontificates, and the great experiment of a constitutional church was a failure. That such an attempt should be made while France was in the throes of this great Hundred Years' War, and that mostly by Frenchmen, shows that alongside of the story of carnage, crime, and superstition, there were signs of intellectual life and

earnest effort of reformers, which are suggestive in the age of Wycliffe and Huss.

A strange page of history is opened here. Sigismund, emperor of Germany, who presided at the council of Constance, was anxious to play a great part in the world's affairs. He took advantage of the great international assemblage in his dominions to attempt to put himself at the head of a European confederacy to fight the Turks, who were advancing along the Danube.

To accomplish this he made a journey into France and England to try to prevent the war. His visit took place just before the fatal invasion of Henry V which brought the victory of Agincourt. To raise the money for that journey Sigismund made over the mark of Brandenburg to Frederick of Hohenzollern, burggraf of Nuremberg, and thus founded the power of the Hohenzollern.

Henry V, was willing to accede to Sigismund's plans, but although he even offered the succession of Hungary as a bribe, the court of France refused to make the peace he desired, and Sigismund's great effort at European concord resulted in only one thing - the foundation of the great dynasty which rules in Germany to-day. France and England went their own way, bringing mutual disaster for another generation.a

[It was Sigismund's grandfather, the blind King John of Bohemia, whose death at Crécy gave the famous motto, Ich dien, to the prince of Wales.]

THE king proclaimed at St. Denis was an infant of ten months, grandson, on his mother's side, of Charles VI. His two uncles ruled in his name, -one the duke of Bedford in France; the other the duke of Gloucester in England. This child was recognised as sovereign of the kingdom of France by parliament, by the university, by the first prince of the blood, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and by the dowager queen, Isabella of Bavaria. Paris, Île-de-France, Picardy, Artois, Flanders, Champagne, and Normandy - that is to say, almost all the country north of the Loire-and Guienne, south of that river, obeyed him.

The king proclaimed in Berri, sole surviving son of Charles VI, was a youth of nineteen years, graceful bearing, but weak in body, pale of figure, of small courage, and ever in fear of violent death; and besides, adds Chastelain,d "a good Latinist, a fine raconteur, and most wise in council." Such indeed he was later on; but for the present and for many years to come he showed spirit only for his own pleasures and a sort of dull apathy in matters of state and in the face of peril. His authority was recognised only in Touraine, Orleans, Berri, Bourbonnais, Auvergne, Languedoc, Dauphiné, and Lyonnais. Indifferent to disaster, he was resigned to hearing himself called derisively "the king of Bourges." To Poitiers he transported his council, his parliament, and his university. But Bourges and Poitiers were still great towns in his eyes; he dragged his little court from castle to castle, completely submissive to the sire de Giac, to Le Camus de Beaulieu, to the sire de la Trémouille, and willingly enduring the all-powerful influence of his mother-in-law Yolande of Anjou.b

The young king, brought up by the Armagnacs, found in them his chief support, and so shared their unpopularity. These Gascons were the most veteran soldiers in France, but the greatest and most cruel plunderers. The

[1422-1424 A.D.] hatred they inspired in the north would have been sufficient to create there a Burgundian and English party. The brigands of the south seemed more of foreigners than the foreigners.

Charles VII next made trial of the foreigners themselves, of those who had gained experience in the English wars. He called the Scotch to his aid. These were the most mortal enemies of England, and their hatred might be relied on as much as their courage. The greatest hopes were built on these auxiliaries. A Scotchman was made constable of France; another, count of Touraine. Notwithstanding, however, their incontestable bravery, they had often been beaten in England. They were not only beaten in France, at Crevant and Verneuil (1423, 1424), but destroyed: the English took care that none of them escaped. It was asserted that the Gascons, out of jealousy against the Scotch, had not supported them.

The English narrowly escaped giving Charles VII an ally far more useful and important than the Scotch-the duke of Burgundy. So little concert was there between the two brothers, that at the selfsame time Bedford married the duke of Burgundy's sister, and Gloucester was commencing war against him. A word as to this romantic story.

The duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, never thought himself secure of his Flanders until he should have flanked it with Holland and Hainault. These two counties had fallen into the hands of a girl, the countess Jacqueline, widow of the dauphin John. The duke of Burgundy married her to a cousin of his own, a sickly boy. Jacqueline, who was a handsome young woman, did not resign herself to so irksome a fate, but left her sorry mate, nimbly crossed the Straits, and herself proposed marriage to the duke of Gloucester. Gloucester committed the folly of accepting the proposal (1423). He espoused Jacqueline's cause, thus beginning against the duke of Burgundy, the indispensable ally of England, a war which, for the latter, was a question of actual existence, a war without treaty, in which the sovereign of Flanders would risk his last man. The incensed duke of Burgundy concluded a secret alliance with the duke of Brittany, and then he made pecuniary demands on Bedford. What could Bedford do? He had no money; instead of it, he offered an inestimable possession worth more than any sum of money-his whole barrier on the north (September, 1423). The bands of Charles VII came and lodged themselves in the very heart of English France, in Normandy; a pitched battle was fought before they could be expelled. It took place on the 17th of August, 1424, at Verneuil. In June, Bedford had regained the good will of the duke of Burgundy by an enormous concession, having pledged his eastern frontier to him, Bar-surSeine, Auxerre, and Mâcon.

All northern France was greatly in danger of thus falling bit by bit into the duke of Burgundy's hand; but suddenly the wind shifted. The sapient Gloucester, in the midst of this war begun for Jacqueline, forgets that he has married her, forgets that at that very moment she is besieged in Bergues, and weds another, a fair English woman. This new folly had the effect of an act of wisdom. The duke of Burgundy consented to be reconciled to the English, and made a show of believing all Bedford told him; the essential thing for him was to be able to despoil Jacqueline, and occupy Hainault, Holland, and afterwards Brabant, the succession to which could not but soon be opened.

Charles VII, therefore, derived little advantage from this event which seemed likely to be so profitable to him. The only benefit that accrued to him from it was that the count de Foix, governor of Languedoc, compre