A French Bishop of the Fifteenth Century

THE feelings, thoughts, and prejudices of a past century can be gathered but scantily from the biography of its greatest man. His individuality fills the picture, and leaves little room for a background. On the other hand, the men who walked the streets and talked at the street corners; who ploughed the fields and kept the shops ; who fought, and worked, and suffered, — all these are dead, and have left no sign; nothing but a dreary mass of averages, which give as little knowledge of the men themselves as can be gained of Raphael’s pictures from a statement of their average length and breadth, and of the average amount of the several colors used in their production. The true likeness of some one poor, plodding French peasant of the fifteenth century, for example, would be priceless ; but it must be supplied by the historical novel, not by historical biography. The most that historical biography can do for us here is to tell us of some man not great enough to move apart from the crowd, yet so well known that his separate likeness has been preserved to us. In France of the fifteenth century such a man was Thomas Basin. In his lifetime he was an honored guest at every court and university of Europe, yet so weak was his individuality that the great history, which he believed would be a benefit and a warning to mankind, for several centuries bore another’s name.

He was born in 1412, at Caudebec, a thriving little Norman city, built close to the north bank of the Seine, midway between Rouen and Harfleur. His father was a rich grocer, and one of the most considerable men in the town, with business relations throughout Normandy and the rest of northwestern France. When Thomas was three years old, just as the memory of Crécy and Poitiers was becoming a tradition, Henry V. landed at the mouth of the Seine, barely forty miles from Caudebec, and sat down before Harfleur.

To-day it is almost impossible to imagine the fear then caused in France by the English invasion. The common people conceived of the English as beings hardly human, and pictured them as ferocious wild beasts with long tails, feasting upon men, women, and children. To make the matter worse, Caudebec was filled with cruel and insolent French soldiers, who plundered alike the peasants of the open country and the merchants of the towns. Unhappy, peace-loving John Basin, not knowing whether he ought most to dread the traditional Englishman or the actual Frenchman, packed up the better part of his household goods, and moved five and twenty miles up the Seine to Rouen. Thither had fled every well-to-do family of the Pays de Caux, together with a horde of wretched peasants, who, having left everything behind them, hoped to live on the charity of the rich provincial capital. Famine followed, and then a pestilence, to escape which John Basin went thirty miles farther up the river to Vernon, returning to Rouen when the plague had lessened.

Nowadays war has become so expensive a luxury that it is fought out with vigor to a definite end. In the fifteenth century a king could afford to linger over it, and enjoy it as a recreation after discharging his pressing duties at home. In 1416, Henry V. was too busy to fight, so he put the matter off for a year, leaving the English garrisons at Harfleur and elsewhere to live off the country as best they could. In 1417, he descended again upon Normandy, and drove John Basin southward from city to city, even to Nantes, on the banks of the Loire. In 1419, it was possible to return to Caudebec with safety. The wave of the English invasion had passed over Normandy, and Henry himself, having organized the provincial administration, was marching on Paris. As he claimed the throne of France by descent, as well as by conquest, he made great show of respecting the liberties of the duchy, often convoked the Estates, and honestly strove to give his new subjects a respectable government. He offered to reinstate every man who would acknowledge him as king. Many of the nobles, most of the burghers, — John Basin among them, — and nearly all the peasants settled down with indifference to a change of masters. Rouen had suffered severely from a long and terrible siege, but the real agony of the duchy was to come later.

From 1419 to 1424 Thomas Basin lived at Caudebec with his family. He was a precocious boy; one of those who delight their mothers’ hearts. He had no taste for war, —the home of a rich and prosperous merchant was a poor school in which to learn fighting, — but he felt himself above his father’s account-books, and, with a view to the Church, he longed for a university education. His parents assented to his wishes. In the first half of the fifteenth century, not only was the clerical profession far more important than it is today, but clergymen absorbed nearly all of what we now call professional life. Physicians seldom were educated men in any real sense; lay lawyers were looked upon with contempt, — at least in Normandy ; nearly all teaching was done by men in holy orders, and they had hardly lost their control of literature. Froissart and other chroniclers might, indeed, tell gossipy stories about brave knights and fair ladies, but Thomas Basin despised such vulgar tales, and early in life earned the reputation of writing the most elaborate and Ciceronian Latin to be found north of the Alps. He learned this art at Paris, whither he went in 1424, and where he passed the following six years.

During his stay at Caudebec the English invasion had made a great advance. To revenge the murder of his father by the national party, Philip of Burgundy had allied himself with the English, and thus Henry had secured Paris, with most of northern France. " When God was weary of helping the English,” as Comines says, Henry V. died. His brother, John of Bedford, with something of Henry’s skill and patience, was trying to hold the friendship of the slippery Philip with one hand, and with the other to drive back the partisans of Charles VII. That wretched man kept himself at a safe distance from the English troops, drenching his passions in drunkenness and debauchery, " as Basin afterwards said, in one of his rare moments of terseness. Paris had always been devoted to the Burgundian party; most of Charles’s supporters had been slaughtered by the Burgundians, or driven into exile ; and the university, at that time perhaps the greatest in the world, was safe in Anglo-Burgundian hands. At the age of twelve Basin entered it, and was enrolled in the venerable nation of the Normans; so called to distinguish it from the most faithful nation of the Picards, the most honorable nation of the French, and the most steadfast nation of the English. Young as he was to be left alone in so great, a city, he was of the usual age at which boys then went to a university. He made great progress under his tutor’s care, living in one of the hostels maintained for students’ use, and sending a letter now and then to his parents by one of the messengers who plied regularly between the university and the country.

As cities went in the Middle Ages, Paris was a great city, although it stretched only from the Place de la Bastille to the Théâtre Francais, from the Porte St. Martin to the palace of the Luxembourg. Then, as now, it was a world in itself, with its own polities and its own quarrels apart from those of the rest of France. Round about its walls prowled the French partisans, seizing upon all who ventured beyond the gates, and putting to ransom, with strict impartiality, English soldiers, rich French merchants, and the poorest artisans and laborers. Within the city, the Anglo - Burgundian party was in momentary dread of treachery and revolt; alternately shivering at the discovery of some new plot, and gloating over the slaughter of the conspirators. In spite of plots and partisans, however, the English arms advanced, though very slowly and with many set-hacks. As the French cause yearly grew more hopeless, the wretched men who at first had fled the city to escape the English found their way back to Paris, one after another, hoping that their presence would pass unnoticed. Seldom was this the case. Even the poorest and meanest among them, even women and young girls, were thrown into prison, until they could beg or buy a pardon. A certain poor baker, going to the door one day, found there his brother William, who had come with his wife to ask for shelter. The couple were half naked and half starved, almost, frozen by the cold weather of January. William told his story. He had wandered about for years through Touraine and Berry, trying to earn his living as a vine-dresser; moving about as, in one place after another, food became so dear that he could not buy enough to live upon. The baker knew his duty. He was bound at once to hand the wretches over to the police. Instead of this, he took them into his house, and in a few days the two men were seized and thrown into prison. The baker’s petition for pardon is very pitiful. He had intended, so he said, to deliver his brother William to justice; “but because, when the said William arrived. he was without shirt or hat, and sick of the cold and the want he had endured on his journey, the petitioner therefore believed that if he had surrendered his brother at once, and if his brother had been imprisoned while he was in such condition, he would have fallen into great and grievous sickness. Moreover, the petitioner had the fullest intention to deliver up the said William as soon as he should be a little recovered.” The English took pity on them, and released them both. As Basin walked about the narrow streets of Paris, he saw hundreds of his countrymen, tied together like dogs, and dragged to imprisonment or to execution. In spite of all the fierce hatreds of civil war, of Burgundian and Armagnac, the national feeling began to show itself. Though the French partisans were undoubtedly more cruel than the English, yet the poor country folk came to feel that all would go well if once the English were driven home.

As the minds of men became unsettled by the great suffering about them, they grew to look for some fearful catastrophe. Early in 1429, Basin stood in a huge crowd for five hours together, listening to Friar Richard, a follower of Bernardino of Sienna, who declared that Antichrist was born already, and that the day of judgment was close at hand. In order to get standing-room near the scaffold from which he preached, men and women went, to the spot over night, and slept upon the ground. The young student saw the huge bonfires made by the terrified people of their trinkets and their charms, the bustles of the women and the gaming-tables of the men. In three weeks the preacher had so grasped the hearts of the people of Paris that the authorities of the university, suspecting his politics rather than his theology, drove him from the eity. After he left Paris, he joined himself to Charles VII. The infuriated people then called down upon him the curses of God and the saints, and went back to their dice and their finery, out of sheer spite against the preacher. At about the same time, in Picardy, another friar preached with great zeal against the high head-dresses then worn by ladies of fortune. With promises of absolution, he persuaded the little boys in the streets to hoot at any such head-dress that they saw. As the chronicler remarks. however, the ladies were much like snails ; when disturbed, they drew in their horns, but thrust them out again as soon as their tormentor was gone away. This friar became involved in some obscure heresy, and was burned at Rome shortly afterwards.

Friar Richard was hardly out of Paris when news of another sort came to terrify the Burgundians. The English army before Orleans was routed, the English fortresses on the Loire were retaken, and, greatest wonder of all, Charles himself was actually marching on Rheims. A rumor went about that the French armies were led by a young peasant girl. At first the skeptical believers in Antichrist thought this part of the story apocryphal, but in three months’ time they were wild with terror, and the peasant girl was battering the Porte St. Honoré. Nothing but the unspeakable cowardice of Charles kept Thomas Basin from seeing Joan of Arc enter Paris in triumph, one day in early September 1429.

Before the authorities of the university were called upon to take part in her trial and condemnation, Basin had left Paris, having made such rapid progress in his studies as to need a special dispensation from the rule which required all masters of arts to be eighteen years of age. At Louvain, where Philip of Burgundy had just founded a university ; at Pavia, where there was a scholarship in the gift of the chapter of Rouen ; and at Bologna, where the papal court was then established, he pursued his theological studies. The mediæval student, unlike the English and American student to-day, felt it a necessity of a liberal education to go from one university to another. In 1438, Basin took his degree in canon law, and returned to Rouen, where his family was then settled.

Great changes had come upon Normandy during the last eight years of Basin s absence. Although Charles VII. had retreated across the Loire, after his failure before Paris in 1429, yet his partisans had always kept a foothold in the north, and had ravaged the country, declaring they would rather see it a desert than abandoned to the English. In 1435, Philip of Burgundy made peace with Charles, but nothing was further from the mind of the astute duke than really to drive out the English. His change of policy served only to give Paris back to the French, and to transfer the war into Normandy. Encouraged by the neighborhood of the French troops, driven to despair by the license of the English soldiers, whose discipline had become relaxed since Bedford’s death, the Norman peasants rose in hopeless revolt against their foreign rulers. All could have been avoided, says Basin, had there been in France any faith, any patriotism, or any military discipline. Five hundred lances, with the people’s help, could have recovered the whole kingdom; but the nobles feared the consequences to themselves, if the people should discover their own strength. The peasants’ condition, indeed, was indescribably wretched. The fields they once had cultivated were now a tangled thicket. In the morning they went with fear and trembling a few yards from the walls of the city where they had taken refuge. At every moment they looked up from their work to the tower where the watchman stood, as in Ezekiel’s day, ready to blow the trumpet if the sword came upon the land. So often was it blown that at its sound, not only men, but cattle and pigs and sheep, fled pell-mell to the city’s gates. The enemy might be an English brigand or a French one; the English government could not altogether exterminate the one, while nearly all Charles’s most trusted lieutenants were brigands by profession. In the slang of that day, they were called écorcheurs, skinners or flayers. When, by a rare chance, one of these unspeakable ruffians was threatened with punishment, he had only to present a petition to Charles in order to receive a free pardon. The effrontery of these petitions is almost incredible. In one of them a redoubtable skinner confesses that he has been guilty of " much plundering, putting to ransom, imprisoning of men, women, priests, nobles, burghers, merchants, laborers, and others. He has been a highway robber and a pillager of markets and fairs. Perhaps some of his men have occasionally, or even frequently, murdered men, burned houses, and violated women. In such case he has received the said men and given them aid and comfort. Since his youth he has committed many and divers crimes, wrongs, and offenses which it is impossible to mention. Otherwise he is a man of good and notable life and renown and honest conversation ; he has served the king honorably, without ever having been guilty of villainy or incurring any reproach.” His pardon was forthcoming immediately. Now and then our feelings are relieved by reading that the exasperated peasants caught a skinner at a disadvantage, and stabbed or drowned him out of hand. Unhappily such retribution was rare.

Thomas Basin was naturally tenderhearted. Such awful misery distressed him, and, besides, he could find no suitable position for himself. After passing several months in Rouen, he started again for Italy, late in the summer of 1438. Not daring to venture by the direct road, he crossed the Channel to England, and pursued his journey through the Low Countries and up the Rhine. He spent a few months at Pavia, then sought the papal court at Ferrara, and followed it to Florence.

Christendom presented at this time the extraordinary spectacle of a Pope and a so-called Œcumenical Council devoting each other to perdition, while the Pope, loudly protesting his love of Christian unity, was trying to wheedle the Eastern Church into union with the Western. At Ferrara and at Florence, Thomas Basin went in and out daily among the papal councilors and the Greek envoys. Under the government of Cosimo de’ Medici, he breathed a little of the spirit of the Renaissance, as he talked familiarly with Poggio and its first apostles. He stood high in the Pope’s favor, and through it, in 1440, he obtained a canonry in the cathedral of Rouen, “ with some other ecclesiastical preferments.” This was a sufficient inducement to return to Normandy, and he went back there at once. In May, 1441, he paid the accustomed fee of one hundred pence to the canons and chaplains of the church, and took possession of his canonry and prebend, after a dispute with another priest who claimed the same position. His first residence of six months was hardly over, when he was called to a more important duty. Immediately after the loss of Paris, the English, wishing to keep the education of Norman youth in friendly hands, set up a university at Caen, the city farthest removed from the danger of attack. Then, as now, it was not easy to create a real university out of nothing, and the royal council was glad to find at hand a young man at once so well educated and so respectable as Thomas Basin. By its orders the delegates of the four faculties of theology, civil law, medicine, and arts unanimously elected him their rector. His salary was about one hundred pounds a year. To eke out his income or to add to his importance, he was appointed vicar-general of his diocesan, the Bishop of Bayeux. At Caen he lectured for more than six years on canon law.

In 1444 came the first break in the hitherto uninterrupted misery of Normandy. A truce was agreed upon between the French and the English. In describing its effect, the dry, elaborate Latin of Basin for once grows eloquent : “ By reason of their great terror and peril, they [the common people] had long been cooped up within the walls of cities and castles, and, like criminals in prison, they had lived almost without hope in the world. Now they had marvelous joy when they saw themselves liberated from the filthy dungeon they had lived in so long, and loosed from their horrible slavery. They were glad to see the fields, though almost untilled and deserted, the woods, the green meadows, the springs, the rivers, and the brooks ; for many men, who never had gone outside city walls, knew of these things by hearsay only, and never had seen them.”Even the brigands and the peasants they had tortured feasted and danced together in safety. For a time it seemed that a lasting peace might be made. Basin went as ambassador from the English court to ask Jeanne de France, daughter of Charles VII., in marriage for the Duke of York’s eldest son, afterwards Edward IV. The embassy was unsuccessful, but

Basin’s reputation steadily grew, until, in 1447, being elected Bishop of Lisieux by the unanimous vote of the chapter, he was confirmed by Pope Nicholas V. It is probable, however, that the real choice was made by the English government.

We are apt to think that every priest in the Middle Ages was either a saint or a fiend, either a St. Francis or an Alexander VI. In fact, most clergymen then adopted their profession for much the same reasons that now lead men to become lawyers or physicians. All hoped to make a living; the more ambitious hoped to make a reputation. And just, as nowadays most lawyers and physicians practice their professions honorably and to the public advantage, so most priests then did their duty, and watched their flocks with no more than the ordinary admixture of selfishness, ignorance, and crime. Such an average man was Thomas Basin. Lisieux, lying a few miles southwest of Rouen, was a rich bishopric, and the new bishop kept a very firm hold on his temporalities, heaping up a good fortune from his surplus income. He was chaste and temperate, and ruled his people as well as he could, under a strong sense of responsibility. He was the most prosperous member of his family, and he helped his poor relatives to such offices as he could dispose of, but no doubt he required of them the fidelity that he showed himself. It is curious to note that, while he gives a full list of his academic degrees, he never tells us how or when he took holy orders.

The first duty of every suffragan of the Archbishop of Rouen was to give a “ past,”or banquet, to the archbishop and chapter. Basin said that if the chapter preferred a round sum of money to the feast, he would not object to pay the reasonable equivalent. His proposition met with favor, and the terms were almost arranged when an unexpected difficulty arose. The archbishop demanded a large share of the commutation money. As he could hardly have eaten more than a minor canon, the chapter refused to grant his demand unless he would give his portion to the library ; and when they found him inexorable, they notified Basin that perforce they must eat the past. It was now his turn to delay, and, though demanded by committee after committee, the past was still uneaten in 1451, four years after his consecration. Tired of waiting, the exasperated chapter then patched up its differences with the archbishop, and brought suit for the past. Basin was forced to give way, and the meal was accordingly eaten in great state at his palace in Rouen.

Long before this happened, Basin was called upon to settle a matter of more general interest. A soldier, desiring absolution for crimes like those mentioned above, offered to the church at Bernay, as the price of his pardon, a reliquary containing some hair. The soldier stoutly affirmed that this hair belonged to the Blessed Virgin, and that he had stolen it, reliquary and all, in the pillage of a church, which, for obvious reasons, he declined to name. Although the good people of Bernay were most anxious to believe his story, they felt the need of confirming the authenticity of the relic by their bishop’s certificate. Basin found within the reliquary a statement concerning the hair in question, written “ in antique characters ; ” he duly confirmed this statement, and quite possibly the relic is venerated to-day. It did not occur to any one that the receiver of a stolen relic might find it less efficacious than would a more innocent possessor.

More serious matters now pressed upon Basin. War had begun again, chiefly through English fault. English discipline had broken down. Civil war was impending at home, and the soldiers abroad, half fed and unpaid, roamed about the country as masked banditti. On the other hand, the vigor of Arthur de Richemont, who now governed the imbecile Charles, had created a regular army in France, paid and disciplined, vastly superior to anything that England could put into the field. In May, 1449. messengers rushed into Rouen at five o’clock in the morning, and announced that the French had taken Pont de l’Arche, a few miles up the river. There was a wild scene in the castle when the news arrived. The English governor, Somerset, raved like a madman, and rushed shouting from room to room, dragging out of bed his halfawakened followers, one after another. His wife followed him in her night-gown, screaming that all was lost; yet she had the kindness and the quick wit to save her French physician from her husband’s blind fury, by hiding him in the curtains of her chamber. When the disturbance was at its height. Basin arrived with two other bishops, members of the duke’s council. Basin says that their arrival was opportune, and that they brought to the duke’s great sorrow “ some cheer and consolation of good hope, like a useful medicine.” As the duke must have known the hollowness of their sympathy, it is rather singular that he should have been brought to a better frame of mind by “ their discourse and sweet exhortation.” Basin saw that the day of the English had gone by, and he set out at once for Lisieux. Two years before he had sworn fealty to Henry VI., and there is no reason to doubt the good faith of his service, but we may be quite sure that he did not grieve for the necessity which forced him to change his allegiance. In August, the French appeared before Lisieux. The walls were weak and the English garrison was small. The French citizens, who had shivered with horror at the tales of French cruelty, dared neither to open the gates nor to defend themselves. Even the English garrison besought the bishop to save their lives ; and so, though he might have taken refuge in his strong castle, near by, he went forth from the city gates, followed by his priests, and met Dunois, St. Pol, and the other French captains. The treaty he obtained gave safe retreat to the English, ample protection to the French, and full confirmation of the rights and privileges of the bishop. He was very proud of this exploit, and boasted of the good advice he afterwards gave to the seasoned French generals. Certainly there was some reason for his satisfaction.

The English lost ground in Normandy almost daily. In October, Charles himself marched against Rouen, though he was very careful to keep a safe distance between his precious person and the English troops. Their demoralization, however, and the skill of his lieutenants insured his success. After thirty years of captivity, the Norman capital opened its gates to receive a French king. The streets were hung with rich blue cloths ; the windows were filled with burghers’ wives and daughters. Here the life of some saint was acted out “ very authentically; ” there stood two young girls, holding in a silken leash the king’s emblem, a flying stag, so contrived mechanically that it knelt to Charles as he passed by. Attended by his generals and the nobles of his court, escorted by two hundred burghers of the city, under a golden-fringed canopy of vermilion satin, the king rode slowly through the shouting streets, from the Beauvais gate to the cathedral porch. As he heard the minstrels play and the little children cry “ Noël ! ” in his welcome, we wonder if he dared turn his head, just before he reached the cathedral, and look over his right shoulder up a certain narrow street, toward the old marketplace of Rouen. Joan of Arc had been burnt there eighteen years before, but it is to be feared that Charles was too brutish and selfish to know shame even for his treatment of her.

In the years that followed, Basin reaped the full reward of his adroit change of party, — a change common to nearly all the leading men of Normandy. His brother was ennobled ; he himself was made a privy councilor and pensioned. “ When, on account of the affection, zeal, and wisdom we have always shown concerning our native land, we had given not a little help to this work and enterprise, it came to pass that an exceeding good report and high opinion of our lowliness and littleness were spread abroad through all parts of France,” said the complacent bishop. One thing alone arose to disturb his peace. The Dauphin, Louis, then on the worst of terms with Charles VII., sent secret letters to the leading men of Normandy, begging them to join in an intrigue to secure for him the government of the duchy, now freed from the English. To Basin he offered honors and an increased pension, but the bishop was too loyal and too prudent to yield. He was in cruel straits, for he was almost sure to survive Charles, a man ten years his senior, and ruined by early and late debauchery. He cast in his lot with the king, however, and forwarded the Dauphin’s letters to court. Of course Louis found him out at once.

In 1461, Charles died at his castle of Mehun sur Yèvre, having starved himself to death, for fear he might be poisoned by Louis, who was undoubtedly plotting against his father from his retreat at the court of Burgundy. With fear and trembling, Basin set to work to ingratiate himself with the new king. At first he met with some success, and even went so far as to offer the king a good deal of advice on the proper method of governing France. He soon found out, however, that the king’s horse carried the whole royal council on his back,” as one of Louis’ servants pithily observed.

Matters Went from bad to worse, in Basin’s opinion. Before long the king, “ without any regard whatever for divine worship or religion,” forbade all persons, including priests, from hunting, even over their own land. This was not all. Nobles and prelates had had the right to transport their wine throughout France without the payment of any dues. The king, “ confounding and perverting all laws, divine and human,” took this privilege away from them, and put them on a level with the rest of his subjects. The wrath of Basin knew no bounds ; he could not speak respectfully even of the king’s devotions, and he described him as visiting “ I don’t know what oratory of the Blessed Mary, for the sake of worship or some superstition.” It must be admitted that some of the king’s remedial measures would hardly commend themselves to a modern statesman. In order to repopulate unhappy Paris, he declared it a sanctuary for all murderers and thieves who were willing to live there, and, as a special favor to faithful Tournai, he pardoned in one act of amnesty over four hundred cut-throats and other criminals, thus restoring them to their sorrowing families. It is reported that Tournai was not grateful for this act of clemency.

Several years passed before the Duke of Burgundy and the other great French nobles found out how wide was the difference between Louis XI. and his father. When, at last, the unwelcome discovery was made, they rallied about Charles of Berry, Louis’ younger brother, who had inherited nearly all of his father’s cowardice, indecision, and sloth. “ I love France so well,” said Charles the Bold, “ that for one king it has, I would it had six. " The League of the Public Weal, as they called their alliance, at first was able to get the upper hand of Louis, and the treaty of Conflans, in 1465, gave Normandy to Charles of Berry. On his arrival at Rouen, he was duly installed with great state, being wedded to the duchy by Basin himself, and receiving a ring in token of the marriage. After the ceremony was over, a chronicle was read to the people, which told how a certain second son of a certain king of France succeeded in wresting the crown from his avaricious elder brother. The moral was obvious, and must have commended itself highly to Louis. Basin devoted himself at once to the cause of Duke Charles, and became one of his most trusted counselors.

Louis XI. was a man born to prove that honesty is not always the best policy. False and treacherous as were many of his contemporaries, beside him they appear the victims of their confiding innocence. Often forced to sell his promises very cheap, he never failed to make a profit out of the transaction. It is impossible not to admire the unwearying subtlety by which the king, apparently so weak, triumphed over his enemies, so many and so strong. The treaty of Conflans was not three months old, the honeymoon of Duke Charles and his bride was hardly begun, before “ the public weal had become the private weal,” as a chronicler puts it. With fresh promises, Louis bought up two of the rebels, and loosed them upon his brother. Charles of Berry ran away at once, after dispatching Basin to ask aid from Philip of Burgundy.

The bishop could get no help for his master, but he was treated with marked distinction at the Burgundian court. By the duke’s request, he consecrated as Bishop of Liege Louis of Bourbon, the gentle prelate of Quentin Durward. Most of his time he passed, pleasantly enough, at his old university of Louvain. Before long Louis granted a universal amnesty, and after much hesitation, in a moment of homesickness Basin committed the unspeakable folly of trusting his royal master’s word. Scarcely had he crossed the frontier, when his retreat was cut off, and he was ordered to proceed at once to Orleans to meet the king. He begged that he might at least make some stay at Rouen, where he had “ a very noble house, — yea, many houses.” Louis yielded only so far as to let him enter the city after dark, to leave it on the morrow at daybreak. He never saw Normandy again. His temporalities were given to Charles d’Albret, who, as the bishop tells us. “ put them to what uses he would, having cast the fear of God behind him. Afterwards, having had some quarrel with the king, he was beheaded and quartered, last summer, at Poitiers. Yet I humbly pray that God will have mercy upon him, and pardon his sins and shortcomings.”

When Basin reached Orleans and tried to get speech with the king, Louis scowled fiercely at him, snapped out a word or two as he passed him by, and cut off all chance for further conference. “ There was near the king’s person at this time,” says Basin, " on very intimate and friendly relations with him, and held in high honor, one Master John Balue, whom he had lately made Bishop of Evreux, and for whom, two years later, he secured the bishopric of Angers and a cardinal’s hat. Although this man was not considered by discreet persons to be eminent either for culture or for good conduct, yet, through the pressing necessity of the case, we sought to wait upon him and gain his acquaintance, in order that we might find in him a mediator and intercessor with the king. Wherefore, we humbly besought him for this thing only: that the royal clemency would allow us to live quietly in our diocese, and serve the household of Christ therein according to our calling. But what efforts the same Balue made to gain this favor we never could know exactly. By the testimony of many persons we learned that he merely pretended to help us, and that in reality he was playing the part of a traitor rather than that of a faithful friend. At first, before he got the bishopric of Angers and the cardinal’s hat, this same Balue, then Bishop of Evreux, sought our bishopric, because it was esteemed to yield a larger income and to be of greater dignity than his own bishopric of Evreux. Wherefore, to accomplish his purpose, he brought it about that we should be sent, to Perpignan, though we thought we had secured him to plead our cause with the king, and to that end had given him an ample present. Such, however, is wont to be the faith and craftiness of courtiers.”

After following the king about for several months, Basin was told by another of the king’s favorites that he must go at once to Perpignan, on the borders of Spain. On account of its fiery climate, the Spaniards called Perpignan the graveyard of the French, and there is little reason to doubt that Louis hoped it would become the grave of a man no longer young. In vain Basin begged for some poor bishopric in Auvergne or Dauphiny, in vain he asked leave simply to visit Lisieux. The most he could obtain was the promise of a salary, not a penny of which was ever paid to him. In April, 1467, he was rudely hidden to leave the court at once. He passed fourteen months at Perpignan, acting as chancellor for the provinces of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and discharging his duties to the satisfaction of all the people. It was a healthy summer, as summers went in so hot a place, yet two thousand people were sick of the fever, and five hundred of them died. Basin himself was far from well. Day after day he longed for permission to go home, but no word came to him, and he believed himself forgotten; he did not know the devilish ingenuity of Louis in torturing those whom he hated.

Early in the Spring of 1468, letters reached Basin directing him to return to court; but by the time he could comprehend his good fortune, these orders were countermanded, and he was sent on an embassy to Barcelona. On his return to Perpignan, he learned that fresh orders had been dispatched by Louis, forbidding him to leave Perpignan on any terms. The hottest season of the year was approaching, and the wretched man was in despair. He saw himself, as he said, " condemned, not only to exile, but to everlasting punishment; chained in that hot and burning region as in a globe of hottest fire, which is said to be the greatest and bitterest punishment of lost souls.” He could bear the king’s caprices no lfinger. No official notification of the royal commands had been received, and Basin fled for his life, through Languedoc, across the Rhone, and over the mountains of Dauphiny to Geneva. The king’s messenger followed him, but Basin naturally declined to trust himself again in France. Yolande of Savoy, although she was Louis’ sister, would not enforce the royal orders. Geneva was a safe refuge from a French king’s wrath in the fifteenth century as well as in the eighteenth.

The court of Savoy was brilliant and much given to all sorts of pleasure. Mummeries were common, and even bishops took part in the revels. One of these entertainments was the drama or “ morality ” of St. Susanna, a performance which must have been calculated to arouse a curious combination of religious and sensual emotions. Basin was in too much trouble, as we may imagine, thoroughly to enjoy diversions like these. A powerful party had been formed at the French court, with the object of seizing his bishopric. His enemies told the king that Basin had instigated Yolande’s brothers-in-law to take up arms against France, and they persuaded Louis, if indeed he needed any persuasion, to seize Basin’s own brothers and throw them into prison. The bishop knew very well that the object of these plots was to make him resign his bishopric, but, now that he was out of Louis’ reach, he declined to yield. In order to prove his innocence, be left the territory of Savoy, and went to Basle. His unhappy brothers, after lingering for some time in prison, at length were released.

Basin’s enemies now tried another plan. They forged a certificate of his death, and begged the Pope to fill the vacancy ; at the same time sending a royal missive to the chapter of Lisieux, ordering it to proceed with the election of a new bishop. Neither the Pope nor the chapter was deceived, however, and the conspirators were only laughed at for their pains. In the mean time Basin continued to beg Louis to grant him the pardon solemnly promised before his return to France. For a moment, indeed, it seemed that he might be successful. In a freak which it would require a treatise on psychology to explain, Louis had thrust himself into the power of his greatest enemy, Charles the Bold. Basin had always been a favorite at the court of burgundy. He rushed from Basle to Ghent, and besought Charles to intercede for him. The duke did so, but Louis, who had already escaped from Charles’s clutches, was angrier than ever. When Basin learned that the king was inexorable, he went again to his beloved Louvain.

The attempt to gain possession of the revenues of Lisieux, begun by D’Albret and Balue, was now continued by several brothers named Mannoury. “ There was a youth, born in our diocese,” says Basin, “ one of the king’s body-guard, the baser and degenerate son of an unrighteous and crime-loving father. He had a brother, whom we had lately ordained priest, — a youth almost without education, in life and habits so utterly infamous and dissolute that by many he was esteemed to be weak-minded and crazy.” The plan of the Mannourys was audacious enough. Balue, Basin’s last persecutor, had sold his royal master to Charles of Burgundy at Péronne. When he was safely out of Charles’s hands, Louis had revenged himself by shutting Balue up in a small cage, placed in a dungeon of the castle of Onzain. The Mannourys represented to Louis that Basin was Balue’s accomplice. The king knew perfectly well that the cardinal had betrayed Basin, and that the story was preposterous. He was pleased to give it; credit, however, and he swore, with great appearance of honest indignation, that he never would forgive a man who had sought his life. Still, the poor bishop was so homesick that he would not submit to his banishment, and he besought his former master, Charles of Berry, Louis’ brother, to intercede in his behalf. The choice of a mediator was not happy. Charles hated Louis with all the hatred of which so imbecile a boy was capable. Louis hated Charles with the whole might of his malignant nature. When these two hopeful brothers met, as each of them remembered well how their common father had murdered John of Burgundy at the bridge of Montereau, they conversed only through a small opening in a very stout wooden grating. To such a brother Louis was not inclined to grant much ; and even when at length he found himself able to dispense with these formalities of intercourse, he yielded only so far as to promise Basin a bishopric in Languedoc, if he would surrender Lisieux. Basin would not accept the compromise. His life at Louvain was as pleasant as the life of an exile can be ; wherever educated men were found, he was sure of a cordial welcome.

Even now he had not lost all hope of softening the heart of Louis. To the Sire de Châtillon, a favorite at court, he gave two thousand crowns, but he could get nothing but permission to come to Orleans, and there abide the king’s pleasure. As he could have gone to Orleans quite as well without permission, and as he retained vivid recollections of his visit there six years before, he declined to enter France. One after another his persecutors had been removed. D’Albret had been quartered, Balue was caged in a miserable dungeon, and the Mannourys were dead. One of the brothers had fallen in battle, another in a brawl; still another was reported to have drowned himself. “ In behalf of all our persecutors, we humbly pray for the divine mercy, that those who still live may be led to that true repentance which alone can obtain remission of sins, and that to those who have passed from this world God may be gracious and merciful. Although, for the sake of a complete history, we have been compelled to tell of the wrongs they have done us, we grieve for their wickedness and the peril of their souls rather than for the pain and the insults they have inflicted; and though they have been our enemies without a cause, we shall never cease to pray for them, according to the gospel teaching of our Redeemer.”A curious mixture of conscious Christianity and unconscious cant.

Though all the other enemies of Basin were dead, the king was still bent upon revenge and hungry for the revenues of Lisieux. Even his power was insufficient entirely to confiscate eccelesiastical property. Again he tried to induce the Pope to nominate a new bishop, but the Pope was friendly to Basin. Then he seized those brothers of Basin whom he had before imprisoned, and, along with them, other relatives and friends of the refugee. They were threatened with torture, heavily fined, and released only in order to visit the bishop and beg him to resign his bishopric into the king’s hands.

Basin was sorely distressed. The verse of Scripture which declares that the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep seemed to forbid his resignation: but he reflected, with some acuteness, that in this case it was the shepherd only who was threatened, while the sheep were quite safe. " No one in his senses can deny that a bishop may corporeally desert his flock, when he is personally sought by the oppressors, and when the faith and the safety of his flock are not imperiled. For this the blessed Augustine says expressly, and the Angelic Doctor after him. It is expressly asserted in chapter seven of his Secunda Secundæ, where this matter is treated in the text and in the notes, and this opinion is supported by authorities and examples, among which is the uncontrovertible command of our Saviour to his apostles : ‘ If they persecute you in one city, flee into another.’ ” Fortified by reasoning like this, Basin yielded at last to the entreaties of his brothers. In March, 1474, he went to Rome. Here, as elsewhere, he was received with the highest honor. The Pope offered him a patriarchate; he was willing even to intercede for the bishop with the king, lint by this time poor Basin had had enough of intercession; he definitely laid down his bishopric of Lisieux, accepting in its stead the archbishopric of Cæsarea, in partibus infidelium. For this surrender he received some money and a pension.

It is pleasant to know that the last years of his life were calm and peaceful. For some time he lived at Treves and at his beloved Louvain. When, in 1477, his old enemy, Louis, invaded the Burgundian territory, after the death of Charles the Bold, he took refuge in Utrecht, being a friend of its bishop, David of Burgundy, illegitimate son of Philip the Good. At Utrecht he lived quietly in a “ most convenient and most pleasant house, a large part of which we ourselves caused to be built for the gratification of our old age.” In 1483, he heard of the death of Louis XI., after the prayers of nuns and hermits, the holy oil flask of Rheims, and “ many terrible and marvelous medicines ” had been tried in vain for the king’s relief. Louis’ son, Charles VIII., probably in good faith, asked Basin to return to France, but the old man refused.

Basin had never been a slothful man. Now that his pastoral labors were ended, he devoted himself with great energy to literature. He prepared an elaborate history of the reigns of Charles VII. and Louis XI., availing himself freely of this opportunity to express his opinion of the latter monarch : “ For we fear that if we shall relate all his acts of meanness, craft, perfidy, cowardice, wrong-doing, and cruelty, they will not be believed by some who shall read these writings. But since ancient authors have written not only the lives of men eminent in virtue and wisdom and useful to the nation, but also the lives of those infamous for their iniquity and for the foulness of their vices (such as Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, and many others), we have therefore dared to describe the king’s acts and to write the history of his times.” Beside this, his great work, Basin wrote a voluminous apology for his course in abandoning his flock at Lisieux, wherein, among other things, he shows how much better was the condition of the Druids among the Gauls than was that of Christian priests under Louis XI. He refuted the opinion of a Carthusian monk of Ruremonde, who maintained that Antichrist had been born in 1472, and that his advent would be manifested in 1504 by the appearance of three comets. In 1490, he published an elaborate treatise against the “ rash and damnable opinions ” of Paul of Middleburg, the foremost of these being a belief that Jonah passed three whole days and three whole nights in the whale’s belly, and not two nights and three days, according to the orthodox belief.

With some of his family gathered about him, Basin lived quietly to a good old age. He died on December 3, 1491, and was buried at Utrecht, in the choir of the church of St. John. In spite of his long exile, he never forgot his native Normandy. By his will he left a sum of money to the clergy of his own cathedral of Lisieux, and in a window of his old parish church at Caudebec stood for many years his likeness in stained glass.

When he was seventy-six years old, a curious fancy took him. The Scriptures tell us that the Children of Israel rested in forty-two places on their journey to the Promised Land. “ All things happened to them as a type,” and so the old man wrote a “ Short discourse of the wanderings and of the forty-two restingplaces which in the desert of this life fell to the lot of Thomas, whilom Bishop of Lisieux, now Archbishop of the Palestinian Cæsarea, as through faith he traveled to the real and true Land of Promise during seventy-six years.” In order to come out exactly even, he left out some places and set down others more than once, " as I remember that I read was done in the catalogue of the resting-places of the Children of Israel.” He closed the Short Discourse with these words : “ Almighty and merciful God, who hast taught thine unworthy servant that in the desert of this world I have no abiding city, but must seek in heaven a city whence I can neither need nor wish to depart, teaching me this by giving me many various mansions in the same desert, and by keeping me from unnumbered evils as I journeyed along, grant that in the journey of this mortal life, through faith in thy love and through observance of thy commandments, I may be kept even to the end in thy holy household, and at length, when the course of this journey is run, that I may enter the true Land of Promise, the heavenly kingdom, thy holy city Jerusalem, and that there, with all thy saints and elect, I may be filled forever with the vision and enjoyment of thy blessed Godhead : through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise, honor, and glory forever. Amen.”

Francis C. Lowell.