3, 3 vols. in 8vo), vol. i, p. 384. Th. Boutiot, _Histoire
de la ville de Troyes_, vol. ii, pp. 477, 478. De Pange, _Le pays de
Jeanne d'Arc, le fief et l'arriere-fief_, Paris, 1902, in 8vo, p. 33.]

Shortly afterwards he incurred the censure of the whole Church of
France and was judged by the bishops worse than the cruellest tyrants
of Scripture--Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Artaxerxes[1387]--who, when
they chastised Israel had spared the Levites. More wicked than they
and more sacrilegious, my Lord of Bedford threatened the privileges of
the Gallican Church, when, on behalf of the Holy See, he robbed the
bishops of their patronage, levied a double tithe on the French
clergy, and commanded churchmen to surrender to him the contributions
they had been receiving for forty years. That he was acting with the
Pope's consent made his conduct none the less execrable in the eyes of
the French bishops. The episcopal lords resolved to appeal from a Pope
ill informed to one with wider knowledge; for they held the authority
of the Bishop of Rome to be insignificant in comparison with the
authority of the Council. They groaned: the abomination of desolation
was laying waste Christian Gaul. In order to pacify the Church of
France thus roused against him, my lord of Bedford convoked at Paris
the bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Sens, which included the
dioceses of Paris, Troyes, Auxerre, Nevers, Meaux, Chartres, and
Orleans.[1388]

[Footnote 1387: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. ccxxii,
according to Labbe and Cossart, _Sacro-Sancta-Consilia_, vol. xii,
col. 390.]

[Footnote 1388: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. ccxx and proofs
and illustrations, ccix, pp. 238-239. Robillard de Beaurepaire, _Les
etats de Normandie sous la domination anglaise_, Evreux, 1859, in
8vo.]

Messire Jean Laiguise attended this Convocation. The Synod was held at
Paris, in the Priory of Saint-Eloi, under the presidency of the
Archbishop, from the 1st of March till the 23rd of April, 1429.[1389]
The assembled bishops represented to my Lord the Regent the sorry
plight of the ecclesiastical lords: the peasants, pillaged by
soldiers, no longer paid their dues; the lands of the Church were
lying waste; divine service had ceased to be held because there was no
money with which to support public worship. Unanimously they refused
to pay the Pope and the Regent the double tithe; and they threatened
to appeal from the Pope to the Council. As for