GUYE DE ROVE, ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS, APPEALS FROM THE CONSTITUTIONS DRAWN UP BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, WHICH ANGERS THAT BODY, AND THEY IMPRISON HIS COMMISSARY.

At this period, Guy de Roye1, archbishop of Rheims, who had been summoned specially by the king to attend the meeting of the prelates at Paris, assembled to consider on the means of uniting the whole church, neither came himself nor sent any one in his behalf. He refused to agree to the decisions of this council, and sent a chaplain as his commissary, with letters signed with his name and seal, to confirm his opposition to all the statutes they had drawn up, as well for himself and his diocese as for all his subjects within the province.

The king and the clergy were much displeased at this conduct; and the university of Paris requested that the commissary should be confined in close imprisonment, where he remained for a long time.

The cardinal of Bordeaux came at this time to Paris, partly for the union of the church; and then also returned thither master Peter Paoul, and the patriarch of Alexandria, named master Symon Cramant, who had been sent by the king of France and the university of Paris, as ambassadors to the two rival popes.

The assembled prelates were very anxious for their arrival, that they might be better acquainted with the business they had to manage, and on what grounds they should proceed. Master Peter Paoul frequently rode through the streets of Paris in his doctor’s dress, accompanied by the cardinal riding on one side of his horse as women do. In the presence of this cardinal and doctor, the abbot of Caudebec, of the order of Cistercians, and doctor in theology, proposed, on the part of the university, an union of the church. The abbot of St Denis, with other doctors in theology, declared for an union of the universal church; and, shortly after, the cardinal departed from Paris for Boulogne, and thence went to Calais.

The abbot of St Denis and another doctor of theology, who had been, by the king’s orders, confined in the prison of the Louvre, were released, at the request of the cardinal de Bar, and set at liberty, contrary to the will of the university of Paris. In like manner did the bishop of Cambray, master Peter d’Ailly, an excellent doctor of theology, gain his liberty. He had been confined at the instance of the university, because he was not favourable to their sentiments, and was delivered at the entreaties of count Waleran de St Pol, and the great council of the king. All Christendom was now divided in religious opinions, as to the head of the church, by the contentions of the two rival popes, who could not be brought to agree on the means to put an end to this disgraceful schism.