I believed the Church existed to meet three needs.
The first was aid for the poor. In the countryside, according to ancient custom, even those who died in utter poverty had neighbors and friends to bury them. Since ancient Roman times, bodies abandoned in the wilderness and those pulled from the Tiber River had been buried in church graveyards. People could not bear to leave the dead forsaken.
In the Middle Ages, people administered last rites and considered burying the dead comparable to other good deeds. In Normandy, which we had visited before, there were still people carrying out this mission.
The second was funeral services. In many places, funerals had been entrusted to the Church. Whether they were priests of small chapels or priests without a title, they needed a place to recite prayers. For this purpose, dedicated altars were built along both sides of the church nave.
In fifteenth-century funeral processions, people made an effigy of the deceased king, with a wax face, wide-open eyes, life-sized and dressed in royal attire. Yet there could not be two figures in royal dress traveling side by side in that procession.
Although ministers were part of the funeral procession, they could not wear mourning clothes that might diminish the new king. They had to wear red robes and follow the new king, thus distinguishing themselves from those dressed in black.
The king had two bodies: one mortal flesh, the other representing eternal power. But did you still remember what we saw last time at Saint-Denis?
I strengthened this religion not because my power was inseparable from the Church, as a king's power was, but because my power had been granted by the people. Whatever increased the welfare of the nation was bound to my own well-being.
The third was that people