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Updated: June 16, 2025
His great soul quitted his body, which was exhausted by almost superhuman exertions, on the 11th of August, 1456. Shortly before he died, according to Florentius, a comet appeared, sent, as it would seem, to announce his coming end. The whole Christian world mourned his loss. The Pope ordered the cardinals to perform a funeral ceremony at Rome in his honour.
Aged fifty-six in 1456, Mauger had seen Joan of Arc when she was brought into the yet extant tower of the castle, and threatened by Cauchon with the torture. 'We were, deposed Mauger, 'my companion and myself, ordered to go there to torture her. She was questioned, and she answered with much prudence, and so well, that every one was amazed.
He died at Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur's children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir."
From cities reeking with putrefying filth it was thought that the plague might be stayed by the prayers of the priests, by them rain and dry weather might be secured, and deliverance obtained from the baleful influences of eclipses and comets. But when Halley's comet came, in 1456, so tremendous was its apparition that it was necessary for the pope himself to interfere.
This needs not to be dilated upon here; suffice it that in February of 1456 he gave the scarlet hat of Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo, in Carcere Tulliano, to his nephew Don Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja. Like his uncle he had studied jurisprudence at the University of Bologna and mentally and physically he was extraordinarily endowed.
He did little more than remain an indolent spectator of the conflict in which the Swiss overthrew Charles the Bold. The great danger to Europe was now from the Turks. Christendom was defended by the Poles and the Hungarians. Frederick left the Hungarians, under the gallant John Hunyady, without his help, to drive them, in 1456, from Belgrade.
Halley's comet did not escape. It was compared to a straight sword at one visit, to a curved scimitar in 1456, and even at its last return in 1835 there were some who recognised in the comet a resemblance to a misty head. Other comets have been compared to swords of fire, bloody crosses, flaming daggers, spears, serpents, fiery dragons, fish, and so forth.
The intervals between these appearances is seventy-five or seventy-six years. He then examined and found old records of similar appearance in 1456, 1380, and 1305. It is true, he noticed, that the intervals varied by a year and a-half, and the inclination of the orbit to the ecliptic diminished with successive apparitions.
At Christmas-time in 1456, readers of Villon will remember that he was engaged on the "Small Testament." About the same period, circa festum nativitatis Domini, he took part in a memorable supper at the Mule Tavern, in front of the Church of St. Mathurin. Tabary, who seems to have been very much Villon's creature, had ordered the supper in the course of the afternoon.
The ruins of Pembroke Castle upon a high rock disclose an enormous circular keep, seventy-five feet high and one hundred and sixty-three feet in circumference. It was begun in the eleventh century, and was the birthplace of Henry VII. in 1456. Here Cromwell was repulsed in 1648, but the fortress was secured for the Parliament after six weeks' siege.
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