Page "Henry Denifle" Paragraph 8

A work of another kind suggested itself to him while gathering in the Vatican archives materials for his annotations on the Chartularium.

Denifle noticed in the three hundred volumes of Registers of Petitions addressed to Clement VI and Urban V, between 1342 and 1393, that many came from France during the Hundred Years ' War between that country and England.

So for the sake of a change of occupation, or un travail accessoire as he called it, Denifle went again through these volumes ( each about 600 pages folio ).

In 1897 he published: La désolation des églises, monasteres, hôpitaux, en France vers le milieu du XVe siècle.

It contains a harrowing description of the state of France, based on 1063 contemporary documents, most of which were discovered in the Vatican.

Then, in order to give an explanation a similar account of the cause of all these calamities, he published in 1889: La guerre de cent ans et la désolation des églises, monastères, et hôpitaux, tom.

I, jusqu ' à la mort de Charles V ( 1385 ).

Though the work was not continued the enormous amount of recondite information brought together and illustrated for the first time makes the volume indispensable to historians ( see e. g., his account of the Battle of Crécy and the Black Prince ).