Thomas Basin

Basin was born at Caudebec in Normandy, but in the devastation caused by the Hundred Years' War, his childhood was itinerant.

In 1433 Basin obtained a bursary at the College of St Augustine in Pavia, which had been founded by Cardinal Branda da Castiglione, a former bishop of Lisieux (1420–1424), who reserved a number of the twenty-four places for students from Normandy.

By September 1437 he was back in Italy, a Master of Arts and of Canon and Civil Laws, and is found at Bologna, where the Papal Curia and Pope Eugene IV were in residence.

[4] Basin was compelled to return home to Normandy when he discovered that his parents had been forced to flee to Rouen to avoid the English, but he was back on the road to Italy in April 1438.

[5] Basin was present at the Council which began at Ferrara, but which was transferred to Florence by decree of Pope Eugene IV on 10 January 1439.

The embassy was made very difficult when Albert of Austria, King of Hungary, died on 14 October 1439, and a struggle for election to the throne began between supporters of Władysław III of Poland and Queen Elisabeth of Luxembourg.

Basin was soon made Canon and prebendary of the Cathedral Chapter of Rouen by Pope Eugene as his reward for service on the legation.

[1] On 4 July 1463 Bishop Basin pronounced the excommunication of three persons convicted of witchcraft, who were immediately turned over to "the secular arm".

Instead, he was sent to Perpignan as Chancellor of Roussillon and Cerdagne, and then as Ambassador to the King of Aragon; this occupied fourteen months of his virtual exile.

He visited Savoy, where Yolande of France was regent, and then cities belonging to the Duke of Burgundy, Geneva, Basle, Trier and Louvain.

Occupied with his writings Basin then passed some years at Trier and afterwards transferred his residence to Utrecht[1] (now in the Netherlands), where his old friend, David the bastard of Burgundy, was Bishop and lord of the city.

[24] When Louis XI died in 1483, his successor Charles VIII invited Bishop Basin to return to France, but without his diocese he saw no reason to accept.

He also wrote a suggestion for reform in the administration of justice entitled Libellus de optimo ordine forenses lites audiendi et deferendi, which was the product of his careful study of the Roman Rota while he worked at the Curia;[26] an Apologia, written to answer the charges brought against him by Louis XI; a Breviloquium, or allegorical account of his own misfortunes; a Peregrinatio; a defence of Joan of Arc entitled Opinio et consilium super processu et condemnatione Johanne, dicte Puelle and other miscellaneous writings.