[Footnote 2073: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 438, 457; vol. iii, p. 121.]

This singular grace however applied to the Armagnacs only; it was not extended to the Burgundians, and Seigneur Aimond did not experience it, for one day he tried to thrust his hand into her bosom. She resisted and repulsed him with all her strength. Lord Aimond concluded as more than one would have done in his place that this was a damsel of rare virtue. He took warning.[2074]

[Footnote 2074: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 120, 121.]

Confined in the castle keep, Jeanne's mind was for ever running on her return to her friends at Compiegne; her one idea was to escape. Somehow there reached her evil tidings from France. She got the idea that all the inhabitants of Compiegne over seven years of age were to be massacred, "to perish by fire and sword," she said; and indeed such a fate was bound to overtake them if the town were taken.

Confiding her distress and her unconquerable desire to Saint Catherine, she asked: "How can God abandon to destruction those good folk of Compiegne who have been so loyal to their Lord?"[2075]

[Footnote 2075: Ibid., vol. i, p. 150.]

And in her dream, surrounded by saints, like the donors in church pictures, kneeling and in rapture, she wrestled with her heavenly counsellors for the poor folk of Compiegne.

What she had heard of their fate caused her infinite distress; she herself would rather die than continue to live after such a destruction of worthy people. For this reason she was strongly tempted to leap from the top of the keep. And because she knew all that could be said against it, she heard her Voices putting her in mind of those arguments.

Nearly every day Saint Catherine said to her: "Do not leap, God will help both you and those of Compiegne."

And Jeanne replied to her: "Since God will help those of Compiegne, I want to be there."

And once again Saint Catherine told her the marvellous story of the shepherdess and the King: "To all things must you be resigned. And you will not be delivered until you have seen the King of the English."

To which Jeanne made answer: "But in good sooth I do not desire to see him. I would rather die than fall into the hands of the English."[2076]

[Footnote 2076: Trial, vol. i, pp. 150, 151.]

One day she heard a rumour that the English had come to fetch her. The arrival of the Lord Bishop of Beauvais who came to offer the blood money at Beaurevoir may have given rise to the report.[2077] Straightway Jeanne became frantic and beside herself. She ceased to listen to her Voices, who forbade her the fatal leap. The keep was at least seventy feet high; she commended her soul to God and leapt.

[Footnote 2077: Ibid., p. 13; vol. v, p. 194.]

Having fallen to the ground, she heard cries: "She is dead."

The guards hurried to the spot. Finding her still alive, in their amazement they could only ask: "Did you leap?"

She felt sorely shaken; but Saint Catherine spoke to her and said: "Be of good courage. You will recover." At the same time the Saint gave her good tidings of her friends. "You will recover and the people of Compiegne will receive succour." And she added that this succour would come before Saint Martin's Day in the winter.[2078]

[Footnote 2078: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 110, 151, 152.]

Henceforth Jeanne believed that it was her saints who had helped her and guarded her from death. She knew well that she had been wrong in attempting such a leap, despite her Voices.

Saint Catherine said to her: "You must confess and ask God to forgive you for having leapt."

Jeanne did confess and ask pardon of Our Lord. And after her confession Saint Catherine made known unto her that God had forgiven her. For three or four days she remained without eating or drinking; then she took some food and was whole.[2079]

[Footnote 2079: Trial, vol. i, p. 166. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 268. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 53, 58.]

Another story was told of the leap from Beaurevoir; it was related that she had tried to escape through a window letting herself down by a sheet or something that broke; but we must believe the Maid: she says she leapt; if she had been attached to a cord, she would not have committed sin and would not have confessed. This leap was known and the rumour spread abroad that she had escaped and joined her own party.[2080]

[Footnote 2080: Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 507, recto. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 301-303. Chronique de Tournai, ed. Smedt, in Recueil des Chroniques de Flandre, vol. iii, pp. 416, 417.]

Meanwhile the Lenten sermons at Orleans had been delivered by that good preacher, Friar Richard, who was ill content with Jeanne, and whom Jeanne disliked and had quitted. The townsfolk as a token of regard presented him with the image of Jesus sculptured in copper by a certain Philippe, a metal-worker of the city. And the bookseller, Jean Moreau, bound him a book of hours at the town's expense.[2081]

[Footnote 2081: Lottin, Recherches sur la ville d'Orleans, vol. i, p. 252. Trial, vol. i, p. 99, note 1. Journal du siege, pp. 235-238. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. cclxiii, note 2.]

He brought back Queen Marie to Jargeau and succeeded in obtaining her favour. Jeanne was spared the bitterness of learning that while she was languishing in prison her friends at Orleans, her fair Dauphin and his Queen Marie, were making good cheer for the monk who had turned from her to prefer a dame Catherine whom she considered worthless.[2082] Only lately the idea of employing Dame Catherine had filled Jeanne with alarm; she wrote to her King about it, and as soon as she saw him besought him not to employ her. However the King set no store by what she had said; he agreed to Friar Richard's favourite being allowed to set forth on her mission to obtain money from the good towns and to negotiate peace with the Duke of Burgundy. But perhaps this saintly dame was not possessed of all the wisdom necessary for the performance of man's work and King's service. For immediately she became a cause of embarrassment to her friends.

[Footnote 2082: Trial, vol. i, pp. 296, 297.]

Being in the town of Tours, she fell to saying: "In this town there be carpenters who work, but not at houses, and if ye have not a care, this town is in the way to a bad end and there be those in the town that know it."[2083]

[Footnote 2083: Register of the Accounts of the town of Tours for the year 1430, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 473, note 1.]

This was a denunciation in the form of a parable. Dame Catherine was thereby accusing the churchmen and burgesses of Tours of working against Charles of Valois, their lord. The woman must have been held to have influence with the King, his kinsmen and his Council; for the inhabitants of Tours took fright and sent an Augustinian monk, Brother Jean Bourget, to King Charles, to the Queen of Sicily, to the Bishop of Seez, and to the Lord of Treves, to inquire whether the words of this holy woman had been believed by them. The Queen of Sicily and the Councillors of King Charles gave the monk letters wherein they announced to the townsfolk of Tours that they had never heard of such things, and King Charles declared that he had every confidence in the churchmen, the burgesses and the other citizens of his town of Tours.[2084]

[Footnote 2084: Trial, vol. iv, p. 473.]

Dame Catherine had in like manner slandered the inhabitants of Angers.[2085]

[Footnote 2085: Ibid., p. 473.]

Whether, following the example of the Blessed Colette of Corbie, this devout person wished to pass from one party to the other, or whether she had chanced to be taken captive by Burgundian men-at-arms, she was brought before the Official at Paris. In their interrogation of her the ecclesiastics appear to have been concerned less about her than about the Maid Jeanne, whose prosecution was then being instituted.

On the subject of the Maid, Catherine said: "Jeanne has two counsellors, whom she calls Counsellors of the Spring."[2086]

[Footnote 2086: Ibid., vol. i, p. 295.]

Such was the confused recollection of the conversations she had had at Jargeau and at Montfaucon. The term Council was the one Jeanne usually employed when speaking of her Voices; but Dame Catherine was confusing Jeanne's heavenly visitants with what the Maid had told her of the Gooseberry Spring at Domremy.

If Jeanne felt unkindly towards Catherine, Catherine did not feel kindly towards Jeanne. She did not assert Jeanne's mission to be nought; but she let it be clearly understood that the hapless damsel, then a prisoner in the hands of the Burgundians, was addicted to invoking evil spirits.

"If Jeanne be not well guarded," Catherine told the Official, "she will escape from prison with the aid of the devil."[2087]

[Footnote 2087: Trial, vol. i, p. 106, note. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 271. Vallet de Viriville, Proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. lxi-lxv.]

Whether Jeanne was or was not aided by the devil was a matter to be decided between herself and the doctors of the church. But it is certain that her one thought was to burst her bonds, and that she was ceaselessly imagining means of escape. Catherine de la Rochelle knew her well and wished her ill.

Catherine was released. Her ecclesiastical judges would not have treated her so leniently had she spoken well of the Maid. The La Rochelle Dame returned to King Charles.[2088]

[Footnote 2088: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 271.]

The two religious women who had followed Jeanne on her departure from Sully and had been taken at Corbeil, Pierronne of Lower Brittany and her companion, had been confined in ecclesiastical prisons at Paris since the spring. They openly said that God had sent them to succour the Maid Jeanne. Friar Richard had been their spiritual father and they had been in the Maid's company. Wherefore they were strongly suspected of having offended against God and his Holy Religion. The Grand Inquisitor of France, Brother Jean Graverent, Prior of the Jacobins at Paris, prosecuted them according to the forms usual in that country. He proceeded in concurrence with the Ordinary, represented by the official.

Pierronne maintained and believed it to be true that Jeanne was good, and that what she did was well done and according to God's will. She admitted that on the Christmas night of that year, at Jargeau, Friar Richard had twice given her the body of Jesus Christ and had given it three times to Jeanne.[2089] Besides, the fact had been well proved by information gathered from eye-witnesses. The judges, who were authorities on this subject, held that the monk should not thus have lavished the bread of angels on such women. However, since frequent communion was not formally forbidden by canon law, Pierronne could not be censured for having received it. The informers, who were then giving evidence against Jeanne, did not remember the three communions at Jargeau.[2090]

[Footnote 2089: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 271, 272.]

[Footnote 2090: Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, article, Arc.]

Heavier charges weighed upon the two Breton women. They were labouring under the accusation of witchcraft and sorcery.

Pierronne stated and took her oath that God often appeared to her in human form and spoke to her as friend to friend, and that the last time she had seen him he was clothed in a purple cloak and a long white robe.[2091]

[Footnote 2091: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 259, 260.]

The illustrious masters who were trying her, represented to her that to speak thus of such apparitions was to blaspheme. And these women were convicted of being possessed by evil spirits, who caused them to err in word and in deed.

On Sunday, the 3rd of September, 1430, they were taken to the Parvis Notre Dame to hear a sermon. Platforms had been erected as usual, and Sunday had been chosen as the day in order that folk might benefit from this edifying spectacle. A famous doctor addressed a charitable exhortation to both women. One of them, the youngest, as she listened to him and looked at the stake that had been erected, was filled with repentance. She confessed that she had been seduced by an angel of the devil and duly renounced her error.

Pierronne, on the contrary, refused to retract. She obstinately persisted in the belief that she saw God often, clothed as she had said. The Church could do nothing for her. Given over to the secular arm, she was straightway conducted to the stake which had been prepared for her, and burned alive by the executioner.[2092]

[Footnote 2092: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 259-260, 271-272. Jean Nider, Formicarium, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 504. A. de la Borderie, Pierronne et Perrinaic, pp. 7 et seq.]

Thus did the Grand Inquisitor of France and the Bishop of Paris cruelly cause to perish by an ignominious death one of those women who had followed Friar Richard, one of the saints of the Dauphin Charles. But the most famous of these women and the most abounding in works was in their hands. The death of La Pierronne was an earnest of the fate reserved for the Maid.



CHAPTER X

BEAUREVOIR—ARRAS—ROUEN—THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE

In the month of September, 1430, two inhabitants of Tournai, the chief alderman, Bietremieu Carlier, and the chief Councillor, Henri Romain, were returning from the banks of the Loire, whither their town had despatched them on a mission to the King of France. They stopped at Beaurevoir. Albeit this place lay upon their direct route and afforded them a halt between two stages of their journey, one cannot help supposing some connection to have existed between their mission to Charles of Valois and their arrival in the domain of the Sire de Luxembourg. The existence of such a connection seems all the more probable when we remember the attachment of their fellow-citizens to the Fleurs-de-Lis, and when we know the relations already existing between the Maid and these emissaries.[2093]

[Footnote 2093: H. Vandenbroeck, Extraits des anciens registres des consaux de la ville de Tournai, vol. ii (1422-1430), and Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 185, 186.]

It has been said that the district of the provost of Tournai was loyal to the King of France, who had granted it freedom and privileges. Message after message it sent him; it organised public processions in his honour, and it was ready to grant him anything, so long as he demanded neither men nor money. The alderman, Carlier, and the Councillor, Romain, had both previously gone to Reims as representatives of their town to witness the anointing and the coronation of King Charles. There they had doubtless seen the Maid in her glory and had held her to be a very great saint. In those days, their town, attentively watching the progress of the royal army, was in regular correspondence with the warlike beguine, and with her confessor, Friar Richard, or more probably Friar Pasquerel. To-day they wended to the castle, wherein she was imprisoned in the hands of her cruel enemies. We know not what it was they came to say to the Sire de Luxembourg, nor even whether he received them. He cannot have refused to hear them if he thought they came to make secret offers on the part of King Charles for the ransom of the Maid, who had fought in his battles. We know not, either, whether they were able to see the prisoner. The idea that they did enter her presence is quite tenable; for in those days it was generally easy to approach captives, and passers by when they visited them were given every facility for the performance of one of the seven works of mercy.

One thing, however, is certain; that when they left Beaurevoir, they carried with them a letter which Jeanne had given them, charging them to deliver it to the magistrates of their town. In this letter she asked the folk of Tournai, for the sake of her Lord the King and in view of the good services she had rendered him, to send unto her twenty or thirty crowns, that she might employ them for her necessities.[2094]

[Footnote 2094: H. Vandenbroeck, Extraits analytiques des anciens registres des consaux de la ville de Tournai, vol. ii, pp. 338, 371-373. Canon H. Debout, Jeanne d'Arc et les villes d'Arras et de Tournai, Paris, n.d., p. 24.]

It was the custom in those days thus to permit prisoners to beg their bread.

It is said that the Demoiselle de Luxembourg, who had just made her will, and had but a few days longer to live,[2095] entreated her noble nephew not to give the Maid up to the English.[2096] But what power had this good dame against the Norman gold of the King of England and against the anathemas of Holy Church? For if my Lord Jean had refused to give up this damsel suspected of enchantments, of idolatries, of invoking devils and committing other crimes against religion, he would have been excommunicated. The venerable University of Paris had not neglected to make him aware that a refusal would expose him to heavy legal penalties.[2097]

[Footnote 2095: Le P. Anselme, Histoire genealogique de la maison de France, vol. iii, pp. 723, 724. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 175, 176. Morosini, vol. iv, supplement xix.]

[Footnote 2096: Trial, vol. i, pp. 95, 231.]

[Footnote 2097: Ibid., pp. 13, 14.]

The Sire de Luxembourg, meanwhile, was ill at ease; he feared that in his castle of Beaurevoir, a prisoner worth ten thousand golden livres was not sufficiently secure in case of a descent on the part of the French or of the English or of the Burgundians, or of any of those folk, who, caring nought for Burgundy or England or France, might wish to carry her off, cast her into a pit, and hold her to ransom, according to the custom of brigands in those days.[2098]

[Footnote 2098: Les miracles de madame Sainte Katerine, Bourasse, passim.]

Towards the end of September, he asked his lord, the Duke of Burgundy, who ruled over fine towns and strong cities, if he would undertake the safe custody of the Maid. My Lord Philip consented and, by his command, Jeanne was taken to Arras. This town was encircled by high walls; it had two castles, one of which, La Cour-le-Comte, was in the centre of the town. It was probably in the cells of Cour-le-Comte that Jeanne was confined, under the watch and ward of my Lord David de Brimeu, Lord of Ligny, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Governor of Arras.

At that time it was rare for prisoners to be kept in isolation.[2099] At Arras, Jeanne received visitors; and among others, a Scotsman, who showed her her portrait, in which she was represented kneeling on one knee and presenting a letter to her King.[2100] This letter might be supposed to have been from the Sire de Baudricourt, or from any other clerk or captain by whom the painter may have thought Jeanne to have been sent to the Dauphin; it might have been a letter announcing to the King the deliverance of Orleans or the victory of Patay.

[Footnote 2099: "Was waited on in prison like a lady," says Le Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 271, concerning the Rouen prison.]

[Footnote 2100: Trial, vol. i, p. 100.]

This was the only portrait of herself Jeanne ever saw and, for her own part, she never had any painted; but during the brief duration of her power, the inhabitants of the French towns placed images of her, carved and painted, in the chapels of the saints, and wore leaden medals on which she was represented; thus in her case following a custom established in honour of the saints canonised by the Church.[2101]

[Footnote 2101: Ibid., pp. 101, 206, 291; vol. iii, p. 87; vol. v, pp. 104, 305. Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. ii, p. 46. P. Lanery d'Arc, Le culte de Jeanne d'Arc au XV'e siecle, Orleans, 1887, in 8vo. Noel Valois, Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 8, 13, 18.]

Many Burgundian lords, and among them a knight, one Jean de Pressy, Controller of the Finances of Burgundy, offered her woman's dress, as the Luxembourg dame had done, for her own good and in order to avoid scandal; but for nothing in the world would Jeanne have cast off the garb which she had assumed according to divine command.

She also received in her prison at Arras a clerk of Tournai, one Jean Naviel, charged by the magistrates of his town to deliver to her the sum of twenty-two golden crowns. This ecclesiastic enjoyed the confidence of his fellow citizens, who employed him in the town's most urgent affairs. In the May of this year, 1430, he had been sent to Messire Regnault de Chartres, Chancellor of King Charles. He had been taken by the Burgundians at the same time as Jeanne and held to ransom; but out of that predicament he soon escaped and at no great cost.

He acquitted himself well of his mission[2102] to the Maid, and, it would seem, received nothing for his trouble, doubtless because he wanted the reward of this work of mercy to be placed to his account in heaven.[2103]

[Footnote 2102: Trial, vol. i, pp. 95, 96, 231. Canon Henri Debout, Jeanne d'Arc prisonniere a Arras, Arras, 1894, in 16mo; Jeanne d'Arc et les villes d'Arras et de Tournai, Paris, 1904, in 8vo; Jeanne d'Arc, vol. ii, pp. 394 et seq.]

[Footnote 2103: On the 7th of November, 1430, a messenger from the town of Arras received forty shillings for having taken two sealed letters to the Duke of Burgundy, one from Jean de Luxembourg, the other from David de Brimeu, Governor of the Bailiwick of Arras; we know nothing of the tenor of these letters written concerning "the case of the Maid." P. Champion, Notes sur Jeanne d'Arc, II; Jeanne d'Arc a Arras, in Le Moyen Age, July-August, 1907, pp. 200, 201.]

Neither the capture of the Maid nor the retreat of the men-at-arms she had brought, put an end to the siege of Compiegne. Guillaume de Flavy and his two brothers, Charles and Louis, and Captain Baretta with his Italians, and the five hundred of the garrison[2104] displayed skill, vigour, and untiring energy. The Burgundians conducted the siege in the same manner as the English had conducted that of Orleans; mines, trenches, bulwarks, cannonades and bastions, those gigantic and absurd erections good for nothing but for burning. The suburbs of the town Guillaume de Flavy had demolished because they were in the way of his firing; boats he had sunk in order to bar the river. To the mortars and huge couillards of the Burgundians he replied with his artillery, and notably with those little copper culverins which did such good service.[2105] If the gay cannoneer of Orleans and Jargeau, Maitre Jean de Montesclere, were absent, there was a shoemaker of Valenciennes, an artilleryman, named Noirouffle, tall, dark, terrible to see, and terrible to hear.[2106] The townsfolk of Compiegne, like those of Orleans, made unsuccessful sallies. One day Louis de Flavy, the governor's brother, was killed by a Burgundian bullet. But none the less on that day Guillaume did as he was wont to do and made the minstrels play to keep his men-at-arms in good cheer.[2107]

[Footnote 2104: H. de Lepinois, Notes extraites des archives communales de Compiegne, in Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1863, vol. xxiv, p. 486. A. Sorel, Prise de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 268. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, pp. 38, 48 et seq.]

[Footnote 2105: Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 500 verso.]

[Footnote 2106: Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 53.]

[Footnote 2107: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 390.]

In the month of June the bulwark, defending the bridge over the Oise, like les Tourelles at Orleans which defended the bridge over the Loire, was captured by the enemy without bringing about the reduction of the town. In like manner, the capture of Les Tourelles had not occasioned the fall of the town of Duke Charles.[2108]

[Footnote 2108: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 390, 391. Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 180. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 306, 307. Chastellain, vol. ii, pp. 51, 54. A. Sorel, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 233 et seq. P. Champion. Guillaume de Flavy, p. 50.]



As for the bastions, they were just as little good on the Oise as they had been on the Loire; everything passed by them. The Burgundians were unable to invest Compiegne because its circumference was too great.[2109] They were short of money; and their men-at-arms, for lack of food and of pay, deserted with that perfect assurance which in those days characterised alike mercenaries of the red cross and of the white.[2110] To complete his misfortunes, Duke Philip was obliged to take away some of the troops engaged in the siege and send them against the inhabitants of Liege who had revolted.[2111] On the 24th of October, a relieving army, commanded by the Count of Vendome and the Marshal de Boussac, approached Compiegne. The English and the Burgundians having turned to encounter them, the garrison and all the inhabitants of the town, even the women, fell upon the rear of the besiegers and routed them.[2112] The relieving army entered Compiegne. The flaring of the bastions was a fine sight. The Duke of Burgundy lost all his artillery.[2113] The Sire de Luxembourg, who had come to Beaurevoir, where he had received the Count Bishop of Beauvais, now appeared before Compiegne just in time to bear his share in the disaster.[2114] The same causes which had constrained the English to depart, as they put it, from Orleans, now obliged the Burgundians to leave Compiegne. But in those days the most ordinary events must needs have a supernatural cause assigned to them, wherefore the deliverance of the town was attributed to the vow of the Count of Vendome, who, in the cathedral of Senlis, had promised an annual mass to Notre-Dame-de-la-Pierre if the place were not taken.[2115]

[Footnote 2109: Le Jouvencel, vol. i, pp. 49 et seq.]

[Footnote 2110: Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 502 verso. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, proofs and illustrations, xli, xlii, xliii.]

[Footnote 2111: Livre des trahisons, p. 202.]

[Footnote 2112: Monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. 410-415. Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 185. Livre des trahisons, p. 202. A. Sorel, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc, proofs and illustrations, xiii, p. 341. P. Champion, loc. cit., p. 176.]

[Footnote 2113: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 418. De La Fons-Melicocq, Documents inedits sur le siege de Compiegne, in La Picardie, vol. iii, 1857, pp. 22, 23. Stevenson, Letters and Papers, vol. ii, part i, p. 156.]

[Footnote 2114: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 419. P. Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, p. 57.]

[Footnote 2115: Sorel, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc, proofs and illustrations, p. 343.]

The Lord Treasurer of Normandy raised aids to the amount of eighty thousand livres tournois, ten thousand of which were to be devoted to the purchase of Jeanne. The Count Bishop of Beauvais, who was taking this matter to heart, urged the Sire de Luxembourg to come to terms, mingled threats with coaxings, and caused the Norman gold to glitter before his eyes. He seemed to fear, and his fear was shared by the masters and doctors of the University, that King Charles would likewise make an offer, that he would promise more than King Henry's ten thousand golden francs and that in the end, by dint of costly gifts, the Armagnacs would succeed in winning back their fairy-godmother.[2116] The rumour ran that King Charles, hearing that the English were about to gain possession of Jeanne for a sum of money, sent an ambassador to warn the Duke of Burgundy not on any account to consent to such an agreement, adding that if he did, the Burgundians in the hands of the King of France would be made to pay for the fate of the Maid.[2117] Doubtless the rumour was false; albeit the fears of the Lord Bishop and the masters of the Paris University were not entirely groundless; and it is certain that from the banks of the Loire the negotiations were being attentively followed with a view to intervention at a favourable moment.

[Footnote 2116: Trial, vol. i, p. 9. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 175.]

[Footnote 2117: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 236. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 18, note.]

Besides, some sudden descent of the French was always to be feared. Captain La Hire was ravaging Normandy, the knight Barbazan, la Champagne, and Marshal de Boussac, the country between the Seine, the Marne and the Somme.[2118]

[Footnote 2118: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 276, note.]

At length, about the middle of November, the Sire de Luxembourg consented to the bargain; Jeanne was delivered up to the English. It was decided to take her to Rouen, through Ponthieu, along the sea-shore, through the north of Normandy, where there would be less risk of falling in with the scouts of the various parties.

From Arras she was taken to the Chateau of Drugy, where the monks of Saint-Riquier were said to have visited her in prison.[2119] She was afterwards taken to Crotoy, where the castle walls were washed by the ocean waves. The Duke of Alencon, whom she called her fair Duke, had been imprisoned there after the Battle of Verneuil.[2120] At the time of her arrival, Maitre Nicolas Gueuville, Chancellor of the Cathedral church of Notre Dame d'Amiens, was a prisoner in that castle in the hands of the English. He heard her confess and administered the Communion to her.[2121] And there on that vast Bay of the Somme, grey and monotonous, with its low sky traversed by sea-birds in their long flight, Jeanne beheld coming down to her the visitant of earlier days, the Archangel Saint Michael; and she was comforted. It was said that the damsels and burgesses of Abbeville went to see her in the castle where she was imprisoned.[2122] At the time of the coronation, these burgesses had thought of turning French; and they would have done so if King Charles had come to their town; he did not come; and perhaps it was through Christian charity that the folk of Abbeville visited Jeanne; but those among them who thought well of her did not say so, for fear they too should be suspected of heresy.[2123]

[Footnote 2119: Chronicle of Jean de la Chapelle, in Trial, vol. v, pp. 358-360. Lefils, Histoire de la ville du Crotoy et de son chateau, pp. 111-118. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, La panique anglaise, p. 8, note 5. L'Abbe Bouthors, Histoire de Saint-Riquier, Abbeville, 1902, pp. 185, 215, 220.]

[Footnote 2120: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 22, 137.]

[Footnote 2121: Trial, vol. iii, p. 121. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 63 et seq.; Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, p. 521.]

[Footnote 2122: Trial, vol. i, p. 89; vol. iii, p. 121. Le P. Ignace de Jesus Maria, Histoire genealogique des comtes de Ponthieu et maieurs d'Abbeville, Paris, 1657, p. 490. Trial, vol. v, p. 361.]

[Footnote 2123: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 353, 354. Trial, vol. v, p. 143.]

The doctors and masters of the University pursued her with a bitterness hardly credible. In November, after they had been informed of the conclusion of the bargain between Jean de Luxembourg and the English, they wrote through their rector to the Lord Bishop of Beauvais reproaching him for his delay in the matter of this woman and exhorting him to be more diligent.

"For you it is no slight matter, holding as you do so high an office in God's Church," ran this letter, "that the scandals committed against the Christian religion be stamped out, especially when such scandals arise within your actual jurisdiction."[2124]

[Footnote 2124: Trial, vol. i, pp. 15, 16. M. Fournier, La Faculte de decret et l'Universite de Paris, vol. i, p. 353.]

Filled with faith and zeal for the avenging of God's honour, these clerks were, as they said, always ready to burn witches. They feared the devil; but, perchance, though they may not have admitted it even to themselves, they feared him twenty times more when he was Armagnac.

Jeanne was taken out of Crotoy at high tide and conveyed by boat to Saint-Valery, then to Dieppe, as is supposed, and certainly in the end to Rouen.[2125]

[Footnote 2125: Trial, vol. i, p. 21. Le P. Ignace de Jesus Maria, in Trial, vol. v, p. 363. F. Poulaine, Jeanne d'Arc a Rouen, Paris, 1899, in 16mo. Ch. Lemire, Jeanne d'Arc en Picardie et en Normandie, Paris, 1903, p. 10, passim. Lanery d'Arc, Livre d'or, pp. 524, 549.]

She was conducted to the old castle, built in the time of Philippe-Auguste on the slope of the Bouvreuil hill.[2126] King Henry VI, who had come to France for his coronation, had been there since the end of August. He was a sad, serious child, harshly treated by the Earl of Warwick, who was governor of the castle.[2127] The castle was strongly fortified;[2128] it had seven towers, including the keep. Jeanne was placed in a tower looking on to the open country.[2129] Her room was on the middle storey, between the dungeon and the state apartment. Eight steps led up to it.[2130] It extended over the whole of that floor, which was forty-three feet across, including the walls.[2131] A stone staircase approached it at an angle. There was but a dim light, for some of the window slits had been filled in.[2132] From a locksmith of Rouen, one Etienne Castille, the English had ordered an iron cage, in which it was said to be impossible to stand upright. If the reports of the ecclesiastical registrars are to be believed, Jeanne was placed in it and chained by the neck, feet, and hands,[2133] and left there till the opening of the trial. At Jean Salvart's, at l'Ecu de France, in front of the Official's courtyard,[2134] a mason's apprentice saw the cage weighed. But no one ever found Jeanne in it. If this treatment were inflicted on Jeanne, it was not invented for her; when Captain La Hire, in the February of this same year, 1430, took Chateau Gaillard, near Rouen, he found the good knight Barbazan in an iron cage, from which he would not come out, alleging that he was a prisoner on parole.[2135] Jeanne, on the contrary, had been careful to promise nothing, or rather she had promised to escape as soon as she could.[2136] Therefore the English, who believed that she had magical powers, mistrusted her greatly.[2137] As she was being prosecuted by the Church, she ought to have been detained in an ecclesiastical prison,[2138] but the Godons were resolved to keep her in their custody. One among them said she was dear to them because they had paid dearly for her. On her feet they put shackles and round her waist a chain padlocked to a beam five or six feet long. At night this chain was carried over the foot of her bed and attached to the principal beam.[2139] In like manner, John Huss, in 1415, when he was delivered up to the Bishop of Constance and transferred to the fortress of Gottlieben, was chained night and day until he was taken to the stake.

[Footnote 2126: A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie au XV'e siecle, Rouen, 1896, in 4to, ch. v.]

[Footnote 2127: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 136-137. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 198.]

[Footnote 2128: L. de Duranville, Le chateau de Bouvreuil, in La Revue de Rouen, 1852, p. 387. A. Deville, La tour de la Pucelle du chateau de Rouen, in Precis des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen, 1865-1866, pp. 236-268. Bouquet, Notice sur le donjon du chateau de Philippe-Auguste, Rouen, 1877, pp. 7 et seq.]

[Footnote 2129: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 317, 345; vol. iii, p. 121.]

[Footnote 2130: Ibid., p. 154. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 190, note 1. L. Delisle, Revue des Societes savantes, 1867, 4th series, vol. v, p. 440. F. Bouquet, Jeanne d'Arc au donjon de Rouen, in Revue de Normandie, 1867, vol. vi, pp. 873-883. L. Delisle, Revue des Societes savantes, vol. v (1867). Lanery d'Arc, pp. 528-533.]

[Footnote 2131: Ballin, Renseignements sur le Vieux-Chateau de Rouen, in Revue de Rouen, 1842, p. 35. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 188.]

[Footnote 2132: Trial, vol. ii, p. 7.]

[Footnote 2133: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 155.]

[Footnote 2134: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 180. A. Sarrazin, pp. 191, 192.]

[Footnote 2135: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 240, 241.]

[Footnote 2136: Trial, vol. i, p. 47.]

[Footnote 2137: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 322.]

[Footnote 2138: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 216, 217. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 112.]

[Footnote 2139: Trial, vol. ii, p. 18.]

Five English men-at-arms,[2140] common soldiers (houspilleurs), guarded the prisoner;[2141] they were not the flower of chivalry. They mocked her and she rebuked them, a circumstance they must have found consolatory. At night two of them stayed behind the door; three remained with her, and constantly troubled her by saying first that she would die, then that she would be delivered. No one could speak to her without their consent.[2142]

[Footnote 2140: Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages (1906), vol. iii, p. 359.]

[Footnote 2141: Trial, vol. iii, p. 154.]

[Footnote 2142: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 318, 319; vol. iii, pp. 131, 140, 148, 161. A. Sarrazin, P. Cauchon, p. 200.]

Nevertheless folk entered the prison as if it were a fair (comme au moulin); people of all ranks came to see Jeanne as they pleased. Thus Maitre Laurent Guesdon, Lieutenant of the Bailie of Rouen, came,[2143] and Maitre Pierre Manuel, Advocate of the King of England, who was accompanied by Maitre Pierre Daron, magistrate of the city of Rouen. They found her with her feet in shackles, guarded by soldiers.[2144]

[Footnote 2143: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 186, 187.]

[Footnote 2144: Ibid., pp. 199, 200.]

Maitre Pierre Manuel felt called upon to tell her that for certain she would never have come there if she had not been brought. Sensible persons were always surprised when they saw witches and soothsayers falling into a trap like any ordinary Christian. The King's Advocate must have been a sensible person, since his surprise appeared in the questions he put to Jeanne.

"Did you know you were to be taken?" he asked her.

"I thought it likely," she replied.

"Then why," asked Maitre Pierre again, "if you thought it likely, did you not take better care on the day you were captured?"

"I knew neither the day nor the hour when I should be taken, nor when it should happen."[2145]

[Footnote 2145: Ibid., p. 200.]

A young fellow, one Pierre Cusquel, who worked for Jean Salvart, also called Jeanson, the master-mason of the castle, through the influence of his employer, was permitted to enter the tower. He also found Jeanne bound with a long chain attached to a beam, and with her feet in shackles. Much later, he claimed to have warned her to be careful of what she said, because her life was involved in it. It is true that she talked volubly to her guards and that all she said was reported to her judges. And it may have happened that the young Pierre, whose master was on the English side, wished to advise her and even did so. There is a suspicion, however, that like so many others he was merely boasting.[2146]

[Footnote 2146: Trial, vol. iii, p. 179.]

The Sire Jean de Luxembourg came to Rouen. He went to the Maid's tower accompanied by his brother, the Lord Bishop of Therouanne, Chancellor of England; and also by Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, Constable of France for King Henry; and the Earl of Warwick, Governor of the Castle of Rouen. At this interview there was also present the young Seigneur de Macy, who held Jeanne to be of very modest bearing, since she had repulsed his attempted familiarity.

"Jeanne," said the Sire de Luxembourg, "I have come to ransom you if you will promise never again to bear arms against us."

These words do not accord with our knowledge of the negotiation for the purchase of the Maid. They seem to indicate that even then the contract was not complete, or at any rate that the vendor thought he could break it if he chose. But the most remarkable point about the Sire de Luxembourg's speech is the condition on which he says he will ransom the Maid. He asks her to promise never again to fight against England and Burgundy. From these words it would seem to have been his intention to sell her to the King of France or to his representative.[2147]

[Footnote 2147: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 236.]

There is no evidence, however, of this speech having made any impression on the English. Jeanne set no store by it.

"In God's name, you do but jest," she replied; "for I know well that it lieth neither within your will nor within your power."

It is related that when he persisted in his statement, she replied:

"I know that these English will put me to death, believing that afterwards they will conquer France."

Since she certainly did not believe it, it seems highly improbable that she should have said that the English would have put her to death. Throughout the trial she was expecting, on the faith of her Voices, to be delivered. She knew not how or when that deliverance would come to pass, but she was as certain of it as of the presence of Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament. She may have said to the Sire de Luxembourg: "I know that the English want to put me to death." Then she repeated courageously what she had already said a thousand times:

"But were there one hundred thousand Godons more than at present, they would not conquer the kingdom."

On hearing these words, the Earl of Stafford unsheathed his sword and the Earl of Warwick had to restrain his hand.[2148] That the English Constable of France should have raised his sword against a woman in chains would be incredible, did we not know that about this time this Earl of Stafford, hearing some one speak well of Jeanne, straightway wished to transfix him.[2149]

[Footnote 2148: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 121, 123.]

[Footnote 2149: Ibid., p. 140.]

In order that the Bishop and Vidame of Beauvais might exercise jurisdiction at Rouen it was necessary that a concession of territory should be granted him. The archiepiscopal see of Rouen was vacant.[2150] For this concession, therefore, the Bishop of Beauvais applied to the chapter, with whom he had had misunderstandings.[2151] The canons of Rouen lacked neither firmness nor independence; more of them were honest than dishonest; some were highly educated, well-lettered and even kind-hearted. None of them nourished any ill will toward the English. The Regent Bedford himself was a canon of Rouen, as Charles VII was a canon of Puy.[2152] On the 20th of October, in that same year 1430, the Regent, donning surplice and amice, had distributed the dole of bread and wine for the chapter.[2153] The canons of Rouen were not prejudiced in favour of the Maid of the Armagnacs; they agreed to the demand of the Bishop of Beauvais and granted him the formal concession of territory.[2154]

[Footnote 2150: C. de Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, in Precis des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen, 1867-1868, pp. 470-479. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 29.]

[Footnote 2151: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 17.]

[Footnote 2152: Gallia Christiana, vol. ii, p. 732. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 213, 214. S. Luce, Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy, p. ccxcv.]

[Footnote 2153: C. de Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, loc. cit. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 168, 171.]

[Footnote 2154: 28 December, 1430. Trial, vol. i, pp. 20, 23. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 46.]

On the 3rd of January, 1431, by royal decree, King Henry ordered the Maid to be given up to the Bishop and Count of Beauvais, reserving to himself the right to bring her before him, if she should be acquitted by the ecclesiastical tribunal.[2155]

[Footnote 2155: Trial, vol. i, pp. 18, 19.]

Nevertheless she was not placed in the Church prison, in one of those dungeons near the Booksellers' Porch, where in the shadow of the gigantic cathedral there rotted unhappy wretches who had erred in matters of faith.[2156] There she would have endured sufferings far more terrible than even the horrors of her military tower. The wrong the Great Council of England inflicted on Jeanne by not handing her over to the ecclesiastical powers of Rouen was far less than the indignity they thereby inflicted on her judges.

[Footnote 2156: A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 1771, 1778.]

With the way thus opened before him, the Bishop of Beauvais proceeded with all the violence one might expect from a Cabochien, albeit that violence was qualified by worldly arts and canonical knowledge.[2157] As promoter in the case, that is, as the magistrate who was to conduct the prosecution, he selected one Jean d'Estivet, called Benedicite, canon of Bayeux and of Beauvais, Promoter-General of the diocese of Beauvais. Jean d'Estivet was a friend of the Lord Bishop, and had been driven out of the diocese by the French at the same time. He was suspected of hostility to the Maid.[2158] The Lord Bishop appointed Jean de la Fontaine, master of arts, licentiate of canon law, to be "councillor commissary" of the trial.[2159] One of the clerks of the ecclesiastical court of Rouen, Guillaume Manchon, priest, he appointed first registrar.

[Footnote 2157: J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 147. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 9.]

[Footnote 2158: Trial, vol. i, p. 24; vol. iii, p. 162. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 26. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 220.]

[Footnote 2159: Trial, vol. i, p. 25.]

In the course of instructing this official as to what would be expected of him, the Lord Bishop said to Messire Guillaume:

"You must do the King good service. It is our intention to institute an elaborate prosecution (un beau proces) against this Jeanne."[2160]

[Footnote 2160: Trial, vol. i, p. 25; vol. iii, p. 137. A. Sarrazin, loc. cit., pp. 221, 222.]

As to the King's service, the Lord Bishop did not mean that it should be rendered at the expense of justice; he was a man of some priestly pride and was not likely to reveal his own evil designs. If he spoke thus, it was because in France, for a century at least, the jurisdiction of the Inquisition had been regarded as the jurisdiction of the King.[2161] And as for the expression "an elaborate prosecution" (un beau proces), that meant a trial in which legal forms were observed and irregularities avoided, for it was a case in which were interested the doctors and masters of the realm of France and indeed the whole of Christendom. Messire Guillaume Manchon, well skilled in legal procedure, was not likely to err in a matter of legal language. An elaborate trial was a strictly regular trial. It was said, for example, that "N—— and N—— had by elaborate judicial procedure found such an one to be guilty."[2162]

[Footnote 2161: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en France, pp. 550, 551.]

[Footnote 2162: De Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces de condamnation, p. 320.]

Charged by the Bishop to choose another registrar to assist him, Guillaume Manchon selected as his colleague Guillaume Colles, surnamed Boisguillaume, who like him was a notary of the Church.[2163]

[Footnote 2163: Trial, vol. i, p. 25; vol. iii, p. 137. De Beaurepaire, Recherches.... p. 103. A. Sarrazin, loc. cit., pp. 222, 223.]

Jean Massieu, priest, ecclesiastical dean of Rouen, was appointed usher of the court.[2164]

[Footnote 2164: Trial, vol. i, p. 26. De Beaurepaire, Recherches.... p. 115. A. Sarrazin, loc. cit., pp. 223, 224.]

In that kind of trial, which was very common in those days, there were strictly only two judges, the Ordinary and the Inquisitor. But it was the custom for the Bishop to summon as councillors and assessors persons learned in both canon and civil law. The number and the rank of those councillors varied according to the case. And it is clear that the obstinate upholder of a very pestilent heresy must needs be more particularly and more ceremoniously tried than an old wife, who had sold herself to some insignificant demon, and whose spells could harm nothing more important than cabbages. For the common wizard, for the multitude of those females, or mulierculae, as they were described by one inquisitor who boasted of having burnt many, the judges were content with three or four ecclesiastical advocates and as many canons.[2165] When it was a question of a very notable personage who had set a highly pernicious example, of a king's advocate, for instance like Master Jean Segueut, who that very year, in Normandy, had spoken against the temporal power of the Church, a large assembly of doctors and prelates, English and French, were convoked, and the doctors and masters of the University of Paris were consulted in writing.[2166] Now it was fitting that the Maid of the Armagnacs should be yet more elaborately and more solemnly tried, with a yet greater concourse of doctors and of prelates; and thus it was ordained by the Lord Bishop of Beauvais. As councillors and assessors he summoned the canons of Rouen in as great a number as possible. Among those who answered his summons we may mention Raoul Roussel, treasurer of the chapter; Gilles Deschamps, who had been chaplain to the late King, Charles VI, in 1415; Pierre Maurice, doctor in theology, rector of the University of Paris in 1428; Jean Alespee, one of the sixteen who during the siege of 1418 had gone robed in black and with cheerful countenance to place at the feet of King Henry V the life and honour of the city; Pasquier de Vaux, apostolic notary at the Council of Constance, President of the Norman Chambre des Comptes; Nicolas de Venderes, whose candidature for the vacant see of Rouen was being advocated by a powerful party; and, lastly, Nicolas Loiseleur. For the same purpose, the Lord Bishop summoned the abbots of the great Norman abbeys, Mont Saint-Michel-au-Peril-de-la-Mer, Fecamp, Jumieges, Preaux, Mortemer, Saint-Georges de Boscherville, la Trinite-du-mont-Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Ouen, Bec, Cormeilles, the priors of Saint-Lo, of Rouen, of Sigy, of Longueville, and the abbot of Saint Corneille of Compiegne. He summoned twelve ecclesiastical advocates; likewise famous doctors and masters of the University of Paris, Jean Beaupere, rector in 1412; Thomas Fiefve, rector in 1427; Guillaume Erart, Nicolas Midi,[2167] and that young doctor, abounding in knowledge and in modesty, the brightest star in the Christian firmament of the day, Thomas de Courcelles.[2168] The Lord Bishop is bent upon turning the tribunal, which is to try Jeanne, into a veritable synod; it is indeed a provincial council, before which she is cited. Moreover, in effect, it is not only Jeanne the Maid, but Charles of Valois, calling himself King of France, and lawful successor of Charles VI who is to be brought to justice. Wherefore are assembled so many croziered and mitred abbots, so many renowned doctors and masters.

[Footnote 2165: Eymeric, Directorium Inquisitorium, quest. 85. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 109. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 9.]

[Footnote 2166: De Beaurepaire, Recherches.... pp. 321 et seq.]

[Footnote 2167: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 27-114. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 103, 104. Boucher de Molandon, Guillaume Erard l'un des juges de la Pucelle, in Bulletin du comite hist. and phil., 1892, pp. 3-10.]

[Footnote 2168: Trial, vol. i, p. 30, note. Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis, Paris, vol. v, pp. 912, 920. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 105. De Beaurepaire, Notes, pp. 30, 31. A. Sarrazin, loc. cit., pp. 226, 227.]

Nevertheless, there were other bright and shining lights of the Church, whom the Bishop of Beauvais neglected to summon. He consulted the two bishops of Coutances and Lisieux; he did not consult the senior bishop of Normandy, the Bishop of Avranches, Messire Jean de Saint-Avit, whom the chapter of the cathedral had charged with the duty of ordination throughout the diocese during the vacancy of the see of Rouen. But Messire Jean de Saint-Avit was considered and rightly considered to favour King Charles.[2169] On the other hand those English doctors and masters, residing at Rouen, who had been consulted in Segueut's trial, were not consulted in that of Jeanne.[2170] The doctors and masters of the University of Paris, the abbots of Normandy, the chapter of Rouen, held firmly to the Treaty of Troyes; they were as prejudiced as the English clerks against the Maid and the Dauphin Charles, and they were less suspected; it was all to the good.[2171]

[Footnote 2169: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 5, 6. De Beaurepaire, Notes, pp. 121-125. A. Sarrazin, loc. cit., pp. 308-310.]

[Footnote 2170: De Beaurepaire, Recherches, pp. 321 et seq.]

[Footnote 2171: J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 101.]

On Tuesday, the 9th of January, my Lord of Beauvais summoned eight councillors to his house: the abbots of Fecamp and of Jumieges, the prior of Longueville, the canons Roussel, Venderes, Barbier, Coppequesne and Loiseleur.

"Before entering upon the prosecution of this woman," he said to them, "we have judged it good, maturely and fully to confer with men learned and skilled in law, human and divine, of whom, thank God, there be great number in this city of Rouen."

The opinion of the doctors and masters was that information should be collected concerning the deeds and sayings publicly imputed to this woman.

The Lord Bishop informed them that already certain information had been obtained by his command, and that he had decided to order more to be collected, which would be ultimately presented to the Council.[2172]

[Footnote 2172: Trial, vol. i, pp. 5-8.]

It is certain that a tabellion[2173] of Andelot in Champagne, Nicolas Bailly, requisitioned by Messire Jean de Torcenay, Bailie of Chaumont for King Henry, went to Domremy, and with Gerard Petit, provost of Andelot, and divers mendicant monks, made inquiry touching Jeanne's life and reputation. The interrogators heard twelve or fifteen witnesses and among others Jean Hannequin[2174] of Greux and Jean Begot, with whom they lodged.[2175] We know from Nicolas Bailly himself that they gathered not a single fact derogatory to Jeanne. And if we may believe Jean Moreau, a citizen of Rouen, Maitre Nicolas, having brought my Lord of Beauvais the result of his researches, was treated as a wicked man and a traitor; and obtained no reward for his expenditure or his labour.[2176] This is possible, but it seems strange. It can in no wise be true, however, that neither at Vaucouleurs nor at Domremy, nor in the neighbouring villages was anything discovered against Jeanne. Quite on the contrary, numbers of accusations were collected against the inhabitants in general, who were addicted to evil practices, and in particular against Jeanne, who held intercourse with fairies,[2177] carried a mandrake in her bosom, and disobeyed her father and mother.[2178]

[Footnote 2173: A notary or secretary in France under the old monarchy (W.S.).]

[Footnote 2174: Trial, vol. ii, p. 463.]

[Footnote 2175: Ibid., p. 453.]

[Footnote 2176: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 192, 193.]

[Footnote 2177: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 105, 146, 234.]

[Footnote 2178: Ibid., pp. 208, 209, 213.]

Abundant information was forthcoming, not only from Lorraine and from Paris, but from the districts loyal to King Charles, from Lagny, Beauvais, Reims, and even from so far as Touraine and Berry;[2179] which was information enough to burn ten heretics and twenty witches. Devilries were discovered which filled the priests with horror: the finding of a lost cup and gloves, the exposure of an immoral priest, the sword of Saint Catherine, the restoration of a child to life. There was also a report of a rash letter concerning the Pope and there were many other indications of witchcraft, heresy, and religious error.[2180] Such information was not to be included among the documents of the trial.[2181] It was the custom of the Holy Inquisition to keep secret the evidence and even the names of the witnesses.[2182] In this case the Bishop of Beauvais might have pleaded as an excuse for so doing the safety of the deponents, who might have suffered had he published information gathered in provinces subject to the Dauphin Charles. Even if their names were concealed, they would be identified by their evidence. For the purposes of the trial, Jeanne's own conversation in prison was the best source of information: she spoke much and without any of the reserve which prudence might have dictated.

[Footnote 2179: J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 117.]

[Footnote 2180: Trial, vol. i, pp. 245, 246.]

[Footnote 2181: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 200.]

[Footnote 2182: De Beaurepaire, Recherches, loc. cit. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 122-124. L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition, pp. 389-395.]

A painter, whose name is unknown, came to see her in her tower. He asked her aloud and before her guards what arms she bore, as if he wished to represent her with her escutcheon. In those days portraits were very seldom painted from life, except of persons of very high rank, and they were generally represented kneeling and with clasped hands in an attitude of prayer. Though in Flanders and in Burgundy there may have been a few portraits bearing no signs of devotion, they were very rare. A portrait naturally suggested a person praying to God, to the Holy Virgin, or to some saint. Wherefore the idea of painting the Maid's picture doubtless must have met with the stern disapproval of her ecclesiastical judges. All the more so because they must have feared that the painter would represent this excommunicated woman in the guise of a saint, canonised by the Church, as the Armagnacs were wont to do.

A careful consideration of this incident inclines us to think that this man was no painter but a spy. Jeanne told him of the arms which the King had granted to her brothers: an azure shield bearing a sword between two golden fleurs de lis. And our suspicion is confirmed when at the trial she is reproached with pomp and vanity for having caused her arms to be painted.[2183]

[Footnote 2183: Trial, vol. i, pp. 117, 300.]

Sundry clerks introduced into her prison gave her to believe that they were men-at-arms of the party of Charles of Valois.[2184] In order to deceive her, the Promoter himself, Maitre Jean d'Estivet, disguised himself as a poor prisoner.[2185] One of the canons of Rouen, who was summoned to the trial, by name Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur, would seem to have been especially inventive of devices for the discovery of Jeanne's heresies. A native of Chartres, he was not only a master of arts, but was greatly renowned for astuteness. In 1427 and 1428 he carried through difficult negotiations, which detained him long months in Paris. In 1430 he was one of those deputed by the chapter to go to the Cardinal of Winchester in order to obtain an audience of King Henry and commend to him the church of Rouen. Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur was therefore a persona grata with the Great Council.[2186]

[Footnote 2184: Trial, vol. ii, p. 362.]

[Footnote 2185: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 63.]

[Footnote 2186: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 72-82. A. Sorel, loc. cit., pp. 243, 247.]

Having concerted with the Bishop of Beauvais and the Earl of Warwick, he entered Jeanne's prison, wearing a short jacket like a layman. The guards had been instructed to withdraw; and Maitre Nicolas, left alone with his prisoner, confided to her that he, like herself, was a native of the Lorraine Marches, a shoemaker by trade, one who held to the French party and had been taken prisoner by the English. From King Charles he brought her tidings which were the fruit of his own imagination. No one was dearer to Jeanne than her King. Thus having won her confidence, the pseudo-shoemaker asked her sundry questions concerning the angels and saints who visited her. She answered him confidingly, speaking as friend to friend, as countryman to countryman. He gave her counsel, advising her not to believe all these churchmen and not to do all that they asked her; "For," he said, "if thou believest in them thou shalt be destroyed."

Many a time, we are told, did Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur act the part of the Lorraine shoemaker. Afterwards he dictated to the registrars all that Jeanne had said, providing thus a valuable source of information of which a memorandum was made to be used during the examination. It would even appear that during certain of these visits the registrars were stationed at a peep-hole in an adjoining room.[2187] If we may believe the rumours current in the town, Maitre Nicolas also disguised himself as Saint Catherine, and by this means brought Jeanne to say all that he wanted.

[Footnote 2187: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 10, 342; vol. iii, pp. 140, 141, 156, 160 et seq.]

He may not have been proud of such deceptions, but at any rate he made no secret of them.[2188] Many famous masters approved him; others censured him.[2189]

[Footnote 2188: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 181.]

[Footnote 2189: Ibid., p. 141.]

The angel of the schools, Thomas de Courcelles, when Nicolas told him of his disguises, counselled him to abandon them.

Afterwards the registrars pretended that it had been extremely repugnant to them thus to overhear in hiding a conversation so craftily contrived. The golden age of inquisitorial justice must have been well over when so strict a doctor as Maitre Thomas was willing thus to criticise the most solemn forms of that justice. Inquisitorial proceedings must indeed have fallen into decay when two notaries of the Church dream of eluding its most common prescriptions. The clerks who disguised themselves as soldiers, the Promoter who took on the semblance of a poor prisoner, were exercising the most regular functions of the judicial system instituted by Innocent III.

In acting the shoemaker and Saint Catherine, if he were seeking the salvation and not the destruction of the sinner, if, contrary to public report, far from inciting her to rebellion, he was reducing her to obedience, if, in short, he were but deceiving her for her own temporal and spiritual good, Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur was proceeding in conformity with established rules. In the Tractatus de Haeresi it is written: "Let no man approach the heretic, save from time to time two persons of faith and tact, who may warn him with precaution and as having compassion upon him, to eschew death by confessing his errors, and who may promise him that by so doing he shall escape death by fire; for the fear of death, and the hope of life may peradventure soften a heart which could be touched in no other wise."[2190]

[Footnote 2190: Tractatus de haeresi pauperum de Lugduno, apud Martene, Thesaurus anecd., vol. v, col. 1787. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 131, 132.]

The duty of registrars was laid down in the following manner:

"Matters shall be ordained thus, that certain persons shall be stationed in a suitable place so as to surprise the confidences of heretics and to overhear their words."[2191]

[Footnote 2191: Eymeric, Directorium, part iii, Cautelae inquisitorum contra haereticorum cavilationes et fraudes.]

As for the Bishop of Beauvais, who had ordained and permitted such procedure, he found his justification and approbation in the words of the Apostle Saint Paul to the Corinthians: "I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile." "Ego vos non gravavi; sed cum essem astutus, dolo vos cepi" (II Corinthians xii, 16).[2192]

[Footnote 2192: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en France, p. 394.]

Meanwhile, when Jeanne saw the Promoter, Jean d'Estivet, in his churchman's habit she did not recognise him. And Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur also often came to her in monkish dress. In this guise he inspired her with great confidence; she confessed to him devoutly and had no other confessor.[2193] She saw him sometimes as a shoemaker and sometimes as a canon and never perceived that he was the same person. Wherefore we must indeed believe her to have been incredibly simple in certain respects; and these great theologians must have realised that it was not difficult to deceive her.

[Footnote 2193: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 10, 342.]

It was well known to all men versed in science, divine and human, that the Enemy never entered into dealings with a maid without depriving her of her virginity.[2194] At Poitiers the French clerks had thought of it, and when Queen Yolande assured them that Jeanne was a virgin, they ceased to fear that she was sent by the devil.[2195] The Lord Bishop of Beauvais in a different hope awaited a similar examination. The Duchess of Bedford herself went to the prison. She was assisted by Lady Anna Bavon and another matron. It has been said that the Regent was hidden meanwhile in an adjoining room and looking through a hole in the wall.[2196] This is by no means certain, but it is not impossible; he was at Rouen a fortnight after Jeanne had been brought there.[2197] Whether the charge were groundless or well founded he was seriously reproached for this curiosity. If there were many who in his place would have been equally curious, every one must judge for himself; but we must bear in mind that my Lord of Bedford believed Jeanne a witch, and that it was not the custom in those days to treat witches with the respect due to ladies. We must remember also that this was a matter in which Old England was greatly concerned, and the Regent loved his country with all his heart and all his strength.

[Footnote 2194: Vallet de Viriville, Nouvelles recherches sur Agnes Sorel, pp. 33 et seq. Du Cange, Glossaire, at the word Matrimonium.]

[Footnote 2195: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 102, 209.]

[Footnote 2196: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 155, 163.]

[Footnote 2197: A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 40.]

Upon the examination of the Duchess of Bedford as upon that of the Queen of Sicily Jeanne appeared a virgin. The matrons knew various signs of virginity; but for us a more certain sign is Jeanne's own word. When she was asked wherefore she called herself the Maid, whether she were one in reality, she replied: "I may tell you that such I am."[2198] The judges, as far as we know, set no store by this favourable result of the examination. Did they believe with the wise King Solomon that in such matters all inquiry is vain, and did they reject the matrons' verdict by virtue of the saying: Virginitatis probatio non minus difficilis quam custodia? No, they knew well that she was indeed a virgin. They allowed it to be understood when they did not assert the contrary.[2199] And since they persisted in believing her a witch, it must have been because they imagined her to have given herself to devils who had left her as they found her. The morals of devils abounded in such inconsistencies, which were the despair of the most learned doctors; every day new inconsistencies were being discovered.

[Footnote 2198: Trial, vol. iii, p. 175.]

[Footnote 2199: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 217, 218.]

On Saturday, the 13th of January, the Lord Abbot of Fecamp, the doctors and masters, Nicolas de Venderes, Guillaume Haiton, Nicolas Coppequesne, Jean de la Fontaine, and Nicolas Loiseleur, met in the house of the Lord Bishop. There was read to them the information concerning the Maid gathered in Lorraine and elsewhere. And it was decided that according to this information a certain number of articles should be drawn up in due form; which was done.[2200]

[Footnote 2200: Trial, vol. i, pp. 27, 28.]

On Tuesday, the 23rd of January, the doctors and masters above named considered the terms of these articles, and, finding them sufficient, they decided that they might be used for the examination. Then they resolved that the Bishop of Beauvais should order a preliminary inquiry as to the deeds and sayings of Jeanne.[2201]

[Footnote 2201: Ibid., pp. 28, 29.]

On Tuesday, the 13th of February, Jean d'Estivet, called Benedicite, Promoter, Jean de la Fontaine, Commissioner, Boisguillaume and Manchon, Registrars, and Jean Massieu, Usher, took the oath faithfully to discharge their various offices. Then straightway Maitre Jean de la Fontaine, assisted by two registrars, proceeded to the preliminary inquiry.[2202]

[Footnote 2202: Ibid., pp. 29, 31.]

On Monday, the 19th of February, at eight o'clock in the morning, the doctors and masters assembled, to the number of eleven, in the house of the Bishop of Beauvais; there they heard the reading of the articles and the preliminary information. Whereupon they gave it as their opinion, and, in conformity with this opinion, the Bishop decided that there was matter sufficient to justify the woman called the Maid being cited and charged touching a question of faith.[2203]

[Footnote 2203: Trial, vol. i, pp. 31-33.]

But now a fresh difficulty arose. In such a trial it was necessary for the accused to appear at once before the Ordinary and before the Inquisitor. The two judges were equally necessary for the validity of the trial. Now the Grand Inquisitor for the realm of France, Brother Jean Graverent, was then at Saint-Lo, prosecuting on a religious charge a citizen of the town, one Jean Le Couvreur.[2204] In the absence of Brother Jean Graverent, the Bishop of Beauvais had invited the Vice-Inquisitor for the diocese of Rouen to proceed against Jeanne conjointly with himself. Meanwhile the Vice-Inquisitor seemed not to understand; he made no response; and the Bishop was left in embarrassment with his lawsuit on his hands.

[Footnote 2204: Ibid., p. 32. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 102. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 24-27. Le P. Chapotin, La guerre de cent ans, Jeanne d'Arc et les dominicains, pp. 141-143. A. Sarrazin, P. Cauchon, p. 124.]

This Vice-Inquisitor was Brother Jean Lemaistre, Prior of the Dominicans of Rouen, bachelor of theology, a monk right prudent and scrupulous.[2205] At length in answer to a summons from the Usher, at four o'clock on the 19th of February, 1413, he appeared in the house of the Bishop of Beauvais. He declared himself ready to intervene provided that he had the right to do so, which he doubted. As the reason for his uncertainty he alleged that he was the Inquisitor of Rouen; now the Bishop of Beauvais was exercising his jurisdiction as bishop of the diocese of Beauvais, but on borrowed territory; wherefore was it not rather for the Inquisitor of Beauvais not for the Inquisitor of Rouen, to sit on the judgment seat side by side with the Bishop?[2206] He declared that he would ask the Grand Inquisitor of France for an authorisation which should hold good for the diocese of Beauvais. Meanwhile he consented to act in order to satisfy his own conscience and to prevent the proceedings from lapsing, which, in the opinion of all, must have ensued had the trial been instituted without the concurrence of the Holy Inquisition.[2207] All preliminary difficulties were now removed. The Maid was cited to appear on Wednesday, the 21st of February,[2208] 1431.

[Footnote 2205: Trial, vol. i, p. 33.]

[Footnote 2206: Trial, vol. i, p. 35. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 394. Doinel, Memoire de la Societe archeologique-historique de l'Orleanais, 1892, vol. xxiv, p. 403. Le P. Chapotin, La guerre de cent ans, Jeanne d'Arc et les dominicains, p. 141. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 32.]

[Footnote 2207: Trial, vol. i, p. 35.]

[Footnote 2208: Ibid., pp. 40-42.]

On that day, at eight o'clock in the morning, the Bishop of Beauvais, the Vicar of the Inquisitor, and forty-one Councillors and Assessors assembled in the castle chapel. Fifteen of them were doctors in theology, five doctors in civil and canon law, six bachelors in theology, eleven bachelors in canon law, four licentiates in civil law. The Bishop sat as judge. At his side were the Councillors and Assessors, clothed either in the fine camlet of canons or in the coarse cloth of mendicants, expressive, the one of sacerdotal solemnity, the other of evangelical meekness. Some glared fiercely, others cast down their eyes. Brother Jean Lemaistre, Vice-Inquisitor of the faith, was among them, silent, in the black and white livery of poverty and obedience.[2209]

[Footnote 2209: Trial, vol. i, pp. 38, 39.]

Before bringing in the accused, the usher informed the Bishop that Jeanne, to whom the citation had been delivered, had replied that she would be willing to appear, but she demanded that an equal number of ecclesiastics of the French party should be added to those of the English party. She requested also the permission to hear mass.[2210] The Bishop refused both demands;[2211] and Jeanne was brought in, dressed as a man, with her feet in shackles. She was made to sit down at the table of the registrars.

[Footnote 2210: Ibid., pp. 42-43.]

[Footnote 2211: Ibid., p. 43.]

And now from the very outset these theologians and this damsel regarded each other with mutual horror and hatred. Contrary to the custom of her sex, a custom which even loose women did not dare to infringe, she displayed her hair, which was brown and cut short over the ears. It was possibly the first time that some of those young monks seated behind their elders had ever seen a woman's hair. She wore hose like a youth. To them her dress appeared immodest and abominable.[2212] She exasperated and irritated them. Had the Bishop of Beauvais insisted on her appearing in hood and gown their anger against her would have been less violent. This man's attire brought before their minds the works performed by the Maid in the camp of the Dauphin Charles, calling himself king. By the stroke of a magic wand she had deprived the English men-at-arms of all their strength, and thereby she had inflicted sore hurt on the majority of the churchmen who were to judge her. Some among them were thinking of the benefices of which she had despoiled them; others, doctors and masters of the University, recalled how she had been about to lay Paris waste with fire and sword;[2213] others again, canons and abbots, could not forgive her perchance for having struck fear into their hearts even in remote Normandy. Was it possible for them to pardon the havoc she had thus wrought in a great part of the Church of France, when they knew she had done it by sorcery, by divination and by invoking devils? "A man must be very ignorant if he will deny the reality of magic," said Sprenger. As they were very learned, they saw magicians and wizards where others would never have suspected them; they held that to doubt the power of demons over men and things was not only heretical and impious, but tending to subvert the whole natural and social order. These doctors, seated in the castle chapel, had burned each one of them ten, twenty, fifty witches, all of whom had confessed their crimes. Would it not have been madness after that to doubt the existence of witches?

[Footnote 2212: Ibid., p. 43.]

[Footnote 2213: Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Le proces de Jeanne d'Arc et l'Universite de Paris.]

To us it seems curious that beings capable of causing hail-storms and casting spells over men and animals should allow themselves to be taken, judged, tortured, and burned without making any defence; but it was constantly occurring; every ecclesiastical judge must have observed it. Very learned men were able to account for it: they explained that wizards and witches lost their power as soon as they fell into the hands of churchmen. This explanation was deemed sufficient. The hapless Maid had lost her power like the others; they feared her no longer.

At least Jeanne hated them as bitterly as they hated her. It was natural for unlettered saints, for the fair inspired, frank of mind, capricious, and enthusiastic to feel an antipathy towards doctors all inflated with knowledge and stiffened with scholasticism. Such an antipathy Jeanne had recently felt towards clerks, even when as at Poitiers they had been on the French side, and had not wished her evil and had not greatly troubled her. Wherefore we may easily imagine how intense was the repulsion with which the clerks of Rouen now inspired her. She knew that they sought to compass her death. But she feared them not; confidently she awaited from her saints and angels the fulfilment of their promise, their coming for her deliverance. She knew not when nor how her deliverance should come; but that come it would she never once doubted. To doubt it would indeed have been to doubt Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and even Our Lord; it would have been to believe evil of her Voices. They had told her to fear nothing, and of nothing was she afeard.[2214] Fearless simplicity; whence came her confidence in her Voices if not from her own heart?

[Footnote 2214: Trial, vol. i, pp. 88, 94, 151, 155, passim.]

The Bishop required her to swear, according to the prescribed form with both hands on the holy Gospels, that she would reply truly to all that should be asked her.

She could not. Her Voices forbade her telling any one of the revelations they had so abundantly vouchsafed to her.

She answered: "I do not know on what you wish to question me. You might ask me things that I would not tell you."

And when the Bishop insisted on her swearing to tell the whole truth:

"Touching my father and mother and what I did after my coming into France I will willingly swear," she said; "but touching God's revelations to me, those I have neither told nor communicated to any man, save to Charles my King. And nought of them will I reveal, were I to lose my head for it."

Then, either because she wished to gain time or because she counted on receiving some new directions from her Council, she added that in a week she would know whether she might so reveal those things.

At length she took the oath, according to the prescribed form, on her knees, with both hands on the missal.[2215] Then she answered concerning her name, her country, her parents, her baptism, her godfathers and godmothers. She said that to the best of her knowledge she was about nineteen years of age.[2216]

[Footnote 2215: Trial, vol. i, p. 45.]

[Footnote 2216: Ibid., p. 46.]

Questioned concerning her education, she replied: "From my mother I learnt my Paternoster, my Ave Maria and my Credo."

But, asked to repeat her Paternoster, she refused, for, she said, she would only say it in confession. This was because she wanted the Bishop to hear her confess.[2217]

[Footnote 2217: Ibid., pp. 46-47.]

The assembly was profoundly agitated; all spoke at once. Jeanne with her soft voice had scandalised the doctors.

The Bishop forbade her to leave her prison, under pain of being convicted of the crime of heresy.

She refused to submit to this prohibition. "If I did escape," she said, "none could reproach me with having broken faith, for I never gave my word to any one."

Afterwards she complained of her chains.

The Bishop told her they were on account of her attempt to escape.

She agreed: "It is true that I wanted to escape, and I still want to, just like every other prisoner."[2218]

[Footnote 2218: Trial, vol. i, p. 47.]

Such a confession was very bold, if she had rightly understood the judge when he said that by flight from prison she would incur the punishment of a heretic. To escape from an ecclesiastical prison was to commit a crime against the Church, but it was folly as well as crime; for the prisons of the Church are penitentiaries, and the prisoner who refuses salutary penance is as foolish as he is guilty; for he is like a sick man who refuses to be cured. But Jeanne was not, strictly speaking, in an ecclesiastical prison; she was in the castle of Rouen, a prisoner of war in the hands of the English. Could it be said that if she escaped she would incur excommunication and the spiritual and temporal penalties inflicted on the enemies of religion? There lay the difficulty. The Lord Bishop removed it forthwith by an elaborate legal fiction. Three English men-at-arms, John Grey, John Berwoist, and William Talbot, were appointed by the King to be Jeanne's custodians. The Bishop, acting as an ecclesiastical judge, himself delivered to them their charge, and made them swear on the holy Gospels to bind the damsel and confine her.[2219] In this wise the Maid became the prisoner of our holy Mother, the Church; and she could not burst her bonds without falling into heresy. The second sitting was appointed for the next day, the 22nd of February.[2220]

[Footnote 2219: Ibid., pp. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 2220: Trial, vol. i, p. 48.]



CHAPTER XI

THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE (continued)

When a record of the proceedings came to be written down after the first sitting, a dispute arose between the ecclesiastical notaries and the two or three royal registrars who had likewise taken down the replies of the accused. As might be expected, the two records differed in several places. It was decided that on the contested points Jeanne should be further examined.[2221] The notaries of the Church complained also that they experienced great difficulty in seizing Jeanne's words on account of the constant interruptions of the bystanders.

[Footnote 2221: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 131-136.]

In a trial by the Inquisition there was no place fixed for the examination any more than for the other acts of the procedure. The judges might examine the accused in a chapel, in a chapter-house, or even in a prison or a torture-chamber. According to Messire Guillaume Manchon it was in order to escape from the tumult of the first sitting,[2222] and because there was no longer any reason for proceeding with such solemn ceremony as at the opening of the trial, that the judge and his councillors met in the Robing Room, a little chamber at one end of the castle hall;[2223] and two English guards were stationed at the door. According to the rules of inquisitorial procedure, the assessors were not bound to be present at all the deliberations.[2224] This time forty-two were present, twenty-six of the original ones and six newly appointed. Among these high clerics was Brother Jean Lemaistre, Vice Inquisitor of the Faith, a humble preaching friar. No longer as in the days of Saint Dominic was the Vice Inquisitor the hunting hound of the Lord, now he was but the dog of the Bishop, a poor monk, who dared neither to do nor to abstain from doing. Such was the result of the assertion of Gallican independence against papal supremacy. Dumb and timid, Brother Jean Lemaistre was the last and the least of all the brethren in that assembly, but he was ever looking for the day when he should be sovereign judge and without appeal.[2225]

[Footnote 2222: Ibid., p. 135.]

[Footnote 2223: Trial, vol. i, p. 48. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 323, 324.]

[Footnote 2224: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition, p. 420.]

[Footnote 2225: Trial, vol. i, pp. 48-50.]

Jeanne was brought in by the Usher, Messire Jean Massieu. Again she endeavoured to avoid taking the oath to tell everything; but she had to swear on the Gospel.[2226]

[Footnote 2226: Ibid., p. 50.]

She was examined by Maitre Jean Beaupere, doctor in theology. In his University of Paris he was regarded as a scholar of light and leading; it had twice appointed him rector. It had charged him with the functions of chancellor in the absence of Gerson, and, in 1419, had sent him with Messire Pierre Cauchon to the town of Troyes, to give aid and counsel to King Charles VI. Three years later it had despatched him to the Queen of England and the Duke of Gloucester to enlist their support in its endeavour to obtain the confirmation of its privileges. King Henry VI had just appointed him canon of Rouen.[2227]

[Footnote 2227: Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Paris., vol. v, p. 919. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 27-30.]

Maitre Jean's first question to Jeanne was what was her age when she left her father's house. She was unable to say, although on the previous day she had stated her present age to be about nineteen.[2228]

[Footnote 2228: Trial, vol. i, p. 51.]

Interrogated as to the occupations of her childhood, she replied that she was busy with household duties and seldom went into the fields with the cattle.

"For spinning and sewing," she said, "I am as good as any woman in Rouen."[2229]

[Footnote 2229: Ibid.]

Thus even in things domestic she displayed her ardour and her chivalrous zeal; at the spinning-wheel and with the needle she challenged all the women in a town, without knowing one of them.

Questioned as to her confessions and her communions, she answered that she confessed to her parish priest or to another priest when the former was not able to hear her. But she refused to say whether she had received the communion on other feast-days than Easter.[2230]

[Footnote 2230: Ibid., pp. 51, 52.]

In order to take her unawares, Maitre Jean Beaupere proceeded without method, passing abruptly from one subject to another. Suddenly he spoke of her Voices. She gave him the following reply:

"Being thirteen years of age, I heard the Voice of God, bidding me lead a good life. And the first time I was sore afeard. And the Voice came almost at the hour of noon, in summer, in my father's garden...."

She heard the Voice on the right towards the church. Rarely did she hear it without seeing a light. This light was in the direction whence the Voice came.[2231]

[Footnote 2231: Trial, vol. i, p. 52.]

When Jeanne said that her Voice spoke to her from the right, a doctor more learned and more kindly disposed than Maitre Jean would have interpreted this circumstance favourably; for do we not read in Ezekiel that the angels were upon the right hand of the dwelling; do we not find in the last chapter of Saint Mark, that the women beheld the Angel seated on the right, and finally does not Saint Luke expressly state that the Angel appeared unto Zacharias on the right of the altar burning with incense; whereupon the Venerable Bede observes: "he appeared on the right as a sign that he was the bringer of divine mercy."[2232] But such things never occurred to the examiner. Thinking to embarrass Jeanne, he asked how she came to see the light if it appeared at her side.[2233] Jeanne made no reply, and as if distraught, she said:

"If I were in a wood I should easily hear the Voices coming towards me.... It seems to me to be a Voice right worthy. I believe that this Voice was sent to me by God. After having heard it three times I knew it to be the voice of an angel."

[Footnote 2232: Brehal, Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc, ed. Lanery d'Arc, p. 409.]

[Footnote 2233: See Appendix I, Letter from Doctor G. Dumas.]

"What instruction did this Voice give you for the salvation of your soul?"

"It taught me to live well, to go to church, and it told me to fare forth into France."[2234]

[Footnote 2234: Trial, vol. i, p. 52.]

Then Jeanne related how, by the command of her Voice, she had gone to Vaucouleurs, to Sire Robert de Baudricourt, whom she had recognised without ever having seen him before, how the Duke of Lorraine had summoned her to cure him, and how she had come into France.[2235]

[Footnote 2235: Ibid., pp. 53, 54.]

Thereafter she was brought to say that she knew well that God loved the Duke of Orleans and that concerning him she had had more revelations than concerning any man living, save the King; that she had been obliged to change her woman's dress for man's attire and that her Council had advised her well.[2236]

[Footnote 2236: Ibid., p. 54.]

The letter to the English was read before her. She admitted having dictated it in those terms, with the exception of three passages. She had not said body for body nor chieftain of war; and she had said surrender to the King in the place of surrender to the Maid. That the judges had not tampered with the text of the letter we may assure ourselves by comparing it with other texts, which did not pass through their hands, and which contain the expressions challenged by Jeanne.[2237]

[Footnote 2237: Ibid., pp. 55, 56; vol. v, p. 95.]

In the beginning of her career, she believed that Our Lord, the true King of France, had ordained her to deliver the government of the realm to Charles of Valois, as His deputy. The words in which she gave utterance to this idea are reported by too many persons strangers one to another for us to doubt her having spoken them. "The King shall hold the kingdom as a fief (en commande); the King of France is the lieutenant of the King of Heaven." These are her own words and she did actually say to the Dauphin: "Make a gift of your realm to the King of Heaven."[2238] But we are bound to admit that at Rouen not one of these mystic ideas persists, indeed there they seem altogether beyond her. In all her replies to her examiners, she seems incapable of any abstract reasoning whatsoever and of any speculation however simple, so that it is hard to understand how she should ever have conceived the idea of the temporal rule of Jesus Christ over the Land of the Lilies. There is nothing in her speech or in her thoughts to suggest such meditations, wherefore we are led to believe that this politico-theology had been taught her in her tender, teachable years by ecclesiastics desiring to remove the woes of Church and kingdom, but that she had failed to seize its spirit or grasp its inner meaning. Now, in the midst of a hard life lived with men-at-arms, whose simple souls accorded better with her own than the more cultivated minds of the early directors of her meditations, she had forgotten even the phraseology in which those suggested meditations were expressed. Interrogated concerning her coming to Chinon, she replied:

"Without let or hindrance I went to my King. When I reached the town of Sainte-Catherine de Fierbois, I sent first to the town of Chateau-Chinon, where my King was. I arrived there about the hour of noon and lodged in an inn, and, after dinner, I went to my King who was in his castle."

[Footnote 2238: Trial, vol. ii, p. 456; vol. iii, pp. 91, 92. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 104. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 152, 153. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, pp. 131-133. Le P. Ayroles, La vraie Jeanne d'Arc, vol. iv, p. 440, ch. i, La royaute de Jesus Christ.]

If we may believe the registrars, they never ceased wondering at her memory. They were amazed that she should recollect exactly what she had said a week before.[2239] Nevertheless her memory was sometimes curiously uncertain, and we have reason for thinking with the Bastard that she waited two days at the inn before being received by the King.[2240]

[Footnote 2239: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 89, 142, 161, 176, 178, 201.]

[Footnote 2240: Ibid., p. 4.]

With regard to this audience in the castle of Chinon, she told her judges she had recognised the King as she had recognised the Sire de Baudricourt, by revelation.[2241]

[Footnote 2241: Ibid., vol. i, p. 56.]

The interrogator asked her: "When the Voice revealed your King to you, was there any light?"[2242]

[Footnote 2242: Ibid., p. 56.]

This question bore upon matters which were of great moment to her judges; for they suspected the Maid of having committed a sacrilegious fraud, or rather witchcraft, with the complicity of the King of France. Indeed, they had learnt from their informers that Jeanne boasted of having given the King a sign in the form of a precious crown.[2243] The following is the actual truth of the matter:

[Footnote 2243: We find it impossible to agree with Quicherat (Apercus nouveaux) and admit that Jeanne gradually invented the fable of the crown during her examination and while her judges were questioning her as to "the sign." The manner in which the judges conducted this part of their examination proves that they were acquainted with the whole of the extraordinary story.]

The legend of Saint Catherine relates that on a day she received from the hand of an angel a resplendent crown and placed it on the head of the Empress of the Romans. This crown was the symbol of eternal blessedness.[2244] Jeanne, who had been brought up on this legend, said that the same thing had happened to her. In France she had told sundry marvellous stories of crowns, and in one of these stories she imagined herself to be in the great hall of the castle at Chinon, in the midst of the barons, receiving a crown from the hand of an angel to give it to her King.[2245] This was true in a spiritual sense, for she had taken Charles to his anointing and to his coronation. Jeanne was not quick to grasp the distinction between two kinds of truth. She may, nevertheless, have doubted the material reality of this vision. She may even have held it to be true in a spiritual sense only. In any case, she had of her own accord promised Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret not to speak of it to her judges.[2246]

[Footnote 2244: Legenda Aurea, ed. 1846, pp. 789 et seq.]

[Footnote 2245: Trial, vol. i, pp. 120-122.]

[Footnote 2246: Ibid., p. 90.]

"Saw you any angel above the King?"

She refused to reply.[2247]

[Footnote 2247: Ibid., p. 56.]

This time nothing more was said of the crown. Maitre Jean Beaupere asked Jeanne if she often heard the Voice.

"Not a day passes without my hearing it. And it is my stay in great need."[2248]

[Footnote 2248: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 57.]

She never spoke of her Voices without describing them as her refuge and relief, her consolation and her joy. Now all theologians agreed in believing that good spirits when they depart leave the soul filled with joy, with peace, and with comfort, and as proof they cited the angel's words to Zacharias and Mary: "Be not afraid."[2249] This reason, however, was not strong enough to persuade clerks of the English party that Voices hostile to the English were of God.

[Footnote 2249: Jean Brehal, Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc, ed. Lanery d'Arc, p. 409.]

And the Maid added: "Never have I required of them any other final reward than the salvation of my soul."[2250]

[Footnote 2250: Trial, vol. iii, p. 57.]

The examination ended with a capital charge: the attack on Paris on a feast day. It was in this connection possibly that Brother Jacques of Touraine, a friar of the Franciscan order, who from time to time put a question, asked Jeanne whether she had ever been in a place where Englishmen were being slain.

"In God's name, was I ever in such a place?" Jeanne responded vehemently. "How glibly you speak. Why did they not depart from France and go into their own country?"

A nobleman of England, who was in the chamber, on hearing these words, said to his neighbours: "By my troth she is a good woman. Why is she not English?"[2251]

[Footnote 2251: Ibid., p. 48.]

The third public sitting was appointed for two days thence, Saturday, the 24th of February.[2252]

[Footnote 2252: Ibid., vol. i, p. 57.]

It was Lent. Jeanne observed the fast very strictly.[2253]

[Footnote 2253: Ibid., pp. 61, 70.]

On Friday, the 23rd, in the morning, she was awakened by her Voices themselves. She arose from her bed and remained seated, her hands clasped, giving thanks. Then she asked what she should reply to her judges, beseeching the Voices thereupon to take counsel of Our Lord. First the Voices uttered words she could not understand. That happened sometimes, in difficult circumstances especially. Then they said:[2254] "Reply boldly, God will aid thee."

[Footnote 2254: Trial, vol. i, p. 62.]

That day she heard them a second time at the hour of vespers and a third time when the bells were ringing the Ave Maria in the evening. In the night of Friday and Saturday they came and revealed to her many secrets for the weal of the King of France. Thereupon she received great consolation.[2255] Very probably they repeated the assurance that she would be delivered from the hands of her enemies, and that on the other hand her judges stood in great danger.

[Footnote 2255: Ibid., pp. 61-64.]

She depended absolutely on her Voices for direction. When she was in difficulty as to what to say to her judges, she prayed to Our Lord; she addressed him devoutly, saying: "Good God, for the sake of thy holy Passion, I beseech thee if thou lovest me to reveal unto me what I should reply to these churchmen. Touching my dress I know well how I was commanded to put it on; but as to leaving it I know nothing. In this may it please thee to teach me."