[Footnote 2432: Recueil des historiens de la France, vol. xx, p. 601; vol. xxi, p. 34. Histoire litteraire de la France, vol. xxvii, p. 70.]

On the 28th of April, the University, meeting in its general assembly at Saint-Bernard, charged the Holy Faculty of Theology and the Venerable Faculty of Decrees with the examination of the twelve articles.[2433]

[Footnote 2433: Trial, vol. i, pp. 407, 413, 420. M. Fournier, La faculte de decret de l'Universite de Paris, p. 353. Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iv, pp. 510 et seq.]

On the 14th of May, the deliberations of the two Faculties were submitted to all the Faculties in solemn assembly, who ratified them and made them their own. The University then sent them to King Henry, beseeching his Royal Majesty to execute justice promptly, in order that the people, so greatly scandalised by this woman, be brought back to good doctrine and holy faith.[2434] It is worthy of notice that in a trial, in which the Pope, represented by the Vice-Inquisitor, was one judge, and the King, represented by the Bishop, another, the Eldest Daughter of Kings[2435] should have communicated directly with the King of France, the guardian of her privileges.

[Footnote 2434: Trial, vol. i, pp. 407, 408. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 42.]

[Footnote 2435: The University of Paris (W.S.).]

According to the Sacred Faculty of Theology, Jeanne's apparitions were fictitious, lying, deceptive, inspired by devils. The sign given to the King was a presumptuous and pernicious lie, derogatory to the dignity of angels. Jeanne's belief in the visitations of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret was an error rash and injurious because Jeanne placed it on the same plane as the truths of religion. Jeanne's predictions were but superstitions, idle divinations and vain boasting. Her statement that she wore man's dress by the command of God was blasphemy, a violation of divine law and ecclesiastical sanction, a contemning of the sacraments and tainted with idolatry. In the letters she had dictated, Jeanne appeared treacherous, perfidious, cruel, sanguinary, seditious, blasphemous and in favour of tyranny. In setting out for France she had broken the commandment to honour father and mother, she had given an occasion for scandal, she had committed blasphemy and had fallen from the faith. In the leap from Beaurevoir, she had displayed a pusillanimity bordering on despair and homicide; and, moreover, it had caused her to utter rash statements touching the remission of her sin and erroneous pronouncements concerning free will. By proclaiming her confidence in her salvation, she uttered presumptuous and pernicious lies; by saying that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret did not speak English, she blasphemed these saints and violated the precept: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour." The honours she rendered these saints were nought but idolatry and the worship of devils. Her refusal to submit her doings to the Church tended to schism, to the denial of the unity and authority of the Church and to apostasy.[2436]

[Footnote 2436: Trial, vol. i, pp. 414, 419.]

The doctors of the Faculty of Theology were very learned. They knew who the three evil spirits were whom Jeanne in her delusion took for Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret. They were Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. Belial, worshipped by the people of Sidon, was sometimes represented as an angel of great beauty; he is the demon of disobedience. Satan is the Lord of Hell; and Behemoth is a dull, heavy creature, who feeds on hay like an ox.[2437]

[Footnote 2437: Ibid., p. 414. Migne, Dictionnaire des sciences occultes.]

The venerable Faculty of Decrees decided that this schismatic, this erring woman, this apostate, this liar, this soothsayer, be charitably exhorted and duly warned by competent judges, and that if notwithstanding she persisted in refusing to abjure her error, she must be given up to the secular arm to receive due chastisement.[2438] Such were the deliberations and decisions which the Venerable University of Paris submitted to the examination and to the verdict of the Holy Apostolic See and of the sacrosanct General Council.

[Footnote 2438: Trial, vol. i, pp. 417, 420.]

Meanwhile, where were the clerks of France? Had they nothing to say in this matter? Had they no decision to submit to the Pope and to the Council? Why did they not urge their opinions in opposition to those of the Faculties of Paris? Why did they keep silence? Jeanne demanded the record of the Poitiers trial. Wherefore did those Poitiers doctors, who had recommended the King to employ the Maid lest, by rejecting her, he should refuse the gift of the Holy Spirit, fail to send the record to Rouen?[2439] Before the Maid espoused their waning cause, these Poitiers doctors, these magistrates, these University professors banished from Paris, advocates and counsellors of an exiled Parlement, had not a robe to their backs nor shoes for their children. Now, thanks to the Maid, they were every day regaining new hope and vigour. And yet they left her, who had so nobly served their King, to be treated as a heretic and a reprobate. Where were Brother Pasquerel, Friar Richard, and all those churchmen who but lately surrounded her in France and who looked to go with her to the Crusade against the Bohemians and the Turks? Why did they not demand a safe-conduct and come and give evidence at the trial? Or at least why did they not send their evidence? Why did not the Archbishop of Embrun, who but recently gave such noble counsels to the King, send some written statement in favour of the Maid to the judges at Rouen? My Lord of Reims, Chancellor of the Kingdom, had said that she was proud but not heretical. Wherefore now, acting contrary to his own interests and honour, did he refrain from testifying in favour of her through whom he had recovered his episcopal city? Wherefore did he not assert his right and do his duty as metropolitan and censure and suspend his suffragan, the Bishop of Beauvais, who was guilty of prevarication in the administration of justice? Why did not the illustrious clerics, whom King Charles had appointed deputies at the Council of Bale, undertake to bring the cause of the Maid before the Council? And finally, why did not the priests, the ecclesiastics of the realm, with one voice demand an appeal to the Holy Father?

[Footnote 2439: From a theological point of view the record of the Poitiers trial may have been insignificant; but at any rate it contained the arguments presented to the King and the memoranda of Gelu and of Gerson.]

They all with one accord, as if struck dumb with astonishment, remained passive and silent. Can they have feared that too searching a light would be cast on Jeanne's cause by that illustrious University, that Sun of the Church, which was consulted on religious matters by all Christian states? Can they have suspected that this woman, who in France had been considered a saint, might after all have been inspired by the devil? But if what they had once believed they still held to be true, if they believed that the Maid had come from God to lead their King to his glorious coronation, then what are we to think of those clerks, those ecclesiastics who denied the Daughter of God, on the eve of her passion?



CHAPTER XIII

THE ABJURATION—THE FIRST SENTENCE

On Saturday, the 19th of May, the doctors and masters, to the number of fifty, assembled in the archiepiscopal chapel of Rouen. There they unanimously declared their agreement with the decision of the University of Paris; and my Lord of Beauvais ordained that a new charitable admonition be addressed to Jeanne.[2440] Accordingly, on Wednesday the 23rd, the Bishop, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the Promoter went to a room in the castle, near Jeanne's cell. They were accompanied by seven doctors and masters, by the Lord Bishop of Noyon and by the Lord Bishop of Therouanne.[2441] The latter, brother to Messire Jean de Luxembourg who had sold the Maid, was held one of the most notable personages of the Great Council of England; he was Chancellor of France for King Henry, as Messire Regnault de Chartres was for King Charles.[2442]

[Footnote 2440: Trial, vol. i, pp. 404, 429.]

[Footnote 2441: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 429, 430.]

[Footnote 2442: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 126-127.]

The accused was brought in, and Maitre Pierre Maurice, doctor in theology, read to her the twelve articles as they had been abridged and commented upon, in conformity with the deliberations of the University; the whole was drawn up as a discourse addressed to Jeanne directly:[2443]

[Footnote 2443: Trial, vol. i, p. 430.]

ARTICLE I

First, Jeanne, thou saidst that at about the age of thirteen, thou didst receive revelations and behold apparitions of angels and of the Saints, Catherine and Margaret, that thou didst behold them frequently with thy bodily eyes, that they spoke unto thee and do still oftentimes speak unto thee, and that they have said unto thee many things that thou hast fully declared in thy trial.

The clerks of the University of Paris and others have considered the manner of these revelations and apparitions, their object, the substance of the things revealed, the person to whom they were revealed; all points touching them have they considered. And now they pronounce these revelations and apparitions to be either lying fictions, deceptive and dangerous, or superstitions, proceeding from spirits evil and devilish.

ARTICLE II

Item, thou hast said that thy King received a sign, by which he knew that thou wast sent of God: to wit that Saint Michael, accompanied by a multitude of angels, certain of whom had wings, others crowns, and with whom were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, came to thee in the town of Chateau-Chinon; and that they all entered with thee and went up the staircase of the castle, into the chamber of thy King, before whom the angel who wore the crown made obeisance. And once didst thou say that this crown which thou callest a sign, was delivered to the Archbishop of Reims who gave it to thy King, in the presence of a multitude of princes and lords whom thou didst call by name.

Now concerning this sign, the aforesaid clerks declare it to lack verisimilitude, to be a presumptuous lie, deceptive, pernicious, a thing counterfeited and attacking the dignity of angels.

ARTICLE III

Item, thou hast said that thou knewest the angels and the saints by the good counsel, the comfort and the instruction they gave thee, because they told thee their names and because the saints saluted thee. Thou didst believe also that it was Saint Michael who appeared unto thee; and that the deeds and sayings of this angel and these saints are good thou didst believe as firmly as thou believest in Christ.

Now the clerks declare such signs to be insufficient for the recognition of the said saints and angels. The clerks maintain that thou hast lightly believed and rashly affirmed, and further that when thou sayst thou dost believe as firmly etc., thou dost err from the faith.

ARTICLE IV

Item, thou hast said thou art assured of certain things which are to come, that thou hast known hidden things, that thou hast also recognized men whom thou hadst never seen before, and this by the Voices of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

Thereupon the clerks declare that in these sayings are superstition, divination, presumptuous assertion and vain boasting.

ARTICLE V

Item, thou hast said that by God's command and according to his will, thou hast worn and dost still wear man's apparel. Because thou hast God's commandment to wear this dress thou hast donned a short tunic, jerkin, and hose with many points. Thou dost even wear thy hair cut short above the ears, without keeping about thee anything to denote the feminine sex, save what nature hath given thee. And oftentimes hast thou in this garb received the Sacrament of the Eucharist. And albeit thou hast been many times admonished to leave it, thou wouldest not, saying that thou wouldst liefer die than quit this apparel, unless it were by God's command; and that if thou wert still in this dress and with those of thine own party it would be for the great weal of France. Thou sayest also that for nothing wouldst thou take an oath not to wear this dress and bear these arms; and for all this that thou doest thou dost plead divine command.

In such matters the clerks declare that thou blasphemest against God, despising him and his Sacraments, that thou dost transgress divine law, Holy Scripture and the canons of the Church, that thou thinkest evil and dost err from the faith, that thou art full of vain boasting, that thou art addicted to idolatry and worship of thyself and thy clothes, according to the customs of the heathen.

ARTICLE VI

Item, thou hast often said, that in thy letters thou hast put these names, Jhesus Maria, and the sign of the cross, to warn those to whom thou didst write not to do what was indicated in the letter. In other letters thou hast boasted that thou wouldst slay all those who did not obey thee, and that by thy blows thou wouldst prove who had God on his side. Also hast thou oftentimes said that all thy deeds were by revelation and according to divine command.

Touching such affirmations the clerks declare thee to be a traitor, perfidious, cruel, desiring human bloodshed, seditious, an instigator of tyranny, a blasphemer of God's commandments and revelations.

ARTICLE VII

Item, thou sayest that according to revelations vouchsafed unto thee at the age of seventeen, thou didst leave thy parents' house against their will, driving them almost mad. Thou didst go to Robert de Baudricourt, who, at thy request, gave thee man's apparel and a sword, also men-at-arms to take thee to thy King. And being come to the King, thou didst say unto him that his enemies should be driven away, thou didst promise to bring him into a great kingdom, to make him victorious over his foes, and that for this God had sent thee. These things thou sayest thou didst accomplish in obedience to God and according to revelation.

In such things the clerks declare thee to have been irreverent to thy father and mother, thus disobeying God's command; to have given occasion for scandal, to have blasphemed, to have erred from the faith and to have made a rash and presumptuous promise.

ARTICLE VIII

Item, thou hast said, that voluntarily thou didst leap from the Tower of Beaurevoir, preferring rather to die than to be delivered into the hands of the English and to live after the destruction of Compiegne. And albeit Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret forbade thee to leap, thou couldst not restrain thyself. And despite the great sin thou hast committed in offending these saints, thou didst know by thy Voices, that after thy confession, thy sin was forgiven thee.

This deed the clerks declare thee to have committed through cowardice turning to despair and probably to suicide. In this matter likewise thou didst utter a rash and presumptuous statement in asserting that thy sin is forgiven, and thou dost err from the faith touching the doctrine of free will.

ARTICLE IX

Item, thou hast said that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret promised to lead thee to Paradise provided thou didst remain a virgin; and that thou hadst vowed and promised them to cherish thy virginity, and of that thou art as well assured as if already thou hadst entered into the glory of the Blessed. Thou believest that thou hast not committed mortal sin. And it seemeth to thee that if thou wert in mortal sin the saints would not visit thee daily as they do.

Such an assertion the clerks pronounce to be a pernicious lie, presumptuous and rash, that therein lieth a contradiction of what thou hadst previously said, and that finally thy beliefs do err from the true Christian faith.

ARTICLE X

Item, thou hast declared it to be within thy knowledge that God loveth certain living persons better than thee, and that this thou hast learnt by revelation from Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret: also that those saints speak French, not English, since they are not on the side of the English. And when thou knewest that thy Voices were for thy King, you didst fall to disliking the Burgundians.

Such matters the clerks pronounce to be a rash and presumptuous assertion, a superstitious divination, a blasphemy uttered against Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, and a transgression of the commandment to love our neighbours.

ARTICLE XI

Item, thou hast said that to those whom thou callest Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, thou didst do reverence, bending the knee, taking off thy cap, kissing the ground on which they trod, vowing to them thy virginity: that in the instruction of these saints, whom thou didst invoke and kiss and embrace, thou didst believe as soon as they appeared unto thee, and without seeking counsel from thy priest or from any other ecclesiastic. And, notwithstanding, thou believest that these Voices came from God as firmly as thou believest in the Christian religion and the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover thou hast said that did any evil spirit appear to thee in the form of Saint Michael thou wouldest know such a spirit and distinguish him from the saint. And again hast thou said, that of thine own accord, thou hast sworn not to reveal the sign thou gavest to thy King. And finally thou didst add: "Save at God's command."

Now touching these matters, the clerks affirm that supposing thou hast had the revelations and beheld the apparitions of which thou boastest and in such a manner as thou dost say, then art thou an idolatress, an invoker of demons, an apostate from the faith, a maker of rash statements, a swearer of an unlawful oath.

ARTICLE XII

Item, thou hast said that if the Church wished thee to disobey the orders thou sayest God gave thee, nothing would induce thee to do it; that thou knowest that all the deeds of which thou hast been accused in thy trial were wrought according to the command of God and that it was impossible for thee to do otherwise. Touching these deeds, thou dost refuse to submit to the judgment of the Church on earth or of any living man, and will submit therein to God alone. And moreover thou didst declare this reply itself not to be made of thine own accord but by God's command; despite the article of faith: Unam sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, having been many times declared unto thee, and notwithstanding that it behoveth all Christians to submit their deeds and sayings to the Church militant especially concerning revelations and such like matters.

Wherefore the clerks declare thee to be schismatic, disbelieving in the unity and authority of the Church, apostate and obstinately erring from the faith.[2444]

[Footnote 2444: Trial, vol. i, pp. 430, 437.]

Having completed the reading of the articles, Maitre Pierre Maurice, on the invitation of the Bishop, proceeded to exhort Jeanne. He had been rector of the University of Paris in 1428.[2445] He was esteemed an orator. He it was who, on the 5th of June, had discoursed in the name of the chapter, before King Henry VI on the occasion of his entering Rouen. He would seem to have been distinguished by some knowledge of and taste for ancient letters, and to have been possessed of precious manuscripts, amongst which were the comedies of Terence and the AEneid of Virgil.[2446]

[Footnote 2445: Du Boulay, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. v, p. 929.]

[Footnote 2446: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, p. 88.]

In terms of calculated simplicity did this illustrious doctor call upon Jeanne to reflect on the effects of her words and sayings, and tenderly did he exhort her to submit to the Church. After the wormwood he offered her the honey; he spoke to her in words kind and familiar. With remarkable adroitness he entered into the feelings and inclinations of the maiden's heart. Seeing her filled with knightly enthusiasm and loyalty to King Charles, whose coronation was her doing, he drew his comparisons from chivalry, thereby essaying to prove to her that she ought rather to believe in the Church Militant than in her Voices and apparitions.

"If your King," he said to her, "had appointed you to defend a fortress, forbidding you to let any one enter it, would you not refuse to admit whomsoever claiming to come from him did not present letters and some other token. Likewise, when Our Lord Jesus Christ, on his ascension into heaven, committed to the Blessed Apostle Peter and to his successors the government of his Church, he forbade them to receive such as claimed to come in his name but brought no credentials."

And, to bring home to her how grievous a sin it was to disobey the Church, he recalled the time when she waged war, and put the case of a knight who should disobey his king:

"When you were in your King's dominion," he said to her, "if a knight or some other owing fealty to him had arisen, saying, 'I will not obey the King; I will not submit either to him or to his officers,' would you not have said, 'He is a man to be censured'? What say you then of yourself, you who, engendered in Christ's religion, having become by baptism the daughter of the Church and the bride of Christ, dost now refuse obedience to the officers of Christ, that is, to the prelates of the Church?"[2447]

[Footnote 2447: Trial, vol. i, pp. 437, 441.]

Thus did Maitre Pierre Maurice endeavour to make Jeanne understand him. He did not succeed. Against the courage of this child all the reasons and all the eloquence of the world would have availed nothing. When Maitre Pierre had finished speaking, Jeanne, being asked whether she did not hold herself bound to submit her deeds and sayings to the Church, replied:

"What I have always held and said in the trial that will I maintain.... If I were condemned and saw the fagots lighted, and the executioner ready to stir the fire, and I in the fire, I would say and maintain till I died nought other than what I said during the trial."

At these words the Bishop declared the discussion at an end, and deferred the pronouncing of the sentence till the morrow.[2448]

[Footnote 2448: Ibid., pp. 441, 442.]

The next day, the Thursday after Whitsuntide and the 24th day of May, early in the morning, Maitre Jean Beaupere visited Jeanne in her prison and warned her that she would be shortly taken to the scaffold to hear a sermon.

"If you are a good Christian," he said, "you will agree to submit all your deeds and sayings to Holy Mother Church, and especially to the ecclesiastical judges."

Maitre Jean Beaupere thought he heard her reply, "So I will."[2449]

[Footnote 2449: Trial, vol. ii, p. 21.]

If such were her answer, then it must have been because, worn out by a flight of agony, her physical courage quailed at the thought of death by burning.

Just when he was leaving her, as she stood near a door, Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur gave her the same advice, and in order to induce her to follow it, he made her a false promise:

"Jeanne, believe me," he said. "You have your deliverance in your own hands. Wear the apparel of your sex, and do what shall be required of you. Otherwise you stand in danger of death. If you do as I tell you, good will come to you and no harm. You will be delivered into the hands of the Church."[2450]

[Footnote 2450: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 146. De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 445 et seq.]

She was taken in a cart and with an armed guard to that part of the town called Bourg-l'Abbe, lying beneath the castle walls. And but a short distance away the cart was stopped, in the cemetery of Saint-Ouen, also called les aitres[2451] Saint-Ouen. Here a highly popular fair was held every year on the feast day of the patron saint of the Abbey.[2452] Here it was that Jeanne was to hear the sermon, as so many other unhappy creatures had done before her. Places like this, to which the folk could flock in crowds, were generally chosen for these edifying spectacles. On the border of this vast charnel-house for a hundred years there had towered a parish church, and on the south there rose the nave of the abbey. Against the magnificent edifice of the church two scaffolds had been erected,[2453] one large, the other smaller. They were west of the porch which was called portail des Marmousets, because of the multitudes of tiny figures carved upon it.[2454]

[Footnote 2451: Old name for a cemetery close to a church. Godefroy, Lexique de l'ancien francais (W.S.).]

[Footnote 2452: Trial, vol. ii, p. 351.]

[Footnote 2453: Trial, vol. iii, p. 54.]

[Footnote 2454: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur le cimetiere de Saint-Ouen de Rouen, in Precis analytique des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen 1875-1876, pp. 211, 230, plan. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc et l'authenticite de sa formule, p. 44. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 351.]

On the great scaffold the two judges, the Lord Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor, took their places. They were assisted by the most reverend Cardinal of Winchester, the Lord Bishops of Therouanne, of Noyon, and of Norwich, the Lord Abbots of Fecamp, of Jumieges, of Bec, of Corneilles, of Mont-Saint-Michel-au-Peril-de-la-Mer, of Mortemart, of Preaux, and of Saint-Ouen of Rouen, where the assembly was held, the Priors of Longueville and of Saint-Lo, also many doctors and bachelors in theology, doctors and licentiates in canon and civil law.[2455] Likewise were there many high personages of the English party. The other scaffold was a kind of pulpit. To it ascended the doctor who, according to the use and custom of the Holy Inquisition was to preach the sermon against Jeanne. He was Maitre Guillaume Erard, doctor in theology, canon of the churches of Langres and of Beauvais.[2456] At this time he was very eager to go to Flanders, where he was urgently needed; and he confided to his young servitor, Brother Jean de Lenisoles, that the preaching of this sermon caused him great inconvenience. "I want to be in Flanders," he said. "This affair is very annoying for me."[2457]

[Footnote 2455: Trial, vol. i, pp. 442, 444. O'Reilly, Les deux proces, vol. i, pp. 70-93.]

[Footnote 2456: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 402, 408.]

[Footnote 2457: Trial, vol. iii, p. 113.]

From one point of view, however, he must have been pleased to perform this duty, since it afforded him the opportunity of attacking the King of France, Charles VII, and of thereby showing his devotion to the English cause, to which he was strongly attached.

Jeanne, dressed as a man, was brought up and placed at his side, before all the people.[2458]

[Footnote 2458: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 469, 470.]

Maitre Guillaume Erard began his sermon in the following manner:

"I take as my text the words of God in the Gospel of Saint John, chapter xv: 'The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine.'[2459] Thus it behoveth all Catholics to remain abiding in Holy Mother Church, the true vine, which the hand of Our Lord Jesus Christ hath planted. Now this Jeanne, whom you see before you, falling from error into error, and from crime into crime, hath become separate from the unity of Holy Mother Church and in a thousand manners hath scandalised Christian people."

[Footnote 2459: Ibid., p. 444. E. Richer, Histoire manuscrite de la Pucelle d'Orleans, bk. i, fol. 8; bk. ii, fol. 198, v'o.]

Then he reproached her with having failed, with having sinned against royal Majesty and against God and the Catholic Faith; and all these things must she henceforth eschew under pain of death by burning.

He declaimed vehemently against the pride of this woman. He said that never had there appeared in France a monster so great as that which was manifest in Jeanne; that she was a witch, a heretic, a schismatic, and that the King, who protected her, risked the same reproach from the moment that he became willing to recover his throne with the help of such a heretic.[2460]

[Footnote 2460: Trial, vol. iii, p. 61.]

Towards the middle of his sermon, he cried out with a loud voice:

"Ah! right terribly hast thou been deceived, noble house of France, once the most Christian of houses! Charles, who calls himself thy head and assumes the title of King hath, like a heretic and schismatic, received the words of an infamous woman, abounding in evil works and in all dishonour. And not he alone, but all the clergy in his lordship and dominion, by whom this woman, so she sayeth, hath been examined and not rejected. Full sore is the pity of it."[2461]

[Footnote 2461: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 15, 17.]

Two or three times did Maitre Guillaume repeat these words concerning King Charles. Then pointing at Jeanne with his finger he said:

"It is to you, Jeanne, that I speak; and I say unto you that your King is a heretic and a schismatic."

At these words Jeanne was deeply wounded in her love for the Lilies of France and for King Charles. She was moved with great feeling, and she heard her Voices saying unto her:

"Reply boldly to the preacher who is preaching to you."[2462]

[Footnote 2462: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 456, 457. U. Chevalier, L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 46, 47.]

Then obeying them heartily, she interrupted Maitre Jean:

"By my troth, Messire," she said to him, "saving your reverence, I dare say unto you and swear at the risk of my life, that he is the noblest Christian of all Christians, that none loveth better religion and the Church, and that he is not at all what you say."[2463]

[Footnote 2463: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 15, 17, 335, 345, 353, 367.]

Maitre Guillaume ordered the Usher, Jean Massieu, to silence her.[2464] Then he went on with his sermon, and concluded with these words: "Jeanne, behold my Lords the Judges, who oftentimes have summoned you and required you to submit all your acts and sayings to Mother Church. In these acts and sayings were many things which, so it seemed to these clerics, were good neither to say nor to maintain."[2465]

[Footnote 2464: Ibid., p. 17.]

[Footnote 2465: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 444, 445.]

"I will answer you," said Jeanne. Touching the article of submission to the Church, she recalled how she had asked for all the deeds she had wrought and the words she had uttered to be reported to Rome, to Our Holy Father the Pope, to whom, after God, she appealed. Then she added: "And as for the sayings I have uttered and the deeds I have done, they have all been by God's command."[2466]

[Footnote 2466: Ibid., p. 445.]

She declared that she had not understood that the record of her trial was being sent to Rome to be judged by the Pope.

"I will not have it thus," she said. "I know not what you will insert in the record of these proceedings. I demand to be taken to the Pope and questioned by him."[2467]

[Footnote 2467: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 358.]

They urged her to incriminate her King. But they wasted their breath.

"For my deeds and sayings I hold no man responsible, neither my King nor another."[2468]

[Footnote 2468: Ibid., vol. i, p. 445.]

"Will you abjure all your deeds and sayings? Will you abjure such of your deeds and sayings as have been condemned by the clerks?"

"I appeal to God and to Our Holy Father, the Pope."

"But that is not sufficient. We cannot go so far to seek the Pope. Each Ordinary is judge in his own diocese. Wherefore it is needful for you to appeal to Our Holy Mother Church, and to hold as true all that clerks and folks well learned in the matter say and determine touching your actions and your sayings."[2469]

[Footnote 2469: Trial, vol. i, pp. 445, 446.]

Admonished with yet a third admonition, Jeanne refused to recant.[2470] With confidence she awaited the deliverance promised by her Voices, certain that of a sudden there would come men-at-arms from France and that in one great tumult of fighting-men and angels she would be liberated. That was why she had insisted on retaining man's attire.

[Footnote 2470: Ibid., p. 446.]

Two sentences had been prepared: one for the case in which the accused should abjure her error, the other for the case in which she should persevere. By the first there was removed from Jeanne the ban of excommunication. By the second, the tribunal, declaring that it could do nothing more for her, abandoned her to the secular arm. The Lord Bishop had them both with him.[2471]

[Footnote 2471: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 146.]

He took the second and began to read: "In the name of the Lord, Amen. All the pastors of the Church who have it in their hearts faithfully to tend their flocks...."[2472]

[Footnote 2472: Ibid., vol. i, p. 473.]

Meanwhile, as he read, the clerks who were round Jeanne urged her to recant, while there was yet time. Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur exhorted her to do as he had recommended, and to put on woman's dress.[2473]

[Footnote 2473: Trial, vol. iii, p. 146.]

Maitre Guillaume Erard was saying: "Do as you are advised and you will be delivered from prison."[2474]

[Footnote 2474: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 17, 331; vol. iii, pp. 52, 156.]

Then straightway came the Voices unto her and said: "Jeanne, passing sore is our pity for you! You must recant what you have said, or we abandon you to secular justice.... Jeanne, do as you are advised. Jeanne, will you bring death upon yourself!"[2475]

[Footnote 2475: Ibid., p. 123.]

The sentence was long and the Lord Bishop read slowly:

"We judges, having Christ before our eyes and also the honour of the true faith, in order that our judgment may proceed from the Lord himself, do say and decree that thou hast been a liar, an inventor of revelations and apparitions said to be divine; a deceiver, pernicious, presumptuous, light of faith, rash, superstitious, a soothsayer, a blasphemer against God and his saints. We declare thee to be a contemner of God even in his sacraments, a prevaricator of divine law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanction, seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, having committed a thousand errors against religion, and by all these tokens rashly guilty towards God and Holy Church.[2476]"

[Footnote 2476: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 474, 475.]

Time was passing. Already the Lord Bishop had uttered the greater part of the sentence.[2477] The executioner was there, ready to take off the condemned in his cart.[2478]

[Footnote 2477: Ibid., p. 473 note.]

[Footnote 2478: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 65, 147, 149, 273. De Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces, p. 358.]

Then suddenly, with hands clasped, Jeanne cried that she was willing to obey the Church.[2479]

[Footnote 2479: Trial, vol. ii, p. 323.]

The judge paused in the reading of the sentence.

An uproar arose in the crowd, consisting largely of English men-at-arms and officers of King Henry. Ignorant of the customs of the Inquisition, which had not been introduced into their country, these Godons could not understand what was going on; all they knew was that the witch was saved. Now they held Jeanne's death to be necessary for the welfare of England; wherefore the unaccountable actions of these doctors and the Lord Bishop threw them into a fury. In their Island witches were not treated thus; no mercy was shown them, and they were burned speedily. Angry murmurs arose; stones were thrown at the registrars of the trial.[2480] Maitre Pierre Maurice, who was doing his best to strengthen Jeanne in the resolution she had taken, was threatened and the coues very nearly made short work with him.[2481] Neither did Maitre Jean Beaupere and the delegates from the University of Paris escape their share of the insults. They were accused of favouring Jeanne's errors.[2482] Who better than they knew the injustice of these reproaches?

[Footnote 2480: Ibid., pp. 137, 376.]

[Footnote 2481: Ibid., p. 356; vol. iii, pp. 157, 178.]

[Footnote 2482: Ibid., p. 55.]

Certain of the high personages sitting on the platform at the side of the judge complained to the Lord Bishop that he had not gone on to the end of the sentence but had admitted Jeanne to repentance.

He was even reproached with insults, for one was heard to cry: "You shall pay for this."

He threatened to suspend the trial.

"I have been insulted," he said. "I will proceed no further until honourable amends have been done me."[2483]

[Footnote 2483: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 90, 147, 156.]

In the tumult, Maitre Guillaume Erard unfolded a double sheet of paper, and read Jeanne the form of abjuration, written down according to the opinion of the masters. It was no longer than the Lord's Prayer and consisted of six or seven lines of writing. It was in French and began with these words: "I, Jeanne...." The Maid submitted therein to the sentence, the judgment, and the commandment of the Church; she acknowledged having committed the crime of high treason and having deceived the people. She undertook never again to bear arms or to wear man's dress or her hair cut round her ears.[2484]

[Footnote 2484: Ibid., pp. 52, 65, 132, 156, 197. U. Chevalier, L'Abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc.]

When Maitre Guillaume had read the document, Jeanne declared she did not understand it, and wished to be advised thereupon.[2485] She was heard to ask counsel of Saint Michael.[2486] She still believed firmly in her Voices, albeit they had not aided her in her dire necessity, neither had spared her the shame of denying them. For, simple as she was, at the bottom of her heart she knew well what the clerks were asking of her; she realised that they would not let her go until she had pronounced a great recantation. All that she said was merely in order to gain time and because she was afraid of death; yet she could not bring herself to lie.

[Footnote 2485: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 156, 157 (evidence of Jean Massieu, Usher of the court).]

[Footnote 2486: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 323.]

Without losing a moment Maitre Guillaume said to Messire Jean Massieu, the Usher: "Advise her touching this abjuration."

And he passed him the document.[2487]

[Footnote 2487: Trial, vol. iii, p. 157.]

Messire Jean Massieu at first made excuse, but afterwards he complied and warned Jeanne of the danger she was running by her refusal to recant.

"You must know," he said, "that if you oppose any of these articles you will be burned. I counsel you to appeal to the Church Universal as to whether you should abjure these articles or not."

Maitre Guillaume Erard asked Jean Massieu: "Well, what are you saying to her?"

Jean Massieu replied: "I make known unto Jeanne the text of the deed of abjuration and I urge her to sign it. But she declares that she knoweth not whether she will."

At this juncture, Jeanne, who was still being pressed to sign, said aloud: "I wish the Church to deliberate on the articles. I appeal to the Church Universal as to whether I should abjure them. Let the document be read by the Church and the clerks into whose hands I am to be delivered. If it be their counsel that I ought to sign it and do what I am told, then willingly will I do it."[2488]

[Footnote 2488: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 331; vol. iii, p. 157. This deed, written in a large hand and containing but a few lines, appears to be an abridgment of that contained in the Trial, vol. i, pp. 447, 448 (cf. vol. iii, pp. 156, 197).]

Maitre Guillaume Erard replied: "Do it now, or you will be burned this very day."

And he forbade Jean Massieu to confer with her any longer.

Whereupon Jeanne said that she would liefer sign than be burned.[2489]

[Footnote 2489: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 156, 197.]

Then straightway Messire Jean Massieu gave her a second reading of the deed of abjuration. And she repeated the words after the Usher. As she spoke her countenance seemed to express a kind of sneer. It may have been that her features were contracted by the violent emotions which swayed her and that the horrors and tortures of an ecclesiastical trial may have overclouded her reason, subject at all times to strange vagaries, and that after such bitter suffering there may have come upon her the actual paroxysm of madness. On the other hand it may have been that with sound sense and calm mind she was mocking at the clerks of Rouen; she was quite capable of it, for she had mocked at the clerks of Poitiers. At any rate she had a jesting air, and the bystanders noticed that she pronounced the words of her abjuration with a smile.[2490] And her gaiety, whether real or apparent, roused the wrath of those burgesses, priests, artisans, and men-at-arms who desired her death.

[Footnote 2490: Trial, vol. ii, p. 338; vol. iii, p. 147.]

"'Tis all a mockery. Jeanne doth but jest,"[2491] they cried.

[Footnote 2491: Ibid., pp. 55, 143.]

Among the most irate was Master Lawrence Calot, Secretary to the King of England. He was seen to be in a violent rage and to approach first the judge and then the accused. A noble of Picardy who was present, the very same who had essayed familiarities with Jeanne in the Castle of Beaurevoir, thought he saw this Englishman forcing Jeanne to sign a paper.[2492] He was mistaken. In every crowd there are those who see things that never happen. The Bishop would not have permitted such a thing; he was devoted to the Regent, but on a question of form he would never have given way. Meanwhile, under this storm of insults, amidst the throwing of stones and the clashing of swords, these illustrious masters, these worthy doctors grew pale. The Prior of Longueville was awaiting an opportunity to make an apology to the Cardinal of Winchester.[2493]

[Footnote 2492: Ibid., p. 123.]

[Footnote 2493: Trial, vol. ii, p. 361. J. Quicherat, Apercus nouveaux, p. 135.]

On the platform a chaplain of the Cardinal violently accused the Lord Bishop. "You do wrong to accept such an abjuration. 'Tis a mere mockery," he said.

"You lie," retorted my Lord Pierre. "I, the judge of a religious suit, ought to seek the salvation of this woman rather than her death."

The Cardinal silenced his chaplain.[2494]

[Footnote 2494: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 147, 156.]

It is said that the Earl of Warwick came up to the judges and complained of what they had done, adding: "The King is not well served, since Jeanne escapes."

And it is stated that one of them replied: "Have no fear, my Lord. She will not escape us long."[2495]

[Footnote 2495: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 376.]

It is hardly credible that any one should have actually said so, but doubtless there were many at that time who thought it.

With what scorn must the Bishop of Beauvais have regarded those dull minds, incapable of understanding the service he was rendering to Old England by forcing this damsel to acknowledge that all she had declared and maintained in honour of her King was but lying and illusion.

With a pen that Massieu gave her Jeanne made a cross at the bottom of the deed.[2496]

[Footnote 2496: Ibid., p. 17; vol. iii, p. 164.]

In the midst of howls and oaths from the English, my Lord of Beauvais read the more merciful of the sentences. It relieved Jeanne from excommunication and reconciled her to Holy Mother Church.[2497] Further the sentence ran:

"... Because thou hast rashly sinned against God and Holy Church, we, thy judges, that thou mayest do salutary penance, out of our Grace and moderation, do condemn thee finally and definitely to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction, so that there thou mayest weep over thy offences and commit no other that may be an occasion of weeping."[2498]

[Footnote 2497: Trial, vol. i, pp. 450, 452.]

[Footnote 2498: Ibid., p. 452.]

This penalty, like all other penalties, save death and mutilation, lay within the power of ecclesiastical judges. They inflicted it so frequently that in the early days of the Holy Inquisition, the Fathers of the Council of Narbonne said that stones and mortar would become as scarce as money.[2499] It was a penalty doubtless, but one which in character and significance differed from the penalties inflicted by secular courts; it was a penance. According to the mercy of ecclesiastical law, prison was a place suitable for repentance, where, in one perpetual penance, the condemned might eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction.

[Footnote 2499: L. Tanon, Tribunaux de l'inquisition, p. 454.]

How foolish was he, who by refusing to enter that prison or by escaping from it, should reject the salutary healing of his soul! By so doing he was fleeing from the gentle tribunal of penance, and the Church in sadness cut him off from the communion of the faithful. By inflicting this penalty, which a good Catholic must needs regard rather as a favour than a punishment, my Lord the Bishop and my Lord the Holy Vicar of the Inquisition were conforming to the custom, whereby our Holy Mother Church became reconciled to heretics. But had they power to execute their sentence? The prison to which they condemned Jeanne, the expiatory prison, the salutary confinement, must be in a dungeon of the Church. Could they send her there?

Jeanne, turning towards them, said: "Now, you Churchmen, take me to your prison. Let me be no longer in the hands of the English."[2500]

[Footnote 2500: Trial, vol. ii, p. 14.]

Many of those clerics had promised it to her.[2501] They had deceived her. They knew it was not possible; for it had been stipulated that the King of England's men should resume possession of Jeanne after the trial.[2502]

[Footnote 2501: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 52, 149.]

[Footnote 2502: Ibid., vol. i, p. 19.]

The Lord Bishop gave the order: "Take her back to the place whence you brought her."[2503]

[Footnote 2503: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 14.]

He, a judge of the Church, committed the crime of surrendering the Church's daughter reconciled and penitent, to laymen. Among them she could not mourn over her sins; and they, hating her body and caring nought for her soul, were to tempt her and cause her to fall back into error.

While Jeanne was being taken back in the cart to her tower in the fields, the soldiers insulted her and their captains did not rebuke them.[2504]

[Footnote 2504: Ibid., p. 376.]

Thereafter, the Vice-Inquisitor and with him divers doctors and masters, went to her prison and charitably exhorted her. She promised to wear woman's apparel, and to let her head be shaved.[2505]

[Footnote 2505: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 452-453.]

The Duchess of Bedford, knowing that she was a virgin, saw to it that she was treated with respect.[2506] As the ladies of Luxembourg had done formerly, she essayed to persuade her to wear the clothing of her sex. By a certain tailor, one Jeannotin Simon, she had had made for Jeanne a gown which she had hitherto refused to wear. Jeannotin brought the garment to the prisoner, who this time did not refuse it. In putting it on, Jeannotin touched her bosom, which she resented. She boxed his ears;[2507] but she consented to wear the gown provided by the Duchess.

[Footnote 2506: Trial, vol. iii, p. 155.]

[Footnote 2507: Ibid., p. 89.]



CHAPTER XIV

THE TRIAL FOR RELAPSE—SECOND SENTENCE—DEATH OF THE MAID

On the following Sunday, which was Trinity Sunday, there arose a rumour that Jeanne had resumed man's apparel. The report spread rapidly from the castle down the narrow streets where lived the clerks in the shadow of the cathedral. Straightway notaries and assessors hastened to the tower which looked on the fields.

In the outer court of the castle they found some hundred men-at-arms, who welcomed them with threats and curses.[2508] These fellows did not yet understand that the judges had conducted the trial so as to bring honour to old England and dishonour to the French. They did not realise what it meant when the Maid of the Armagnacs, who hitherto had obstinately persisted in her utterances, was at length brought to confess her impostures. They did not see how great was the advantage to their country when it was published abroad throughout the world that Charles of Valois had been conducted to his coronation by a heretic. But no, the only idea these brutes were capable of grasping was the burning of the girl prisoner who had struck terror into their hearts. The doctors and masters they treated as traitors, false counsellors and Armagnacs.[2509]

[Footnote 2508: Trial, vol. iii, p. 148.]

[Footnote 2509: Trial, vol. ii, p. 14; vol. iii, p. 148.]

In the castle yard is Maitre Andre Marguerie, bachelor in decrees, archdeacon of Petit-Caux, King's Counsellor,[2510] who is inquiring what has happened. He had displayed great assiduity in the trial. The Maid he held to be a crafty damsel.[2511] Now again he desired to give an expert's judgment touching what had just occurred.

[Footnote 2510: De Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges, pp. 82 et seq.]

[Footnote 2511: Trial, vol. ii, p. 354.]

"That Jeanne is to be seen dressed as a man is not everything," he said. "We must know what motives induced her to resume masculine attire."

Maitre Andre Marguerie was an eloquent orator, one of the shining lights of the Council of Constance. But, when a man-at-arms raised his axe against him and called out "Traitor! Armagnac!" Maitre Marguerie asked no further questions, but speedily departed, and went to bed very sick.[2512]

[Footnote 2512: Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 158, 180.]

The next day, Monday the 25th, there came to the castle the Vice-Inquisitor, accompanied by divers doctors and masters. The Registrar, Messire Guillaume Manchon, was summoned. He was such a coward that he dared not come save under the escort of one of the Earl of Warwick's men-at-arms.[2513] They found Jeanne wearing man's apparel, jerkin and short tunic, with a hood covering her shaved head. Her face was in tears and disfigured by terrible suffering.[2514]

[Footnote 2513: Ibid., vol. i, p. 454; vol. iii, p. 148.]

[Footnote 2514: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 5. Isambart's evidence refers to this day, the 28th.]

She was asked when and why she had assumed this attire.

She replied: "'Tis but now that I have donned man's dress and put off woman's."

"Wherefore did you put it on and who made you?"

"I put it on of my own will and without constraint. I had liefer wear man's dress than woman's."

"You promised and swore not to wear man's dress."

"I never meant to take an oath not to wear it."

"Wherefore did you return to it?"

"Because it is more seemly to take it and wear man's dress, being amongst men, than to wear woman's dress.... I returned to it because the promise made me was not kept, to wit, that I should go to mass and should receive my Saviour and be loosed from my bonds."

"Did you not abjure, and promise not to return to this dress?"

"I had liefer die than be in bonds. But if I be allowed to go to mass and taken out of my bonds and put in a prison of grace, and given a woman to be with me, I will be good and do as the Church shall command."

"Have you heard your Voices since Thursday?"

"Yes."

"What did they say unto you?"

"They told me that through Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret God gave me to wit his sore pity for the treachery, to which I consented in abjuring and recanting to save my life, and that in saving my life I was losing my soul. Before Thursday my Voices had told me what I should do and what I did do on that day. On the scaffold my Voices told me to reply boldly to the preacher. He is a false preacher.... Many things did he say that I have never done. If I were to say that God has not sent me I should be damned. It is true that God has sent me. My Voices have since told me that by confessing I committed a great wickedness which I ought never to have done. All that I said I uttered through fear of the fire."[2515]

[Footnote 2515: Trial, vol. i, pp. 455-457.]

Thus spake Jeanne in sore sorrow. And now what becomes of those monkish tales of attempted violence related long afterwards by a registrar and two churchmen?[2516] And how can Messire Massieu make us believe that Jeanne, unable to find her petticoats, put on her hose in order not to appear before her guards unclothed?[2517] The truth is very different. It is Jeanne herself who confesses bravely and simply. She repented of her abjuration, as of the greatest sin she had ever committed. She could not forgive herself for having lied through fear of death. Her Voices, who, before the sermon at Saint-Ouen had foretold that she would deny them, now came to her and spoke of "the sore pity of her treachery." Could they say otherwise since they were the voices of her own heart? And could Jeanne fail to listen to them since she had always listened to them whenever they had counselled her to sacrifice and self-abnegation?

[Footnote 2516: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 5, 8, 365; vol. iii, pp. 148, 149.]

[Footnote 2517: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 18.]

It was out of obedience to her heavenly Council that Jeanne had returned to man's apparel, because she would not purchase her life at the price of denying the Angel and the Saints, and because with her whole heart and soul she rebelled against her recantation.

Still the English were seriously to blame for having left her man's clothes. It would have been more humane to have taken them from her, since if she wore them she must needs die. They had been put in a bag.[2518] Her guards may even be suspected of having tempted her by placing under her very eyes those garments which recalled to her days of happiness. They had taken away all her few possessions, even her poor brass ring, everything save that suit which meant death to her.

[Footnote 2518: Trial, vol. ii, p. 18.]

To blame also were her ecclesiastical judges who should not have sentenced her to imprisonment if they foresaw that they could not place her in an ecclesiastical prison, nor have commanded her a penance which they knew they were unable to enforce. Likewise to blame were the Bishop of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor; because after having, for the good of her sinful soul, prescribed the bread of bitterness and the water of affliction, they gave her not this bread and this water, but delivered her in disgrace into the hands of her cruel enemies.

When she uttered the words, "God by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret hath given me to wit the sore pity of the treason to which I consented," Jeanne consummated the sacrifice of her life.[2519]

[Footnote 2519: "Responsio mortifera," wrote the notary Boisguillaume in the margin of his minutes. Trial, vol. i, pp. 456, 457.]

The Bishop and the Inquisitor had now to proceed in conformity with the law. The interrogatory however lasted a few moments longer.

"Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine?"

"Yes, and they come from God."

"Tell us the truth touching the crown."

"To the best of my knowledge I told you the truth of everything at the trial."

"On the scaffold, at the time of your abjuration, you did acknowledge before us your judges and before many others, and in the presence of the people, that you had falsely boasted your Voices to be those of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret."

"I did not mean thus to do or to say. I did not deny, neither did I intend to deny, my apparitions and to say that they were not Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. All that I have said was through fear of the fire, and I recanted nothing that was not contrary to the truth. I had liefer do my penance once and for all, to wit by dying, than endure further anguish in prison. Whatsoever abjuration I have been forced to make, I never did anything against God and religion. I did not understand what was in the deed of abjuration, wherefore I did not mean to abjure anything unless it were Our Lord's will. If the judges wish I will resume my woman's dress. But nothing else will I do."[2520]

[Footnote 2520: Trial, vol. i, pp. 456-458.]

Coming out of the prison, my Lord of Beauvais met the Earl of Warwick accompanied by many persons. He said to him: "Farewell. Faites bonne chere." It is said that he added, laughing: "It is done! We have caught her."[2521] The words are his, doubtless, but we are not certain that he laughed.

[Footnote 2521: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 5, 8, 305.]

On the morrow, Tuesday the 29th, he assembled the tribunal in the chapel of the Archbishop's house. The forty-two assessors present were informed of what had happened on the previous day and invited to state their opinions, the nature of which might easily be anticipated.[2522] Every heretic who retracted his confession was held a perjurer, not only impenitent but relapsed. And the relapsed were given up to the secular arm.[2523]

[Footnote 2522: Ibid., vol. i, pp. 459, 467.]

[Footnote 2523: Bernard Gui, Pratique, part iii, p. 144. L. Tanon, Tribunaux de l'inquisition, pp. 464 et seq.]

Maitre Nicholas de Venderes, canon, archdeacon, was the first to state his opinion.

"Jeanne is and must be held a heretic. She must be delivered to the secular authority."[2524]

[Footnote 2524: Trial, vol. i, pp. 462, 463.]

The Lord Abbot of Fecamp expressed his opinion in the following terms: "Jeanne has relapsed. Nevertheless it is well that the terms of her abjuration once read to her, be read a second time and explained, and that at the same time she be reminded of God's word. This done, it is for us, her judges, to declare her a heretic and to abandon her to the secular authority, entreating it to deal leniently with her."[2525]

[Footnote 2525: Ibid., p. 463.]

This plea for leniency was a mere matter of form. If the Provost of Rouen had taken it into consideration he also would have been excommunicated, with a further possibility of temporal punishment.[2526] And yet there were certain counsellors who even wished to dispense with this empty show of pity, urging that there was no need for such a supplication.

[Footnote 2526: L. Tanon, Tribunaux de l'inquisition, pp. 472, 473.]

Maitre Guillaume Erard and sundry other assessors, among whom were Maitres Marguerie, Loiseleur, Pierre Maurice, and Brother Martin Ladvenu, were of the opinion of my Lord Abbot of Fecamp.[2527]

[Footnote 2527: Trial, vol. i, pp. 463, 467.]

Maitre Thomas de Courcelles advised the woman being again charitably admonished touching the salvation of her soul.

Such likewise was the opinion of Brother Isambart de la Pierre.[2528]

[Footnote 2528: Trial, vol. i, p. 466.]

The Lord Bishop, having listened to these opinions, concluded that Jeanne must be proceeded against as one having relapsed. Accordingly he summoned her to appear on the morrow, the 30th of May, in the old Market Square.[2529]

[Footnote 2529: Ibid., pp. 467, 469.]

On the morning of that Wednesday, the 30th of May, by the command of my Lord of Beauvais, the two young friars preachers, bachelors in theology, Brother Martin Ladvenu and Brother Isambart de la Pierre, went to Jeanne in her prison. Brother Martin told her that she was to die that day.

At the approach of this cruel death, amidst the silence of her Voices, she understood at length that she would not be delivered. Cruelly awakened from her dream, she felt heaven and earth failing her, and fell into a deep despair.

"Alas!" she cried, "shall so terrible a fate betide me as that my body ever pure and intact shall to-day be burned and reduced to ashes? Ah me! Ah me! Liefer would I be seven times beheaded than thus be burned. Alas! had I been in the prison of the Church, to which I submitted, and guarded by ecclesiastics and not by my foes and adversaries, so woeful a misfortune as this would not have befallen me. Oh! I appeal to God, the great judge, against this violence and these sore wrongs with which I am afflicted."[2530]

[Footnote 2530: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 3, 4 (evidence of Brother Isambart de la Pierre). Ibid., p. 8 (evidence of Brother Martin Ladvenu).]

While she was lamenting, the doctors and masters, Nicolas de Venderes, Pierre Maurice and Nicolas Loiseleur, entered the prison; they came by order of my Lord of Beauvais.[2531] On the previous day thirty-nine counsellers out of forty-two, declaring that Jeanne had relapsed, had added that they deemed it well she should be reminded of the terms of her abjuration.[2532] Wherefore, according to the counsel of these clerics, the Lord Bishop had sent certain learned doctors to the relapsed heretic and had resolved to come to her himself.

[Footnote 2531: Trial, vol. i, p. 481. (In the Introduction I have given my reasons for regarding the information given after the death of the Maid as possessing great historical significance.)]

[Footnote 2532: Trial, vol. i, pp. 462-467.]

She must needs submit to one last examination.

"Do you believe that your Voices and apparitions come from good or from evil spirits?"

"I know not; but I appeal to my Mother the Church."[2533]

[Footnote 2533: Ibid., p. 479. Or "to such of you as are churchmen." Ibid., p. 482 (information furnished after her death).]

Maitre Pierre Maurice, a reader of Terence and Virgil, was filled with pity for this hapless Maid.[2534] On the previous day he had declared her to have relapsed because his knowledge of theology forced him to it; and now he was concerned for the salvation of this soul in peril, which could not be saved except by recognising the falseness of its Voices.

[Footnote 2534: Robillard de Beaurepaire, Notes sur les juges.]

"Are they indeed real?" he asked her.

She replied, "Whether they be good or bad, they appeared to me."

She affirmed that with her eyes she had seen, with her ears heard, the Voices and apparitions which had been spoken of at the trial.

She heard them most frequently, she said, at the hour of compline and of matins, when the bells were ringing.[2535]

[Footnote 2535: Trial, vol. i, p. 480.]

Maitre Pierre Maurice, being the Pope's secretary, was debarred from openly professing the Pyrrhonic philosophy. He inclined, however, to a rational interpretation of natural phenomena, if we may judge from his remarking to Jeanne that the ringing of bells often sounded like voices.

Without describing the exact form of her apparitions, Jeanne said they came to her in a great multitude and were very tiny. She believed in them no longer, being fully persuaded that they had deceived her.

Maitre Pierre Maurice asked about the Angel who had brought the crown.

She replied that there had never been a crown save that promised by her to her King, and that the Angel was herself.[2536]

[Footnote 2536: Ibid., pp. 480, 481 (information furnished after her death).]

At that moment the Lord Bishop of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor entered the prison, accompanied by Maitre Thomas de Courcelles and Maitre Jacques Lecamus.[2537]

[Footnote 2537: Ibid., pp. 482, 483.]

At the sight of the Judge who had brought her to such a pass she cried, "Bishop, I die through you."

He replied by piously admonishing her. "Ah! Jeanne, bear all in patience. You die because you have not kept your promise and have returned to evil-doing.[2538] Now, Jeanne," he asked her, "you have always said that your Voices promised you deliverance; you behold how they have deceived you, wherefore tell us the truth."

[Footnote 2538: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 114 (evidence of Brother Jehan Toutmouille).]

She replied, "Verily, I see that they have deceived me."[2539]

[Footnote 2539: Trial, vol. i, pp. 481, 482 (information given after Jeanne's death).]

The Bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor withdrew. They had triumphed over a poor girl of twenty.

"If after their condemnation heretics repent, and if the signs of their repentance are manifest, the sacraments of confession and the eucharist may not be denied them, provided they demand them with humility."[2540] Thus ran the sacred decretals. But no recantation, no assurance of conformity, could save the relapsed heretic. He was permitted confession, absolution, and communion; which means that at the bar of the Sacrament the sincerity of his repentance and conversion was believed in. But at the same time it was declared judicially that his repentance was not believed in and that consequently he must die.[2541]

[Footnote 2540: Textus decretalium, lib. v, ch. iv.]

[Footnote 2541: Ignace de Doellinger, La Papaute, traduit par A. Giraud-Teulon, Paris, 1904, in 8vo, p. 105.]

Brother Martin Ladvenu heard Jeanne's confession. Then he sent Messire Massieu, the Usher, to my Lord of Beauvais, to inform him that she asked to be given the body of Jesus Christ.

The Bishop assembled certain doctors to confer on this subject; and after they had deliberated, he replied to the Usher: "Tell Brother Martin to give her the communion and all that she shall ask."[2542]

[Footnote 2542: Trial, vol. iii, p. 158.]

Messire Massieu returned to the castle to bear this reply to Brother Martin. For a second time Brother Martin heard Jeanne in confession and gave her absolution.[2543]

[Footnote 2543: Trial, vol. ii, p. 334.]

A cleric, one Pierre, brought the body of Our Lord in an unceremonious fashion, on a paten covered with the cloth used to put over the chalice, without lights or procession, without surplice or stole.[2544]

[Footnote 2544: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 19, 334. De Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces, pp. 116, 117.]

This did not please Brother Martin, who sent to fetch a stole and candles.

Then, taking the consecrated host in his fingers and presenting it to Jeanne, he said: "Do you believe this to be the body of Christ?"

"Yes, and it alone is able to deliver me."

And she entreated that it should be given to her.

"Do you still believe in your Voices?" asked the officiating priest.

"I believe in God alone, and will place no trust in the Voices who have thus deceived me."[2545]

[Footnote 2545: Trial, vol. i, pp. 482, 483 (information procured after Jeanne's death).]

And shedding many tears she received the body of Our Lord very devoutly. Then to God, to the Virgin Mary and to the saints she offered prayers beautiful and reverent and gave such signs of repentance that those present were moved to tears.[2546]

[Footnote 2546: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 19, 308, 320; vol. iii, pp. 114, 158, 183, 197.]

Contrite and sorrowful she said to Maitre Pierre Maurice:[2547] "Maitre Pierre, where shall I be this evening?"

[Footnote 2547: For Jeanne's communion see also De Beaurepaire, Recherches sur le proces, pp. 116-117.]

"Do you not trust in the Lord?" asked the canon.

"Yea, God helping me, I shall be in Paradise."[2548]

[Footnote 2548: Trial, vol. iii, p. 191.]

Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur exhorted her to correct the error she had caused to grow up among the people.

"To this end you must openly declare that you have been deceived and have deceived the folk and that you humbly ask pardon."

Then, fearing lest she might forget when the time came for her to be publicly judged, she asked Brother Martin to put her in mind of this matter and of others touching her salvation.[2549]

[Footnote 2549: Ibid., vol. i, p. 485. Maitre N. Taquel would lead us to believe that the interrogatories took place after Jeanne's communion, but this can hardly be admitted.]

Maitre Loiseleur went away giving signs of violent grief. Walking through the streets like a madman, he was howled at by the Godons.[2550]

[Footnote 2550: Trial, vol. ii, p. 320; vol. iii, p. 162.]

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when Brother Martin and Messire Massieu took Jeanne out of the prison, wherein she had been in bonds one hundred and seventy-eight days. She was placed in a cart, and, escorted by eighty men-at-arms, was driven along the narrow streets to the Old Market Square, close to the River.[2551] This square was bordered on the east by a wooden market-house, the butcher's market, on the west by the cemetery of Saint-Sauveur, on the edge of which, towards the square, stood the church of Saint-Sauveur.[2552] In this place three scaffolds had been raised, one against the northern gable of the market-house; and in its erection several tiles of the roof had been broken.[2553] On this scaffold Jeanne was to be stationed, there to listen to the sermon. Another and a larger scaffold had been erected adjoining the cemetery. There the judges and the prelates were to sit.[2554] The pronouncing of sentence in a religious trial was an act of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For the place of its pronouncement the Inquisitor and the Ordinary preferred consecrated territory, holy ground. True it is that a bull of Pope Lucius forbade such sentences to be given in churches and cemeteries; but the judges eluded this rule by recommending the secular arm to modify its sentence. The third scaffold, opposite the second, was of plaster, and stood in the middle of the square, on the spot whereon executions usually took place. On it was piled the wood for the burning. On the stake which surmounted it was a scroll bearing the words:

"Jehanne, who hath caused herself to be called the Maid, a liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic."[2555]

[Footnote 2551: A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 369.]

[Footnote 2552: Bouquet, Rouen aux differentes epoques de son histoire, pp. 25 et seq. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 374, 375. De Beaurepaire, Memoires sur le lieu du supplice de Jeanne d'Arc, with plan of the Old Market Square of Rouen according to the Livre de fontaine de 1525, Rouen, 1867, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 2553: De Beaurepaire, Note sur la prise du chateau de Rouen, par Ricarville, Rouen, 1857, in 8vo, p. 5.]

[Footnote 2554: Bouquet, Jeanne d'Arc au chateau de Rouen, p. 25. De Beaurepaire, Memoire sur le lieu du supplice de Jeanne d'Arc, p. 32. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, pp. 376 et seq.]

[Footnote 2555: Trial, vol. iv, p. 459.]

The square was guarded by one hundred and sixty men-at-arms. A crowd of curious folk pressed behind the guards, the windows were filled and the roofs covered with onlookers. Jeanne was brought on to the scaffold which had its back to the market-house gable. She wore a long gown and hood.[2556] Maitre Nicolas Midi, doctor in theology, came up on to the same platform and began to preach to her.[2557] As the text of his sermon he took the words of the Apostle in the first Epistle to the Corinthians:[2558] "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." Jeanne patiently listened to the sermon.[2559]

[Footnote 2556: Trial, vol. i, pp. 470; vol. ii, pp. 14, 303, 328; vol. iii, pp. 159, 173.]

[Footnote 2557: Ibid., vol. i, p. 470; vol. ii, p. 334; vol. iii, pp. 53, 114, 159.]

[Footnote 2558: Chapter xii, 26 (W.S.).]

[Footnote 2559: Trial, vol. iii, p. 194.]

Then my Lord of Beauvais, in his own name and that of the Vice-Inquisitor, pronounced the sentence.

He declared Jeanne to be a relapsed heretic.

"We declare that thou, Jeanne, art a corrupt member, and in order that thou mayest not infect the other members, we are resolved to sever thee from the unity of the Church, to tear thee from its body, and to deliver thee to the secular power. And we reject thee, we tear thee out, we abandon thee, beseeching this same secular power, that touching death and the mutilation of the limbs, it may be pleased to moderate its sentence...."[2560]

[Footnote 2560: Ibid., p. 159.]

By this formula, the ecclesiastical judge withdrew from any share in the violent death of a fellow creature: Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.[2561] But every one knew how much such an entreaty was worth; and all were aware that if the impossible had happened and the magistrate had granted it, he would have been subject to the same penalties as the heretic. Things had now come to such a pass that had the city of Rouen belonged to King Charles, he himself could not have saved the Maid from the stake.

[Footnote 2561: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition, p. 374.]

When the sentence was announced Jeanne breathed heart-rending sighs. Weeping bitterly, she fell on her knees, commended her soul to God, to Our Lady, to the blessed saints of Paradise, many of whom she mentioned by name. Very humbly did she ask for mercy from all manner of folk, of whatsoever rank or condition, of her own party and of the enemy's, entreating them to forgive the wrong she had done them and to pray for her. She asked pardon of her judges, of the English, of King Henry, of the English princes of the realm. Addressing all the priests there present she besought each one to say a mass for the salvation of her soul.[2562]

[Footnote 2562: Trial, vol. ii, p. 19; vol. iii, p. 177.]

Thus for one half hour did she continue with sighs and tears to give expression to the sentiments of humiliation and contrition with which the clerics had inspired her.[2563]

[Footnote 2563: Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 19, 351.]

And even now she did not neglect to defend the honour of the fair Dauphin, whom she had so greatly loved.

She was heard to say: "It was never my King who induced me to do anything I have done, either good or evil."[2564]

[Footnote 2564: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 56.]

Many of the bystanders wept. A few English laughed. Certain of the captains, who could make nothing of the edifying ceremonial of ecclesiastical justice, grew impatient. Seeing Messire Massieu in the pulpit and hearing him exhort Jeanne to make a good end, they cried:

"What now, priest! Art thou going to keep us here to dinner?"[2565]

[Footnote 2565: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 6, 20; vol. iii, pp. 53, 177, 186.]

At Rouen, when a heretic was given up to the secular arm, it was customary to take him to the town hall, where the town council made known unto him his sentence.[2566] In Jeanne's case these forms were not observed. The Bailie, Messire le Bouteiller, who was present, waved his hand and said: "Take her, take her."[2567] Straightway, two of the King's sergeants dragged her to the base of the scaffold and placed her in a cart which was waiting. On her head was set a great fool's cap made of paper, on which were written the words: "Heretique, relapse, apostate, idolatre"; and she was handed over to the executioner.[2568]

[Footnote 2566: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 188. A. Sarrazin, Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie, p. 386. Guedon and Ladvenu added to their evidence that not long afterwards a certain Georges Folenfant was also given up to the secular arm. But the Archbishop and the Inquisitor sent Ladvenu to the Bailie "in order to warn him that the said Georges was not to be treated like the Maid who was burned without the pronouncement of any definite and final sentence." Trial, vol. ii, p. 9.]

[Footnote 2567: Ibid., p. 344.]

[Footnote 2568: Falconbridge, in Trial, vol. iv, p. 459. Yet Martin Ladvenu says "until the last hour," etc., which is obviously false.]

A bystander heard her saying: "Ah! Rouen, sorely do I fear that thou mayest have to suffer for my death."[2569]

[Footnote 2569: Trial, vol. iii, p. 53.]

She evidently still regarded herself as the messenger from Heaven, the angel of the realm of France. Possibly the illusion, so cruelly reft from her, returned at last to enfold her in its beneficent veil. At any rate, she appears to have been crushed; all that remained to her was an infinite horror of death and a childlike piety.

The ecclesiastical judges had barely time to descend and flee from a spectacle which they could not have witnessed without violating the laws of clerical procedure. They were all weeping: the Lord Bishop of Therouanne, Chancellor of England, had his eyes full of tears. The Cardinal of Winchester, who was said never to enter a church save to pray for the death of an enemy,[2570] had pity on this damsel so woeful and so contrite. Brother Pierre Maurice, the canon who was a reader of the AEneid, could not keep back his tears. All the priests who had delivered her to the executioner were edified to see her make so holy an end. That is what Maitre Jean Alespee meant when he sighed: "I would that my soul were where I believe the soul of that woman to be."[2571] To himself and the hapless sufferer he applied the following lines from the Dies irae:

Qui Mariam absolvisti, Mihi quoque spem dedisti.[2572]

[Footnote 2570: Shakespeare, Henry VI, part 1, act i, scene 1.]

[Footnote 2571: Trial, vol. ii, p. 6; vol. iii, pp. 53, 191, 375.]

[Footnote 2572: Missel Romain, Office des morts. Cf. Le P. C. Clair, Le Dies irae, histoire, traduction et commentaire, Paris, in 8vo, 1881, pp. 38-142.]

But none the less he must have believed that by her heresies and her obstinacy she had brought death on herself.

The two young friars preachers and the Usher Massieu accompanied Jeanne to the stake.

She asked for a cross. An Englishman made a tiny one out of two pieces of wood, and gave it to her. She took it devoutly and put it in her bosom, on her breast. Then she besought Brother Isambart to go to the neighbouring church to fetch a cross, to bring it to her and hold it before her, so that as long as she lived, the cross on which God was crucified should be ever in her sight.

Massieu asked a priest of Saint-Sauveur for one, and it was brought. Jeanne weeping kissed it long and tenderly, and her hands held it while they were free.[2573]

[Footnote 2573: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 6, 20.]

As she was being bound to the stake she invoked the aid of Saint Michael; and now at length no examiner was present to ask her whether it were really he she saw in her father's garden. She prayed also to Saint Catherine.[2574]

[Footnote 2574: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 170.]

When she saw a light put to the stake, she cried loudly, "Jesus!" This name she repeated six times.[2575] She was also heard asking for holy water.[2576]

[Footnote 2575: Ibid., p. 186.]

[Footnote 2576: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 8; vol. iii, pp. 169, 194.]

It was usual for the executioner, in order to cut short the sufferings of the victim, to stifle him in dense smoke before the flames had had time to ascend; but the Rouen executioner was too terrified of the prodigies worked by the Maid to do thus; and besides he would have found it difficult to reach her, because the Bailie had had the plaster scaffold made unusually high. Wherefore the executioner himself, hardened man that he was, judged her death to have been a terribly cruel one.[2577]

[Footnote 2577: Ibid., vol. ii, p. 7.]

Once again Jeanne uttered the name of Jesus; then she bowed her head and gave up her spirit.[2578]

[Footnote 2578: Ibid., vol. iii, p. 186.]

As soon as she was dead the Bailie commanded the executioner to scatter the flames in order to see that the prophetess of the Armagnacs had not escaped with the aid of the devil or in some other manner.[2579] Then, after the poor blackened body had been shown to the people, the executioner, in order to reduce it to ashes, threw on to the fire coal, oil and sulphur.

[Footnote 2579: Trial, vol. iii, p. 191. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 269, 270.]

In such an execution the combustion of the corpse was rarely complete.[2580] Among the ashes, when the fire was extinguished, the heart and entrails were found intact. For fear lest Jeanne's remains should be taken and used for witchcraft or other evil practices,[2581] the Bailie had them thrown into the Seine.[2582]

[Footnote 2580: L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition, p. 478.]

[Footnote 2581: Chronique des cordeliers, fol. 507 verso. Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 269.]

[Footnote 2582: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 159, 160, 185; vol. iv, p. 518. Th. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, vol. i, p. 83. Th. Cochard, Existe-t-il des reliques de Jeanne d'Arc? Orleans, 1891, in 8vo.]



CHAPTER XV

AFTER THE DEATH OF THE MAID—THE END OF THE SHEPHERD—LA DAME DES ARMOISES

In the evening, after the burning, the executioner, as was his wont, went whining and begging to the monastery of the preaching friars. The creature complained that he had found it very difficult to make an end of Jeanne. According to a legend invented afterwards, he told the monks that he feared damnation for having burned a saint.[2583] Had he actually spoken thus in the house of the Vice-Inquisitor he would have been straightway cast into the lowest dungeon, there to await a trial for heresy, which would have probably resulted in his being sentenced to suffer the death he had inflicted on her whom he had called a saint. And what could have led him to suppose that the woman condemned by good Father Lemaistre and my Lord of Beauvais was not a bad woman? The truth is that in the presence of these friars he arrogated to himself merit for having executed a witch and taken pains therein, wherefore he came to ask for his pot of wine. One of the monks, who happened to be a friar preacher, Brother Pierre Bosquier, forgot himself so far as to say that it was wrong to have condemned the Maid. These words, albeit they were heard by only a few persons, were carried to the Inquisitor General. When he was summoned to answer for them, Brother Pierre Bosquier declared very humbly that his words were altogether wrong and tainted with heresy, and that indeed he had only uttered them when he was full of wine. On his knees and with clasped hands he entreated Holy Mother Church, his judges and the most redoubtable lords to pardon him. Having regard to his repentance and in consideration of his cloth and of his having spoken in a state of intoxication, my Lord of Beauvais and the Vice-Inquisitor showed indulgence to Brother Pierre Bosquier. By a sentence pronounced on the 8th of August, 1431, they condemned him to be imprisoned in the house of the friars preachers and fed on bread and water until Easter.[2584]

[Footnote 2583: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 7, 352, 366.]

[Footnote 2584: Trial, vol. i, pp. 493, 495.]

On the 12th of June the judges and counsellors, who had sat in judgment on Jeanne, received letters of indemnity from the Great Council. What was the object of these letters? Was it in case the holders of them should be proceeded against by the French? But in that event the letters would have done them more harm than good.[2585]

[Footnote 2585: Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, Cartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iv, p. 527.]

The Lord Chancellor of England sent to the Emperor, to the Kings and to the princes of Christendom, letters in Latin; to the prelates, dukes, counts, lords, and all the towns of France, letters in French.[2586] Herein he made known unto them that King Henry and his Counsellors had had sore pity on the Maid, and that if they had caused her death it was through their zeal for the faith and their solicitude Christian folk.[2587]

[Footnote 2586: Trial, vol. iii, pp. 240, 243.]

[Footnote 2587: Trial, vol. i, pp. 485, 496; vol. iv, p. 403. Monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. cv.]

In like tenor did the University of Paris write to the Holy Father, the Emperor and the College of Cardinals.[2588]

[Footnote 2588: Trial, vol. i, pp. 496, 500.]

On the 4th of July, the day of Saint-Martin-le-Bouillant, Master Jean Graverent, Prior of the Jacobins, Inquisitor of the Faith, preached at Saint-Martin-des-Champs. In his sermon he related the deeds of Jeanne, and told how for her errors and shortcomings she had been delivered to the secular judges and burned alive.

Then he added: "There were four, three of whom have been taken, to wit, this Maid, Pierronne, and her companion. One, Catherine de la Rochelle, still remaineth with the Armagnacs. Friar Richard, the Franciscan, who attracted so great a multitude of folk when he preached in Paris at the Innocents and elsewhere, directed these women; he was their spiritual father."[2589]

[Footnote 2589: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, pp. 270, 272. This sermon contains curious inaccuracies. Are they the fault of the Inquisitor or of the author of Le Journal?]

With Pierronne burned in Paris, her companion eating the bread of bitterness and drinking the water of affliction in the prison of the Church, and Jeanne burned at Rouen, the royal company of beguines was now almost entirely annihilated. There only remained to the King the holy dame of La Rochelle, who had escaped from the hands of the Paris Official; but her indiscreet talk had rendered her troublesome.[2590] While his penitents were being discredited, good Friar Richard himself had fallen on evil days. The Vicars in the diocese of Poitiers and the Inquisitor of the Faith had forbidden him to preach. The great orator, who had converted so many Christian folk, could no longer thunder against gaming-tables and dice, against women's finery, and mandrakes arrayed in magnificent attire. No longer could he declare the coming of Antichrist nor prepare souls for the terrible trials which were to herald the imminent end of the world. He was ordered to lie under arrest in the Franciscan monastery at Poitiers. And doubtless it was with no great docility that he submitted to the sentence of his superiors; for on Friday, the 23rd of March, 1431, we find the Ordinary and the Inquisitor, asking aid in the execution of the sentence from the Parliament of Poitiers, which did not refuse it. Why did Holy Church exercise such severity towards a preacher endowed with so wondrous a power of moving sinful souls? We may at any rate suspect the reason. For some time the English and Burgundian clergy had been accusing him of apostasy and magic. Now, owing to the unity of the Church in general and to that of the Gallican Church in particular, owing also to the authority of that bright sun of Christendom, the University of Paris, when a clerk was suspected of error and heresy by the doctors of the English and Burgundian party he came to be looked at askance by the clergy who were loyal to King Charles. Especially was this so when in a matter touching the Catholic faith, the University had pronounced against him and in favour of the English. It is quite likely that the clerks of Poitiers had been prejudiced against Friar Richard by Pierronne's conviction and even by the Maid's trial. The good brother, who persisted in preaching the end of the world, was strongly suspected of dealing in the black art. Wherefore, realising the fate which was threatening him, he fled, and was never heard of again.[2591]

[Footnote 2590: Trial, vol. iv, p. 473.]

[Footnote 2591: Th. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI, vol. iv, pp. 103, 104. Monstrelet, ch. lxiii. Bougenot, Deux documents inedits relatifs a Jeanne d'Arc, in Revue bleue, 13 Feb., 1892, pp. 203, 204.]

None the less, however, did the counsellors of King Charles continue to employ the devout in the army. At the time of the disappearance of Friar Richard and his penitents, they were making use of a young shepherd whom my Lord the Archbishop, Duke of Reims and Chancellor of the kingdom, had proclaimed to be Jeanne's miraculous successor. And it was in the following circumstance that the shepherd was permitted to display his power.

The war continued. Twenty days after Jeanne's death the English in great force marched to recapture the town of Louviers. They had delayed till then, not, as some have stated, because they despaired of succeeding in anything as long as the Maid lived, but because they needed time to collect money and engines for the siege.[2592] In the July and August of this same year, at Senlis and at Beauvais, my Lord of Reims, Chancellor of France and the Marechal de Boussac, were upholding the French cause. And we may be sure that my Lord of Reims was upholding it with no little vigour since at the same time he was defending the benefices which were so dear to him.[2593] A Maid had reconquered them, now he intended a lad to hold them. With this object he employed the little shepherd, Guillaume, from the Lozere Mountains, who, like Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine of Sienna, had received stigmata. A party of French surprised the Regent at Mantes and were on the point of taking him prisoner. The alarm was given to the army besieging Louviers; and two or three companies of men-at-arms were despatched. They hastened to Mantes, where they learnt that the Regent had succeeded in reaching Paris. Thereupon, having been reinforced by troops from Gournay and certain other English garrisons, being some two thousand strong and commanded by the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, Salisbury, and Suffolk, and by Lord Talbot and Sir Thomas Kiriel, the English made bold to march upon Beauvais. The French, informed of their approach, left the town at daybreak, and marched out to meet them in the direction of Savignies. King Charles's men, numbering between eight hundred and one thousand combatants, were commanded by the Marechal de Boussac, the Captains La Hire, Poton, and others.[2594]

[Footnote 2592: Trial, vol. ii, pp. 3, 344, 348, 373; vol. iii, p. 189; vol. v, pp. 169, 179, 181. Dibon, Essai sur Louviers, Rouen, 1836, in 8vo, pp. 33 et seq. Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, pp. 246 et seq.]

[Footnote 2593: Le P. Denifle, La desolation des eglises de France vers le milieu du XV'e siecle, vol. i, p. xvi.]

[Footnote 2594: Jean Chartier, Chronique, vol. i, p. 132. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 433. Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 265.]

The shepherd Guillaume, whom they believed to be sent of God, was at their head, riding side-saddle and displaying the miraculous wounds in his hands, his feet, and his left side.[2595]

[Footnote 2595: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 272.]

When they were about two and a half miles from the town, just when they least expected it, a shower of arrows came down upon them. The English, informed by their scouts of the French approach, had lain in wait for them in a hollow of the road. Now they attacked them closely both in the van and in the rear. Each side fought valiantly. A considerable number were slain, which was not the case in most of the battles of those days, when few but the fugitives were killed. But the French, feeling themselves surrounded, were seized with panic, and thus brought about their own destruction. Most of them, with the Marechal de Boussac and Captain La Hire, fled to the town of Beauvais. Captain Poton and the shepherd, Guillaume, remained in the hands of the English, who returned to Rouen in triumph.[2596]

[Footnote 2596: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 272.]

Poton made sure of being ransomed in the usual manner. But the little shepherd could not hope for such a fate; he was suspected of heresy and magic; he had deceived Christian folk and accepted from them idolatrous veneration. The signs of our Saviour's passion that he bore upon him helped him not a whit; on the contrary the wounds, by the French held to have been divinely imprinted, to the English seemed the marks of the devil.

Guillaume, like the Maid, had been taken in the diocese of Beauvais. The Lord Bishop of this town, Messire Pierre Cauchon, who had claimed the right to try Jeanne, made a similar claim for Guillaume; and the shepherd was granted what the Maid had been refused, he was cast into an ecclesiastical prison.[2597] He would seem to have been less difficult to guard than Jeanne and also less important. But the English had recently learnt what was involved in a trial by the Inquisition; they now knew how lengthy and how punctilious it was. Moreover, they did not see how it would profit them if this shepherd were convicted of heresy. If the French had set their hope of success in war[2598] in Guillaume as they had done in Jeanne, then that hope was but short-lived. To put the Armagnacs to shame by proving that their shepherd lad came from the devil, that game was not worth the candle. The youth was taken to Rouen and thence to Paris.[2599]

[Footnote 2597: Vallet de Viriville, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. ii, p. 248. De Beaurepaire, Recherches sur les juges, p. 43.]

[Footnote 2598: Lea, History of the Inquisition, vol. iii, 377 (ed. 1905).]

[Footnote 2599: Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, pp. 263, 264.]

He had been a prisoner for four months when King Henry VI, who was nine years old, came to Paris to be crowned in the church of Notre Dame with the two crowns of France and England. With high pomp and great rejoicing he made his entrance into the city on Sunday, the 16th of December. Along the route of the procession, in the Rue du Ponceau-Saint-Denys, had been constructed a fountain adorned with three sirens; and from their midst rose a tall lily stalk, from the buds and blossoms of which flowed streams of wine and milk. Folk flocked to drink of the fountain; and around its basin men disguised as savages entertained them with games and sham fights.

From the Porte Saint-Denys to the Hotel Saint-Paul in the Marais, the child King rode beneath a great azure canopy, embroidered with flowers-de-luce in gold, borne first by the four aldermen hooded and clothed in purple, then by the corporations, drapers, grocers, money-changers, goldsmiths and hosiers. Before him went twenty-five heralds and twenty-five trumpeters; followed by nine handsome men and nine beautiful ladies, wearing magnificent armour and bearing great shields, representing the nine preux and the nine preuses, also by a number of knights and squires. In this brilliant procession appeared the little shepherd Guillaume; he no longer stretched out his arms to show the wounds of the passion, for he was strongly bound.[2600]

[Footnote 2600: Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris, p. 274.]

After the ceremony he was conducted back to prison, whence he was taken later to be sewn in a sack and thrown into the Seine.[2601] Even the French admitted that Guillaume was but a simpleton and that his mission was not of God.[2602]

[Footnote 2601: Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 264.]

[Footnote 2602: Martial d'Auvergne, Vigiles, ed. Coustelier, vol. i.]

In 1433, the Constable, with the assistance of the Queen of Sicily, caused the capture and planned the assassination of La Tremouille. It was the custom of the nobles of that day to appoint counsellors for King Charles and afterwards to kill them. However, the sword which was to have caused the death of La Tremouille, owing to his corpulence, failed to inflict a mortal wound. His life was saved, but his influence was dead. King Charles tolerated the Constable as he had tolerated the Sire de la Tremouille.[2603]