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JEANNE D’ARC
[Illustration:
_Reputed Portrait of
Jeanne d’Arc,
From the original, formerly in the Church of S^t. Maurice, Orleans.
(MUSÉE DU TROCADÉRO, PARIS._)
]
JEANNE D’ARC
MAID OF ORLEANS
DELIVERER OF FRANCE
Being the Story of her Life, her Achievements, and her Death, as
attested on Oath and Set forth in the Original Documents
EDITED BY
T. DOUGLAS MURRAY
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP
[Illustration]
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1902
_This Edition enjoys Copyright in all Countries signatory to the
Berne Treaty, and is not to be imported into the United States of
America._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
The following Document concerning the story of the life and death of
Jeanne d’Arc, Maid of Orleans, is probably the only known instance in
which a complete biographical record, of historical importance, has been
elicited by evidence taken on oath. These depositions cover the
childhood of the Maid; the series of her military exploits as
Commander-in-Chief of the armies of France; her capture, imprisonment,
and death at the stake in the market-place of Rouen.
The official Latin text of the Trial and Rehabilitation of Jeanne d’Arc,
rescued from oblivion among the archives of France, and published in the
forties by Quicherat, has been faithfully, and now for the first time,
rendered into English. This account, given by numerous contemporary
witnesses, of an episode which profoundly affected the history of Europe
and determined the destinies of England and France must appeal to the
general reader no less than to the student.
INTRODUCTION
By the order of Pope Calixtus in 1455, the Trial of Jeanne d’Arc at
Rouen, which had taken place twenty-four years before, was reconsidered
by a great court of lawyers and churchmen, and the condemnation of
Jeanne was solemnly annulled and declared wicked and unjust. By this
re-trial posterity has been allowed to see the whole life of the village
maiden of Domremy, as she was known first to her kinsfolk and her
neighbours, and afterwards to warriors, nobles and churchmen who
followed her extraordinary career. The evidence so given is unique in
its minute and faith-worthy narration of a great and noble life; as
indeed that life is itself unique in all human history. After all that
can be done by the rationalising process, the mystery remains of an
untutored and unlettered girl of eighteen years old, not only imposing
her will upon captains and courtiers, but showing a skill and judgment
worthy, as General Dragomiroff says, of the greatest commanders, indeed
of Napoleon himself. While we must give due weight and consideration to
the age in which this marvel showed itself on the stage of history, an
age of portents and prophecies, of thaumaturgists and saints, yet when
all allowance is made there remains this sane, strong, solid girl
leaving her humble home, and in two short months accomplishing more than
Cæsar or Alexander accomplished in so much time, and at an age when even
Alexander had as yet achieved nothing.
The story is best given by the witnesses, and only indications or, so to
speak, sign-posts are needed to point out the way. Before the work of
Jeanne can be even vaguely apprehended something must be known of how
France stood at her coming. A century of misfortune and sorrow, broken
only by a parenthesis of comparative prosperity from 1380 to 1407, had
left her an easy prey to the hereditary enemy. Torn asunder by factions
which distracted Church and State alike, she was in no condition of
health and courage to recover from the shock of the crushing disaster of
Agincourt. For although the English were unable at the moment to follow
up the victory they had gained, and Henry V. returned to England the
bearer of barren glory, still the breathing time was not put to good
account by the French, whose domestic jars made combined national action
impossible. At Henry’s second coming, regular resistance was hardly
offered. His fleets and armies held the Channel and the ports and
fortresses on both sides. The King of France was insane. His wife,
Isabel of Bavaria, came to terms with the English King, and by the
treaty of Troyes (1420) the Crown of France was to pass away from the
Dauphin, whom his wretched mother would fain bastardise, to the issue of
Henry and the Princess Catherine, the ready instrument of her mother’s
purpose. When Henry V. died the son born of this unhallowed marriage was
declared King of France and England under the title of Henry VI. The
poor child was less than a year old. His able and resolute uncle John,
Duke of Bedford, ruled France as Regent, and carried the arms of England
in triumph against all who dared to dispute his nephew’s title. The
Dauphin fled to the south, and abandoned to Bedford all territory north
of the Loire. Paris was occupied and held by the English. The braver
members of the Parliament and the University joined the Dauphin at
Poitiers, but the accommodating and timid members did homage to Bedford
and duly attorned to Henry VI. as to their lawful King. Orleans alone
remained, of the strong places of France, in the hands of the patriot
party. If Orleans fell, all organised opposition to Bedford would melt
away.
As Orleans was the key of the military, so was Rheims the key of the
political, situation. Rheims was the old city where for many centuries
the Kings of France had been crowned and consecrated. Such a ceremony
brought with it in an especial manner the sacrosanct divinity which in
the middle ages hedged a King.
It is noteworthy that Jeanne’s mission, as now defined and traced by
French scholars, was the double one of rescuing beleaguered Orleans and
crowning the Dauphin at Rheims.
Orleans had withstood a stubborn siege of many months, but its fate
seemed sealed. The Dauphin had almost given up the struggle. He had made
futile appeals for help to the King of Scotland, whose infant daughter
was betrothed to young Louis, afterwards the terrible Louis XI. To
Naples also he made appeals, but no succour or hope came, and in despair
he shut himself up at Chinon, giving up the cause of France as lost
unless aid came from on high. Jeanne came as the messenger of glad
tidings, and announced herself as one sent by God to aid France in her
extreme need.
She came from Lorraine, out of which no good thing could come, as
proverbs taught; for Lorraine had ever been branded as false to God and
false to man. Ambiguous in its relations to France and to the Empire, it
had, like most borderlands, the unstableness of character which comes of
social and political insecurity. Jeanne’s native town of Domremy was one
of a cluster of hamlets on the verge of France, in the smiling valley
through which a winding river made its way. Her father and mother were
in a very humble station, having a little patch of land with rights of
commonage on the village pastures, and were, from the evidence of their
neighbours, frugal, hard-working, and “well thought of.”
Jeanne herself was in no way marked out from her girl friends by any
special accomplishments or ambition. She prided herself solely on her
domestic usefulness and her skill in household work. She was intensely
pious, but in no way introspective or morbid. God and His angels and
saints were as real to her, more real indeed, than the men and women of
her native village. The thoughts of sacred things subdued her soul to an
unconsciousness of self, which marks her off even from such beautiful
spiritual natures as Teresa and Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of
Sienna, whose habit of mind was less simple and less humble than hers.
She seems to have grieved long and deeply on the misfortunes of France,
which was to her the only country claiming her allegiance. For, although
geographically in Lorraine, Domremy was part of the French Kingdom, and
its people were devotedly on the side of the Dauphin and the national
party. The Duke of Burgundy, who had sided with the English, had only
one adherent in Domremy, and he was treated, after the manner of
good-natured peasants, with a certain humorous toleration by the
patriots of the village.
Growing up in this atmosphere, Jeanne, who was born on the feast of the
Epiphany 1412, heard in her earlier girlhood of the sad state of her
country torn asunder by faction and treason, and presenting a very
broken front to the redoubtable armies of England, which had in the
course of a century carried the banner of St. George over all the lands
from Calais to Cadiz without once meeting an enemy strong enough to look
them in the face on a pitched field of battle.
Agincourt, and the carnage after Agincourt, revived in French minds the
humiliation of Poitiers and the horrors of Limoges, so that dread and
hatred of the English were the burden of every household story. Nor must
we forget that in Europe then, as in Asia and Africa now, news spread
apace, and unlettered folk got to know in some strange way the doings of
camps and courts.
Old prophecies too were on every lip. That weird unrest which
Shakespeare shadows forth in Peter of Pomfret and his sayings, shaking
the throne of Richard II. by their very vagueness, was nowhere felt more
intensely than in Lorraine, with its blending of old Celtic myths,
German romances, and tales of Provençal minstrelsy in all hearts and
memories.
Sublime above all these loomed the Church and its tremendous message.
And so, from current history and fable and folk-lore, Jeanne’s
imagination was fed, while her soul was ready to receive any mandate
which the Lord of all things might deign to signify. She was thirteen
years old when the first message came to her. The Archangel Michael, as
she states, appeared, and she was struck with great fear; but afterwards
she longed for his coming and his words. He admonished her to be pure
and holy and religious, and she determined to be so. Later on St.
Catherine (the Virgin) and St. Margaret appeared to her, and told her
that the Lord ordered her to go into France and relieve Orleans. In her
examination she tells these things with great particularity, meeting all
questions as to age, size, voice, dress, language, and surroundings of
the angels, with a simple directness which carries conviction of her
absolute truthfulness.
Her doubts and misgivings as to her own unfitness she put aside as
impertinences, when assured of her divine mission. No shadow of
spiritual inflation or egotism is to be seen in all these things. Rather
she held by the belief that her very unworthiness in the world’s eye was
the cause of her being chosen as a simple instrument in the hands of the
Lord.
Her uncle led her to Vaucouleurs in 1428; Robert de Baudricourt, whom
she believed she was told to see, declined to give ear to her stories;
but Jean de Metz, whose evidence is of absorbing interest, tells us how
he was overcome and won over to her by her compelling earnestness and
faith. She came to Chinon with a small escort, and she and her guard had
to travel mostly by night to avoid the Burgundians. “At Chinon,” says
Jean de Metz, “she had to submit to long inquiries.”
The Dauphin was naturally loath to take a step so full of peril, and
indeed so fraught with the danger of ridiculous failure, without grave,
anxious, and searching investigation. He wished Jeanne to appear at
Poitiers before the prelates and lawyers of Parliament. At Poitiers she
was subjected to the closest examination, and in the end convinced the
lawyers and churchmen of her good faith and the reality of her visions
and voices. The Archbishop of Rheims, following “Gamaliel in the Council
of the Jews,” advised the Dauphin not to spurn the proffered help; and
Charles, who had been already impressed by the “revelations,” took the
Archbishop’s advice, and placed his forces and his fortune in her hands,
trusting to divine help and succour. The armies of France were in marked
contrast to those of England. French nobles had quasi-regal power in
their dominions, and only fitfully followed the royal arms. In England,
from the Conquest, the King was supreme lord of all, and every one owed
direct and immediate allegiance to him. The English armies, unlike the
French feudal array, were made up of peasants and artisans and
adventurous young men seeking a career, and, in the last resort, as we
know from Falstaff, of losels and waifs and ne’er-do-wells. Whether Lord
Melville’s famous saying that “the worst men make the best soldiers” be
or be not accepted, it seems true enough that for aggressive wars at any
rate the reckless bravery of adventurers goes very far. And Henry’s
army, composed as it was of English, Welsh, and Irish, was in truth an
army of intrepid _condottieri_, intrepid to a fault, but lacking the
chivalrous feelings which with all their drawbacks the feudal system and
the knightly organisations tended to evolve.
Hardened and seasoned by years of warfare, the English in 1429 were
without serious opposition or check in their movements and attacks. No
French army kept the field. The King’s authority was flouted. The Duke
of Burgundy was openly for the English cause. The Duke of Brittany and
Lorraine wavered from side to side. Money had run out, and the last
chance of success was staked in a bold throw on the strange promises of
the young country girl.
The evidence given by competent witnesses shows us clearly the magnitude
of her achievements during the months of May, June, and July, 1429: the
relief of Orleans; the victory of Patay; the capture of Troyes; and the
triumphal march to Rheims, completing her work by the consecration of
Charles in the old Cathedral, which had seen so many of his predecessors
anointed and crowned within its walls.
But the marvel is that these stupendous achievements were not the
results of mere enthusiasm, great and potent though that was, but of
settled, farseeing skill and prudence on the part of Jeanne, joined to a
strength of soul and purpose which multiplied the strength of the army
tenfold.
Like Cromwell she “new-modelled” the army. The licentious gaiety of the
feudal warrior had to give way to the sobriety and seemliness which
became a Christian camp. The voluptuary and the blasphemer had to amend
their lives. To revels succeeded prayers and fasts and vigils. Yet never
for a moment did this great amendment degenerate into formalism or
hypocrisy. Like all great souls she awakened latent good and drove vice
abashed from her presence without any conscious spiritual superiority in
herself. Men were ashamed to be base in such a presence. Nor did she
ever become a law unto herself, as the “illuminated” are so apt to be;
rather she was more than ever observant of all the duties and claims and
observances of ordinary religious obligation, being ever in heart the
simple maid whom the Lord for His own mysterious purpose, and without
any merit of hers, had chosen for a mighty task.
These great qualities won for her the ready submission of the soldiers,
while her name and fame brought levies of ardent volunteers, from all
sides, eagerly contending for the glory of serving under such a leader.
Her frame was hardy and enduring. She wore armour night and day for a
week at a time. She ate sparingly and drank hardly at all, moistening a
crust in wine, or, greatly fatigued, tasting a little as a restorative.
While her woman’s nature showed itself in her burst of tears when
dishonouring names were flung at her by some brutal English soldiers, or
when she screamed at the sharp and sudden pain of the wound she
received, still there always came a quick moral reinforcement which
restored her serene fortitude in the midst of indignities and perils.
Writers have differed and must go on differing with regard to the scope
of her mission and the waning of her powers after the coronation of
Rheims. If she dictated the letter to Henry VI. in which the words
occur, “body for body you will be driven out of France,” we may, by
connecting this saying with her famous letter to the Hussites—in which
she threatened to chastise them, “Saracens” that they were, when her
work was done and France cleared of her enemies—and from other scattered
phrases as well, come to the conclusion that in her belief France was to
be wholly freed, and freed by her as agent of the Lord. But the letter
to Henry VI. is of doubtful authority, and her appeal to Charles after
the coronation to be allowed to return to her father and mother,
supported by contemporary authority, seems to show that she looked upon
her work as done, and the great outburst of weeping in the Cathedral was
in all likelihood the sob of satisfied piety and patriotism, whose cares
were at an end and whose task was fulfilled even to fruition.
This seems the true view, with which also the latest French students
agree. Yielding to entreaty she threw herself further into the national
struggle. She was still brave, still magnetic and inspiring, but no
longer to herself or to others the sword in the hand of God.
But if in the campaign of May and June she showed the wonderful military
genius to which so many competent witnesses bear testimony, in the weary
winter of the same year she shows a clearness and depth of statesmanship
scarcely less astonishing. In moments of national peril there are always
“wise” men who think that further resistance is foolish and even
criminal. Alfred had to deal with such time-servers. So had Bruce, and
so later on had Washington. Jeanne with a sore heart found herself
clogged and impeded by these prudent men. Foremost amongst them was the
Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres. His programme was one of
reconciliation. The Duke of Burgundy was to become the ally of France,
and as such was to act as negotiator and intermediary for a lasting
peace between Henry VI. and Charles VII. Poor Charles was weary of the
war, and lent a ready ear to the accommodator. In vain Jeanne warned him
of the folly of these plans. To strike, and strike quickly, at Paris was
her advice. Halting and hesitating, Charles consented. An army was
placed at her disposal, but, just as victory seemed sure, she was
ordered to desist, and Burgundy so duped the French King that he was
allowed to go through the French lines into Paris, ostensibly to treat
for peace, but in reality, as the event proved, to put himself under
Bedford’s orders, and to hold Paris as lieutenant for the Regent and
ally of the King of England. Had Jeanne’s advice been followed this
shameful treason could never have come about. She had known and felt
that the hatred of the Duke of Burgundy and his house against Charles
VII. was too deep and too rooted to be pulled up in a moment. For twenty
years France had been distracted by the factions of Burgundy and Orleans
struggling for control. Fire and water were not more opposed. Burgundy
looked to England, and Orleans to France. We must not too hastily
condemn these factions. Nations in the modern sense had not fully
arisen. The State was everything. Whether a great Anglo-French monarchy
sitting in Paris ruled over France, England, Ireland, and Wales, or a
more domestic French line only ruled over France itself, was a question
on which upright men might well take opposite sides. Jeanne’s special
merit was that she saw the possibility of a great French nation,
self-centred, self-sufficient, and she so stamped this message on the
French heart that its characters have never faded. Ecclesiastics, on the
other hand, with their conception of a Universal Empire and a Universal
Church, thought little of National aspirations or claims. To them,
anything which would allay the bitter rivalries of France and England
naturally appealed, seeing, as they did, in such a change the promise of
a return to the days before the Babylonian captivity at Avignon, and the
bringing of all peoples into ready submission to Peter’s chair. Jeanne’s
greatness is nowhere more manifest than in her willing loyalty to the
Church and “our lord the Pope,” while claiming for France absolute
national independence. Herein she stands alone. Dante’s two swords
(wielded by Pope and Emperor) were lethal to national life. To the
spiritual sword Jeanne bowed, but to no Emperor or King other than the
anointed King of France could the loyalty of a French heart be due.
The winter of 1429 was spent in controversies of which the opposing
principles of imperialism and nationality are the true keys. In the
early spring, Jeanne, who had bravely stood by the national cause, and
heartened all who withstood the party of compromise and surrender, saw
only too clearly that for the time the French hopes of success had given
way. That brave night ride to relieve Compiègne was in many respects a
meeting of fate half way. No doubt, she defied augury, but signs of
impending disaster multiplied; and when she fell into the hands of the
Burgundians, she must have felt that while her own agony began, the
cause of France might well gather more strength from her example as a
sufferer, than from her futile struggle against cowardice and treason.
Into one short year her whole astounding public career is crowded;
Orleans, Patay, Troyes, Rheims, Paris, Compiègne; glory, exaltation,
wreckage, and captivity. But France was at the end of it a conscious
nation with an anointed King, and the work of deliverance was assured.
_The Trial and Rehabilitation._
The English had felt sorely the humiliations of the year 1429. In
Bedford’s report to the King’s Council in London he told of those who
were struck with fear by the incantations of this “limb of the fiend”
who had startled them from their security; and proclamations were issued
against those who in terror of the Maid deserted the army. Now that she,
who had worked such mischief to them, was in their hands, betrayed by
her own countrymen,[1] they wreaked vengeance upon her without stint.
The story of her prison life is a record of shame to her gaolers.
Chained, mocked at, threatened, and insulted, her serenity never failed.
She was in God’s hand, and she bowed to His will.
Months of suffering and anxiety passed over her before her captors made
up their minds as to the course they would take to bring about her death
under the semblance of legal execution. If she could be convicted by an
ecclesiastical court of crimes against the faith, her condemnation would
redound to the fair fame of England and the pious[2] House of Lancaster,
while covering the French and their sovereign with confusion as the
allies and associates of a minister of hell.
Pliant churchmen were at hand to give countenance and help in this
undertaking—bishops full of zeal and loyalty for our sovereign lord
Henry VI., by the grace of God King of France and England.
The worst of these servile churchmen was the wretched Bishop of
Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. Many other prelates were Cæsar’s friends, but
he sits exalted in solitary infamy. He came to the Burgundian camp and
claimed his victim in the name of Bedford, Regent of France for the
English King. Had Jeanne been detained by the Burgundians, it is
impossible to believe that Charles VII. would not have procured her
release. Had she been held as a prisoner of war by the English, it is
very likely that the shame of holding a woman captive in their hands
would have made it possible to arrange for her ransom. But once charged
with heresy and taken out of the hands of the Burgundians such hopes and
chances were closed. Still, as an ecclesiastical prisoner she would have
been entitled to counsel and guidance by religious persons, the Church
offering admonition before preferring grave charges of rebellion against
any of her children. But this would render her punishment uncertain.
Grave doctors of the law and eminent churchmen had at Poitiers, after
long inquiry, declared her worthy of trust and they might do so again.
Therefore it was determined that she should be held in a lay prison
though charged with an ecclesiastical offence. Cut off in this way from
all spiritual help and instruction, she was to be brought, when the
process was ripe, before a well-chosen court bent on her destruction,
and ready to entangle her in questions which might entrap her into
erroneous or heretical statements.
And once more we are confronted, if we try to rationalise her life and
put away all belief in inspiration, with the amazing problem as to where
and how this untutored girl drew her stores of logic, law, and theology.
The trial took place in Rouen Castle,[3] the seat of Bedford’s
government in France. The choosing of her judges was committed to
Cauchon, who selected the most sturdy adherents of the English. No
formal charge was preferred, but Jeanne was interrogated. This course
was severely condemned by a distinguished lawyer named Lohier, who puts
clearly before us the procedure and principles that should govern such a
hearing.
There should be in the first place in all such trials a definite
indictment of the charges advanced against the accused, who in turn
ought to have due time to answer all the allegations with the assistance
of counsel.
In Jeanne’s particular case, seeing that she had been already
practically tried and acquitted at Poitiers at a trial presided over by
the Archbishop of Rheims, the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, it
was putting her twice in peril for the same offence, and on the second
occasion before an inferior court, a thing contrary to law and reason.
Moreover the venue was wrong. She had been captured in one diocese as an
ecclesiastical prisoner, and she was to be tried in another, and no
assent of the chapter of Rouen could give jurisdiction in such a case.
Finally she was in a lay prison, held there by her political enemies,
which made it impossible for her to have the liberty and spiritual
assistance necessary to meet ecclesiastical charges. The trial ought to
have been held in an ordinary court and not in the Castle.
All these objections are of great substance and go to the very root of
the inquiry. But more vital than all was Jeanne’s own expostulation
against trial before Cauchon, who was her declared and bitter enemy, and
the mere instrument of her foes and gaolers.
Gross however as the injustice was, there were certain barriers within
which even Cauchon and his accomplices had to work their wicked wills.
As there were fearless canonists like Lohier, who, as members of a great
international Bar, were independent of any King or bishop, so the
notaries, being apostolic and imperial officers, were in no way amenable
to Cauchon or his crew. Every word spoken in court is duly and
faithfully recorded, and this record formed the basis for the petition
subsequently presented to the Pope by Jeanne’s mother and brother when
seeking amendment of Cauchon’s judgment.
The trial is one of the most enthralling dramas in all history. The
caution, the skill, the simplicity withal, shown by Jeanne in her
answers to bewildering and entrapping questions, well earned the praise
bestowed twenty years later by the accomplished lawyers who wrote on the
case, sustaining the appeal for a new hearing.
The report gives all the details of the inquiry with fulness and
accuracy, and when we carefully examine its course, we must agree with
the canonists who said that the forms of law were indeed adhered to, but
its spirit was grossly violated. The judges in Jeanne’s case fortified
themselves with the decision of the University of Paris, but that
decision was procured by laying before the University what purported to
be the statements of Jeanne, but what were in truth selected passages
from her statements torn from qualifying contexts and often with the
suppression of governing words.
Still this précis was also part of the record of the Court, although
attempts were made to suppress it, and at the re-hearing Cauchon and his
fellow hirelings were vehemently condemned for this nefarious
proceeding.
By a sentence, so obtained and so buttressed, Jeanne d’Arc was done to
death. The story of the execution is one of the most heart-rending
incidents in history. No comment can deepen or add to the pathos of the
narrative given by the bystanders.
In 1450 King Charles VII. empowered Guillaume Bouillé, Rector of the
University of Paris, to inquire into the circumstances of Jeanne’s
trial, condemnation, and death, and to report the result of his
investigation.
Great lawyers gave their opinions, and declared the trial void, as
having been bad in substance as well as in form. But no regular judgment
was pronounced.
Again in 1452 Pope Nicholas V., on appeal by Jeanne’s mother, Isabel
d’Arc, ordered inquiry, which duly took place, but without formal issue.
It is fortunate for truth and human interest that these inquiries were
abortive. Had they on general grounds annulled the proceedings under
Cauchon, how much would have been lost to us!
We should never have had that delightful picture of Domremy given by the
simple people of the place. Nor should we have, as we have now, a sworn
narrative of Jeanne’s private and public life laying bare her very soul.
When Pope Calixtus ordered a full inquiry, he seemed to think, as Newman
thought when writing the “Apologia,” that the less argument and the more
narrative and evidence that could be given the better; and so, instead
of discussing the nature of angels, the limits of Catholic obedience,
the Great Schism,[4] and the assurances of salvation of the just, he and
his deputies put aside such questions with patient contempt until they
first made sure of the human side of the story. How Jeanne impressed her
neighbours, her priest, and her kin; what kind of girl she was; what
were her employments; was she restive and ambitious or quiet and
satisfied; was her life pure; was she given to foolish imaginings, or
was she a sane, modest, unpretending country maiden? Into all these
things Cauchon had made inquiries, but as the answers were all
favourable to the accused he suppressed the evidence.
The decree of Pope Calixtus has added a true romance to human story. In
all that we know of the world’s great ones we can find no parallel for
the Maid of Domremy. Perhaps only in Catholic France was such a heroine
possible. Certainly Teutonic Protestantism has as yet given to the world
none of the exalted types of radiant and holy women such as those that
illuminate Latin Christianity. Whether as a saint or a nation-maker,
Jeanne’s place in world-history is assured.
-----
Footnote 1:
Had there been any desire on the part of the French King to rescue
Jeanne from captivity, a ‘King’s ransom,’ which was later paid for her
by Cauchon, could scarcely have been refused in those days for a
prisoner of war, however renowned. Unhappily for the memory of
Charles, she was left to the tender mercies of the English without any
offer being made for her release, or any attempt at rescue. There
existed a bitter feeling of jealousy towards Jeanne in consequence of
her great successes in the field. This was notably shown during her
attack upon Paris, where she was thwarted in every direction, and all
possibility of victory was taken from her by the conduct of the King.
Whether or not Flavy, the Governor of Compiègne, who was completely
under the control of the King, betrayed Jeanne at Compiègne, by
shutting the gates and closing the drawbridge at her approach, will
never be known, but suspicion has always pointed to his betrayal of
the Maid.
Alain Bouchard states that, in the year 1488, he heard from two aged
men of Compiègne, who had themselves been present, that a few days
before her capture, the Maid was attending Mass in the Church of St.
Jacques. After communicating and spending some time in devotion, she
turned to the assembled congregation, and, leaning against a pillar,
uttered this prediction: “My good friends, my dear little children, I
am sold and betrayed. Soon I shall be given up to death. Pray to God
for me, for I can no longer serve the King and the Kingdom of
France.”—_Grandes Annales de Bretagne_, also _Miroir des Femmes
Vertueuses_.
Footnote 2:
The House of Lancaster was fervidly orthodox. Persecution of heretics
begins with Henry IV. The “Cardinal of England” (Beaufort Bishop of
Winchester) was the _malleus hereticorum_ at home and abroad. He spoke
against the Hussites at the Council of Basle, and he planned Crusades
against both heretics and “Saracens.”
Footnote 3:
The court before which Jeanne was brought to trial at Rouen was not a
court of the Holy Office or Inquisition, neither was it, as the
English courts for the trial of heresy were in Lancastrian times, a
statutable court of ecclesiastical jurisdiction on whose decision,
certified by the bishop, the sheriff was bound to act. It was a
composite tribunal. The Bishop of Beauvais claimed and exercised
jurisdiction as Ordinary. But the Deputy Inquisitor was joined with
him as co-ordinate judge with officers of his own.
The Inquisition arose out of the troubles in Spain and South France,
where heresy was to some extent necessarily a kind of treason to the
polity of Christian Europe. Men were punished for heretical opinions,
but these heretical opinions were in most cases lapses from allegiance
at a time of national peril. The later Inquisition has no such excuse.
Footnote 4:
The Great Schism arose out of the Babylonian captivity at Avignon
(1306–1376). Popes and anti-Popes contended for 40 years (1378–1418).
France was on the side of the Avignon Popes, while the Empire and
England supported the Popes in Rome. Philip the Fair, by arrangement
with the Pope, changed the Papal chair to Avignon. During the seventy
years of the captivity, when the Church was ruled by French Popes,
France underwent the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, and became
almost a province of England.
CONTENTS
PART I—THE TRIAL
I
FIRST PROCESS: THE LAPSE
PAGE
TRIAL EX OFFICIO 3
SIX PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS 3
NINE PRIVATE EXAMINATIONS 55
THE TRIAL IN ORDINARY 98
EXHORTATIONS AND ADMONITIONS 106
FINAL SESSION AND SENTENCE. RECANTATION 121
THE SENTENCE 129
II
SECOND PROCESS: THE RELAPSE
SENTENCE OF DEATH 142
SUBSEQUENT EXAMINATIONS AND PROCEEDINGS AFTER THE RELAPSE 147
EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES 147