THE MAID AT POITIERS (_continued_)
A belief, common to learned and ignorant alike, ascribed special
virtues to the state of virginity. Such ideas had been handed down
from a remote antiquity; their origin was pre-Christian; they were an
immemorial inheritance, one part of which came from the Gauls and
Germans, the other from the Romans and Greeks. In the land of Gaul
there still lingered a memory of the sacred beauty of the white
priestesses of the forest; and sometimes in the Island of Sein, along
the misty shores of the Ocean, there wandered the shades of those nine
sisters at whose bidding, in days of yore, the tempest raged and was
stilled.
According to these beliefs, which had dawned in the childhood of
races, the gift of prophecy is bestowed on virgins alone. It is the
heritage of a Cassandra or a Velleda. It was said that Sibyls had
prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ. In the Church they were
considered the first witnesses of Christ among the Gentiles, and they
were venerated as the august sisters of the prophets of Israel. The
_Dies Irae_ mentions one of them in the same breath with King David
himself. By what pious frauds their fame for prophecy was established,
we cannot tell any more than Jean Gerson or Gerard Machet. With the
doctors of the fifteenth century we must look upon these virgins as
speaking the word of truth to the nations, who venerated but did not
understand them. Such was the ancient tradition of the Christian
Church. The most ancient fathers of the Church, Justin, Origen,
Clement of Alexandria, frequently made use of the Sibylline oracles;
and the heathen were at a loss for a reply when Lactantius confronted
them with these prophetesses of the nations. Trusting in the word of
Varro, Saint Jerome firmly believed in their existence. Into _The City
of God_ Saint Augustine introduces the Erythrean Sibyl, who, he says,
faithfully foretold the Life of the Saviour. As early as the
thirteenth century, these virgins of old had their places in
cathedrals by the side of patriarchs and prophets. But it was not
until the fifteenth century that multitudes of them were represented;
sculptured on church porches, carved on choir stalls, painted on
chapel walls or glass windows. Each one has her distinctive attribute.
The Persian holds the lantern and the Libyan the torch, which
illuminated the darkness of the Gentiles. The Agrippine, the European,
and Erythrean are armed with the sword; the Phrygian bears the Paschal
cross; the Hellespontine presents a rose tree in flower; the others
display the visible signs of the mystery they foretell: the Cumaean a
manger; the Delphian, the Samian, the Tiburtine, the Cimmerian a crown
of thorns, a sceptre of reeds, scourges, a cross.[775]
[Footnote 775: Jean Philippe de Lignan, Rome, 1481 (not paginated),
leaf 10 and the following. For the comparison of Jeanne d'Arc to the
ancient Sibyl, see the Clerk of Spire, _Sibylla Francica_, in the
_Trial_, vol. iii, p. 422. Christine de Pisano in the _Trial_, vol. v,
p. 12. Lanery d'Arc, _Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne
d'Arc_, pp. 8-10. Barbier de Montault, _Iconographie des Sibylles_, in
the _Revue de l'art chretien_, xiii-xiv (1869-1870). Barraud, _Notice
sur les attributs avec lesquelles on represente les Sibylles aux
XV'e et XVI'e siecles_, in the _Bulletin archeologique de la
Commission historique des arts mon._, vol. iv (1848). Cf. Morosini,
vol. iv, supplement xiv, p. 319.]
The very economy of the Christian religion--the ordering of its
mysteries, wherein humanity is represented as ruined by a woman and
saved by a virgin, and all flesh is involved in Eve's curse--led to
the triumph of virginity and the exaltation of a condition which, in
the words of a Father of the Church, is in the flesh, yet not of the
flesh.
"It is because of virginity," says Saint Gregory of Nyssa, "that God
vouchsafes to dwell with men. It is virginity which gives men wings to
soar towards heaven." Celibacy raises the Apostle John above the
Prince of the Apostles himself. At the funeral of the Virgin Mary,
Peter gave John a palm branch, saying: "It becometh one who is
celibate to bear the Virgin's palm."[776]
[Footnote 776: Voragine, _La legende doree_ (Assomption de la
Vierge).]
Throughout western Christendom the Virgin Mary--the Virgin _par
excellence_--had been the object of zealous devout worship[777] ever
since the twelfth century. The great cathedrals of northern France,
dedicated to Our Lady, celebrated the feast of their patron saint on
the day of the Assumption. On the sculptured pillar of the central
porch was the Virgin, with her divine Child and the Virgin's lily.
Sometimes Eve figured beneath, in order to represent at once sin and
its redemption: the second Eve redeeming the first, the Virgin exalted
the woman humbled. Marvellous scenes are portrayed on the tympanums of
porches. The Virgin is kneeling; at her side is a flowering lily in a
vase. The Angel, book in hand, greets her with an AVE, thus
transposing the name EVA, _mutans Evae nomen_. Or again, with her feet
resting on the crescent moon, she rises to the highest heaven:
_Exaltata est super choros angelorum_. Further, from Jesus Christ she
receives the precious crown: _Posuit in capite ejus coronam de lapide
pretioso_. In gems of painted glass, church windows portrayed the
figures of Mary's virginity; the stone which Daniel saw dug from the
mountain by no human hand, Gideon's fleece, Moses' burning bush, and
Aaron's budding rod.
[Footnote 777: Le Cure de Saint-Sulpice, _Notre Dame de France ou
histoire du culte de la Sainte Vierge en France_, Paris, 1862, 7 vols.
in 8vo. Abbe Mignard, _La Sainte Vierge_, Paris, 1877, in 8vo, pp. 382
_et seq._]
In an inexhaustible flow of images, expressed in hymns, sequences, and
litanies, she was the Mystic Rose, the Ivory Tower, the Ark of the
Covenant, the Gate of Heaven, the Morning Star. She was the Well of
Living Water, the Fountain of the Garden, the Walled Orchard, the
Bright and Shining Stone, the Flower of Virtue, the Palm of Sweetness,
the Myrtle of Temperance, the Sweet Ointment.
In the Golden Legend, images rich and charming clothed the idea that
grace and power resided in virginity. The hagiographers burst forth in
loving praise of the brides of Jesus Christ; of those especially who
put on the white robe of virginity and the red roses of martyrdom. It
was during the passion of virgins that miracles of the most abounding
grace were worked. Angels bring down to Dorothea celestial roses,
which she scatters over her executioners. Virgin martyrs exercise
their power over beasts. The lions of the amphitheatre lick the feet
of Saint Thecla. The wild beasts of the circus gather together, and
with tails interlaced, prepare a throne for Saint Euphemia; in the
pit, aspics form a pleasing necklace for Saint Christina. It is not
the will of the divine Spouse for whom they endure anguish that they
should suffer in their modesty. When the executioner tears off Saint
Agnes's garments, her hair grows thicker and clothes her in a
miraculous garment. When Saint Barbara is to be taken naked through
the streets, an angel brings her a white tunic. These Agneses and
these Dorotheas, these Catherines and these Margarets, this legion of
innocent conquerors prepared men's minds to believe in the miracle of
a virgin stronger than armed men. Had not Saint Genevieve turned away
Attila and his barbarian warriors from Paris?
The fable of the Maid and the Unicorn, so widely known in those days,
is a lively expression of this belief in a special virtue residing in
the state of virginity.
The unicorn was half goat and half horse, of immaculate whiteness; it
bore a marvellous sword upon its forehead. Hunters, when they saw it
pass in the thicket, had never been able to reach it, so rapid was its
course. But if a virgin in the forest called the unicorn, the creature
obeyed, came and laid its head on her lap, and allowed such feeble
hands to take and bind it. If however a damsel corrupt and no longer a
maid approached it, the unicorn slew her immediately.[778]
[Footnote 778: _De l'unicorne qu'une jeune fille seduit_, in the
_Bestiaire_ of R. de Fournival (Paulin Paris, _Manuscrits francais_,
vol. iv, p. 25). Berger de Xivrey, _Traditions teratologiques_, p.
559. J. Doublet, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denys_, vol. i, p.
320. Vallet de Viriville, _Nouvelles recherches sur Agnes Sorel_, in
_Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de Picardie_, vol. vi, p. 621.
A. Maury, _Croyances et legendes du moyen age_, pp. 262 _et seq._]
It was even said that a virgin had the power to cure king's evil, by
reciting, fasting and naked, certain magic words; but they were not
words from the Gospel.[779]
[Footnote 779: Leber, _Des ceremonies du sacre_, Paris, 1825, in 8vo,
p. 459.]
While mystics and visionaries were glorifying virginity, the Church,
bent on governing the body as well as the soul, condemned opinions
denying the lawfulness of marriage, which she had constituted a
sacrament. Those who would anathematise all works of the flesh she
held to be abominable and impious. A maid deserved praise for
preserving her virginity, provided always that her motives were
praiseworthy. Two hundred years before the reign of Charles VII, a
young girl of Reims realised that a grave sin may be committed against
the Church of God by refusing the solicitations of a clerk in a
vineyard. Here is the damsel's story as related by the canon Gervais.
"On a day, Guillaume with the White Hands, Uncle of King Philippe of
France, for his pleasure rode forth from his town. A clerk of his
following, Gervais by name, who was in the heat of youth, saw a maiden
walking alone in a vineyard. He went to her, greeted her and asked:
'What are you doing in such great haste?' And with fitting words he
courteously solicited her.
"Without even looking at him, calmly and gravely she replied: 'God
forbid, youth, that I should ever be yours or any man's, for if I were
to lose my virginity and my body its purity, I should inevitably fall
into eternal damnation.'
"Such words caused the clerk to suspect that the maiden belonged to
the impious sect of the Cathari, whom the Church was in those days
pursuing relentlessly and punishing severely. One of the errors of
these heretics was indeed to condemn all carnal intercourse. Impatient
to resolve his doubts, Gervais straightway provoked the damsel to a
discussion on the Church's teaching in this matter. Meanwhile, the
Archbishop, Guillaume with the White Hands, turned his steed, and,
followed by his monks, came to the vineyard where the clerk and the
maiden were disputing together. When he learnt the cause of their
disagreement he ordered the maiden to be seized and brought into the
town. There he exhorted her, and, in charity, endeavoured to convert
her to the Catholic Faith.
"She would not submit, however. 'I am not well enough grounded in
doctrine to defend myself,' she said to him. 'But in the town I have a
mistress, who, with good reasons, will easily refute all your
arguments. She it is who lodges in that house.'
"The Archbishop Guillaume straightway sent to inquire after this
woman; and, having questioned her, perceived that what the maiden had
said concerning her was true. The very next day he convoked an
assembly of clerks and nobles to judge the two women. Both of them
were condemned to be burnt. The mistress contrived to escape, but
promises and persuasions having failed to turn the maiden from the
pernicious error of her ways, she was delivered up to the executioner.
She died without shedding a tear, without uttering a complaint."[780]
[Footnote 780: L. Tanon, _Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en
France_, Paris, 1893, in 8vo, p. 293.]
In the year 1416 there was a certain woman, a native of the Duchy of
Bar, Catherine Sauve by name. She was then a solitary, living at
Montpellier, on the road to Lattes. Having been publicly accused, she
was examined by the Inquisitor's Vicar, Maitre Raymond Cabasse, and
found to be infected with the heresy of the Cathari. Among other
errors she maintained that all carnal intercourse is sinful, even in
wedlock. Wherefore she was delivered to the secular arm and burned at
the stake on the 2nd of November in that year.[781]
[Footnote 781: Germain, _Catherine Sauve_, in _Academie des sciences
et lettres de Montpellier, Lettres_, vol. i, 1854, in 4to, pp.
539-552.]
It was then commonly believed that such maidens as gave themselves to
the devil were straightway stripped of their virginity; and that thus
he obtained power over these unhappy creatures.[782] Such ways
accorded with what was known of his libidinous disposition. These
pleasures were tempered to his woeful state. And thereby he gained a
further advantage,--that of unarming his victim,--for virginity is as
a coat of mail against which the darts of hell are but blades of
straw. Hence it was all but certain that a soul vowed to the devil
could not reside within a maid.[783] Wherefore, there was one
infallible way of proving that the peasant girl from Vaucouleurs was
not given up to magic or to sorcery, and had made no pact with the
Evil One. Recourse was had to it.
[Footnote 782: Du Cange, _Glossaire_, under the word _Matrimonium_.]
[Footnote 783: Pierre Le Loyer, _Livre des spectres_, 1586, in 4to,
pp. 527, 551.]
Jeanne was seen, visited, privately inspected, and thoroughly examined
by wise women, _mulieres doctas_; by knowing virgins, _peritas
virgines_; by widows and wives, _viduas et conjugates_. First among
these matrons were: the Queen of Sicily and of Jerusalem, Duchess of
Anjou; Dame Jeanne de Preuilly, wife of the Sire de Gaucourt, Governor
of Orleans, who was about fifty-seven years of age; and Dame Jeanne de
Mortemer, wife of Messire Robert le Macon, Lord of Treves, a man full
of years.[784] The last was only eighteen, and one would have expected
her to be better acquainted with the _Calendrier des Vieillards_ than
with the formulary of matrons. It is strange with what assurance the
good wives of those days undertook the solution of a problem which had
appeared difficult to King Solomon in all his wisdom.
[Footnote 784: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 102. Vallet de Viriville, article
_Le Macon_, in _Nouvelle biographie generale_.]
Jeanne of Domremy was found to be a maid pure and intact.[785]
[Footnote 785: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 210. Eberhard Windecke, p. 157.
Morosini, p. 99.]
While she herself was being subjected to the interrogatories of
doctors and the examination of matrons, certain clerics who had been
despatched to her native province were there prosecuting an inquiry
concerning her birth, her life, and her morals.[786] The ecclesiastics
had been chosen from those mendicant Friars[787] who could pass freely
along the highways and byways of the enemy's country without exciting
the suspicion of English and Burgundians. And, indeed, they were in no
way molested. From Domremy and from Vaucouleurs they brought back sure
testimony to the humility, the devotion, the honesty, and the
simplicity of Jeanne. But, most important, they had found no
difficulty in gleaning certain pious tales, such as commonly adorned
the childhood of saints. To these monks we must attribute an important
share in the development of those legends of Jeanne's early years,
which were so soon to become popular. From this time, apparently,
dates the story that when Jeanne was in her seventh year, wolves
spared her sheep, and birds of the woods came at her call and ate
crumbs from her lap.[788] Such saintly flowers suggest a Franciscan
origin; among them are the wolf of Gubbio and the birds preached to by
Saint Francis. These mendicants may also have furnished examples of
the Maid's prophetic gift. They may have spread abroad the story that,
when she was at Vaucouleurs, on the day of the Battle of the Herrings,
she knew of the great hurt inflicted on the French at Rouvray.[789]
The success of such little stories was immediate and complete.
[Footnote 786: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 82.]
[Footnote 787: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. cxliii.
_Trial_, vol. ii, p. 397.]
[Footnote 788: Letter from Perceval de Boulainvilliers to the Duke of
Milan, in the _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 115, 121. _Journal d'un bourgeois
de Paris_, p. 237.]
[Footnote 789: _Journal du siege_, p. 48. _Chronique de la Pucelle_,
p. 275.]
After this examination and inquiry, the doctors came to the following
conclusions: "The King, beholding his own need and that of his realm,
and considering the constant prayers to God of his poor subjects and
all others who love peace and justice, ought not to repulse or reject
the Maid who says that God has sent her to bring him succour, albeit
these promises may be nothing[790] but the works of man; neither ought
he lightly or hastily to believe in her. But, according to Holy
Scripture he must try her in two ways: to wit, with human wisdom, by
inquiring of her life, her morals, and her motive, as saith Saint Paul
the Apostle: _Probate spiritus, si ex Deo sunt_; and by earnest prayer
to ask for a sign of her work and her divine hope, by which to tell
whether it is by God's will that she is come. Thus God commanded Ahaz
that he should ask for a sign when God promised him victory, saying
unto him: _Pete signum a Domino_; and Gideon did likewise when he
asked for a sign and many others, etc. Since the coming of the said
Maid, the King hath observed her in the two manners aforesaid: to wit,
by trial of human wisdom and by prayer, asking God for a sign. As for
the first, which is trial by human wisdom, he has tested the said Maid
in her life, her origin, her morals, her intention; and has kept her
near him for the space of six weeks to show her to all people, whether
clerks, ecclesiastics, monks, men-at-arms, wives, widows or others. In
public and in private she hath conversed with persons of all
conditions. But there hath been found no evil in her, nothing but
good, humility, virginity, devoutness, honesty, simplicity. Of her
birth, as well as of her life, many marvellous things are related."
[Footnote 790: The word _seules_ in the text is doubtful.]
"As for the second ordeal, the King asked her for a sign, to which she
replied that before Orleans she would give it, but neither earlier nor
elsewhere, for thus it is ordained of God.
"Now, seeing that the King hath made trial of the aforesaid Maid as
far as it was in his power to do, that he findeth no evil in her, and
that her reply is that she will give a divine sign before Orleans;
seeing her persistency, and the consistency of her words, and her
urgent request that she be sent to Orleans to show there that the aid
she brings is divine, the King should not hinder her from going to
Orleans with men-at-arms, but should send her there in due state
trusting in God. For to fear her or reject her when there is no
appearance of evil in her would be to rebel against the Holy Ghost,
and to render oneself unworthy of divine succour, as Gamaliel said of
the Apostles in the Council of the Jews."[791]
[Footnote 791: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 391, 392.]
In short, the doctors' conclusion was that as yet nothing divine
appeared in the Maid's promises, but that she had been examined and
been found humble, a virgin, devout, honest, simple, and wholly good;
and that, since she had promised to give a sign from God before
Orleans, she must be taken there, for fear that in her the gift of the
Holy Ghost should be rejected.
Of these conclusions a great number of copies were made and sent to
the towns of the realm as well as to the princes of Christendom. The
Emperor Sigismond, for example, received a copy.[792]
[Footnote 792: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 32, 41.]
If the doctors of Poitiers had intended this six weeks inquiry,
culminating in a favourable and solemn conclusion, to bring about the
glorification of the Maid and the heartening of the French people by
the preparation and announcement of the marvel they had before them,
then they succeeded perfectly.[793]
[Footnote 793: The conclusions of the Poitiers commission were
circulated everywhere. Traces of them are to be found in Brittany
(Buchon and _Chronique de Morosini_), in Flanders (_Chronique de
Tournai_ and _Chronique de Morosini_), in Germany (Eb. Windecke), in
Dauphine (Buchon).]
That prolonged investigation, that minute examination reassured those
doubting minds among the French, who suspected a woman dressed as a
man of being a devil; they flattered men's imaginations with the hope
of a miracle; they appealed to all hearts to judge favourably of the
damsel who came forth radiant from the fire of ordeal and appeared as
if glorified with a celestial halo. Her vanquishing the doctors in
argument made her seem like another Saint Catherine.[794] But that she
should have met difficult questions with wise answers was not enough
for a multitude eager for marvels. It was imagined that she had been
subjected to a strange probation from which she had come forth by
nothing short of a miracle. Thus a few weeks after the inquiry, the
following wonderful story was related in Brittany and in Flanders:
when at Poitiers she was preparing to receive the communion, the
priest had one wafer that was consecrated and another that was not. He
wanted to give her the unconsecrated wafer. She took it in her hand
and told the priest that it was not the body of Christ her Redeemer,
but that the body was in the wafer which the priest had covered with
the corporal.[795] After that there could be no doubt that Jeanne was
a great saint.
[Footnote 794: "_Altra santa Catarina_" (Morosini, vol. iii, p. 52).
There is no doubt that here she is compared to Saint Catherine of
Alexandria and not to Saint Catherine of Sienna.]
[Footnote 795: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 101.]
At the termination of the inquiries, a favourable opportunity for
introducing the Maid into Orleans arrived in the beginning of April.
For her arming and her accoutring she was sent first to Tours.[796]
[Footnote 796: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 66, 210.]
Sixty-six years later, an inhabitant of Poitiers, almost a hundred
years old, told a young fellow-citizen that he had seen the Maid set
out for Orleans on horseback, in white armour.[797] He pointed to the
very stone from which she had mounted her horse in the corner of the
Rue Saint-Etienne. Now, when Jeanne was at Poitiers, she was not in
armour. But the people of Poitou had named the stone "the Maid's
mounting stone." With what a glad eager step the Saint must have leapt
from that stone on to the horse which was to carry her away from those
furred cats to the afflicted and oppressed whom she was longing to
succour.[798]
[Footnote 797: Jean Bouchet, _Annales d'Aquitaine_, in the _Trial_,
vol. iv, pp. 536, 537.]
[Footnote 798: Guilbert, _Histoire des villes de France_, vol. iv,
Poitiers. Cf. B. Ledain, _La Maison de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers_,
Saint-Maixent, 1892, in 8vo. According to M. Ledain the Hotel de la
Rose was on the spot now occupied by a house, number 13 in La Rue
Notre-Dame-la-Petite.]