stronghold, some distance from Noyon, occupied by a small English
garrison, commanded by Lord Montgomery.
The Burgundians, who were besieging Compiegne, made Pont-l'Eveque
their base. In the middle of May, the French numbering about a
thousand, commanded by Captain Poton, by Messire Jacques de Chabannes
and divers others, and accompanied by the Maid, attacked the English
under Lord Montgomery, and the battle was passing fierce. But the
enemy, being relieved by the Burgundians of Noyon, the French must
needs beat a retreat. They had slain thirty of their adversaries and
had lost as many, wherefore the combat was held to have been right
sanguinary.[1997] There was no longer any question of crossing the
Aisne and saving Choisy.
[Footnote 1997: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 382. Lefevre de Saint-Remy,
vol. ii, p. 178. _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 498 verso.]
After returning to Compiegne, Jeanne, who never rested for a moment,
hastened to Crepy-en-Valois, where were gathering the troops intended
for the defence of Compiegne. Then, with these troops, she marched
through the Forest of Guise, to the besieged town and entered it on
the 23rd, at daybreak, without having encountered any Burgundians.
There were none in the neighbourhood of the Forest, on the left bank
of the Oise.[1998]
[Footnote 1998: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 114. Perceval de Cagny, p. 174.
Extract from a note concerning G. de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p.
176. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 296, note 1.]
They were all on the other side of the river. There meadowland extends
for some three-quarters of a mile, while beyond rises the slope of
Picardy. Because this meadow was low, damp and frequently flooded, a
causeway had been built leading from the bridge to the village of
Margny, which rose on the steep slope of the hill. Some two miles up
the river there towered the belfry of Clairoix, at the junction of the
Aronde and the Oise. On the opposite bank rose the belfry of Venette,
about a mile and a quarter lower down, towards Pont-Sainte-Maxence.[1999]
[Footnote 1999: Manuscript map of Compiegne in 1509, in Debout, _Jeanne
d'Arc_, vol. ii, p. 293. Plan of the town of Compiegne, engraved by
Aveline in the 17th century, reduction published by _La Societe
historique de Compiegne_, May, 1877. Lambert de Ballyhier, _Compiegne
historique et monumental_, 1842, 2 vols. in 8vo, engravings. Plan of
the restitution of the town of Compiegne in 1430, in A. Sorel, _La
prise de Jeanne d'Arc_. P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 43.]
A little band of Burgundians commanded by a knight, Messire Baudot de
Noyelles, occupied the high ground of the village of Margny. Most
renowned among the men of war of the Burgundian party was Messire Jean
de Luxembourg. He with his Picards was posted at Clairoix, on the
banks of the Aronde, at the foot of Mount Ganelon. The five hundred
English of Lord Montgomery watched the Oise at Venette. Duke Philip
occupied Coudun, a good two and a half miles from the town, towards
Picardy.[2000] Such dispositions were in accordance with the precepts
of the most experienced captains. It was their rule that when
besieging a fortified town a large number of men-at-arms should never
be concentrated in one spot, in one camp, as they said. In case of a
sudden attack, it was thought that a large company, if it has but one
base, will be surprised and routed just as easily as a lesser number,
and the disaster will be grievous. Wherefore it is better to divide
the besiegers into small companies and to place them not far apart, in
order that they may aid one another. In this wise, when those of one
body are discomfited those of another have time to put themselves in
battle array for their succour. While the assailants are sore aghast
at seeing fresh troops come down upon them, those who are being
attacked take heart of grace. At any rate such was the opinion of
Messire Jean de Bueil.[2001]
[Footnote 2000: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 383, 384.]
[Footnote 2001: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. 196.]
That same day, the 23rd of May, towards five o'clock in the
evening[2002] riding a fine dapple-grey horse, Jeanne sallied forth,
across the bridge, on to the causeway over the meadow. With her were
her standard-bearer and her company of Lombards, Captain Baretta and
his three or four hundred men, both horse and foot, who had entered
Compiegne by night. She was girt with the Burgundian sword, found at
Lagny, and over her armour she wore a surcoat of cloth of gold.[2003]
Such attire would have better beseemed a parade than a sortie; but in
the simplicity of her rustic and religious soul she loved all the
pompous show of chivalry.
[Footnote 2002: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 116. Letter from Philippe le Bon to
the inhabitants of Saint-Quentin, _Trial_, vol. v, p. 166. Letter from
Philippe le Bon to Amedee, Duke of Savoy in P. Champion, _loc. cit._
Proofs and illustrations, xxxvii. Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv,
p. 458. William Worcester, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 475, and _Le
Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 255.]
[Footnote 2003: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 78, 223, 224. Chastellain, vol.
ii, p. 49. The Clerk of the Brabant _Chambre des Comptes_, in _Trial_,
vol. iv, p. 428.]
The enterprise had been concerted between Captain Baretta, the other
leaders of the party and Messire Guillaume de Flavy. The last-named,
in order to protect the line of retreat for the French, had posted
archers, cross-bowmen, and cannoneers at the head of the bridge, while
on the river he launched a number of small covered boats, intended if
need were to bring back as many men as possible.[2004] Jeanne was not
consulted in the matter; her advice was never asked. Without being
told anything she was taken with the army as a bringer of good luck;
she was exhibited to the enemy as a powerful enchantress, and they,
especially if they were in mortal sin, feared lest she should cast a
spell over them. Certain there were doubtless on both sides, who
perceived that she did not greatly differ from other women;[2005] but
they were folk who believed in nothing, and that manner of person is
always outside public opinion.
[Footnote 2004: Notes concerning G. de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p.
177. _Chronique de Tournai_, in _Recueil des Chroniques de Flandre_,
1856, vol. iii, pp. 415, 416.]
[Footnote 2005: Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 49.]
This time she had not the remotest idea of what was to be done. With
her head full of dreams, she imagined she was setting forth for some
great and noble emprise. It is said that she had promised to discomfit
the Burgundians and bring back Duke Philip prisoner. But there was no
question of that; Captain Baretta and those who commanded the soldiers
of fortune proposed to surprise and plunder the little Burgundian
outpost, which was nearest the town and most accessible. That was
Margny, and there on a steep hill, which might be reached in twenty or
twenty-five minutes along the causeway, was stationed Messire Baudot
de Noyelles. The attempt was worth making. The taking of outposts
constituted the perquisites of men-at-arms. And, albeit the enemy's
positions were very wisely chosen, the assailants if they proceeded
with extreme swiftness had a chance of success. The Burgundians at
Margny were very few. Having but lately arrived, they had erected
neither bastion nor bulwark, and their only defences were the
outbuildings of the village.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon when the French set out on the
march. The days being at their longest, they did not depend on the
darkness for success. In those times indeed, men-at-arms were chary of
venturing much in the darkness. They deemed the night treacherous,
capable of serving the fool's turn as well as the wise man's, and thus
ran the saw: "Night never blushes at her deed."[2006]
[Footnote 2006: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, p. 91.]
Having climbed up to Margny, the assailants found the Burgundians
scattered and unarmed. They took them by surprise; and the French set
to work to strike here and there haphazard. The Maid, for her part,
overthrew everything before her.
Now just at this time Sire Jean de Luxembourg and the Sire de Crequy
had ridden over from their camp at Clairoix.[2007] Wearing no armour,
and accompanied by eight or ten gentlemen-at-arms, they were climbing
the Margny hill. They were on their way to visit Messire Baudot de
Noyelles, and all unsuspecting, they were thinking to reconnoitre the
defences of the town from this elevated spot, as the Earl of Salisbury
had formerly done from Les Tourelles at Orleans. Having fallen into a
regular skirmish, they sent to Clairoix in all haste for their arms
and to summon their company, which would take a good half hour to
reach the scene of battle. Meanwhile, all unarmed as they were, they
joined Messire Baudot's little band, to help it to hold out against
the enemy.[2008] Thus to surprise my Lord of Luxembourg might be a
stroke of good luck and certainly could not be bad; for in any event
the Margny men would have straightway summoned their comrades of
Clairoix to their aid, as they did in very deed summon the English
from Venette and the Burgundians from Coudun.
[Footnote 2007: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 387. Lefevre de Saint-Remy,
vol. ii, p. 179. Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 48. Note concerning G. de
Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 176.]
[Footnote 2008: Letter from the Duke of Burgundy to the inhabitants of
Saint-Quentin, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 166. Monstrelet, Lefevre de
Saint-Remy, Chastellain. Notes concerning G. de Flavy, _loc. cit._]
Having stormed the camp and pillaged it, the assailants should in all
haste have fallen back on the town with their booty; but they dallied
at Margny, for what reason is not difficult to guess: that reason
which so often transformed the robber into the robbed. The wearers of
the white cross as well as those of the red, no matter what danger
threatened them, never quitted a place as long as anything remained to
be carried away.
If the mercenaries of Compiegne incurred peril by their greed, the
Maid on her side by her valour and prowess ran much greater risk;
never would she consent to leave a battle; she must be wounded,
pierced with bolts and arrows, before she would give in.
Meanwhile, having recovered from so sudden an alarm, Messire Baudot's
men armed as best they might and endeavoured to win back the village.
Now they drove out the French, now they themselves were forced to
retreat with great loss. The Seigneur de Crequy, among others, was
sorely wounded in the face. But the hope of being reinforced gave them
courage. The men of Clairoix appeared. Duke Philip himself came up
with the band from Coudun. The French, outnumbered, abandoned Margny,
and retreated slowly. It may be that their booty impeded their march.
But suddenly espying the _Godons_ from Venette advancing over the
meadowland, they were seized with panic; to the cry of "_Sauve qui
peut!_" they broke into one mad rush and in utter rout reached the
bank of the Oise. Some threw themselves into boats, others crowded
round the bulwark of the Bridge. Thus they attracted the very
misfortune they feared. For the English followed so hard on the
fugitives that the defenders on the ramparts dared not fire their
cannon for fear of striking the French.[2009]
[Footnote 2009: Perceval de Cagny, p. 176. Falconbridge, in _Trial_,
vol. iv, p. 458. Monstrelet. Note concerning G. de Flavy; Lefevre de
Saint-Remy, Chastellain, _loc. cit._]
The latter having forced the barrier of the bulwark, the English were
about to enter on their heels, cross the bridge and pass into the
town. The captain of Compiegne saw the danger and gave the command to
close the town gate. The bridge was raised and the portcullis
lowered.[2010]
[Footnote 2010: Note concerning G. de Flavy, _loc. cit._ Du Fresne de
Beaucourt, _Jeanne d'Arc et Guillaume de Flavy_ in _Bulletin de la
Societe de l'Histoire de France_, vol. iii, 1861, pp. 173 _et seq._ Z.
Rendu, _Jeanne d'Arc et G. de Flavy_, Compiegne, 1865, in 8vo, 32 pp.
A. Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 209. P. Champion, _Guillaume
de Flavy_, appendix i, pp. 282, 286.]
In the meadow, Jeanne still laboured under the heroic delusion of
victory. Surrounded by a little band of kinsmen and personal
retainers, she was withstanding the Burgundians, and imagining that
she would overthrow everything before her.
Her comrades shouted to her: "Strive to regain the town or we are
lost."
But her eyes were dazzled by the splendour of angels and archangels,
and she made answer: "Hold your peace; it will be your fault if we are
discomfited. Think of nought but of attacking them."
And once again she uttered those words which were forever in her
mouth: "Go forward! They are ours!"[2011]
[Footnote 2011: Perceval de Cagny, p. 175.]
Her men took her horse by the bridle and forced her to turn towards
the town. It was too late; the bulwarks commanding the bridge could
not be entered: the English held the head of the causeway. The Maid
with her little band was penned into the corner between the side of
the bulwark and the embankment of the road. Her assailants were men of
Picardy, who, striking hard and driving away her protectors, succeeded
in reaching her.[2012] A bowman pulled her by her cloak of cloth of
gold and threw her to the ground. They all surrounded her and together
cried:
"Surrender!"
[Footnote 2012: Perceval de Cagny, p. 175. Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 49.
Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. i, p. 122; vol. iii, p. 207.
Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p. 87.]
Urged to give her parole, she replied: "I have plighted my word to
another, and I shall keep my oath."[2013]
[Footnote 2013: Perceval de Cagny, p. 176.]
One of those who pressed her said that he was of gentle birth. She
surrendered to him.
He was an archer, by name Lyonnel, in the company of the Bastard of
Wandomme. Deeming that his fortune was made, he appeared more joyful
than if he had taken a king.[2014]
[Footnote 2014: Letter from the Duke of Burgundy in _Trial_, vol. v, p.
166. Perceval de Cagny, p. 175. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 400. Lefevre
de Saint-Remy, p. 175. Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 49. Note concerning G.
de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 174. Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_,
vol. i, p. 118. P. Champion, _loc. cit._, pp. 46, 49. Lanery d'Arc,
_Livre d'Or_, pp. 513-518.]
With the Maid was taken her brother, Pierre d'Arc, Jean d'Aulon, her
steward, and Jean d'Aulon's brother, Poton, surnamed the
Burgundian.[2015] According to the Burgundians, the French in this
engagement lost four hundred fighting men, killed or drowned;[2016] but
according to the French most of the foot soldiers were taken up by the
boats which were moored near the bank of the Oise.[2017]
[Footnote 2015: Richer, _Histoire manuscrite de la Pucelle_, book iv,
fol. 188 _et seq._ P. Champion, _loc. cit._ Proofs and illustrations,
xxxiii. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388. Note concerning G. de Flavy,
_loc. cit._ Letter from the Duke of Burgundy to the inhabitants of
Saint-Quentin, _loc. cit._ _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 255.
Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 459.]
[Footnote 2016: According to _Le Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p.
255, four hundred French were killed or drowned.]
[Footnote 2017: Note concerning G. de Flavy, in _Trial_, vol. v, p.
176. Perceval de Cagny, p. 175.]
Had it not been for the archers, cross-bowmen and cannoneers posted at
the bridge end by the Sire de Flavy, the bulwark would have been
captured. The Burgundians had but twenty wounded and not one
slain.[2018] The Maid had not been very vigorously defended.
[Footnote 2018: Letter from the Duke of Burgundy to the inhabitants of
Saint-Quentin, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 166.]
She was disarmed and taken to Margny.[2019] At the tidings that the
witch of the Armagnacs had been taken, cries and rejoicings resounded
throughout the Burgundian camp. Duke Philip wished to see her. When he
drew near to her, there were certain of his clergy and his knighthood
who praised his piety, extolled his courage, and wondered that this
mighty Duke was not afraid of the spawn of Hell.[2020]
[Footnote 2019: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388. Chastellain, vol. ii, p.
50. A. Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. 253 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2020: Jean Jouffroy, in d'Achery, _Spicilegium_, iii, pp. 823
_et seq._]
In this respect, his knighthood were as valiant as he, for many
knights and squires flocked to satisfy this same curiosity. Among them
was Messire Enguerrand de Monstrelet, a native of the County of
Boulogne, a retainer of the House of Luxembourg, the author of the
Chronicles. He heard the words the Duke addressed to the prisoner,
and, albeit his calling required a good memory, he forgot them.
Possibly he did not consider them chivalrous enough to be written in
his book.[2021]
[Footnote 2021: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 388.]
Jeanne remained in the custody of Messire Jean de Luxembourg, to whom
she belonged henceforward. The bowman, her captor, had given her up to
his captain, the Bastard of Wandomme, who, in his turn, had yielded
her to his Master, Messire Jean.[2022]
[Footnote 2022: _Ibid._, p. 389. P. Champion, _loc. cit._, p. 168.]
Branches of the Luxembourg tree extended from the west to the east of
Christendom, as far as Bohemia and Hungary; and it had produced six
queens, an empress, four kings, and four emperors. A scion of a
younger branch of this illustrious house and himself a but poorly
landed cadet, Jean de Luxembourg, had with great labour won his spurs
in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. When he held the Maid to
ransom, he was thirty-nine years of age, covered with wounds and
one-eyed.[2023]
[Footnote 2023: _La Chronique des cordeliers_, and Monstrelet,
_passim_. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp.
165, 166.]
That very evening from his quarters at Coudun the Duke of Burgundy
caused letters to be written to the towns of his dominions telling of
the capture of the Maid. "Of this capture shall the fame spread far
and wide," is written in the letter to the people of Saint-Quentin;
"and there shall be bruited abroad the error and misbelief of all such
as have approved and favoured the deeds of this woman."[2024]
[Footnote 2024: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 167. J. Quicherat, _Apercus
nouveaux_, p. 95.]
In like manner did the Duke send the tidings to the Duke of Brittany
by his herald Lorraine; to the Duke of Savoy and to his good town of
Ghent.[2025]
[Footnote 2025: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 358. Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie
Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iii, p. 534. P. Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_,
pp. 169-171.]
The survivors of the company the Maid had taken to Compiegne abandoned
the siege, and on the morrow returned to their garrisons. The Lombard
Captain, Bartolomeo Baretta, Jeanne's lieutenant, remained in the town
with thirty-two men-at-arms, two trumpeters, two pages, forty-eight
cross bowmen, and twenty archers or targeteers.[2026]
[Footnote 2026: Note concerning Guillaume de Flavy in _Trial_, vol. v,
p. 177. A. Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 333.]
CHAPTER VIII
THE MAID AT BEAULIEU--THE SHEPHERD OF GEVAUDAN
The tidings that Jeanne was in the hands of the Burgundians reached
Paris on the morning of May the 25th.[2027] On the morrow, the 26th,
the University sent a summons to Duke Philip requiring him to give up
his prisoner to the Vicar-General of the Grand Inquisitor of France.
At the same time, the Vicar-General himself by letter required the
redoubtable Duke to bring prisoner before him the young woman
suspected of divers crimes savouring of heresy.[2028]
[Footnote 2027: Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 458. _Journal
d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 255. J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p.
96. U. Chevalier, _L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc au cimetiere de
Saint-Ouen et l'authenticite de sa formule_, Paris, 1902, in 8vo, p.
18.]
[Footnote 2028: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 8-10. E. O'Reilly, _Les deux
proces_, vol. ii, pp. 13, 14. P. Denifle and Chatelain, _Chartularium
Universitatis Parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. 516, no. 2372.]
"... We beseech you in all good affection, O powerful Prince," he
said, "and we entreat your noble vassals that by them and by you
Jeanne be sent unto us surely and shortly, and we hope that thus ye
will do as being the true protector of the faith and the defender of
God's honour...."[2029]
[Footnote 2029: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 12. E. O'Reilly, _Les deux
proces_.]
The Vicar-General of the Grand Inquisitor of France, Brother Martin
Billoray,[2030] Master of theology, belonged to the order of friars
preachers, the members of which exercised the principal functions of
the Holy office. In the days of Innocent III, when the Inquisition was
exterminating Cathari and Albigenses, the sons of Dominic figured in
paintings in monasteries and chapels as great white hounds spotted
with black, biting at the throats of the wolves of heresy.[2031] In
France in the fifteenth century the Dominicans were always the dogs of
the Lord; they, jointly with the bishops, drove out the heretic. The
Grand Inquisitor or his Vicar was unable of his own initiative to set
on foot and prosecute any judicial action; the bishops maintained
their right to judge crimes committed against the Church. In matters
of faith trials were conducted by two judges, the Ordinary, who might
be the bishop himself or the Official, and the Inquisitor or his
Vicar. Inquisitorial forms were observed.[2032]
[Footnote 2030: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 3, 12; vol. iii, p. 378; vol. v,
p. 392.]
[Footnote 2031: _Domini canes._ Thus they are represented in the
frescoes of the Capella degli Spagnuoli in Santa-Maria-Novella at
Florence.]
[Footnote 2032: Tanon, _Histoire des tribuneaux de l'inquisition en
France_, ch. ii.]
In the Maid's case it was not the Bishop only who was prompting the
Holy Inquisition, but the Daughter of Kings, the Mother of Learning,
the Bright and Shining Sun of France and of Christendom, the
University of Paris. She arrogated to herself a peculiar jurisdiction
in cases of heresy or other matters of doctrine occurring in the city
or its neighbourhood; her advice was asked on every hand and regarded
as authoritative over the face of the whole world, wheresoever the
Cross had been set up. For a year her masters and doctors, many in
number and filled with sound learning, had been clamouring for the
Maid to be delivered up to the Inquisition, as being good for the
welfare of the Church and conducive to the interests of the faith; for
they had a deep-rooted suspicion that the damsel came not from God,
but was deceived and seduced by the machinations of the Devil; that
she acted not by divine power but by the aid of demons; that she was
addicted to witchcraft and practised idolatry.[2033]
[Footnote 2033: Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, _Chartularium
universitatis Parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. 510; _Le proces de Jeanne
d'Arc et l'universite de Paris_, Paris, 1897, in 8vo, 32 pp.]
Such knowledge as they possessed of things divine and methods of
reasoning corroborated this grave suspicion. They were Burgundians and
English by necessity and by inclination; they observed faithfully the
Treaty of Troyes to which they had sworn; they were devoted to the
Regent who showed them great consideration; they abhorred the
Armagnacs, who desolated and laid waste their city, the most beautiful
in the world;[2034] they held that the Dauphin Charles had forfeited
his rights to the Kingdom of the Lilies. Wherefore they inclined to
believe that the Maid of the Armagnacs, the woman knight of the
Dauphin Charles, was inspired by a company of loathsome demons. These
scholars of the University were human; they believed what it was to
their interest to believe; they were priests and they beheld the Devil
everywhere, but especially in a woman. Without having devoted
themselves to any profound examination of the deeds and sayings of
this damsel, they knew enough to cause them to demand an immediate
inquiry. She called herself the emissary of God, the daughter of God;
and she appeared loquacious, vain, crafty, gorgeous in her attire. She
had threatened the English that if they did not quit France she would
have them all slain. She commanded armies, wherefore she was a slayer
of her fellow-creatures and foolhardy. She was seditious, for are not
all those seditious who support the opposite party? But recently
having appeared before Paris in company with Friar Richard, a heretic,
and a rebel,[2035] she had threatened to put the Parisians to death
without mercy and committed the mortal sin of storming the city on the
Anniversary of the Nativity of Our Lady. It was important to examine
whether in all this she had been inspired by a good spirit or a
bad.[2036]
[Footnote 2034: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, _passim_.
Falconbridge, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 450.]
[Footnote 2035: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 237. T. Basin,
_Histoire de Charles VII et de Louis XI_, vol. iv, pp. 103, 104.
Monstrelet, vol. iv, ch. lxiii. Bougenot, _Deux documents inedits
relatifs a Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Revue bleue_, 13 Feb., 1892, pp. 203,
204.]
[Footnote 2036: Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, _Chartularium
Universitatis Parisiensis_, vol. iv, p. 515, no. 2370; _Le proces de
Jeanne d'Arc et l'universite de Paris_.]
Despite his strong attachment to the interests of the Church, the Duke
of Burgundy did not respond to the urgent demand of the University;
and Messire Jean de Luxembourg, after having kept the Maid three or
four days in his quarters before Compiegne, had her taken to the
Castle of Beaulieu in Vermandois, a few leagues from the camp.[2037]
Like his master, he ever appeared the obedient son of Mother Church;
but prudence counselled him to await the approach of English and
French and to see what each of them would offer.
[Footnote 2037: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 389. Perceval de Cagny, p. 176.
Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 300-302; vol. iv, pp. 254-355. De La
Fons-Melicocq, _Une cite picarde au moyen age ou Noyon et les
Noyonnais aux XIV'e et XV'e siecles_, Noyon, 1841, vol. ii, pp.
100-105. In 1441 Lyonnel de Wandomme, who was governor of this town,
was driven out by the inhabitants on the death of Jean de Luxembourg
(Monstrelet, vol. v, p. 456).]
At Beaulieu, Jeanne was treated courteously and ceremoniously. Her
steward, Messire Jean d'Aulon, waited on her in her prison; one day he
said to her pitifully:
"That poor town of Compiegne, which you so dearly loved, will now be
delivered into the hands of the enemies of France, whom it must needs
obey."
She made answer: "No, that shall not come to pass. For not one of
those places, which the King of Heaven hath conquered through me and
restored to their allegiance to the fair King Charles, shall be
recaptured by the enemy, so diligently will he guard them."[2038]
[Footnote 2038: Perceval de Cagny, p. 177, very doubtful.]
One day she tried to escape by slipping between two planks. She had
intended to shut up her guards in the tower and take to the fields,
but the porter saw and stopped her. She concluded that it was not
God's will that she should escape this time.[2039] Notwithstanding she
had far too much self-reliance to despair. Her Voices, like her
enamoured of marvellous encounters and knightly adventures, told her
that she must see the King of England.[2040] Thus did her dreams
encourage and console her in her misfortune.
[Footnote 2039: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 163-164, 249.]
[Footnote 2040: _Ibid._, p. 151.]
Great was the mourning on the Loire when the inhabitants of the towns
loyal to King Charles learnt the disaster which had befallen the Maid.
The people, who venerated her as a saint, who went so far as to say
that she was the greatest of all God's saints after the Blessed Virgin
Mary, who erected images of her in the chapels of saints, who ordered
masses to be said for her, and collects in the churches, who wore
leaden medals on which she was represented as if the Church had
already canonized her,[2041] did not withdraw their trust, but
continued to believe in her.[2042] Such faithfulness scandalized the
doctors and masters of the University, who reproached the hapless Maid
herself with it. "Jeanne," they said, "hath so seduced the Catholic
people, that many have adored her as a saint in her presence, and now
in her absence they adore her still."[2043]
[Footnote 2041: Vallet de Viriville, _Note sur deux medailles de plomb
relatives a Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1861, in 8vo, 30 pages. Forgeais,
_Notice sur les plombs histories trouves dans la Seine_, Paris, 1860,
in 8vo. J. Quicherat, _Medaille frappee en l'honneur de la Pucelle,
Six dessins sur Jeanne d'Arc tires d'un manuscrit du XV'e siecle_,
in _L'autographe_, No. 24, 15 Nov., 1864.]
[Footnote 2042: P. Lanery d'Arc, _Le culte de Jeanne d'Arc au XV'e
siecle_, Paris, 1887, in 8vo, 29 pages.]
[Footnote 2043: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 290.]
This was indeed true of many folk and many places. The councillors of
the town of Tours ordered public prayers to be offered for the
deliverance of the Maid. There was a public procession in which took
part the canons of the cathedral church, the clergy of the town,
secular and regular, all walking barefoot.[2044]
[Footnote 2044: Carreau, _Histoire manuscrite de Touraine_, in
_Proces_, vol. v, pp. 253, 254.]
In the towns of Dauphine prayers for the Maid were said at mass.
"_Collect._ O God, all powerful and eternal, who, in thy holy and
ineffable mercy, hast commanded the Maid to restore and deliver the
realm of France, and to repulse, confound and annihilate her enemies,
and who hast permitted her, in the accomplishment of this holy work,
ordained by thee, to fall into the hands and into the bonds of her
enemies, we beseech thee, by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin
Mary and of all the saints to deliver her out of their hands, without
her having suffered any hurt, in order that she may finish the work
whereto thou hast sent her."
"For the sake of Jesus Christ, etc."
"_Secret._ O God all powerful, Father of virtues, let thy holy
benediction descend upon this sacrifice; let thy wondrous power be
made manifest, that by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and
of all the saints, it may deliver the Maid from the prisons of the
enemy so that she may finish the work whereto thou hast sent her.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, etc."
"_Post Communion._ O God all powerful, incline thine ear and listen
unto the prayers of thy people: by the virtue of the Sacrament we have
just received, by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of
all the saints, burst the bonds of the Maid, who, in the fulfilment of
thy commands, hath been and is still confined in the prisons of our
enemy; through thy divine compassion and thy mercy, permit her, freed
from peril, to accomplish the work whereto thou hast sent her. Through
our Lord Jesus Christ, etc."[2045]
[Footnote 2045: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 104. E. Maignien, _Oraisons latines
pour la delivrance de Jeanne d'Arc_. Grenoble, 1867, in 8vo (_Revue
des Societes savantes_, vol. iv, pp. 412-414). G. de Braux, _Trois
oraisons pour la delivrance de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Journal de la
Societe d'Archeologie Lorraine_, June, 1887, pp. 125, 127.]
Learning that the Maid, whom he had once suspected of evil intentions
and then recognised to be wholly good, had just fallen into the hands
of the enemy of the realm, Messire Jacques Gelu, my Lord Archbishop of
Embrun, despatched to King Charles a messenger bearing a letter
touching the line of conduct to be adopted in such an unhappy
conjuncture.[2046]
[Footnote 2046: _Vita Jacobi Gelu ab ipso conscripta_, in _Bulletin de
la Societe archeologique de Touraine_, iii, 1867, pp. 266 _et seq._
The Rev. Father Marcellin Fornier, _Histoire des Alpes Maritimes ou
Cottiennes_, vol. ii, pp. 313 _et seq._]
Addressing the Prince, whom in childhood he had directed, Messire
Jacques begins by recalling what the Maid had wrought for him by God's
help and her own great courage. He beseeches him to examine his
conscience and see whether he has in any wise sinned against the grace
of God. For it may be that in wrath against the King the Lord hath
permitted this virgin to be taken. For his own honour he urges him to
strain every effort for her deliverance.
"I commend unto you," he said, "that for the recovery of this damsel
and for her ransom, ye spare neither measures nor money, nor any cost,
unless ye be ready to incur the ineffaceable disgrace of an
ingratitude right unworthy."
Further he advises that prayers be ordered to be said everywhere for
the deliverance of the Maid, so that if this disaster should have
befallen through any misdoing of the King or of his people, it might
please God to pardon it.[2047]
[Footnote 2047: _Ibid._, pp. 319, 320.]
Such were the words, lacking neither in strength nor in charity, of
this aged prelate, who was more of a hermit than of a bishop. He
remembered having been the Dauphin's Councillor in evil days and he
dearly loved the King and the kingdom.
The Sire de la Tremouille and the Lord Archbishop of Reims have been
suspected of desiring to get rid of the Maid and of having promoted
her discomfiture. There are those who think they have discovered the
treacherous methods employed to compass her defeat at Paris, at La
Charite and at Compiegne.[2048] But in good sooth such methods were
unnecessary. At Paris there was but little chance of her being able to
cross the moat, since neither she nor her companions in arms had
ascertained its depth; besides, it was not the fault of the King and
his Council that the Carmelites, on whom they relied, failed to open
the gates. The siege of La Charite was conducted not by the Maid, but
by the Sire d'Albret and divers valiant captains. In the sortie from
Compiegne, it was certain that any dallying at Margny would cause the
French to be cut off by the English from Venette and by the
Burgundians from Clairoix and to be promptly overcome by the
Burgundians from Coudun. They forgot themselves in the delights of
pillage; and the inevitable result followed.
[Footnote 2048: Thomassin, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 312. _Chronique du
doyen de Saint-Thibaud_, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 323. _Chronique de
Tournai_, in _Recueil des chroniques de Flandre_, vol. iii, p. 415.
_Chronique de Normandie_, ed. A. Hellot, Rouen, 1881, in 8vo, pp. 77,
78. _Chronique de Lorraine_, ed. Abbe Marchal (_Recueil de documents
sur l'histoire de Lorraine_, vol. v).]
And why should the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Archbishop have
wanted to get rid of the Maid? She did not trouble them; on the
contrary they found her useful and employed her. By her prophecy that
she would cause the King to be anointed at Reims, she rendered an
immense service to my Lord Regnault, who more than any other profited
from the Champagne expedition, more even than the King, who, while he
succeeded in being crowned, failed to recover Paris and Normandy.
Notwithstanding this great advantage, the Lord Archbishop felt no
gratitude towards the Maid; he was a hard man and an egoist. But did
he wish her harm? Had he not need of her? At Senlis he was maintaining
the King's cause; and he was maintaining it well, we may be sure,
since, with the towns that had returned to their liege lord, he was
defending his own episcopal and ducal city, his benefices and his
canonries. Did he not intend to use her against the Burgundians? We
have already noted reasons for believing that towards the end of
March, he had asked the Sire de la Tremouille to send her from Sully
with a goodly company to wage war in l'Ile-de-France. And our
hypothesis is confirmed when, after they had been unhappily deprived
of Jeanne's services, we find the bishop and the Chamberlain driven to
replace her by someone likewise favoured with visions and claiming to
be sent of God. Unable to discover a maid they had to make shift with
a youth. This resolution they took a few days after Jeanne's capture
and this is how it came about.
Some time before, a shepherd lad of Gevaudan, by name Guillaume, while
tending his flocks at the foot of the Lozere Mountains and guarding
them from wolf and lynx, had a revelation concerning the realm of
France. This shepherd, like John, Our Lord's favourite disciple, was
virgin. In one of the caves of the Mende Mountain, where the holy
apostle Privat had prayed and fasted, his ear was struck by a heavenly
voice, and thus he knew that God was sending him to the King of
France. He went to Mende, just as Jeanne had gone to Vaucouleurs in
order that he might be taken to the King. There he found pious folk,
who, touched by his holiness and persuaded that there was power in
him, provided for his equipment and for his journey, which provisions,
in sooth, amounted to very little. The words he addressed to the King
were much the same as those uttered by the Maid.
"Sire," he said, "I am commanded to go with your people; and without
fail the English and Burgundians shall be discomfited."[2049]
[Footnote 2049: Summary of a letter from Regnault de Chartres to the
inhabitants of Reims, _Trial_, vol. v, p. 168.]
The King received him kindly. The clerks who had examined the Maid
must have feared lest if they repulsed this shepherd lad they might be
rejecting the aid of the Holy Ghost. Amos was a shepherd, and to him
God granted the gift of prophecy: "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." MATT. xi, 25.
But before this shepherd could be believed he must give a sign. The
clerks of Poitiers, who in those evil days languished in dire penury,
did not appear exacting in their demand for proofs; they had
counselled the King to employ the Maid merely on the promise that as a
token of her mission she would deliver Orleans. The Gevaudan shepherd
had more than promises to allege; he showed wondrous marks on his
body. Like Saint Francis he had received the stigmata; and on his
hands, his feet and in his side were bleeding wounds.[2050]
[Footnote 2050: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 272. Lefevre de
Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 263. Martial d'Auvergne, _Vigiles_, vol. i, p.
124.]
The mendicant monks rejoiced that their spiritual father had thus
participated in the Passion of Our Lord. A like grace had been granted
to the Blessed Catherine of Sienna, of the order of Saint Dominic.
But if there were miraculous stigmata imprinted by Jesus Christ
himself, there were also the stigmata of enchantment, which were the
work of the Devil, and very important was it to distinguish between
the two.[2051] It could only be done by great knowledge and great
piety. It would appear that Guillaume's stigmata were not the work of
the devil; for it was resolved to employ him in the same manner as
Jeanne, as Catherine de la Rochelle, and as the two Breton women, the
spiritual daughters of Friar Richard.
[Footnote 2051: A. Maury, _La stigmatisation et les stigmates_, in
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1854, ch. viii, pp. 454-482. Dr. Subled, _Les
stigmates selon la science_, in _Science catholique_, 1894, vol. viii,
pp. 1073 _et seq._; vol. ix, pp. 2 _et seq._]
When the Maid fell into the hands of the Burgundians, the Sire de la
Tremouille was with the King, on the Loire, where fighting had ceased
since the disastrous siege of La Charite. He sent the shepherd youth
to the banks of the Oise, to the Lord Archbishop of Reims, who was
there opposing the Burgundians, commanded by Duke Philip, himself.
Messire Regnault had probably asked for the boy. In any case he
welcomed him willingly and kept him at Beauvais, supervising and
interrogating him, ready to use him at an auspicious moment. One day,
either to try him or because the rumour was really in circulation,
young Guillaume was told that the English had put Jeanne to death.
"Then," said he, "it will be the worse for them."[2052]
[Footnote 2052: Letter from Regnault de Chartres, in _Trial_, vol. v,
p. 168.]
By this time, after all the rivalries and jealousies which had torn
asunder this company of the King's _beguines_, there remained to Friar
Richard one only of his penitents, Dame Catherine of La Rochelle, who
had the gift of discovering hidden treasure.[2053] The young shepherd
approved of the Maid as little as Dame Catherine had done.
[Footnote 2053: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 295 _et seq._]
"God suffered Jeanne to be taken," he said, "because she was puffed up
with pride and because of the rich clothes she wore and because she
had not done as God commanded her but according to her own will."[2054]
[Footnote 2054: Letter from Regnault de Chartres, in _Ibid._, vol. v,
p. 168.]
Were these words suggested to him by the enemies of the Maid? That may
be: but it is also possible that he derived them from inspiration.
Saints are not always kind to one another.
Meanwhile Messire Regnault de Chartres believed himself possessed of a
marvel far surpassing the marvel he had lost. He wrote a letter to the
inhabitants of his town of Reims telling them that the Maid had been
taken at Compiegne.
This misfortune had befallen her through her own fault, he added. "She
would not take advice, but would follow her own will." In her stead
God had sent a shepherd, "who says neither more nor less than Jeanne."
God has strictly commanded him to discomfit the English and the
Burgundians. And the Lord Archbishop neglects not to repeat the words
by which the prophet of Gevaudan had represented Jeanne as proud,
gorgeous in attire, rebellious of heart.[2055] The Reverend Father in
God, my Lord Regnault, would never have consented to employ a heretic
and a sorcerer; he believed in Guillaume as he had believed in Jeanne;
he held both one and the other to have been divinely sent, in the
sense that all which is not of the devil is of God. It was sufficient
for him that no evil had been found in the child, and he intended to
essay him, hoping that Guillaume would do what Jeanne had done.
Whether the Archbishop thus acted rightly or wrongly the issue was to
decide, but he might have exalted the shepherd without denying the
Saint who was so near her martyrdom. Doubtless he deemed it necessary
to distinguish between the fortune of the kingdom and the fortune of
Jeanne. And he had the courage to do it.
[Footnote 2055: _Ibid._, p. 168.]
CHAPTER IX
THE MAID AT BEAUREVOIR--CATHERINE DE LA ROCHELLE AT PARIS--EXECUTION
OF LA PIERRONNE
The Maid had been taken captive in the diocese of Beauvais.[2056] At
that time the Bishop Count of Beauvais was Pierre Cauchon of Reims, a
great and pompous clerk of the University of Paris, which had elected
him rector in 1403. Messire Pierre Cauchon was not a moderate man;
with great ardour he had thrown himself into the Cabochien riots.[2057]
In 1414, the Duke of Burgundy had sent him on an embassy to the
Council of Constance to defend the doctrines of Jean Petit;[2058] then
he had appointed him Master of Requests in 1418, and finally raised
him to the episcopal see of Beauvais.[2059] Standing equally high in
the favour of the English, Messire Pierre was Councillor of King Henry
VI, Almoner of France and Chancellor to the Queen of England. Since
1423, his usual residence had been at Rouen. By their submission to
King Charles the people of Beauvais had deprived him of his episcopal
revenue.[2060] And, as the English said and believed that the army of
the King of France was at that time commanded by Friar Richard and the
Maid, Messire Pierre Cauchon, the impoverished Bishop of Beauvais, had
a personal grievance against Jeanne. It would have been better for his
own reputation that he should have abstained from avenging the
Church's honour on a damsel who was possibly an idolatress, a
soothsayer and the invoker of devils, but who had certainly incurred
his personal ill-will. He was in the Regent's pay;[2061] and the Regent
was filled with bitter hatred of the Maid.[2062] Again for his
reputation's sake, my Lord Bishop of Beauvais should have reflected
that in prosecuting Jeanne for a matter of faith he was serving his
master's wrath and furthering the temporal interests of the great of
this world. On these things he did not reflect; on the contrary, this
case at once temporal and spiritual, as ambiguous as his own position,
excited his worst passions. He flung himself into it with all the
thoughtlessness of the violent. A maiden to be denounced, a heretic
and an Armagnac to boot, what a feast for the prelate, the Councillor
of King Henry! After having concerted with the doctors and masters of
the University of Paris, on the 14th of July, he presented himself
before the camp of Compiegne and demanded the Maid as subject to his
jurisdiction.[2063]
[Footnote 2056: This point was not called in question at the time; but
what might be discussed is whether the Bishop of Beauvais could
exercise ordinary jurisdiction over the Maid. On this subject see:
Abbe Ph. H. Dunand, _Histoire complete de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1899,
vol. ii, pp. 412, 413.]
[Footnote 2057: Robillard de Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges et
assesseurs du proces de Jeanne d'Arc_, Rouen, 1890, p. 12. Douet
d'Arcq, _Choix de pieces inedites relatives au regne de Charles VI_,
vol. i, pp. 356, 357. Chanoine Cerf, _Pierre Cauchon de Sommievre,
chanoine de Reims et de Beauvais, eveque de Beauvais et de Lisieux;
son origine, ses dignites, sa mort et ses sepultures_, in _Travaux de
l'Academie de Reims_, CI (1898), pp. 363 _et seq._, A. Sarrazin,
_Pierre Cauchon, juge de Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1901, in 8vo, pp. 26
_et seq._]
[Footnote 2058: Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. i, p. 116.
A. Sarrazin, _P. Cauchon_, pp. 36, 37.]
[Footnote 2059: Du Boulay, _Historia Universitatis Parisiensis_, 1670,
vol. v, p. 912. The Abbe Delettre, _Histoire du diocese de Beauvais_,
Beauvais, 1842, vol. ii, p. 348.]
[Footnote 2060: Robillard de Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, p.
13.]
[Footnote 2061: A. Sarrazin, _P. Cauchon_, pp. 58 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2062: Rymer, _Foedera_, vol. x, p. 408, _passim_.]
[Footnote 2063: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 13. Vallet de Viriville, _Proces de
condamnation_, pp. 10 _et seq._ A. Sarrazin, _P. Cauchon_, pp. 108 _et
seq._]
He supported his demand by letters from the _Alma Mater_ to the Duke
of Burgundy and the Lord Jean de Luxembourg.
The University made known to the most illustrious Prince, the Duke of
Burgundy, that once before it had claimed this woman, called the Maid,
and had received no reply.
"We greatly fear," continued the doctors and masters, "that by the
false and seductive power of the Hellish Enemy and by the malice and
subtlety of wicked persons, your enemies and adversaries who, it is
said, are making every effort to deliver this woman by crooked means,
will in some manner remove her out of your power.
"Wherefore, the University hopes that so great a dishonour may be
spared to the most Christian name of the house of France, and again it
supplicates your Highness, the Duke of Burgundy, to deliver over this
woman either to the Inquisitor of the evil of heresy or to my Lord
Bishop of Beauvais within whose spiritual jurisdiction she was
captured."
Here follows the letter which the doctors and masters of the
University entrusted to the Lord Bishop of Beauvais for the Lord Jean
de Luxembourg:
Most noble, honoured and powerful lord, to your high
nobility we very affectionately commend us. Your noble
wisdom doth well know and recognise that all good Catholic
knights should employ their strength and their power first
in God's service and then for the common weal. Above all,
the first oath of the order of knighthood is to defend and
keep the honour of God, the Catholic Faith and holy Church.
This sacred oath was present to your mind when you employed
your noble power and your person in the taking of the woman
who calleth herself the Maid, by whom the glory of God hath
been infinitely offended, the Faith deeply wounded and the
Church greatly dishonoured: for through her there have
arisen in this kingdom, idolatries, errors, false doctrines
and other evils and misfortunes without end. And in truth
all loyal Christians must give unto you hearty thanks for
having rendered so great service to our holy Faith and to
all the kingdom. As for us, we thank God with all our
hearts, and you we thank for your noble prowess as
affectionately as we may. But such a capture alone would be
but a small thing were it not followed by a worthy issue
whereby this woman may answer for the offences she hath
committed against our merciful Creator, his faith and his
holy Church, as well as for her other evil deeds which are
said to be without number. The mischief would be greater
than ever, the people would be wrapped in yet grosser error
than before and his Divine Majesty too insufferably
offended, if matters continued in their present state, or if
it befell that this woman were delivered or retaken, as we
are told, is wished, plotted and endeavoured by divers of
our enemies, by all secret ways and by what is even worse by
bribe or by ransom. But it is our hope that God will not
permit so great an evil to betide his people, and that your
great and high wisdom will not suffer it so to befall but
will provide against it as becometh your nobility.
For if without the retribution that behoveth she were to be
delivered, irreparable would be the dishonour which should
fall on your great nobility and on all those who have dealt
in this matter. But your good and noble wisdom will know how
to devise means whereby such scandal shall cease as soon as
may be, whereof there is great need. And because all delay
in this matter is very perilous and very injurious to this
kingdom, very kindly and with a cordial affection do we
beseech your powerful and honoured nobility to grant that
for the glory of God, for the maintenance of the Holy
Catholic Faith, for the good and honour of the kingdom, this
woman be delivered up to justice and given over here to the
Inquisitor of the Faith, who hath demanded her and doth now
demand her urgently, in order that he may examine the
grievous charges under which she labours, so that God may be
satisfied and the folk duly edified in good and holy
doctrine. Or, an it please you better, hand over this woman
to the reverend Father in God, our highly honoured Lord
Bishop of Beauvais, who it is said hath likewise claimed
her, because she was taken within his jurisdiction. This
prelate and this inquisitor are judges of this woman in
matters of faith; and every Christian of whatsoever estate
owes them obedience in this case under heavy penalty of the
law. By so doing you will attain to the love and grace of
the most High and you will be the means of exalting the holy
Faith, and likewise will you glorify your own high and noble
name and also that of the most high and most powerful
Prince, our redoubtable Lord and yours, my Lord of Burgundy.
Every man shall be required to pray God for the prosperity
of your most noble worship, whom may it please God our
Saviour in his grace, to guide and keep in all his affairs
and finally to grant eternal joy.
Given at Paris, the 14th day of July, 1430.[2064]
[Footnote 2064: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 10, 11. M. Fournier, _La faculte
de decret_, vol. i, p. 353, note.]
At the same time that he bore these letters, the Reverend Father in
God, the Bishop of Beauvais was charged to offer money.[2065] To us it
seems strange indeed that just at the very time when, by the mouth of
the University, he was representing to the Lord of Luxembourg that he
could not sell his prisoner without committing a crime, the Bishop
should himself offer to purchase her. According to these
ecclesiastics, Jean would incur terrible penalties in this world and
in the next, if in conformity with the laws and customs of war he
surrendered a prisoner held to ransom in return for money, and he
would win praise and blessing if he treacherously sold his captive to
those who wished to put her to death. But at least we might expect
that this Lord Bishop who had come to buy this woman for the Church,
would purchase her with the Church's money. Not at all! The purchase
money is furnished by the English. In the end therefore she is
delivered not to the Church but to the English. And it is a priest,
acting in the interests of God and of his Church, by virtue of his
episcopal jurisdiction, who concludes the bargain. He offers ten
thousand golden francs, a sum in return for which, he says, according
to the custom prevailing in France, the King has the right to claim
any prisoner even were he of the blood royal.[2066]
[Footnote 2065: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 2066: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 14.]
There can be no doubt whatever that the high and solemn ecclesiastic,
Pierre Cauchon, suspected Jeanne of witchcraft. Wishing to bring her
to trial, he exercised his ecclesiastical functions. But he knew her
to be the enemy of the English as well as of himself; there is no
doubt on that point. So when he wished to bring her to trial he acted
as the Councillor of King Henry. Was it a witch or the enemy of the
English he was buying with his ten thousand gold francs? And if it
were merely a witch and an idolatress that the Holy Inquisitor, that
the University, that the Ordinary demanded for the glory of God, and
at the price of gold, wherefore so much ado, wherefore so great an
expenditure of money? Would it not be better in this matter to act in
concert with the ecclesiastics of King Charles's party? The Armagnacs
were neither infidels nor heretics; they were neither Turks nor
Hussites; they were Catholics; they acknowledged the Pope of Rome to
be the true head of Christendom. The Dauphin Charles and his clergy
had not been excommunicated. Neither those who regarded the Treaty of
Troyes as invalid nor those who had sworn to it had been pronounced
anathema by the Pope. This was not a question of faith. In the
provinces ruled over by King Charles the Holy Inquisition prosecuted
heresy in a curious manner and the secular arm saw to it that the
sentences pronounced by the Church did not remain a dead letter. The
Armagnacs burned witches just as much as the French and the
Burgundians. For the present doubtless they did not believe the Maid
to be possessed by devils; most of them on the contrary were inclined
to regard her as a saint. But might they not be undeceived? Would it
not be good Christian charity to present them with fine canonical
arguments? If the Maid's case were really a case for the
ecclesiastical court why not join with Churchmen of both parties and
take her before the Pope and the Council? And just at that time a
Council for the reformation of the Church and the establishment of
peace in the kingdom was sitting in the town of Bale; the University
was sending its delegates, who would there meet the ecclesiastics of
King Charles, also Gallicans and firmly attached to the privileges of
the Church of France.[2067] Why not have this Armagnac prophetess
tried by the assembled Fathers? But for the sake of Henry of Lancaster
and the glory of Old England matters had to take another turn. The
Regent's Councillors were already accusing Jeanne of witchcraft when
she summoned them in the name of the King of Heaven to depart out of
France. During the siege of Orleans, they wanted to burn her heralds
and said that if they had her they would burn her also at the stake.
Such in good sooth was their firm intent and their unvarying
intimation. This does not look as if they would be likely to hand her
over to the Church as soon as she was taken. In their own kingdom they
burned as many witches and wizards as possible; but they had never
suffered the Holy Inquisition to be established in their land, and
they were ill acquainted with that form of justice. Informed that
Jeanne was in the hands of the Sire de Luxembourg, the Great Council
of England were unanimously in favour of her being purchased at any
price. Divers lords recommended that as soon as they obtained
possession of the Maid she should be sewn in a sack and cast into the
river. But one of them (it is said to have been the Earl of Warwick)
represented to them that she ought first to be tried, convicted of
heresy and witchcraft by an ecclesiastical tribunal, and then solemnly
degraded in order that her King might be degraded with her.[2068] What
a disgrace for Charles of Valois, calling himself King of France, if
the University of Paris, if the French ecclesiastical dignitaries,
bishops, abbots, canons, if in short the Church Universal were to
declare that a witch had sat in his Council and that a witch led his
host, that one possessed had conducted him to his impious,
sacrilegious and void anointing! Thus would the trial of the Maid be
the trial of Charles VII, the condemnation of the Maid the
condemnation of Charles VII. The idea seemed good to them and was
adopted.
[Footnote 2067: Du Boulay, _Historia Universitatis Parisiensis_, vol.
v, pp. 393-408. _Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi
quinti_, vol. i, pp. 70 _et seq._ Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, _Le
proces de Jeanne d'Arc et l'Universite de Paris_.]
[Footnote 2068: Valeran Varanius, ed. Prarond, Paris, 1889, book iv, p.
100.]
The Lord Bishop of Beauvais was eager to put it into execution. He, a
priest and Councillor of State, was consumed with a desire, under the
semblance of trying an unfortunate heretic, to sit in judgment on the
descendant of Clovis, of Saint Charlemagne and of Saint Louis.
Early in August, the Sire de Luxembourg had the Maid taken from
Beaulieu, which was not safe enough, to Beaurevoir, near Cambrai.[2069]
There dwelt Dame Jeanne de Luxembourg and Dame Jeanne de Bethune.
Jeanne de Luxembourg was the aunt of Lord Jean, whom she loved dearly.
Among the great of this world she had lived as a saint, and she had
never married. Formerly lady-in-waiting to Queen Ysabeau, King Charles
VII's godmother, one of the most important events of her life had been
to solicit from Pope Martin the canonisation of her Brother, the
Cardinal of Luxembourg, who had died at Avignon in his ninetieth year.
She was known as the Demoiselle de Luxembourg. She was sixty-seven
years of age, infirm and near her end.[2070]
[Footnote 2069: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 109, 110; vol. ii, p. 298; vol.
iii, p. 121. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 389. E. Gomart, _Jeanne d'Arc au
chateau de Beaurevoir_, Cambrai, 1865, in 8vo, 47 pages (_Mem. de la
Societe d'emulation de Cambrai_, xxxviii, 2, pp. 305-348). L. Sambier,
_Jeanne d'Arc et la region du Nord_, Lille, 1901, in 8vo, 63 pages.
Cf. Morosini, vol. iii, p. 300, notes 3 and 4, vol. iv, supplement
xxi.]
[Footnote 2070: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 95, 231. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p.
402. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. i, p. 2;
vol. ii, pp. 72, 73.]
Jeanne de Bethune, widow of Lord Robert de Bar, slain at the Battle
of Azincourt, had married Lord Jean in 1418. She was reputed pitiful,
because, in 1424, she had obtained from her husband the pardon of a
nobleman of Picardy, who had been brought prisoner to Beaurevoir and
was in great danger of being beheaded and quartered.[2071]
[Footnote 2071: A. Duchene, _Histoire de la maison de Bethune_, ch.
iii, and proofs and illustrations, p. 33. Vallet de Viriville, _loc.
cit._, and Morosini, vol. iv, pp. 352, 354.]
These two ladies treated Jeanne kindly. They offered her woman's
clothes or cloth with which to make them; and they urged her to
abandon a dress which appeared to them unseemly. Jeanne refused,
alleging that she had not received permission from Our Lord and that
it was not yet time; later she admitted that had she been able to quit
man's attire, she would have done so at the request of these two dames
rather than for any other dame of France, the Queen excepted.[2072]
[Footnote 2072: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 95, 231.]
A noble of the Burgundian party, one Aimond de Macy, often came to see
her and was pleased to converse with her. To him she seemed modest in
word and in deed. Still Sire Aimond, who was but thirty, had found her
personally attractive.[2073] If certain witnesses of her own party are
to be believed, Jeanne, although beautiful, did not inspire men with
desire.
[Footnote 2073: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 438, 457; vol. iii, p. 121.]
This singular grace however applied to the Armagnacs only; it was not
extended to the Burgundians, and Seigneur Aimond did not experience
it, for one day he tried to thrust his hand into her bosom. She
resisted and repulsed him with all her strength. Lord Aimond concluded
as more than one would have done in his place that this was a damsel
of rare virtue. He took warning.[2074]
[Footnote 2074: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 120, 121.]
Confined in the castle keep, Jeanne's mind was for ever running on her
return to her friends at Compiegne; her one idea was to escape.
Somehow there reached her evil tidings from France. She got the idea
that all the inhabitants of Compiegne over seven years of age were to
be massacred, "to perish by fire and sword," she said; and indeed such
a fate was bound to overtake them if the town were taken.
Confiding her distress and her unconquerable desire to Saint
Catherine, she asked: "How can God abandon to destruction those good
folk of Compiegne who have been so loyal to their Lord?"[2075]
[Footnote 2075: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 150.]
And in her dream, surrounded by saints, like the donors in church
pictures, kneeling and in rapture, she wrestled with her heavenly
counsellors for the poor folk of Compiegne.
What she had heard of their fate caused her infinite distress; she
herself would rather die than continue to live after such a
destruction of worthy people. For this reason she was strongly tempted
to leap from the top of the keep. And because she knew all that could
be said against it, she heard her Voices putting her in mind of those
arguments.
Nearly every day Saint Catherine said to her: "Do not leap, God will
help both you and those of Compiegne."
And Jeanne replied to her: "Since God will help those of Compiegne, I
want to be there."
And once again Saint Catherine told her the marvellous story of the
shepherdess and the King: "To all things must you be resigned. And you
will not be delivered until you have seen the King of the English."
To which Jeanne made answer: "But in good sooth I do not desire to see
him. I would rather die than fall into the hands of the English."[2076]
[Footnote 2076: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 150, 151.]
One day she heard a rumour that the English had come to fetch her. The
arrival of the Lord Bishop of Beauvais who came to offer the blood
money at Beaurevoir may have given rise to the report.[2077]
Straightway Jeanne became frantic and beside herself. She ceased to
listen to her Voices, who forbade her the fatal leap. The keep was at
least seventy feet high; she commended her soul to God and leapt.
[Footnote 2077: _Ibid._, p. 13; vol. v, p. 194.]
Having fallen to the ground, she heard cries: "She is dead."
The guards hurried to the spot. Finding her still alive, in their
amazement they could only ask: "Did you leap?"
She felt sorely shaken; but Saint Catherine spoke to her and said: "Be
of good courage. You will recover." At the same time the Saint gave
her good tidings of her friends. "You will recover and the people of
Compiegne will receive succour." And she added that this succour would
come before Saint Martin's Day in the winter.[2078]
[Footnote 2078: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 110, 151, 152.]
Henceforth Jeanne believed that it was her saints who had helped her
and guarded her from death. She knew well that she had been wrong in
attempting such a leap, despite her Voices.
Saint Catherine said to her: "You must confess and ask God to forgive
you for having leapt."
Jeanne did confess and ask pardon of Our Lord. And after her
confession Saint Catherine made known unto her that God had forgiven
her. For three or four days she remained without eating or drinking;
then she took some food and was whole.[2079]
[Footnote 2079: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 166. _Journal d'un bourgeois de
Paris_, p. 268. J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, pp. 53, 58.]
Another story was told of the leap from Beaurevoir; it was related
that she had tried to escape through a window letting herself down by
a sheet or something that broke; but we must believe the Maid: she
says she leapt; if she had been attached to a cord, she would not have
committed sin and would not have confessed. This leap was known and
the rumour spread abroad that she had escaped and joined her own
party.[2080]
[Footnote 2080: _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 507, recto. Morosini,
vol. iii, pp. 301-303. _Chronique de Tournai_, ed. Smedt, in _Recueil
des Chroniques de Flandre_, vol. iii, pp. 416, 417.]
Meanwhile the Lenten sermons at Orleans had been delivered by that
good preacher, Friar Richard, who was ill content with Jeanne, and
whom Jeanne disliked and had quitted. The townsfolk as a token of
regard presented him with the image of Jesus sculptured in copper by a
certain Philippe, a metal-worker of the city. And the bookseller, Jean
Moreau, bound him a book of hours at the town's expense.[2081]
[Footnote 2081: Lottin, _Recherches sur la ville d'Orleans_, vol. i, p.
252. _Trial_, vol. i, p. 99, note 1. _Journal du siege_, pp. 235-238.
S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. cclxiii, note 2.]
He brought back Queen Marie to Jargeau and succeeded in obtaining her
favour. Jeanne was spared the bitterness of learning that while she
was languishing in prison her friends at Orleans, her fair Dauphin and
his Queen Marie, were making good cheer for the monk who had turned
from her to prefer a dame Catherine whom she considered
worthless.[2082] Only lately the idea of employing Dame Catherine had
filled Jeanne with alarm; she wrote to her King about it, and as soon
as she saw him besought him not to employ her. However the King set no
store by what she had said; he agreed to Friar Richard's favourite
being allowed to set forth on her mission to obtain money from the
good towns and to negotiate peace with the Duke of Burgundy. But
perhaps this saintly dame was not possessed of all the wisdom
necessary for the performance of man's work and King's service. For
immediately she became a cause of embarrassment to her friends.
[Footnote 2082: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 296, 297.]
Being in the town of Tours, she fell to saying: "In this town there be
carpenters who work, but not at houses, and if ye have not a care,
this town is in the way to a bad end and there be those in the town
that know it."[2083]
[Footnote 2083: Register of the Accounts of the town of Tours for the
year 1430, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 473, note 1.]
This was a denunciation in the form of a parable. Dame Catherine was
thereby accusing the churchmen and burgesses of Tours of working
against Charles of Valois, their lord. The woman must have been held
to have influence with the King, his kinsmen and his Council; for the
inhabitants of Tours took fright and sent an Augustinian monk, Brother
Jean Bourget, to King Charles, to the Queen of Sicily, to the Bishop
of Seez, and to the Lord of Treves, to inquire whether the words of
this holy woman had been believed by them. The Queen of Sicily and the
Councillors of King Charles gave the monk letters wherein they
announced to the townsfolk of Tours that they had never heard of such
things, and King Charles declared that he had every confidence in the
churchmen, the burgesses and the other citizens of his town of
Tours.[2084]
[Footnote 2084: _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 473.]
Dame Catherine had in like manner slandered the inhabitants of
Angers.[2085]
[Footnote 2085: _Ibid._, p. 473.]
Whether, following the example of the Blessed Colette of Corbie, this
devout person wished to pass from one party to the other, or whether
she had chanced to be taken captive by Burgundian men-at-arms, she was
brought before the Official at Paris. In their interrogation of her
the ecclesiastics appear to have been concerned less about her than
about the Maid Jeanne, whose prosecution was then being instituted.
On the subject of the Maid, Catherine said: "Jeanne has two
counsellors, whom she calls Counsellors of the Spring."[2086]
[Footnote 2086: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 295.]
Such was the confused recollection of the conversations she had had at
Jargeau and at Montfaucon. The term Council was the one Jeanne usually
employed when speaking of her Voices; but Dame Catherine was confusing
Jeanne's heavenly visitants with what the Maid had told her of the
Gooseberry Spring at Domremy.
If Jeanne felt unkindly towards Catherine, Catherine did not feel
kindly towards Jeanne. She did not assert Jeanne's mission to be
nought; but she let it be clearly understood that the hapless damsel,
then a prisoner in the hands of the Burgundians, was addicted to
invoking evil spirits.
"If Jeanne be not well guarded," Catherine told the Official, "she
will escape from prison with the aid of the devil."[2087]
[Footnote 2087: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 106, note. _Journal d'un bourgeois
de Paris_, p. 271. Vallet de Viriville, _Proces de condamnation de
Jeanne d'Arc_, pp. lxi-lxv.]
Whether Jeanne was or was not aided by the devil was a matter to be
decided between herself and the doctors of the church. But it is
certain that her one thought was to burst her bonds, and that she was
ceaselessly imagining means of escape. Catherine de la Rochelle knew
her well and wished her ill.
Catherine was released. Her ecclesiastical judges would not have
treated her so leniently had she spoken well of the Maid. The La
Rochelle Dame returned to King Charles.[2088]
[Footnote 2088: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 271.]
The two religious women who had followed Jeanne on her departure from
Sully and had been taken at Corbeil, Pierronne of Lower Brittany and
her companion, had been confined in ecclesiastical prisons at Paris
since the spring. They openly said that God had sent them to succour
the Maid Jeanne. Friar Richard had been their spiritual father and
they had been in the Maid's company. Wherefore they were strongly
suspected of having offended against God and his Holy Religion. The
Grand Inquisitor of France, Brother Jean Graverent, Prior of the
Jacobins at Paris, prosecuted them according to the forms usual in
that country. He proceeded in concurrence with the Ordinary,
represented by the official.
Pierronne maintained and believed it to be true that Jeanne was good,
and that what she did was well done and according to God's will. She
admitted that on the Christmas night of that year, at Jargeau, Friar
Richard had twice given her the body of Jesus Christ and had given it
three times to Jeanne.[2089] Besides, the fact had been well proved by
information gathered from eye-witnesses. The judges, who were
authorities on this subject, held that the monk should not thus have
lavished the bread of angels on such women. However, since frequent
communion was not formally forbidden by canon law, Pierronne could not
be censured for having received it. The informers, who were then
giving evidence against Jeanne, did not remember the three communions
at Jargeau.[2090]
[Footnote 2089: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 271, 272.]
[Footnote 2090: Voltaire, _Dictionnaire philosophique_, article, Arc.]
Heavier charges weighed upon the two Breton women. They were labouring
under the accusation of witchcraft and sorcery.
Pierronne stated and took her oath that God often appeared to her in
human form and spoke to her as friend to friend, and that the last
time she had seen him he was clothed in a purple cloak and a long
white robe.[2091]
[Footnote 2091: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 259, 260.]
The illustrious masters who were trying her, represented to her that
to speak thus of such apparitions was to blaspheme. And these women
were convicted of being possessed by evil spirits, who caused them to
err in word and in deed.
On Sunday, the 3rd of September, 1430, they were taken to the Parvis
Notre Dame to hear a sermon. Platforms had been erected as usual, and
Sunday had been chosen as the day in order that folk might benefit
from this edifying spectacle. A famous doctor addressed a charitable
exhortation to both women. One of them, the youngest, as she listened
to him and looked at the stake that had been erected, was filled with
repentance. She confessed that she had been seduced by an angel of the
devil and duly renounced her error.
Pierronne, on the contrary, refused to retract. She obstinately
persisted in the belief that she saw God often, clothed as she had
said. The Church could do nothing for her. Given over to the secular
arm, she was straightway conducted to the stake which had been
prepared for her, and burned alive by the executioner.[2092]
[Footnote 2092: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 259-260,
271-272. Jean Nider, _Formicarium_, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 504. A. de
la Borderie, _Pierronne et Perrinaic_, pp. 7 _et seq._]
Thus did the Grand Inquisitor of France and the Bishop of Paris
cruelly cause to perish by an ignominious death one of those women who
had followed Friar Richard, one of the saints of the Dauphin Charles.
But the most famous of these women and the most abounding in works was
in their hands. The death of La Pierronne was an earnest of the fate
reserved for the Maid.
CHAPTER X
BEAUREVOIR--ARRAS--ROUEN--THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE
In the month of September, 1430, two inhabitants of Tournai, the chief
alderman, Bietremieu Carlier, and the chief Councillor, Henri Romain,
were returning from the banks of the Loire, whither their town had
despatched them on a mission to the King of France. They stopped at
Beaurevoir. Albeit this place lay upon their direct route and afforded
them a halt between two stages of their journey, one cannot help
supposing some connection to have existed between their mission to
Charles of Valois and their arrival in the domain of the Sire de
Luxembourg. The existence of such a connection seems all the more
probable when we remember the attachment of their fellow-citizens to
the Fleurs-de-Lis, and when we know the relations already existing
between the Maid and these emissaries.[2093]
[Footnote 2093: H. Vandenbroeck, _Extraits des anciens registres des
consaux de la ville de Tournai_, vol. ii (1422-1430), and Morosini,
vol. iii, pp. 185, 186.]
It has been said that the district of the provost of Tournai was loyal
to the King of France, who had granted it freedom and privileges.
Message after message it sent him; it organised public processions in
his honour, and it was ready to grant him anything, so long as he
demanded neither men nor money. The alderman, Carlier, and the
Councillor, Romain, had both previously gone to Reims as
representatives of their town to witness the anointing and the
coronation of King Charles. There they had doubtless seen the Maid in
her glory and had held her to be a very great saint. In those days,
their town, attentively watching the progress of the royal army, was
in regular correspondence with the warlike _beguine_, and with her
confessor, Friar Richard, or more probably Friar Pasquerel. To-day
they wended to the castle, wherein she was imprisoned in the hands of
her cruel enemies. We know not what it was they came to say to the
Sire de Luxembourg, nor even whether he received them. He cannot have
refused to hear them if he thought they came to make secret offers on
the part of King Charles for the ransom of the Maid, who had fought in
his battles. We know not, either, whether they were able to see the
prisoner. The idea that they did enter her presence is quite tenable;
for in those days it was generally easy to approach captives, and
passers by when they visited them were given every facility for the
performance of one of the seven works of mercy.
One thing, however, is certain; that when they left Beaurevoir, they
carried with them a letter which Jeanne had given them, charging them
to deliver it to the magistrates of their town. In this letter she
asked the folk of Tournai, for the sake of her Lord the King and in
view of the good services she had rendered him, to send unto her
twenty or thirty crowns, that she might employ them for her
necessities.[2094]
[Footnote 2094: H. Vandenbroeck, _Extraits analytiques des anciens
registres des consaux de la ville de Tournai_, vol. ii, pp. 338,
371-373. Canon H. Debout, _Jeanne d'Arc et les villes d'Arras et de
Tournai_, Paris, n.d., p. 24.]
It was the custom in those days thus to permit prisoners to beg their
bread.
It is said that the Demoiselle de Luxembourg, who had just made her
will, and had but a few days longer to live,[2095] entreated her noble
nephew not to give the Maid up to the English.[2096] But what power had
this good dame against the Norman gold of the King of England and
against the anathemas of Holy Church? For if my Lord Jean had refused
to give up this damsel suspected of enchantments, of idolatries, of
invoking devils and committing other crimes against religion, he would
have been excommunicated. The venerable University of Paris had not
neglected to make him aware that a refusal would expose him to heavy
legal penalties.[2097]
[Footnote 2095: Le P. Anselme, _Histoire genealogique de la maison de
France_, vol. iii, pp. 723, 724. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de
Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 175, 176. Morosini, vol. iv, supplement
xix.]
[Footnote 2096: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 95, 231.]
[Footnote 2097: _Ibid._, pp. 13, 14.]
The Sire de Luxembourg, meanwhile, was ill at ease; he feared that in
his castle of Beaurevoir, a prisoner worth ten thousand golden livres
was not sufficiently secure in case of a descent on the part of the
French or of the English or of the Burgundians, or of any of those
folk, who, caring nought for Burgundy or England or France, might wish
to carry her off, cast her into a pit, and hold her to ransom,
according to the custom of brigands in those days.[2098]
[Footnote 2098: _Les miracles de madame Sainte Katerine_, Bourasse,
_passim_.]
Towards the end of September, he asked his lord, the Duke of Burgundy,
who ruled over fine towns and strong cities, if he would undertake
the safe custody of the Maid. My Lord Philip consented and, by his
command, Jeanne was taken to Arras. This town was encircled by high
walls; it had two castles, one of which, La Cour-le-Comte, was in the
centre of the town. It was probably in the cells of Cour-le-Comte that
Jeanne was confined, under the watch and ward of my Lord David de
Brimeu, Lord of Ligny, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Governor of Arras.
At that time it was rare for prisoners to be kept in isolation.[2099]
At Arras, Jeanne received visitors; and among others, a Scotsman, who
showed her her portrait, in which she was represented kneeling on one
knee and presenting a letter to her King.[2100] This letter might be
supposed to have been from the Sire de Baudricourt, or from any other
clerk or captain by whom the painter may have thought Jeanne to have
been sent to the Dauphin; it might have been a letter announcing to
the King the deliverance of Orleans or the victory of Patay.
[Footnote 2099: "Was waited on in prison like a lady," says _Le Journal
d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 271, concerning the Rouen prison.]
[Footnote 2100: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 100.]
This was the only portrait of herself Jeanne ever saw and, for her own
part, she never had any painted; but during the brief duration of her
power, the inhabitants of the French towns placed images of her,
carved and painted, in the chapels of the saints, and wore leaden
medals on which she was represented; thus in her case following a
custom established in honour of the saints canonised by the
Church.[2101]
[Footnote 2101: _Ibid._, pp. 101, 206, 291; vol. iii, p. 87; vol. v,
pp. 104, 305. Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. ii, p. 46.
P. Lanery d'Arc, _Le culte de Jeanne d'Arc au XV'e siecle_, Orleans,
1887, in 8vo. Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc_,
pp. 8, 13, 18.]
Many Burgundian lords, and among them a knight, one Jean de Pressy,
Controller of the Finances of Burgundy, offered her woman's dress, as
the Luxembourg dame had done, for her own good and in order to avoid
scandal; but for nothing in the world would Jeanne have cast off the
garb which she had assumed according to divine command.
She also received in her prison at Arras a clerk of Tournai, one Jean
Naviel, charged by the magistrates of his town to deliver to her the
sum of twenty-two golden crowns. This ecclesiastic enjoyed the
confidence of his fellow citizens, who employed him in the town's most
urgent affairs. In the May of this year, 1430, he had been sent to
Messire Regnault de Chartres, Chancellor of King Charles. He had been
taken by the Burgundians at the same time as Jeanne and held to
ransom; but out of that predicament he soon escaped and at no great
cost.
He acquitted himself well of his mission[2102] to the Maid, and, it
would seem, received nothing for his trouble, doubtless because he
wanted the reward of this work of mercy to be placed to his account in
heaven.[2103]
[Footnote 2102: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 95, 96, 231. Canon Henri Debout,
_Jeanne d'Arc prisonniere a Arras_, Arras, 1894, in 16mo; _Jeanne
d'Arc et les villes d'Arras et de Tournai_, Paris, 1904, in 8vo;
_Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. ii, pp. 394 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2103: On the 7th of November, 1430, a messenger from the town
of Arras received forty shillings for having taken two sealed letters
to the Duke of Burgundy, one from Jean de Luxembourg, the other from
David de Brimeu, Governor of the Bailiwick of Arras; we know nothing
of the tenor of these letters written concerning "the case of the
Maid." P. Champion, _Notes sur Jeanne d'Arc, II; Jeanne d'Arc a
Arras_, in _Le Moyen Age_, July-August, 1907, pp. 200, 201.]
Neither the capture of the Maid nor the retreat of the men-at-arms she
had brought, put an end to the siege of Compiegne. Guillaume de Flavy
and his two brothers, Charles and Louis, and Captain Baretta with his
Italians, and the five hundred of the garrison[2104] displayed skill,
vigour, and untiring energy. The Burgundians conducted the siege in
the same manner as the English had conducted that of Orleans; mines,
trenches, bulwarks, cannonades and bastions, those gigantic and absurd
erections good for nothing but for burning. The suburbs of the town
Guillaume de Flavy had demolished because they were in the way of his
firing; boats he had sunk in order to bar the river. To the mortars
and huge _couillards_ of the Burgundians he replied with his
artillery, and notably with those little copper culverins which did
such good service.[2105] If the gay cannoneer of Orleans and Jargeau,
Maitre Jean de Montesclere, were absent, there was a shoemaker of
Valenciennes, an artilleryman, named Noirouffle, tall, dark, terrible
to see, and terrible to hear.[2106] The townsfolk of Compiegne, like
those of Orleans, made unsuccessful sallies. One day Louis de Flavy,
the governor's brother, was killed by a Burgundian bullet. But none
the less on that day Guillaume did as he was wont to do and made the
minstrels play to keep his men-at-arms in good cheer.[2107]
[Footnote 2104: H. de Lepinois, _Notes extraites des archives
communales de Compiegne_, in _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_,
1863, vol. xxiv, p. 486. A. Sorel, _Prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 268. P.
Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, pp. 38, 48 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2105: _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 500 verso.]
[Footnote 2106: Chastellain, vol. ii, p. 53.]
[Footnote 2107: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 390.]
In the month of June the bulwark, defending the bridge over the Oise,
like les Tourelles at Orleans which defended the bridge over the
Loire, was captured by the enemy without bringing about the reduction
of the town. In like manner, the capture of Les Tourelles had not
occasioned the fall of the town of Duke Charles.[2108]
[Footnote 2108: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 390, 391. Lefevre de
Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 180. Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 306, 307.
Chastellain, vol. ii, pp. 51, 54. A. Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne
d'Arc_, pp. 233 _et seq._ P. Champion. _Guillaume de Flavy_, p. 50.]
[Illustration: HENRY VI
_From a portrait in the "Election Chamber" at Eton, reproduced by
permission of the Provost_]
As for the bastions, they were just as little good on the Oise as they
had been on the Loire; everything passed by them. The Burgundians were
unable to invest Compiegne because its circumference was too
great.[2109] They were short of money; and their men-at-arms, for lack
of food and of pay, deserted with that perfect assurance which in
those days characterised alike mercenaries of the red cross and of the
white.[2110] To complete his misfortunes, Duke Philip was obliged to
take away some of the troops engaged in the siege and send them
against the inhabitants of Liege who had revolted.[2111] On the 24th of
October, a relieving army, commanded by the Count of Vendome and the
Marshal de Boussac, approached Compiegne. The English and the
Burgundians having turned to encounter them, the garrison and all the
inhabitants of the town, even the women, fell upon the rear of the
besiegers and routed them.[2112] The relieving army entered Compiegne.
The flaring of the bastions was a fine sight. The Duke of Burgundy
lost all his artillery.[2113] The Sire de Luxembourg, who had come to
Beaurevoir, where he had received the Count Bishop of Beauvais, now
appeared before Compiegne just in time to bear his share in the
disaster.[2114] The same causes which had constrained the English to
depart, as they put it, from Orleans, now obliged the Burgundians to
leave Compiegne. But in those days the most ordinary events must needs
have a supernatural cause assigned to them, wherefore the deliverance
of the town was attributed to the vow of the Count of Vendome, who, in
the cathedral of Senlis, had promised an annual mass to
Notre-Dame-de-la-Pierre if the place were not taken.[2115]
[Footnote 2109: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. i, pp. 49 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2110: _Chronique des cordeliers_, fol. 502 verso. P.
Champion, _Guillaume de Flavy_, proofs and illustrations, xli, xlii,
xliii.]
[Footnote 2111: _Livre des trahisons_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 2112: Monstrelet, vol. iii, pp. 410-415. Lefevre de
Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 185. _Livre des trahisons_, p. 202. A. Sorel,
_La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, proofs and illustrations, xiii, p. 341. P.
Champion, _loc. cit._, p. 176.]
[Footnote 2113: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 418. De La Fons-Melicocq,
_Documents inedits sur le siege de Compiegne_, in _La Picardie_, vol.
iii, 1857, pp. 22, 23. Stevenson, _Letters and Papers_, vol. ii, part
i, p. 156.]
[Footnote 2114: Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 419. P. Champion, _Guillaume de
Flavy_, p. 57.]
[Footnote 2115: Sorel, _La prise de Jeanne d'Arc_, proofs and
illustrations, p. 343.]
The Lord Treasurer of Normandy raised aids to the amount of eighty
thousand _livres tournois_, ten thousand of which were to be devoted
to the purchase of Jeanne. The Count Bishop of Beauvais, who was
taking this matter to heart, urged the Sire de Luxembourg to come to
terms, mingled threats with coaxings, and caused the Norman gold to
glitter before his eyes. He seemed to fear, and his fear was shared by
the masters and doctors of the University, that King Charles would
likewise make an offer, that he would promise more than King Henry's
ten thousand golden francs and that in the end, by dint of costly
gifts, the Armagnacs would succeed in winning back their
fairy-godmother.[2116] The rumour ran that King Charles, hearing that
the English were about to gain possession of Jeanne for a sum of
money, sent an ambassador to warn the Duke of Burgundy not on any
account to consent to such an agreement, adding that if he did, the
Burgundians in the hands of the King of France would be made to pay
for the fate of the Maid.[2117] Doubtless the rumour was false; albeit
the fears of the Lord Bishop and the masters of the Paris University
were not entirely groundless; and it is certain that from the banks of
the Loire the negotiations were being attentively followed with a view
to intervention at a favourable moment.
[Footnote 2116: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 9. Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire
de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 175.]
[Footnote 2117: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 236. U. Chevalier, _L'abjuration
de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 18, note.]
Besides, some sudden descent of the French was always to be feared.
Captain La Hire was ravaging Normandy, the knight Barbazan, la
Champagne, and Marshal de Boussac, the country between the Seine, the
Marne and the Somme.[2118]
[Footnote 2118: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 276, note.]
At length, about the middle of November, the Sire de Luxembourg
consented to the bargain; Jeanne was delivered up to the English. It
was decided to take her to Rouen, through Ponthieu, along the
sea-shore, through the north of Normandy, where there would be less
risk of falling in with the scouts of the various parties.
From Arras she was taken to the Chateau of Drugy, where the monks of
Saint-Riquier were said to have visited her in prison.[2119] She was
afterwards taken to Crotoy, where the castle walls were washed by the
ocean waves. The Duke of Alencon, whom she called her fair Duke, had
been imprisoned there after the Battle of Verneuil.[2120] At the time
of her arrival, Maitre Nicolas Gueuville, Chancellor of the Cathedral
church of Notre Dame d'Amiens, was a prisoner in that castle in the
hands of the English. He heard her confess and administered the
Communion to her.[2121] And there on that vast Bay of the Somme, grey
and monotonous, with its low sky traversed by sea-birds in their long
flight, Jeanne beheld coming down to her the visitant of earlier days,
the Archangel Saint Michael; and she was comforted. It was said that
the damsels and burgesses of Abbeville went to see her in the castle
where she was imprisoned.[2122] At the time of the coronation, these
burgesses had thought of turning French; and they would have done so
if King Charles had come to their town; he did not come; and perhaps
it was through Christian charity that the folk of Abbeville visited
Jeanne; but those among them who thought well of her did not say so,
for fear they too should be suspected of heresy.[2123]
[Footnote 2119: Chronicle of Jean de la Chapelle, in _Trial_, vol. v,
pp. 358-360. Lefils, _Histoire de la ville du Crotoy et de son
chateau_, pp. 111-118. G. Lefevre-Pontalis, _La panique anglaise_, p.
8, note 5. L'Abbe Bouthors, _Histoire de Saint-Riquier_, Abbeville,
1902, pp. 185, 215, 220.]
[Footnote 2120: Perceval de Cagny, pp. 22, 137.]
[Footnote 2121: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 121. A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc
et la Normandie_, pp. 63 _et seq._; Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, p.
521.]
[Footnote 2122: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 89; vol. iii, p. 121. Le P. Ignace
de Jesus Maria, _Histoire genealogique des comtes de Ponthieu et
maieurs d'Abbeville_, Paris, 1657, p. 490. _Trial_, vol. v, p. 361.]
[Footnote 2123: Monstrelet, vol. iv, pp. 353, 354. _Trial_, vol. v, p.
143.]
The doctors and masters of the University pursued her with a
bitterness hardly credible. In November, after they had been informed
of the conclusion of the bargain between Jean de Luxembourg and the
English, they wrote through their rector to the Lord Bishop of
Beauvais reproaching him for his delay in the matter of this woman and
exhorting him to be more diligent.
"For you it is no slight matter, holding as you do so high an office
in God's Church," ran this letter, "that the scandals committed
against the Christian religion be stamped out, especially when such
scandals arise within your actual jurisdiction."[2124]
[Footnote 2124: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 15, 16. M. Fournier, _La Faculte
de decret et l'Universite de Paris_, vol. i, p. 353.]
Filled with faith and zeal for the avenging of God's honour, these
clerks were, as they said, always ready to burn witches. They feared
the devil; but, perchance, though they may not have admitted it even
to themselves, they feared him twenty times more when he was Armagnac.
Jeanne was taken out of Crotoy at high tide and conveyed by boat to
Saint-Valery, then to Dieppe, as is supposed, and certainly in the end
to Rouen.[2125]
[Footnote 2125: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 21. Le P. Ignace de Jesus Maria, in
_Trial_, vol. v, p. 363. F. Poulaine, _Jeanne d'Arc a Rouen_, Paris,
1899, in 16mo. Ch. Lemire, _Jeanne d'Arc en Picardie et en Normandie_,
Paris, 1903, p. 10, _passim_. Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, pp. 524,
549.]
She was conducted to the old castle, built in the time of
Philippe-Auguste on the slope of the Bouvreuil hill.[2126] King Henry
VI, who had come to France for his coronation, had been there since
the end of August. He was a sad, serious child, harshly treated by the
Earl of Warwick, who was governor of the castle.[2127] The castle was
strongly fortified;[2128] it had seven towers, including the keep.
Jeanne was placed in a tower looking on to the open country.[2129] Her
room was on the middle storey, between the dungeon and the state
apartment. Eight steps led up to it.[2130] It extended over the whole
of that floor, which was forty-three feet across, including the
walls.[2131] A stone staircase approached it at an angle. There was but
a dim light, for some of the window slits had been filled in.[2132]
From a locksmith of Rouen, one Etienne Castille, the English had
ordered an iron cage, in which it was said to be impossible to stand
upright. If the reports of the ecclesiastical registrars are to be
believed, Jeanne was placed in it and chained by the neck, feet, and
hands,[2133] and left there till the opening of the trial. At Jean
Salvart's, at _l'Ecu de France_, in front of the Official's
courtyard,[2134] a mason's apprentice saw the cage weighed. But no one
ever found Jeanne in it. If this treatment were inflicted on Jeanne,
it was not invented for her; when Captain La Hire, in the February of
this same year, 1430, took Chateau Gaillard, near Rouen, he found the
good knight Barbazan in an iron cage, from which he would not come
out, alleging that he was a prisoner on parole.[2135] Jeanne, on the
contrary, had been careful to promise nothing, or rather she had
promised to escape as soon as she could.[2136] Therefore the English,
who believed that she had magical powers, mistrusted her greatly.[2137]
As she was being prosecuted by the Church, she ought to have been
detained in an ecclesiastical prison,[2138] but the _Godons_ were
resolved to keep her in their custody. One among them said she was
dear to them because they had paid dearly for her. On her feet they
put shackles and round her waist a chain padlocked to a beam five or
six feet long. At night this chain was carried over the foot of her
bed and attached to the principal beam.[2139] In like manner, John
Huss, in 1415, when he was delivered up to the Bishop of Constance and
transferred to the fortress of Gottlieben, was chained night and day
until he was taken to the stake.
[Footnote 2126: A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie au XV'e
siecle_, Rouen, 1896, in 4to, ch. v.]
[Footnote 2127: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 136-137. Vallet de Viriville,
_Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, p. 198.]
[Footnote 2128: L. de Duranville, _Le chateau de Bouvreuil_, in _La
Revue de Rouen_, 1852, p. 387. A. Deville, _La tour de la Pucelle du
chateau de Rouen_, in _Precis des travaux de l'Academie de Rouen_,
1865-1866, pp. 236-268. Bouquet, _Notice sur le donjon du chateau de
Philippe-Auguste_, Rouen, 1877, pp. 7 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2129: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 317, 345; vol. iii, p. 121.]
[Footnote 2130: _Ibid._, p. 154. A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la
Normandie_, p. 190, note 1. L. Delisle, _Revue des Societes savantes_,
1867, 4th series, vol. v, p. 440. F. Bouquet, _Jeanne d'Arc au donjon
de Rouen_, in _Revue de Normandie_, 1867, vol. vi, pp. 873-883. L.
Delisle, _Revue des Societes savantes_, vol. v (1867). Lanery d'Arc,
pp. 528-533.]
[Footnote 2131: Ballin, _Renseignements sur le Vieux-Chateau de Rouen_,
in _Revue de Rouen_, 1842, p. 35. A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la
Normandie_, p. 188.]
[Footnote 2132: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 7.]
[Footnote 2133: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 155.]
[Footnote 2134: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 180. A. Sarrazin, pp. 191, 192.]
[Footnote 2135: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, pp. 240, 241.]
[Footnote 2136: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 47.]
[Footnote 2137: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 322.]
[Footnote 2138: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 216, 217. J. Quicherat, _Apercus
nouveaux_, p. 112.]
[Footnote 2139: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 18.]
Five English men-at-arms,[2140] common soldiers (_houspilleurs_),
guarded the prisoner;[2141] they were not the flower of chivalry. They
mocked her and she rebuked them, a circumstance they must have found
consolatory. At night two of them stayed behind the door; three
remained with her, and constantly troubled her by saying first that
she would die, then that she would be delivered. No one could speak to
her without their consent.[2142]
[Footnote 2140: Lea, _A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages_
(1906), vol. iii, p. 359.]
[Footnote 2141: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 154.]
[Footnote 2142: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 318, 319; vol. iii, pp. 131, 140,
148, 161. A. Sarrazin, _P. Cauchon_, p. 200.]
Nevertheless folk entered the prison as if it were a fair (_comme au
moulin_); people of all ranks came to see Jeanne as they pleased. Thus
Maitre Laurent Guesdon, Lieutenant of the Bailie of Rouen, came,[2143]
and Maitre Pierre Manuel, Advocate of the King of England, who was
accompanied by Maitre Pierre Daron, magistrate of the city of Rouen.
They found her with her feet in shackles, guarded by soldiers.[2144]
[Footnote 2143: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 186, 187.]
[Footnote 2144: _Ibid._, pp. 199, 200.]
Maitre Pierre Manuel felt called upon to tell her that for certain she
would never have come there if she had not been brought. Sensible
persons were always surprised when they saw witches and soothsayers
falling into a trap like any ordinary Christian. The King's Advocate
must have been a sensible person, since his surprise appeared in the
questions he put to Jeanne.
"Did you know you were to be taken?" he asked her.
"I thought it likely," she replied.
"Then why," asked Maitre Pierre again, "if you thought it likely, did
you not take better care on the day you were captured?"
"I knew neither the day nor the hour when I should be taken, nor when
it should happen."[2145]
[Footnote 2145: _Ibid._, p. 200.]
A young fellow, one Pierre Cusquel, who worked for Jean Salvart, also
called Jeanson, the master-mason of the castle, through the influence
of his employer, was permitted to enter the tower. He also found
Jeanne bound with a long chain attached to a beam, and with her feet
in shackles. Much later, he claimed to have warned her to be careful
of what she said, because her life was involved in it. It is true that
she talked volubly to her guards and that all she said was reported
to her judges. And it may have happened that the young Pierre, whose
master was on the English side, wished to advise her and even did so.
There is a suspicion, however, that like so many others he was merely
boasting.[2146]
[Footnote 2146: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 179.]
The Sire Jean de Luxembourg came to Rouen. He went to the Maid's tower
accompanied by his brother, the Lord Bishop of Therouanne, Chancellor
of England; and also by Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, Constable of
France for King Henry; and the Earl of Warwick, Governor of the Castle
of Rouen. At this interview there was also present the young Seigneur
de Macy, who held Jeanne to be of very modest bearing, since she had
repulsed his attempted familiarity.
"Jeanne," said the Sire de Luxembourg, "I have come to ransom you if
you will promise never again to bear arms against us."
These words do not accord with our knowledge of the negotiation for
the purchase of the Maid. They seem to indicate that even then the
contract was not complete, or at any rate that the vendor thought he
could break it if he chose. But the most remarkable point about the
Sire de Luxembourg's speech is the condition on which he says he will
ransom the Maid. He asks her to promise never again to fight against
England and Burgundy. From these words it would seem to have been his
intention to sell her to the King of France or to his representative.[2147]
[Footnote 2147: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 236.]
There is no evidence, however, of this speech having made any
impression on the English. Jeanne set no store by it.
"In God's name, you do but jest," she replied; "for I know well that
it lieth neither within your will nor within your power."
It is related that when he persisted in his statement, she replied:
"I know that these English will put me to death, believing that
afterwards they will conquer France."
Since she certainly did not believe it, it seems highly improbable
that she should have said that the English would have put her to
death. Throughout the trial she was expecting, on the faith of her
Voices, to be delivered. She knew not how or when that deliverance
would come to pass, but she was as certain of it as of the presence of
Our Lord in the Holy Sacrament. She may have said to the Sire de
Luxembourg: "I know that the English want to put me to death." Then
she repeated courageously what she had already said a thousand times:
"But were there one hundred thousand _Godons_ more than at present,
they would not conquer the kingdom."
On hearing these words, the Earl of Stafford unsheathed his sword and
the Earl of Warwick had to restrain his hand.[2148] That the English
Constable of France should have raised his sword against a woman in
chains would be incredible, did we not know that about this time this
Earl of Stafford, hearing some one speak well of Jeanne, straightway
wished to transfix him.[2149]
[Footnote 2148: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 121, 123.]
[Footnote 2149: _Ibid._, p. 140.]
In order that the Bishop and Vidame of Beauvais might exercise
jurisdiction at Rouen it was necessary that a concession of territory
should be granted him. The archiepiscopal see of Rouen was
vacant.[2150] For this concession, therefore, the Bishop of Beauvais
applied to the chapter, with whom he had had misunderstandings.[2151]
The canons of Rouen lacked neither firmness nor independence; more of
them were honest than dishonest; some were highly educated,
well-lettered and even kind-hearted. None of them nourished any ill
will toward the English. The Regent Bedford himself was a canon of
Rouen, as Charles VII was a canon of Puy.[2152] On the 20th of October,
in that same year 1430, the Regent, donning surplice and amice, had
distributed the dole of bread and wine for the chapter.[2153] The
canons of Rouen were not prejudiced in favour of the Maid of the
Armagnacs; they agreed to the demand of the Bishop of Beauvais and
granted him the formal concession of territory.[2154]
[Footnote 2150: C. de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces de
condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Precis des travaux de l'Academie de
Rouen_, 1867-1868, pp. 470-479. U. Chevalier, _L'abjuration de Jeanne
d'Arc_, p. 29.]
[Footnote 2151: De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, p. 17.]
[Footnote 2152: _Gallia Christiana_, vol. ii, p. 732. Vallet de
Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. ii, pp. 213, 214. S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. ccxcv.]
[Footnote 2153: C. de Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces de
condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc_, _loc. cit._ A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc
et la Normandie_, pp. 168, 171.]
[Footnote 2154: 28 December, 1430. _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 20, 23. De
Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, p. 46.]
On the 3rd of January, 1431, by royal decree, King Henry ordered the
Maid to be given up to the Bishop and Count of Beauvais, reserving to
himself the right to bring her before him, if she should be acquitted
by the ecclesiastical tribunal.[2155]
[Footnote 2155: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 18, 19.]
Nevertheless she was not placed in the Church prison, in one of those
dungeons near the Booksellers' Porch, where in the shadow of the
gigantic cathedral there rotted unhappy wretches who had erred in
matters of faith.[2156] There she would have endured sufferings far
more terrible than even the horrors of her military tower. The wrong
the Great Council of England inflicted on Jeanne by not handing her
over to the ecclesiastical powers of Rouen was far less than the
indignity they thereby inflicted on her judges.
[Footnote 2156: A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie_, pp. 1771,
1778.]
With the way thus opened before him, the Bishop of Beauvais proceeded
with all the violence one might expect from a Cabochien, albeit that
violence was qualified by worldly arts and canonical knowledge.[2157]
As promoter in the case, that is, as the magistrate who was to conduct
the prosecution, he selected one Jean d'Estivet, called Benedicite,
canon of Bayeux and of Beauvais, Promoter-General of the diocese of
Beauvais. Jean d'Estivet was a friend of the Lord Bishop, and had been
driven out of the diocese by the French at the same time. He was
suspected of hostility to the Maid.[2158] The Lord Bishop appointed
Jean de la Fontaine, master of arts, licentiate of canon law, to be
"councillor commissary" of the trial.[2159] One of the clerks of the
ecclesiastical court of Rouen, Guillaume Manchon, priest, he appointed
first registrar.
[Footnote 2157: J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p. 147. De
Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, p. 9.]
[Footnote 2158: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 24; vol. iii, p. 162. De
Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, p. 26. A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc
et la Normandie_, p. 220.]
[Footnote 2159: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 25.]
In the course of instructing this official as to what would be
expected of him, the Lord Bishop said to Messire Guillaume:
"You must do the King good service. It is our intention to institute
an elaborate prosecution (_un beau proces_) against this Jeanne."[2160]
[Footnote 2160: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 25; vol. iii, p. 137. A. Sarrazin,
_loc. cit._, pp. 221, 222.]
As to the King's service, the Lord Bishop did not mean that it should
be rendered at the expense of justice; he was a man of some priestly
pride and was not likely to reveal his own evil designs. If he spoke
thus, it was because in France, for a century at least, the
jurisdiction of the Inquisition had been regarded as the jurisdiction
of the King.[2161] And as for the expression "an elaborate prosecution"
(_un beau proces_), that meant a trial in which legal forms were
observed and irregularities avoided, for it was a case in which were
interested the doctors and masters of the realm of France and indeed
the whole of Christendom. Messire Guillaume Manchon, well skilled in
legal procedure, was not likely to err in a matter of legal language.
An elaborate trial was a strictly regular trial. It was said, for
example, that "N---- and N---- had by elaborate judicial procedure
found such an one to be guilty."[2162]
[Footnote 2161: L. Tanon, _Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en
France_, pp. 550, 551.]
[Footnote 2162: De Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces de
condamnation_, p. 320.]
Charged by the Bishop to choose another registrar to assist him,
Guillaume Manchon selected as his colleague Guillaume Colles, surnamed
Boisguillaume, who like him was a notary of the Church.[2163]
[Footnote 2163: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 25; vol. iii, p. 137. De
Beaurepaire, _Recherches...._ p. 103. A. Sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp.
222, 223.]
Jean Massieu, priest, ecclesiastical dean of Rouen, was appointed
usher of the court.[2164]
[Footnote 2164: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 26. De Beaurepaire,
_Recherches...._ p. 115. A. Sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. 223, 224.]
In that kind of trial, which was very common in those days, there were
strictly only two judges, the Ordinary and the Inquisitor. But it was
the custom for the Bishop to summon as councillors and assessors
persons learned in both canon and civil law. The number and the rank
of those councillors varied according to the case. And it is clear
that the obstinate upholder of a very pestilent heresy must needs be
more particularly and more ceremoniously tried than an old wife, who
had sold herself to some insignificant demon, and whose spells could
harm nothing more important than cabbages. For the common wizard, for
the multitude of those females, or _mulierculae_, as they were
described by one inquisitor who boasted of having burnt many, the
judges were content with three or four ecclesiastical advocates and as
many canons.[2165] When it was a question of a very notable personage
who had set a highly pernicious example, of a king's advocate, for
instance like Master Jean Segueut, who that very year, in Normandy,
had spoken against the temporal power of the Church, a large assembly
of doctors and prelates, English and French, were convoked, and the
doctors and masters of the University of Paris were consulted in
writing.[2166] Now it was fitting that the Maid of the Armagnacs should
be yet more elaborately and more solemnly tried, with a yet greater
concourse of doctors and of prelates; and thus it was ordained by the
Lord Bishop of Beauvais. As councillors and assessors he summoned the
canons of Rouen in as great a number as possible. Among those who
answered his summons we may mention Raoul Roussel, treasurer of the
chapter; Gilles Deschamps, who had been chaplain to the late King, Charles
VI, in 1415; Pierre Maurice, doctor in theology, rector of the University
of Paris in 1428; Jean Alespee, one of the sixteen who during the siege of
1418 had gone robed in black and with cheerful countenance to place at the
feet of King Henry V the life and honour of the city; Pasquier de Vaux,
apostolic notary at the Council of Constance, President of the Norman
_Chambre des Comptes_; Nicolas de Venderes, whose candidature for the
vacant see of Rouen was being advocated by a powerful party; and, lastly,
Nicolas Loiseleur. For the same purpose, the Lord Bishop summoned the
abbots of the great Norman abbeys, Mont Saint-Michel-au-Peril-de-la-Mer,
Fecamp, Jumieges, Preaux, Mortemer, Saint-Georges de Boscherville, la
Trinite-du-mont-Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Ouen, Bec, Cormeilles, the
priors of Saint-Lo, of Rouen, of Sigy, of Longueville, and the abbot
of Saint Corneille of Compiegne. He summoned twelve ecclesiastical
advocates; likewise famous doctors and masters of the University of
Paris, Jean Beaupere, rector in 1412; Thomas Fiefve, rector in 1427;
Guillaume Erart, Nicolas Midi,[2167] and that young doctor, abounding
in knowledge and in modesty, the brightest star in the Christian
firmament of the day, Thomas de Courcelles.[2168] The Lord Bishop is
bent upon turning the tribunal, which is to try Jeanne, into a
veritable synod; it is indeed a provincial council, before which she
is cited. Moreover, in effect, it is not only Jeanne the Maid, but
Charles of Valois, calling himself King of France, and lawful
successor of Charles VI who is to be brought to justice. Wherefore are
assembled so many croziered and mitred abbots, so many renowned
doctors and masters.
[Footnote 2165: Eymeric, _Directorium Inquisitorium_, quest. 85. J.
Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p. 109. De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les
juges_, p. 9.]
[Footnote 2166: De Beaurepaire, _Recherches...._ pp. 321 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2167: De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, pp. 27-114. J.
Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, pp. 103, 104. Boucher de Molandon,
_Guillaume Erard l'un des juges de la Pucelle_, in _Bulletin du comite
hist. and phil._, 1892, pp. 3-10.]
[Footnote 2168: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 30, note. Du Boulay, _Historia
Universitatis, Paris_, vol. v, pp. 912, 920. J. Quicherat, _Apercus
nouveaux_, p. 105. De Beaurepaire, _Notes_, pp. 30, 31. A. Sarrazin,
_loc. cit._, pp. 226, 227.]
Nevertheless, there were other bright and shining lights of the
Church, whom the Bishop of Beauvais neglected to summon. He consulted
the two bishops of Coutances and Lisieux; he did not consult the
senior bishop of Normandy, the Bishop of Avranches, Messire Jean de
Saint-Avit, whom the chapter of the cathedral had charged with the
duty of ordination throughout the diocese during the vacancy of the
see of Rouen. But Messire Jean de Saint-Avit was considered and
rightly considered to favour King Charles.[2169] On the other hand
those English doctors and masters, residing at Rouen, who had been
consulted in Segueut's trial, were not consulted in that of
Jeanne.[2170] The doctors and masters of the University of Paris, the
abbots of Normandy, the chapter of Rouen, held firmly to the Treaty of
Troyes; they were as prejudiced as the English clerks against the Maid
and the Dauphin Charles, and they were less suspected; it was all to
the good.[2171]
[Footnote 2169: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 5, 6. De Beaurepaire, _Notes_,
pp. 121-125. A. Sarrazin, _loc. cit._, pp. 308-310.]
[Footnote 2170: De Beaurepaire, _Recherches_, pp. 321 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2171: J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p. 101.]
On Tuesday, the 9th of January, my Lord of Beauvais summoned eight
councillors to his house: the abbots of Fecamp and of Jumieges, the
prior of Longueville, the canons Roussel, Venderes, Barbier,
Coppequesne and Loiseleur.
"Before entering upon the prosecution of this woman," he said to them,
"we have judged it good, maturely and fully to confer with men learned
and skilled in law, human and divine, of whom, thank God, there be
great number in this city of Rouen."
The opinion of the doctors and masters was that information should be
collected concerning the deeds and sayings publicly imputed to this
woman.
The Lord Bishop informed them that already certain information had
been obtained by his command, and that he had decided to order more to
be collected, which would be ultimately presented to the Council.[2172]
[Footnote 2172: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 5-8.]
It is certain that a tabellion[2173] of Andelot in Champagne, Nicolas
Bailly, requisitioned by Messire Jean de Torcenay, Bailie of Chaumont
for King Henry, went to Domremy, and with Gerard Petit, provost of
Andelot, and divers mendicant monks, made inquiry touching Jeanne's
life and reputation. The interrogators heard twelve or fifteen
witnesses and among others Jean Hannequin[2174] of Greux and Jean
Begot, with whom they lodged.[2175] We know from Nicolas Bailly himself
that they gathered not a single fact derogatory to Jeanne. And if we
may believe Jean Moreau, a citizen of Rouen, Maitre Nicolas, having
brought my Lord of Beauvais the result of his researches, was treated
as a wicked man and a traitor; and obtained no reward for his
expenditure or his labour.[2176] This is possible, but it seems
strange. It can in no wise be true, however, that neither at
Vaucouleurs nor at Domremy, nor in the neighbouring villages was
anything discovered against Jeanne. Quite on the contrary, numbers of
accusations were collected against the inhabitants in general, who
were addicted to evil practices, and in particular against Jeanne, who
held intercourse with fairies,[2177] carried a mandrake in her bosom,
and disobeyed her father and mother.[2178]
[Footnote 2173: A notary or secretary in France under the old monarchy
(W.S.).]
[Footnote 2174: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 463.]
[Footnote 2175: _Ibid._, p. 453.]
[Footnote 2176: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 192, 193.]
[Footnote 2177: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 105, 146, 234.]
[Footnote 2178: _Ibid._, pp. 208, 209, 213.]
Abundant information was forthcoming, not only from Lorraine and from
Paris, but from the districts loyal to King Charles, from Lagny,
Beauvais, Reims, and even from so far as Touraine and Berry;[2179]
which was information enough to burn ten heretics and twenty witches.
Devilries were discovered which filled the priests with horror: the
finding of a lost cup and gloves, the exposure of an immoral priest,
the sword of Saint Catherine, the restoration of a child to life.
There was also a report of a rash letter concerning the Pope and there
were many other indications of witchcraft, heresy, and religious
error.[2180] Such information was not to be included among the
documents of the trial.[2181] It was the custom of the Holy Inquisition
to keep secret the evidence and even the names of the witnesses.[2182]
In this case the Bishop of Beauvais might have pleaded as an excuse
for so doing the safety of the deponents, who might have suffered had
he published information gathered in provinces subject to the Dauphin
Charles. Even if their names were concealed, they would be identified
by their evidence. For the purposes of the trial, Jeanne's own
conversation in prison was the best source of information: she spoke
much and without any of the reserve which prudence might have
dictated.
[Footnote 2179: J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p. 117.]
[Footnote 2180: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 245, 246.]
[Footnote 2181: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 200.]
[Footnote 2182: De Beaurepaire, _Recherches_, _loc. cit._ J. Quicherat,
_Apercus nouveaux_, pp. 122-124. L. Tanon, _Histoire des tribunaux de
l'inquisition_, pp. 389-395.]
A painter, whose name is unknown, came to see her in her tower. He
asked her aloud and before her guards what arms she bore, as if he
wished to represent her with her escutcheon. In those days portraits
were very seldom painted from life, except of persons of very high
rank, and they were generally represented kneeling and with clasped
hands in an attitude of prayer. Though in Flanders and in Burgundy
there may have been a few portraits bearing no signs of devotion, they
were very rare. A portrait naturally suggested a person praying to
God, to the Holy Virgin, or to some saint. Wherefore the idea of
painting the Maid's picture doubtless must have met with the stern
disapproval of her ecclesiastical judges. All the more so because they
must have feared that the painter would represent this excommunicated
woman in the guise of a saint, canonised by the Church, as the
Armagnacs were wont to do.
A careful consideration of this incident inclines us to think that
this man was no painter but a spy. Jeanne told him of the arms which
the King had granted to her brothers: an azure shield bearing a sword
between two golden _fleurs de lis_. And our suspicion is confirmed
when at the trial she is reproached with pomp and vanity for having
caused her arms to be painted.[2183]
[Footnote 2183: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 117, 300.]
Sundry clerks introduced into her prison gave her to believe that they
were men-at-arms of the party of Charles of Valois.[2184] In order to
deceive her, the Promoter himself, Maitre Jean d'Estivet, disguised
himself as a poor prisoner.[2185] One of the canons of Rouen, who was
summoned to the trial, by name Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur, would seem to
have been especially inventive of devices for the discovery of
Jeanne's heresies. A native of Chartres, he was not only a master of
arts, but was greatly renowned for astuteness. In 1427 and 1428 he
carried through difficult negotiations, which detained him long months
in Paris. In 1430 he was one of those deputed by the chapter to go to
the Cardinal of Winchester in order to obtain an audience of King
Henry and commend to him the church of Rouen. Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur
was therefore a _persona grata_ with the Great Council.[2186]
[Footnote 2184: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 362.]
[Footnote 2185: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 63.]
[Footnote 2186: De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, pp. 72-82. A.
Sorel, _loc. cit._, pp. 243, 247.]
Having concerted with the Bishop of Beauvais and the Earl of Warwick,
he entered Jeanne's prison, wearing a short jacket like a layman. The
guards had been instructed to withdraw; and Maitre Nicolas, left alone
with his prisoner, confided to her that he, like herself, was a native
of the Lorraine Marches, a shoemaker by trade, one who held to the
French party and had been taken prisoner by the English. From King
Charles he brought her tidings which were the fruit of his own
imagination. No one was dearer to Jeanne than her King. Thus having
won her confidence, the pseudo-shoemaker asked her sundry questions
concerning the angels and saints who visited her. She answered him
confidingly, speaking as friend to friend, as countryman to
countryman. He gave her counsel, advising her not to believe all these
churchmen and not to do all that they asked her; "For," he said, "if
thou believest in them thou shalt be destroyed."
Many a time, we are told, did Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur act the part of
the Lorraine shoemaker. Afterwards he dictated to the registrars all
that Jeanne had said, providing thus a valuable source of information
of which a memorandum was made to be used during the examination. It
would even appear that during certain of these visits the registrars
were stationed at a peep-hole in an adjoining room.[2187] If we may
believe the rumours current in the town, Maitre Nicolas also disguised
himself as Saint Catherine, and by this means brought Jeanne to say
all that he wanted.
[Footnote 2187: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 10, 342; vol. iii, pp. 140, 141,
156, 160 _et seq._]
He may not have been proud of such deceptions, but at any rate he made
no secret of them.[2188] Many famous masters approved him; others
censured him.[2189]
[Footnote 2188: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 181.]
[Footnote 2189: _Ibid._, p. 141.]
The angel of the schools, Thomas de Courcelles, when Nicolas told him
of his disguises, counselled him to abandon them.
Afterwards the registrars pretended that it had been extremely
repugnant to them thus to overhear in hiding a conversation so
craftily contrived. The golden age of inquisitorial justice must have
been well over when so strict a doctor as Maitre Thomas was willing
thus to criticise the most solemn forms of that justice. Inquisitorial
proceedings must indeed have fallen into decay when two notaries of
the Church dream of eluding its most common prescriptions. The clerks
who disguised themselves as soldiers, the Promoter who took on the
semblance of a poor prisoner, were exercising the most regular
functions of the judicial system instituted by Innocent III.
In acting the shoemaker and Saint Catherine, if he were seeking the
salvation and not the destruction of the sinner, if, contrary to
public report, far from inciting her to rebellion, he was reducing her
to obedience, if, in short, he were but deceiving her for her own
temporal and spiritual good, Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur was proceeding
in conformity with established rules. In the _Tractatus de Haeresi_ it
is written: "Let no man approach the heretic, save from time to time
two persons of faith and tact, who may warn him with precaution and as
having compassion upon him, to eschew death by confessing his errors,
and who may promise him that by so doing he shall escape death by
fire; for the fear of death, and the hope of life may peradventure
soften a heart which could be touched in no other wise."[2190]
[Footnote 2190: _Tractatus de haeresi pauperum de Lugduno_, apud
Martene, _Thesaurus anecd._, vol. v, col. 1787. J. Quicherat, _Apercus
nouveaux_, pp. 131, 132.]
The duty of registrars was laid down in the following manner:
"Matters shall be ordained thus, that certain persons shall be
stationed in a suitable place so as to surprise the confidences of
heretics and to overhear their words."[2191]
[Footnote 2191: Eymeric, _Directorium_, part iii, _Cautelae inquisitorum
contra haereticorum cavilationes et fraudes_.]
As for the Bishop of Beauvais, who had ordained and permitted such
procedure, he found his justification and approbation in the words of
the Apostle Saint Paul to the Corinthians: "I did not burden you:
nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile." "_Ego vos non
gravavi; sed cum essem astutus, dolo vos cepi_" (II Corinthians xii,
16).[2192]
[Footnote 2192: L. Tanon, _Histoire des tribunaux de l'inquisition en
France_, p. 394.]
Meanwhile, when Jeanne saw the Promoter, Jean d'Estivet, in his
churchman's habit she did not recognise him. And Maitre Nicolas
Loiseleur also often came to her in monkish dress. In this guise he
inspired her with great confidence; she confessed to him devoutly and
had no other confessor.[2193] She saw him sometimes as a shoemaker and
sometimes as a canon and never perceived that he was the same person.
Wherefore we must indeed believe her to have been incredibly simple in
certain respects; and these great theologians must have realised that
it was not difficult to deceive her.
[Footnote 2193: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 10, 342.]
It was well known to all men versed in science, divine and human, that
the Enemy never entered into dealings with a maid without depriving
her of her virginity.[2194] At Poitiers the French clerks had thought
of it, and when Queen Yolande assured them that Jeanne was a virgin,
they ceased to fear that she was sent by the devil.[2195] The Lord
Bishop of Beauvais in a different hope awaited a similar examination.
The Duchess of Bedford herself went to the prison. She was assisted by
Lady Anna Bavon and another matron. It has been said that the Regent
was hidden meanwhile in an adjoining room and looking through a hole
in the wall.[2196] This is by no means certain, but it is not
impossible; he was at Rouen a fortnight after Jeanne had been brought
there.[2197] Whether the charge were groundless or well founded he was
seriously reproached for this curiosity. If there were many who in his
place would have been equally curious, every one must judge for
himself; but we must bear in mind that my Lord of Bedford believed
Jeanne a witch, and that it was not the custom in those days to treat
witches with the respect due to ladies. We must remember also that
this was a matter in which Old England was greatly concerned, and the
Regent loved his country with all his heart and all his strength.
[Footnote 2194: Vallet de Viriville, _Nouvelles recherches sur Agnes
Sorel_, pp. 33 _et seq._ Du Cange, _Glossaire_, at the word
_Matrimonium_.]
[Footnote 2195: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 102, 209.]
[Footnote 2196: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 155, 163.]
[Footnote 2197: A. Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie_, p. 40.]
Upon the examination of the Duchess of Bedford as upon that of the
Queen of Sicily Jeanne appeared a virgin. The matrons knew various
signs of virginity; but for us a more certain sign is Jeanne's own
word. When she was asked wherefore she called herself the Maid,
whether she were one in reality, she replied: "I may tell you that
such I am."[2198] The judges, as far as we know, set no store by this
favourable result of the examination. Did they believe with the wise
King Solomon that in such matters all inquiry is vain, and did they
reject the matrons' verdict by virtue of the saying: _Virginitatis
probatio non minus difficilis quam custodia_? No, they knew well that
she was indeed a virgin. They allowed it to be understood when they
did not assert the contrary.[2199] And since they persisted in
believing her a witch, it must have been because they imagined her to
have given herself to devils who had left her as they found her. The
morals of devils abounded in such inconsistencies, which were the
despair of the most learned doctors; every day new inconsistencies
were being discovered.
[Footnote 2198: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 175.]
[Footnote 2199: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 217, 218.]
On Saturday, the 13th of January, the Lord Abbot of Fecamp, the
doctors and masters, Nicolas de Venderes, Guillaume Haiton, Nicolas
Coppequesne, Jean de la Fontaine, and Nicolas Loiseleur, met in the
house of the Lord Bishop. There was read to them the information
concerning the Maid gathered in Lorraine and elsewhere. And it was
decided that according to this information a certain number of
articles should be drawn up in due form; which was done.[2200]
[Footnote 2200: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 27, 28.]
On Tuesday, the 23rd of January, the doctors and masters above named
considered the terms of these articles, and, finding them sufficient,
they decided that they might be used for the examination. Then they
resolved that the Bishop of Beauvais should order a preliminary
inquiry as to the deeds and sayings of Jeanne.[2201]
[Footnote 2201: _Ibid._, pp. 28, 29.]
On Tuesday, the 13th of February, Jean d'Estivet, called Benedicite,
Promoter, Jean de la Fontaine, Commissioner, Boisguillaume and
Manchon, Registrars, and Jean Massieu, Usher, took the oath faithfully
to discharge their various offices. Then straightway Maitre Jean de la
Fontaine, assisted by two registrars, proceeded to the preliminary
inquiry.[2202]
[Footnote 2202: _Ibid._, pp. 29, 31.]
On Monday, the 19th of February, at eight o'clock in the morning, the
doctors and masters assembled, to the number of eleven, in the house
of the Bishop of Beauvais; there they heard the reading of the
articles and the preliminary information. Whereupon they gave it as
their opinion, and, in conformity with this opinion, the Bishop
decided that there was matter sufficient to justify the woman called
the Maid being cited and charged touching a question of faith.[2203]
[Footnote 2203: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 31-33.]
But now a fresh difficulty arose. In such a trial it was necessary for
the accused to appear at once before the Ordinary and before the
Inquisitor. The two judges were equally necessary for the validity of
the trial. Now the Grand Inquisitor for the realm of France, Brother
Jean Graverent, was then at Saint-Lo, prosecuting on a religious
charge a citizen of the town, one Jean Le Couvreur.[2204] In the
absence of Brother Jean Graverent, the Bishop of Beauvais had invited
the Vice-Inquisitor for the diocese of Rouen to proceed against Jeanne
conjointly with himself. Meanwhile the Vice-Inquisitor seemed not to
understand; he made no response; and the Bishop was left in
embarrassment with his lawsuit on his hands.
[Footnote 2204: _Ibid._, p. 32. J. Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, p.
102. De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les juges_, pp. 24-27. Le P. Chapotin,
_La guerre de cent ans, Jeanne d'Arc et les dominicains_, pp. 141-143.
A. Sarrazin, _P. Cauchon_, p. 124.]
This Vice-Inquisitor was Brother Jean Lemaistre, Prior of the
Dominicans of Rouen, bachelor of theology, a monk right prudent and
scrupulous.[2205] At length in answer to a summons from the Usher, at
four o'clock on the 19th of February, 1413, he appeared in the house
of the Bishop of Beauvais. He declared himself ready to intervene
provided that he had the right to do so, which he doubted. As the
reason for his uncertainty he alleged that he was the Inquisitor of
Rouen; now the Bishop of Beauvais was exercising his jurisdiction as
bishop of the diocese of Beauvais, but on borrowed territory;
wherefore was it not rather for the Inquisitor of Beauvais not for the
Inquisitor of Rouen, to sit on the judgment seat side by side with the
Bishop?[2206] He declared that he would ask the Grand Inquisitor of
France for an authorisation which should hold good for the diocese of
Beauvais. Meanwhile he consented to act in order to satisfy his own
conscience and to prevent the proceedings from lapsing, which, in the
opinion of all, must have ensued had the trial been instituted without
the concurrence of the Holy Inquisition.[2207] All preliminary
difficulties were now removed. The Maid was cited to appear on
Wednesday, the 21st of February,[2208] 1431.
[Footnote 2205: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 33.]
[Footnote 2206: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 35. De Beaurepaire, _Notes sur les
juges_, p. 394. Doinel, _Memoire de la Societe archeologique-historique
de l'Orleanais_, 1892, vol. xxiv, p. 403. Le P. Chapotin, _La guerre de
cent ans, Jeanne d'Arc et les dominicains_, p. 141. U. Chevalier,
_L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 2207: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 35.]
[Footnote 2208: _Ibid._, pp. 40-42.]
On that day, at eight o'clock in the morning, the Bishop of Beauvais,
the Vicar of the Inquisitor, and forty-one Councillors and Assessors
assembled in the castle chapel. Fifteen of them were doctors in
theology, five doctors in civil and canon law, six bachelors in
theology, eleven bachelors in canon law, four licentiates in civil
law. The Bishop sat as judge. At his side were the Councillors and
Assessors, clothed either in the fine camlet of canons or in the
coarse cloth of mendicants, expressive, the one of sacerdotal
solemnity, the other of evangelical meekness. Some glared fiercely,
others cast down their eyes. Brother Jean Lemaistre, Vice-Inquisitor
of the faith, was among them, silent, in the black and white livery of
poverty and obedience.[2209]
[Footnote 2209: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 38, 39.]
Before bringing in the accused, the usher informed the Bishop that
Jeanne, to whom the citation had been delivered, had replied that she
would be willing to appear, but she demanded that an equal number of
ecclesiastics of the French party should be added to those of the
English party. She requested also the permission to hear mass.[2210]
The Bishop refused both demands;[2211] and Jeanne was brought in,
dressed as a man, with her feet in shackles. She was made to sit down
at the table of the registrars.
[Footnote 2210: _Ibid._, pp. 42-43.]
[Footnote 2211: _Ibid._, p. 43.]
And now from the very outset these theologians and this damsel
regarded each other with mutual horror and hatred. Contrary to the
custom of her sex, a custom which even loose women did not dare to
infringe, she displayed her hair, which was brown and cut short over
the ears. It was possibly the first time that some of those young
monks seated behind their elders had ever seen a woman's hair. She
wore hose like a youth. To them her dress appeared immodest and
abominable.[2212] She exasperated and irritated them. Had the Bishop of
Beauvais insisted on her appearing in hood and gown their anger
against her would have been less violent. This man's attire brought
before their minds the works performed by the Maid in the camp of the
Dauphin Charles, calling himself king. By the stroke of a magic wand
she had deprived the English men-at-arms of all their strength, and
thereby she had inflicted sore hurt on the majority of the churchmen
who were to judge her. Some among them were thinking of the benefices
of which she had despoiled them; others, doctors and masters of the
University, recalled how she had been about to lay Paris waste with
fire and sword;[2213] others again, canons and abbots, could not
forgive her perchance for having struck fear into their hearts even in
remote Normandy. Was it possible for them to pardon the havoc she had
thus wrought in a great part of the Church of France, when they knew
she had done it by sorcery, by divination and by invoking devils? "A
man must be very ignorant if he will deny the reality of magic," said
Sprenger. As they were very learned, they saw magicians and wizards
where others would never have suspected them; they held that to doubt
the power of demons over men and things was not only heretical and
impious, but tending to subvert the whole natural and social order.
These doctors, seated in the castle chapel, had burned each one of
them ten, twenty, fifty witches, all of whom had confessed their
crimes. Would it not have been madness after that to doubt the
existence of witches?
[Footnote 2212: _Ibid._, p. 43.]
[Footnote 2213: Le P. Denifle and Chatelain, _Le proces de Jeanne d'Arc
et l'Universite de Paris_.]
To us it seems curious that beings capable of causing hail-storms and
casting spells over men and animals should allow themselves to be
taken, judged, tortured, and burned without making any defence; but it
was constantly occurring; every ecclesiastical judge must have
observed it. Very learned men were able to account for it: they
explained that wizards and witches lost their power as soon as they
fell into the hands of churchmen. This explanation was deemed
sufficient. The hapless Maid had lost her power like the others; they
feared her no longer.
At least Jeanne hated them as bitterly as they hated her. It was
natural for unlettered saints, for the fair inspired, frank of mind,
capricious, and enthusiastic to feel an antipathy towards doctors all
inflated with knowledge and stiffened with scholasticism. Such an
antipathy Jeanne had recently felt towards clerks, even when as at
Poitiers they had been on the French side, and had not wished her evil
and had not greatly troubled her. Wherefore we may easily imagine how
intense was the repulsion with which the clerks of Rouen now inspired
her. She knew that they sought to compass her death. But she feared
them not; confidently she awaited from her saints and angels the
fulfilment of their promise, their coming for her deliverance. She
knew not when nor how her deliverance should come; but that come it
would she never once doubted. To doubt it would indeed have been to
doubt Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and even Our Lord; it would have
been to believe evil of her Voices. They had told her to fear nothing,
and of nothing was she afeard.[2214] Fearless simplicity; whence came
her confidence in her Voices if not from her own heart?
[Footnote 2214: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 88, 94, 151, 155, _passim_.]
The Bishop required her to swear, according to the prescribed form
with both hands on the holy Gospels, that she would reply truly to all
that should be asked her.
She could not. Her Voices forbade her telling any one of the
revelations they had so abundantly vouchsafed to her.
She answered: "I do not know on what you wish to question me. You
might ask me things that I would not tell you."
And when the Bishop insisted on her swearing to tell the whole truth:
"Touching my father and mother and what I did after my coming into
France I will willingly swear," she said; "but touching God's
revelations to me, those I have neither told nor communicated to any
man, save to Charles my King. And nought of them will I reveal, were I
to lose my head for it."
Then, either because she wished to gain time or because she counted on
receiving some new directions from her _Council_, she added that in a
week she would know whether she might so reveal those things.
At length she took the oath, according to the prescribed form, on her
knees, with both hands on the missal.[2215] Then she answered
concerning her name, her country, her parents, her baptism, her
godfathers and godmothers. She said that to the best of her knowledge
she was about nineteen years of age.[2216]
[Footnote 2215: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 45.]
[Footnote 2216: _Ibid._, p. 46.]
Questioned concerning her education, she replied: "From my mother I
learnt my Paternoster, my Ave Maria and my Credo."
But, asked to repeat her Paternoster, she refused, for, she said, she
would only say it in confession. This was because she wanted the
Bishop to hear her confess.[2217]
[Footnote 2217: _Ibid._, pp. 46-47.]
The assembly was profoundly agitated; all spoke at once. Jeanne with
her soft voice had scandalised the doctors.
The Bishop forbade her to leave her prison, under pain of being
convicted of the crime of heresy.
She refused to submit to this prohibition. "If I did escape," she
said, "none could reproach me with having broken faith, for I never
gave my word to any one."
Afterwards she complained of her chains.
The Bishop told her they were on account of her attempt to escape.
She agreed: "It is true that I wanted to escape, and I still want to,
just like every other prisoner."[2218]
[Footnote 2218: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 47.]
Such a confession was very bold, if she had rightly understood the
judge when he said that by flight from prison she would incur the
punishment of a heretic. To escape from an ecclesiastical prison was
to commit a crime against the Church, but it was folly as well as
crime; for the prisons of the Church are penitentiaries, and the
prisoner who refuses salutary penance is as foolish as he is guilty;
for he is like a sick man who refuses to be cured. But Jeanne was not,
strictly speaking, in an ecclesiastical prison; she was in the castle
of Rouen, a prisoner of war in the hands of the English. Could it be
said that if she escaped she would incur excommunication and the
spiritual and temporal penalties inflicted on the enemies of religion?
There lay the difficulty. The Lord Bishop removed it forthwith by an
elaborate legal fiction. Three English men-at-arms, John Grey, John
Berwoist, and William Talbot, were appointed by the King to be
Jeanne's custodians. The Bishop, acting as an ecclesiastical judge,
himself delivered to them their charge, and made them swear on the
holy Gospels to bind the damsel and confine her.[2219] In this wise
the Maid became the prisoner of our holy Mother, the Church; and she
could not burst her bonds without falling into heresy. The second
sitting was appointed for the next day, the 22nd of February.[2220]
[Footnote 2219: _Ibid._, pp. 47, 48.]
[Footnote 2220: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 48.]
CHAPTER XI
THE TRIAL FOR LAPSE (_continued_)
When a record of the proceedings came to be written down after the
first sitting, a dispute arose between the ecclesiastical notaries and
the two or three royal registrars who had likewise taken down the
replies of the accused. As might be expected, the two records differed
in several places. It was decided that on the contested points Jeanne
should be further examined.[2221] The notaries of the Church complained
also that they experienced great difficulty in seizing Jeanne's words
on account of the constant interruptions of the bystanders.
[Footnote 2221: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 131-136.]
In a trial by the Inquisition there was no place fixed for the
examination any more than for the other acts of the procedure. The
judges might examine the accused in a chapel, in a chapter-house, or
even in a prison or a torture-chamber. According to Messire Guillaume
Manchon it was in order to escape from the tumult of the first
sitting,[2222] and because there was no longer any reason for
proceeding with such solemn ceremony as at the opening of the trial,
that the judge and his councillors met in the Robing Room, a little
chamber at one end of the castle hall;[2223] and two English guards
were stationed at the door. According to the rules of inquisitorial
procedure, the assessors were not bound to be present at all the
deliberations.[2224] This time forty-two were present, twenty-six of
the original ones and six newly appointed. Among these high clerics
was Brother Jean Lemaistre, Vice Inquisitor of the Faith, a humble
preaching friar. No longer as in the days of Saint Dominic was the
Vice Inquisitor the hunting hound of the Lord, now he was but the dog
of the Bishop, a poor monk, who dared neither to do nor to abstain
from doing. Such was the result of the assertion of Gallican
independence against papal supremacy. Dumb and timid, Brother Jean
Lemaistre was the last and the least of all the brethren in that
assembly, but he was ever looking for the day when he should be
sovereign judge and without appeal.[2225]
[Footnote 2222: _Ibid._, p. 135.]