From the early morning of Sunday, August 18, 1909, till evening came,
the Square of St. Peter's in Rome and the interior of the great basilica
itself were thronged from end to end with worshippers and pilgrims. The
scene was brilliant with innumerable lamps, with the robes of many
cardinals and the vestments of bishops, archbishops, and all the ranks
of priesthood. The ceremony of adding one more to the calendar of the
Blessed was performed, a solemn "Te Deum" was sung in praise of God's
eternal greatness, and Pontifical Mass was celebrated, with all the
splendour of ancient ritual and music of the grandest harmony. In the
afternoon Christ's Vicar himself entered from his palace, attended by
fifteen cardinals, seventy of the archbishops and bishops of France,
with an equal number of their rank from elsewhere, and, amid the
gleaming lights of scarlet and gold, of green and violet, of jewels and
holy flames, he prostrated himself before the figure of the Blessed One,
to whom effectual prayer might now be offered even by the Head of the
Church militant here on earth. Till late at night the vast cathedral was
crowded with increasing multitudes assembled for the honour of one whom
the Church which judges securely as the world, commanded them to revere.
It was a simple peasant girl--"just the simplest peasant you could ever
see"--whom the Head of the Church thus worshipped and crowds delighted
to honour. Short and deep-chested she was, capable of a man's endurance,
and with black hair cut like a boy's. She could not write or read, was
so ignorant as to astonish ladies, and had only the peasant arts. The
earliest description tells of her "common red frock carefully patched."
"I could beat any woman in Rouen at spinning and stitching," she said to
her judges, who, to be sure, had no special knowledge of anything beyond
theology. "I'm only a poor girl, and can't ride or fight," she said when
first she conceived her mission, and she had just the common instincts
of the working woman. We may suppose her fond of children, for wherever
she went she held the newborn babies at the font. She hated death and
cruelty. "The sight of French blood," she said, "always makes my hair
stand on end," and even to the enemy she always offered peace. "Or, if
you want to fight," she sent a message to the Duke of Burgundy, "you
might go and fight the Saracens." She never killed anyone, she said at
her trial. Just an ordinary peasant girl she seemed--"la plus simple
bergerette qu'on veit onques"--with no apparent distinction but a sweet
and attractive voice. To be sure, she could put that sweet voice to
shrewd use when she pleased. "What tongue do your Visions speak?" a
theologian kept asking her. "A better tongue than yours!" she answered
with the retort of an open-air meeting. But in those days there were
theologians who would try the patience of a saint, and Joan of Arc is
not a saint even yet, having been only Beatified on that Sunday, nearly
five centuries after her death.
And she was only nineteen when they burnt her. At least, she thought
she was about nineteen, but was not quite sure. Few years had passed
since she was a child dancing under the big trees which fairies haunted
still. Her days of glory had lasted only a few months, and now she had
lain week after week in prison, weighed down with chains and balls of
iron, watched day and night by men in the cell, because she always
claimed a prisoner's right to escape if she could. Her trial before the
Bishop of Beauvais and all the learning and theology of Paris University
lasted nearly three months. Sometimes forty men were present, sometimes
over sixty, for it was a remarkable case, and gave fine opportunity for
the display of the superhuman knowledge and wisdom upon which divines
exist. Human compassion they displayed also, hurrying away just before
the burning began one May morning, and shedding tears of pity over the
sins of one so young. Indeed, their preachings and exhortations to her
whilst the stake and fire were being arranged continued so long that the
rude English soldiers, so often deaf to the beauty of theology, asked
whether they were going to be kept waiting there past dinner-time.
However, the verdict of divine and human law could never be really
doubtful from the first, for the charges on which she was found guilty
comprehended many grievous sins. The inscription placed over her head as
she stood while the flames were being kindled declared this Joan, who
called herself the Maid, to be a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the
people, a sorceress, superstitious, a blasphemer of God, presumptuous, a
misbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, idolatress, cruel,
dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It was
a heavy crime-sheet for a mere girl, and there was no knowing into what
a monster she might grow up. So the Bishop of Beauvais could not well
hesitate in pronouncing the final sentence whereby, to avoid further
infection to its members, this rotten limb, Joan, was cast out from the
unity of the Church, torn from its body, and delivered to the secular
power, with a request for moderation in the execution of the sentence.
Accordingly she was burnt alive, and the Voices and Visions to which she
had trusted did not save her from the agony of flames.
At first sight the contrast between these two scenes, enacted by the
authority of the same Church, may appear a little bewildering. It might
tempt us to criticise the consistency of ecclesiastic judgment, did we
not know that in theology, as in metaphysics, extreme contradictions are
capable of ultimate reconciliation. The Church's attitude was, in fact,
definitely fixed in January 1909 by the Papal proclamation declaring
that the girl's virtues were heroic and her miracles authentic. One can
only regret that the discovery was not made sooner, in time to save her
from the fire, when her clerical judges came to the very opposite
conclusion. Yet we must not hastily condemn them for an error which,
even apart from theological guidance, most of us laymen would probably
have committed.
Let us for a moment imagine Joan herself appearing in the England of
to-day on much the same mission. It is not difficult to picture the
contempt, the derision, the ribaldry, with which she would be greeted.
In nearly every point her reception would be the same as it was, except
that fewer people would believe in her inspiration. We have only to read
her trial, or even the account given in _Henry VI_, to know what we
should say of her now. There would be the same reproaches of
unwomanliness, the same reminders that a woman's sphere is the home, the
same plea that she should leave serious affairs to men, who, indeed, had
carried them on so well that the whole country was tormented with
perpetual panic of an enemy over sea. There would be the same taunts of
immodesty, the same filthy songs. Since science has presumed to take the
place of theology, we should talk about hysteria instead of witchcraft,
and hallucination instead of demoniacal possession. Physiologists would
expound her enthusiasm as functional disorder of the thyroid gland.
Historians would draw parallels between her recurring Voices and the
"tarantism" of the Middle Ages. Superior people would smile with polite
curiosity. The vulgar would yell in crowds and throw filth in her face.
The scenes of the fifteenth century in France would be exactly repeated,
except that we should not actually burn her in Trafalgar Square. If she
escaped the madhouse, the gaol and forcible feeding would be always
ready.
So that we must not be hard on that theological conclave which made the
mistake of burning a Blessed One alive. They were inspired by the
highest motives, political and divine, and they made the fullest use of
their knowledge of spiritual things. Being under divine direction, they
could not allow any weak sentiment of pity or human consideration to
influence their judgment. Their only error was in their failure to
discern the authenticity of the girl's miracles, and we must call that a
venial error, since it has taken the Church nearly five centuries to
give a final decision on the point. The authenticity of miracles! Of all
questions that is the most difficult for a contemporary to decide. In
the case of Joan's judges, indeed, the solution of this mystery must
have been almost impossible, unless they were gifted with prophecy; for
most of her miracles were performed only after her death, or at least
only then became known. And as to the bare facts they knew of her
life--the realities that everyone might have seen or heard, and many
thousands had shared in--there was nothing miraculous about them,
nothing to detain the attention of theologians. They were natural
events.
For a hundred years the country had been rent and devastated by foreign
war. The enemy still clutched its very centre. The south-west quarter of
the kingdom was his beyond question. By treaty his young king was heir
to the whole. The land was depopulated by plague and impoverished by
vain revolution. Continuous civil strife tore the people asunder, and
the most powerful of the factions fought for the invader's claim. Armies
ate up the years like locusts, and there was no refuge for the poor, no
preservation of wealth for men or honour for women. Even religion was
distracted by schism, divided against herself into two, perhaps into
three, conflicting churches. In the midst of the misery and tumult this
girl appears, possessed by one thought only--the pity for her country.
Modest beyond all common decency; most sensitive to pain, for it always
made her cry; conscious, as she said, that in battle she ran as much
risk of being killed as anyone else, she rode among men as one of
themselves, bareheaded, swinging her axe, charging with her standard
which all must follow, heartening her countrymen for the cause of
France, striking the invading enemy with the terrors of a spirit. Just a
clear-witted, womanly girl, except that her cause had driven fear from
her heart, and occupied all her soul, to the exclusion of lesser things.
"Pity she isn't an Englishwoman!" said one of the enemy who was near her
after a battle, and he meant it for the most delicate praise. In a few
months she changed the face of her country, revived the hope, inspired
the courage, rekindled the belief, re-established the unity, staggered
the invader with a blow in the heart, and crowned her king as the symbol
of national glory. Within a few months she had set France upon the
assured road to future greatness. Little over twenty years after they
burnt her there was hardly a trace of foreign foot upon French soil.
It was all quite natural, of course. The theologians who condemned her
to death, and those who have now raised her to Beatitude, were concerned
with the authenticity of her miracles, and there is nothing miraculous
in thus raising a nation from the dead. Considering the difficulty of
their task, we may forgive the clergy some apparent inconsistency in
their treatment. But for myself, as a mere layman, I should be content
to call any human being Blessed for the natural magic of such a history;
and compared with that deed of hers, I would not turn my head to witness
the most astonishing miracle ever performed in all the records of the
saints.