“Here’s Lohier, who holds fine views concerning our trial! He wants to object to everything, and says that our proceedings are invalid. If we were to take his advice we should begin everything over again, and all we have done would be worthless! It is easy to see what he is aiming at. By Saint John, we will do nothing of the kind; we will go on with our trial now it is begun.”
The next day, in the Church of Notre Dame, Guillaume Manchon met Maître Jean Lohier and asked him:
“Have you seen anything of the records of the trial?”
“I have,” replied Maître Jean. “This trial is void. It is impossible to support it on many grounds: firstly, it is not in regular form.”
By that he meant that proceedings should not have been taken against Jeanne without preliminary inquiries concerning the probability of her guilt; either he did not know of the inquiries instituted by my Lord of Beauvais, or he deemed them insufficient.
“Secondly,” continued Maître Jean Lohier, “the judges and assessors when they are trying this case are shut up in the castle, where they are not free to utter their opinions frankly. Thirdly, the trial involves divers persons who are not called, notably it touches the reputation of the King of France, to whose party Jeanne belonged, yet neither he nor his representative is cited. Fourthly, neither documents nor definite written charges have been produced, wherefore this woman, this simple girl, is left to reply without guidance to so many masters, to such great doctors and on such grave matters, especially those concerning her revelations. For all these reasons the trial appears to me to be invalid.” Then he added: “You see how they proceed. They will catch her if they can in her words. They take advantage of the statements in which she says, ‘I know for certain,’ concerning her apparitions. But if she were to say, ‘It seems to me,’ instead of ‘I know for certain,’ it is my opinion that no man could convict her. I perceive that the dominant sentiment which actuates them is one of hatred. Their intention is to bring her to her death. Wherefore I shall stay here no longer. I cannot witness it. What I say gives offence.”
That same day Maître Jean left Rouen.
A somewhat similar incident occurred with regard to Maître Nicolas de Houppeville, a famous cleric. In conference with certain churchmen, he expressed the opinion that to appoint as Jeanne’s judges members of the party hostile to her was not a correct method of procedure; and he added that Jeanne had already been examined by the clerks of Poitiers and by the Archbishop of Reims, the metropolitan of this very Bishop of Beauvais. Hearing of this expression of opinion, my Lord of Beauvais flew into a violent rage, and summoned Maître Nicolas to appear before him. The latter replied that the Official of Rouen was his superior, and that the Bishop of Beauvais was not his judge. If it be true, as is related, that Maître Nicolas was thereafter cast into the King’s prison, it was doubtless for a reason more strictly judicial than that of having offended the Lord Bishop of Beauvais. It is more probable, however, that this famous cleric did not wish to act as assessor, and that he left Rouen in order to avoid being summoned to take part in the trial.
Certain ecclesiastics, among others Maître Jean Pigache, Maître Pierre Minier, and Maître Richard de Grouchet, discovered long afterwards that being threatened they had given their opinions under the influence of fear. “We were present at that trial,” they said, “but throughout the proceedings we were always contemplating flight.” As a matter of fact, no violence was done to any man’s opinions, and such as refused to attend the trial were in no way molested. Threats! But why should there be any? Was it difficult to convict a witch in those days? Jeanne was no witch. But, then, neither were the others. Still, between Jeanne and the other alleged witches there was this difference, that Jeanne had cast her spells in favour of the Armagnacs, and to convict her was to render a service to the English, who were the masters. This was a point to be taken into consideration; but there was something else which ought also to be borne in mind by thoughtful folk: such a conviction would at the same time offend the French, who were in a fair way to become the masters once more in the place of the English. These matters were very perplexing to the doctors; but the second consideration had less weight with them than the first; they had no idea that the French were so near reconquering Normandy.
The fifth session of the court took place in the usual chamber on the 1st of March, in the presence of fifty-eight assessors, of whom nine had not sat previously.
The first question the examiner put Jeanne was:
“What say you of our Lord the Pope, and whom think you to be the true pope?”
She adroitly made answer by asking another question: “Are there two?”
No, there were not two; Clement VIII’s abdication had put an end to the schism; the great rift in the Church had been closed for thirteen years and all Christian nations recognized the Pope of Rome; even France who had become resigned to the disappearance of her Avignon popes. There was something, however, which neither the accused nor her judges knew; on that 1st of March, 1431, far from there being two popes, there was not even one; the Holy See had fallen vacant by the death of Martin V on the 20th of February, and the vacancy was only to be filled on the 3rd of March, by the election of Eugenius IV.
The examiner in questioning Jeanne concerning the Holy See was not without a motive. That motive became obvious when he asked her whether she had not received a letter from the Count of Armagnac. She admitted having received the letter and having replied to it.
Copies of these two letters were included in the evidence to be used at the trial. They were read to Jeanne.
It appeared that the Count of Armagnac had asked the Maid by letter which of the three popes was the true one, and that Jeanne had replied to him, likewise by letter, that for the moment she had not time to answer, but that she would do so at her leisure when she should come to Paris.
Having heard these two letters read, Jeanne declared that the one attributed to her was only partially hers. And since she always dictated and could never read what had been taken down, it is conceivable that hasty words, uttered with her foot in the stirrup, may not have been accurately transcribed; but in a series of involved and contradictory replies she was unable to demonstrate how that which she had dictated differed from the written text; and in itself the letter appears much more likely to have proceeded from an ignorant visionary than from a clerk who would have some knowledge, however little, of church affairs.
It contains certain words and turns of expression which are to be found in Jeanne’s other letters. There can hardly be any doubt that this letter is by her; she had forgotten it. There is nothing surprising in that; her memory, as we have seen, was curiously liable to fail her.
On this document the judges based the most serious of charges; they regarded it as furnishing proof of a most blamable temerity. What arrogance on the part of this woman, so it seemed to them, to claim to have been told by God himself that which the Church alone is entitled to teach! And to undertake by means of an inner illumination to point out the true pope, was that not to commit grave sin against the Bride of Christ, and with sacrilegious hand to rend the seamless robe of our Lord?
For once Jeanne saw clearly how her judges were endeavouring to entrap her, wherefore she twice declared her belief in the Sovereign Pontiff of Rome. How bitterly she would have smiled had she known that the lights of the University of Paris, these famous doctors who held it mortal sin to believe in the wrong pope, themselves believed in his Holiness about as much as they disbelieved in him; that at that very time certain of their number, Maître Thomas de Courcelles, so great a doctor, Maître Jean Beaupère, the examiner, Maître Nicolas Loiseleur, who acted the part of Saint Catherine, were hastening to despatch her, in order that they might bestride their mules and amble away to Bâle, there in the Synagogue of Satan to hurl thunderbolts against the Holy Apostolic See, and diabolically to decree the subjection of the Pope to the Council, the confiscation of his annates, dearer to him than the apple of his eye, and finally
his own deposition. Now would have been the time for her to have cried, with the voice of a simple soul, to the priests so keen to avenge upon her the Church’s honour: “I am more of a Catholic than you!” And the words in her mouth would have been even more appropriate than on the lips of the Limousin clerk of old. Yet we must not reproach these clerics for having been good Gallicans at Bâle, but rather for having been cruel and hypocritical at Rouen.
In her prison the Maid prophesied before her guard, John Grey. Informed of these prophecies, the judges wished to hear them from Jeanne’s own mouth.
“Before seven years have passed,” she said to them, “the English shall lose a greater wager than any they lost at Orléans. They shall lose everything in France. They shall suffer greater loss than ever they have suffered in France, and that shall come to pass because God shall vouchsafe unto the French great victory.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know it by revelation made unto me and that this shall befall within seven years. And greatly should I sorrow were it further delayed. I know it by revelation as surely as I know that you are before my eyes at this moment.”
“When shall this come to pass?”
“I know neither the day nor the hour.”
“But the year?”
“That ye shall not know for the present. But I should wish it to be before Saint John’s Day.”
“Did you not say that it should come to pass before Saint Martin in the winter?”
“I said that before Saint Martin in the winter many things should befall and it might be that the English would be discomfited.”
Whereupon the examiner asked Jeanne whether when Saint Michael came to her he was accompanied by Saint Gabriel.
Jeanne replied: “I do not remember.”
She did not remember whether, in the multitude of angels who visited her, was the Angel Gabriel who had saluted Our Lady and announced unto her the salvation of mankind. So many angels and archangels had she seen that this one had not particularly impressed her.
After an answer of such perfect simplicity how could these priests proceed to question her on her visions? Were they not sufficiently edified? But no! These innocent answers whetted the examiner’s zeal. With intense ardour and copious amplification, passing from angels to saints, he multiplied petty and insidious questions. Did you see the hair on their heads? Had they rings in their ears? Was there anything between their crowns and their hair? Was their hair long and hanging? Had they arms? How did they speak? What kind of voices had they?
This last question touched on an important theological point. Demons, whose voices are as rasping as a cart wheel or a winepress screw, cannot imitate the sweet tones of saints.
Jeanne replied that the Voice was beautiful, sweet, and soft, and spoke in French.
Whereupon she was asked craftily wherefore Saint Margaret did not speak English.
She replied: “How should she speak English, since she is not on the side of the English?”
Two hundred years before, a poet of Champagne had said that the French language, which Our Lord created beautiful and graceful, was the language of Paradise.
She was afterwards asked concerning her rings. This was a hard matter; in those days there were many magic rings or rings bearing amulets. They were fashioned by magicians under the influence of planets; and, by means of wonder-working herbs and stones, these rings had spells cast upon them and received miraculous virtues. Constellation rings worked miracles. Jeanne, alas! had possessed but two poor rings, one of brass, inscribed with the names Jésus and Marie, which she received from her father and mother, the other her brother had given her. The Bishop kept the latter; the other had been taken from her by the Burgundians.
An attempt was made to incriminate her in a pact made with the Devil near the Fairy Tree. She was not to be caught thus, but retorted by prophesying her deliverance and the destruction of her enemies. “Those who wish to banish me from this world may very likely leave it before me.... I know that my King will win the realm of France.”
She was asked what she had done with her mandrake. She said she had never had one.
Then the examiner appeared to be seized with curiosity concerning Saint Michael. “Was he clothed?”
She replied: “Doubt ye that Messire lacks wherewithal to clothe himself?”
“Had he hair?”
“Wherefore should he have cut it off?”
“Did he hold scales?”
“I don’t know.”
Their object was to ascertain whether she saw Saint Michael as he was represented in the churches, with scales for weighing souls.
When she said that at the sight of the Archangel it seemed to her she was not in a state of mortal sin, the examiner fell to arguing on the subject of her conscience. She replied like a true Christian. Then he returned to the miracle of the sign, which had not been referred to since the first sitting, to the mystery of Chinon, to that wondrous crown, which Jeanne, following Saint Catherine of Alexandria, believed she had received from the hand of an angel. But she had promised Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret to say nothing about it.
“When you showed the King the sign was there any one with him?”
“I think there was no other person, albeit there were many folk not far off.”
“Did you see a crown on the King’s head when you gave him this sign?”
“I cannot say without committing perjury.”
“Had your King a crown at Reims?”
“My King, methinketh, took with pleasure the crown he found at Reims. But afterwards a very rich crown was brought him. He did not wait for it, because he wished to hurry on the ceremony according to the request of the inhabitants of Reims who desired to rid their town of the burden of men-at-arms. If he had waited he would have had a crown a thousand times more rich.”
“Have you seen that richer crown?”
“I cannot tell you without committing perjury. If I have not seen it I have heard tell how rich and how magnificent it is.”
Jeanne suffered intensely from being deprived of the sacraments. One day when Messire Jean Massieu, performing the office of ecclesiastical usher, was taking her before her judges, she asked him whether there were not on the way some church or chapel in which was the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Messire Jean Massieu, dean of Rouen, was a cleric of manners dissolute; his inveterate lewdness had involved him in difficulties with the Chapter and with the Official. He may have been neither as brave nor as frank as he wished to make out, but he was not hard or pitiless.
He told his prisoner that there was a chapel on the way. And he pointed out to her the chapel of the castle.
Then she besought him urgently to take her into the chapel in order that she might worship Messire and pray.
Readily did Messire Jean Massieu consent; and he permitted her to kneel before the sanctuary. Devoutly bending, Jeanne offered her prayer.
The Lord Bishop, being informed of this incident, was highly displeased. He instructed the Usher that in the future such devotions must not be tolerated.
And the Promoter, Maître Jean d’Estivet, on his part, addressed many a reprimand to Messire Jean Massieu.
“Rascal,” he said, “what possesses thee to allow an excommunicated whore to approach a church without permission? If ever thou doest the like again I will imprison thee in that tower, where for a month thou wilt see neither sun nor moon.”
Messire Jean Massieu heeded not this threat. And the Promoter, perceiving this, himself took up his post at the chapel door when Jeanne went that way. Thus he prevented the hapless damsel from engaging in her devotions.
The sixth sitting was held in the same court as before, in the presence of forty-one assessors, of whom six or seven were new, and among them was Maître Guillaume Erart, doctor in theology.
In the beginning, the examiner asked Jeanne whether she had seen Saint Michael and the saints, and whether she had seen anything but their faces. He insisted: “You
must say what you know.”
“Rather than say all that I know, I would have my head cut off.”
They puzzled her with questions touching the nature of angelic bodies. She was simple; with her own eyes she had seen Saint Michael; she said so and could not say otherwise.
The examiner, now as always, informed of the words she had let fall in prison, asked her whether she had heard her Voices.
“Yes, in good sooth. They told me that I should be delivered. But I know neither the day nor the hour. And they told me to have good courage, and to be of good cheer.”
Of all this the judges believed nothing, because demonologists teach that witches lose their power when an officer of Holy Church lays hands upon them.
The examiner recurred to her man’s dress. Then he endeavoured to find out whether she had cast spells over the banners of her companions in arms.
He sought out by what secret power she led the soldiers.
This power she was willing to reveal: “I said to them: ‘Go on boldly against the English;’ and at the same time I went myself.”
In this examination, which was the most diffuse and the most captious of all, the following curious question was put to the accused: “When you were before Jargeau, what was it you were wearing behind your helmet? Was there not something round?”
At the siege of Jargeau she had been struck on the head by a huge stone which had not hurt her; and this her own party deemed miraculous. Did the judges of Rouen imagine that she wore a golden halo, like the saints, and that this halo had protected her?
Later she was examined on a more ordinary subject, concerning a picture in the house of her host at Orléans, representing three women: Justice, Peace, Union.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 464