Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death Part 12

Asked, whether she could give a reason why she would not submit to the Church: but to this she would make no additional reply.

Again a week pa.s.sed in busy talk and consultation without, in silence and desertion within. On the 9th of May the prisoner was again led, this time to the great tower, apparently the torture chamber of the castle, where she found nine of her judges awaiting her, and was once more adjured to speak the truth, with the threat of torture if she continued to refuse. Never was her att.i.tude more calm, more dignified and lofty in its simplicity, than at this grim moment.

"Truly," she replied, "if you tear the limbs from my body, and my soul out of it, I can say nothing other than what I have said; or if I said anything different, I should afterwards say that you had compelled me to do it by force." She added that on the day of the Holy Cross, the 3d of May past, she had been comforted by St. Gabriel. She believed that it was St. Gabriel: and she knew by her voices that it was St. Gabriel. She had asked counsel of her voices whether she should submit to the Church, because the priests pressed her so strongly to submit: but it had been said to her that if she desired our Lord to help her she must depend upon Him for everything. She added that she knew well that our Lord had always been the master of all she did, and that the Enemy had nothing to do with her deeds. Also she had asked her voices if she should be burned, and the said voices had replied to her that she was to wait for the Lord and He would help her.

Afterwards in respect to the crown which had been handed by the angel to the Archbishop of Rheims, she was asked if she would refer to him. She answered: "Bring him here, that I may hear what he says, and then I shall answer you; he will not dare to say the contrary of that which I have said to you."

The Archbishop of Rheims had been her constant enemy; all the hindrances that had occurred in her active life, and the constant attempts made to balk her even in her brief moment of triumph, came from him and his a.s.sociate La Tremouille. He was the last person in the world to whom Jeanne naturally would have appealed. Perhaps that was the admirable reason why he was suggested in this dreadful crisis of her fate.

A few days later, it was discussed among those dark inquisitors whether the torture should be applied or not. Finally, among thirteen there were but two (let not the voice of sacred vengeance be silent on their shame though after four centuries and more), Thomas de Courcelles, first of theologians, cleverest of ecclesiastical lawyers, mildest of men, and Nicolas L'Oyseleur, the spy and traitor, who voted for the torture. One man most reasonably asked why she should be put to torture when they had ample material for judgment without it? One cannot but feel that the proceedings on this occasion were either intended to beguile the impatience of the English authorities, eager to be done with the whole business, or to add a quite gratuitous pang to the sufferings of the heroic girl. As the men were not devils, though probably possessed by this time, the more cruel among them, by the horrible curiosity, innate alas! in human nature, of seeing how far a suffering soul could go, it is probable that the first motive was the true one. The English, Warwick especially, whose every movement was restrained by this long-pending affair, were exceedingly impatient, and tempted at times to take the matter into their own hands, and spoil the perfectness of this well constructed work of art, conducted according to all the rules, the beautiful trial which was dear to the Bishop's heart--and destined to be, though perhaps in a sense somewhat different to that which he hoped, his chief t.i.tle to fame.

Ten days after, the decision of the University of Paris arrived, and a great a.s.sembly of counsellors, fifty-one in all, besides the permanent presidents, collected together in the chapel of the Archbishop's house, to hear that doc.u.ment read, along with many other doc.u.ments, the individual opinions of a host of doctors and eminent authorities.

After an explanation of the solemn care given by the University to the consideration of every one of the twelve articles of the indictment, that learned tribunal p.r.o.nounced its verdict upon each. The length of the proceedings makes it impossible to reproduce these. First as to the early revelations given to Jeanne, described in the first and second articles, they are denounced as "murderous, seductive, and pernicious fictions," the apparitions those of "malignant spirits and devils, Belial, Satan, and Behemoth." The third article, which concerned her recognition of the saints, was described more mildly as containing errors in faith; the fourth, as to her knowledge of future events, was characterised as "superst.i.tious and presumptuous divination." The fifth, concerning her dress, declared her to be "blasphemous and contemptuous of G.o.d in His Sacraments." The sixth, by which she was accused of loving bloodshed, because she made war against those who did not obey the summons in her letters bearing the name Jhesus Maria, was declared to prove that she was cruel, "seeking the shedding of blood, seditious, and a blasphemer of G.o.d." The tenor is the same to the end: Blasphemy, superst.i.tion, pernicious doctrine, impiety, cruelty, presumption, lying; a schismatic, a heretic, an apostate, an idolator, an invoker of demons.

These are the conclusions drawn by the most solemn and weighty tribunal on matters of faith in France. The precautions taken to procure a full and trustworthy judgment, the appeal to each section in turn, the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Law, the "Nations," all separately and than all together pa.s.sing every item in review--are set forth at full length. Every formality had been fulfilled, every rule followed, every detail was in the fullest order, signed and sealed and attested by solemn notaries, bristling with well-known names. A beautiful judgment, equal to the trial, which was beautiful too--not a rule omitted except those of justice, fairness, and truth! The doctors sat and listened with every fine professional sense satisfied.

"If the beforesaid woman, charitably exhorted and admonished by competent judges, does not return spontaneously to the Catholic faith, publicly abjure her errors, and give full satisfaction to her judges, she is hereby given up to the secular judge to receive the reward of her deeds."

The attendant judges, each in his place, now added their adhesion.

Most of them simply stated their agreement with the judgment of the University, or with that of the Bishop of Fecamp, which was a similar tenor; a few wished that Jeanne should be again "charitably admonished"; many desired that on this selfsame day the final sentence should be p.r.o.nounced. One among them, a certain Raoul Sauvage (Radulphus Silvestris), suggested that she should be brought before the people in a public place, a suggestion afterwards carried out. Frere Isambard desired that she should be charitably admonished again and have another chance, and that her final fate should still be in the hands of "us her judges." The conclusion was that one more "charitable admonition" should be given to Jeanne, and that the law should then take its course.

The suggestion that she should make a public appearance had only one supporter.

This dark scene in the chapel is very notable, each man rising to p.r.o.nounce what was in reality a sentence of death,--fifty of them almost unanimous, filled no doubt with a hundred different motives, to please this man or that, to win favour, to get into the way of promotion,--but all with a distinct consciousness of the great yet horrible spectacle, the stake, the burning:--though perhaps here and there was one with a hope that perpetual imprisonment, bread of sorrow and water of anguish, might be subst.i.tuted for that terrible death. Finally, it was decided that--always on the side of mercy, as every act proved--the tribunal should once more "charitably admonish" the prisoner for the salvation of her soul and body, and that after all this "good deliberation and wholesome counsel" the case should be concluded.

Again there follows a pause of four days. No doubt the Bishop and his a.s.sessors had other things to do, their ecclesiastical functions, their private business, which could not always be put aside because one forsaken soul was held in suspense day after day. Finally on the 24th of May, Jeanne again received in her prison a dignified company, some quite new and strange to her (indeed the idea may cross the reader's mind that it was perhaps to show off the interesting prisoner to two new and powerful bishops, the first, Louis of Luxembourg, a relative of her first captor, that this last examination was held), nine men in all, crowding her chamber--_exponuntur Johannae defectus sui_, says the record--to expound to Jeanne her faults. It was Magister Peter Morice to whom this office was confided. Once more the "schedule" was gone over, and an address delivered laden with all the bad words of the University.

"Jeanne, dearest friend," said the orator at last, "it is now time, at the end of the trial, to think well what words these are." She would seem to have spoken during this address, at least once--to say that she held to everything she had said during the trial. When Morice had finished she was once more questioned personally.

She was asked if she still thought and believed that it was not her duty to submit her deeds and words to the Church militant, or to any other except G.o.d, upon which she replied, "What I have always said and held to during the trial, I maintain to this moment"; and added that if she were in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the f.a.ggots burning, and the executioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire, she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in her trial, to death.

Once more the scribe has written on his margin the words _Responsio Johannae superba_--the proud answer of Jeanne. Her raised head, her expanded breast, something of a splendour of indignation about her, must have moved the man, thus for the third time to send down to us his distinctly human impression of the worn out prisoner before her judges.

"And immediately the promoter and she refusing to say more, the cause was concluded," says the record, so formal, sustained within such purely abstract limits, yet here and there with a sort of throb and reverberation of the mortal encounter. From the lips of the Inquisitor too all words seemed to have been taken. It is as when amid the excited crowd in the Temple the officers of the Pharisees approaching to lay hands on a greater than Jeanne, fell back, not knowing why, and could not do their office. This man was silenced also. Two bishops were present, and one a great man full of patronage; but not for the richest living in Normandy could Peter Morice find any more to say.

These are in one sense the words of Jeanne; the last we have from her in her prison, the last of her consistent and unbroken life. After, there was a deeper horror to go through, a moment when all her forces failed.

Here on the verge of eternity she stands heroic and unyielding, brave, calm, and steadfast as at the outset of her career, the Maid of France.

Were the fires lighted and the f.a.ggots burning, and she herself within the fire, she had no other word to say.

(1) It is correct in French to use the second person plural in addressing G.o.d, _thou_ being a more intimate and less respectful form of speech. Such a difference is difficult to remember, and troubles the ear. The French, even those who ought to know better, sometimes speak of it as a supreme profanity on the part of the profane English, that they address G.o.d as _thou_.

(2) The French report goes on, "et requiert ----," but no more. It is not in the Latin. The scribe was stopped by the Bishop's profane outcry, and forbidden to register the fact she was about to make a direct appeal to the Pope.

CHAPTER XVI -- THE ABJURATION. MAY 24, 1431.

On the 23d of May Jeanne was taken back to her prison attended by the officer of the court, Ma.s.sieu, her frame still thrilling, her heart still high, with that great note of constancy yet defiance. She had been no doubt strongly excited, the commotion within her growing with every repet.i.tion of these scenes, each one of which promised to be the last.

And the fire and the stake and the executioner had come very near to her; no doubt a whole murmuring world of rumour, of strange information about herself, never long inaudible, never heard outside of the Castle of Rouen, rose half-comprehended from the echoing courtyard outside and the babble of her guards within. She would hear even as she was conveyed along the echoing stone pa.s.sages something here and there of the popular expectation:--a burning! the wonderful unheard of sight, which by hook or by crook everyone must see; and no doubt among the English talk she might now be able to make out something concerning this long business which had r.e.t.a.r.ded all warlike proceedings but which would soon be over now, and the witch burnt. There must have been some, even among those rude companions, who would be sorry, who would feel that she was no witch, yet be helpless to do anything for her, any more than Ma.s.sieu could, or Frere Isambard: and if it was all for the sake of certain words to be said, was the wench mad? would it not be better to say anything, to give up anything rather than be burned at the stake?

Jeanne, notwithstanding the wonderful courage of her last speech, must have returned to her cell with small illusion possible to her intelligent spirit. The stake had indeed come very near, the flames already dazzled her eyes, she must have felt her slender form shrink together at the thought. All that long night, through the early daylight of the May morning did she lie and ponder, as for far less reasons so many of us have pondered as we lay wakeful through those morning watches. G.o.d's promises are great, but where is the fulfilment? We ask for bread and he gives us, if not a stone, yet something which we cannot realise to be bread till after many days. Jeanne's voices had never paused in their pledge to her of succour. "Speak boldly, G.o.d will help you--fear nothing"; there would be aid for her before three months, and great victory. They went on saying so, though the stake was already being raised. What did they mean? what did they mean? Could she still trust them? or was it possible----?

Her heart was like to break. At their word she would have faced the fire. She meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, the heartrending ache of hope that was still in her. But they did not give her that heroic command. Still and always, they said G.o.d will help you, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must mean deliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her head high as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so often left with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon have dropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her.

Over and over again had she affirmed them to be true--these voices that had guided her steps and led her to victory. And they had promised her the aid of G.o.d if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear.

But now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fierce soldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her in charity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal fire for the body. She felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if on the breath of the evening wind, and her girlish flesh shrank. Was that what the voices had called deliverance? was that the grand victory, the aid of the Lord?

It may well be imagined that Jeanne slept but little that night; she had reached the lowest depths; her soul had begun to lose itself in bitterness, in the horror of a doubt. The atmosphere of her prison became intolerable, and the noise of her guards keeping up their rough jests half through the night, their stamping and clamour, and the clang of their arms when relieved. Early next morning a party of her usual visitors came in upon her to give her fresh instruction and advice.

Something new was about to happen to-day. She was to be led forth, to breathe the air of heaven, to confront the people, the raging sea of men's faces, all the unknown world about her. The crowd had never been unfriendly to Jeanne. It had closed about her, almost wherever she was visible, with sweet applause and outcries of joy. Perhaps a little hope stirred her heart in the thought of being surrounded once more by the common folk, though probably it did not occur to her to think of these Norman strangers as her own people. And a great day was before her, a day in which something might still be done, in which deliverance might yet come. L'Oyseleur, who was one of her visitors, adjured her now to change her conduct, to accept whatever means of salvation might be offered to her. There was no longer any mention of Pope or Council, but only of the Church to which she ought to yield. How it was that he preserved his influence over her, having been proved to be a member of the tribunal that judged her, and not a fellow-prisoner, nor a fellow-countryman, nor any of the things he had professed to be, no once can tell us; but evidently he had managed to do so. Jeanne would seem to have received him without signs of repulsion or displeasure. Indeed she seems to have been ready to hear anyone, to believe in those who professed to wish her well, even when she did not follow their counsel.

It would require, however, no great persuasion on L'Oyseleur's part to convince her that this was a more than usually important day, and that something decisive must be done, now or never. Why should she be so determined to resist her only chance of safety? If she were but delivered from the hands of the English, safe in the gentler keeping of the Church, there would be time to think of everything, even to make her peace with her voices who would surely understand if, for the saving of her life, and out of terror for the dreadful fire, she abandoned them for a moment. She had disobeyed them at Beaurevoir and they had forgiven. One faltering word now, a mark of her hand upon a paper, and she would be safe--even if still all they said was true; and if indeed and in fact, after buoying her up from day to day, such a dreadful thing might be as that they were not true----

The traitor was at her ear whispering; the cold chill of disappointment, of disillusion, of sickening doubt was in her heart.

Then there came into the prison a better man than L'Oyseleur, Jean Beaupere, her questioner in the public trial, the representative of all these notabilities. What he said was spoken with authority and he came in all seriousness, may not we believe in some kindness too? to warn her. He came with permission of the Bishop, no stealthy visitor. "Jean Beaupere entered alone into the prison of the said Jeanne by permission, and advertised her that she would straightway be taken to the scaffold to be addressed (_pour y etre preschee_), and that if she was a good Christian she would on that scaffold place all her acts and words under the jurisdiction of our Holy Mother, the Church, and specially of the ecclesiastical judges." "Accept the woman's dress and do all that you are told," her other adviser had said. When the car that was to convey her came to the prison doors, L'Oyseleur accompanied her, no doubt with a show of supporting her to the end. What a change from the confined and gloomy prison to the dazzling clearness of the May daylight, the air, the murmuring streets, the throng that gazed and shouted and followed!

Life that had run so low in the prisoner's veins must have bounded up within her in response to that sunshine and open sky, and movement and sound of existence--summer weather too, and everything softened in the medium of that soft breathing air, sound and sensation and hope. She had been three months in her prison. As the charrette rumbled along the roughly paved streets drawing all those crowds after it, a strange object appeared to Jeanne's eyes in the midst of the market-place, a lofty scaffold with a stake upon it, rising over the heads of the crowd, the logs all arranged ready for the fire, a car waiting below with four horses, to bring hither the victim. The place of sacrifice was ready, everything arranged--for whom? for her? They drove her noisily past that she might see the preparations. It was all ready; and where then was the great victory, the deliverance in which she had believed?

In front of the beautiful gates of St. Ouen there was a different scene.

That stately church was surrounded then by a churchyard, a great open s.p.a.ce, which afforded room for a very large a.s.sembly. In this were erected two platforms, one facing the other. On the first sat the court of judges in number about forty, Cardinal Winchester having a place by the side of Monseigneur de Beauvais, the president, with several other bishops and dignified ecclesiastics. Opposite, on the other platform, were a pulpit and a place for the accused, to which Jeanne was conducted by Ma.s.sieu, who never left her, and L'Oyseleur, who kept as near as he could, the rest of the platform being immediately covered by lawyers, doctors, all the camp followers, so to speak, of the black army, who could find footing there. Jeanne was in her usual male dress, the doublet and hose, with her short-clipped hair--no doubt looking like a slim boy among all this dark crowd of men. The people swayed like a sea all about and around--the throng which had gathered in her progress through the streets pushing out the crowd already a.s.sembled with a movement like the waves of the sea. Every step of the trial all through had been attended by preaching, by discourses and reasoning and admonishments, charitable and otherwise. Now she was to be "preached"

for the last time.

It was Doctor Guillaume erard who ascended the pulpit, a great preacher, one whom the "copious mult.i.tude" ran after and were eager to hear. He himself had not been disposed to accept this office, but no doubt, set up there on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought of his own reputation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the more than king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influential of men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel: "A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." The centre circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of English soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that the witch should be condemned.

It was in this strange and crowded scene that the sermon which was long and eloquent began. When it was half over, in one of his fine periods admired by all the people, the preacher, after heaping every reproach upon the head of Jeanne, suddenly turned to apostrophise the House of France, and the head of that House, "Charles who calls himself King."

"He has," cried the preacher, stimulated no doubt by the eye of Winchester upon him, "adhered, like a schismatic and heretical person as he is, to the words and acts of a useless woman, disgraced and full of dishonour; and not he only, but the clergy who are under his sway, and the n.o.bility. This guilt is thine, Jeanne, and to thee I say that thy King is a schismatic and a heretic."

In the full flood of his oratory the preacher was arrested here by that clear voice that had so often made itself heard through the tumult of battle. Jeanne could bear much, but not this. She was used to abuse in her own person, but all her spirit came back at this a.s.sault on her King. And interruption to a sermon has always a dramatic and startling effect, but when that voice arose now, when the startled speaker stopped, and every dulled attention revived, it is easy to imagine what a stir, what a wonderful, sudden sensation must have arisen in the midst of the crowd. "By my faith, sire," cried Jeanne, "saving your respect, I swear upon my life that my King is the most n.o.ble Christian of all Christians, that he is not what you say."

The sermon, however, was resumed after this interruption. And finally the preacher turned to Jeanne, who had subsided from that start of animation, and was again the subdued and silent prisoner, her heart overwhelmed with many heavy thoughts. "Here," said erard, "are my lords the judges who have so often summoned and required of you to submit your acts and words to our Holy Mother the Church; because in these acts and words there are many things which it seemed to the clergy were not good either to say or to sustain."

To which she replied (we quote again from the formal records), "I will answer you." And as to her submission to the Church she said: "I have told them on that point that all the works which I have done and said may be sent to Rome, to our Holy Father the Pope, to whom, but to G.o.d first, I refer in all. And as for my acts and words I have done all on the part of G.o.d." She also said that no one was to blame for her acts and words, neither her King nor any other; and if there were faults in them, the blame was hers and no other's.

Asked, if she would renounce all that she had done wrong; answered, "I refer everything to G.o.d and to our Holy Father the Pope."

It was then told her that this was not enough, and that our Holy Father was too far off; also that the Ordinaries were judges each in his diocese, and it was necessary that she should submit to our Mother the Holy Church, and that she should confess that the clergy and officers of the Church had a right to determine in her case. And of this she was admonished three times.

After this the Bishop began to read the definitive sentence. When a great part of it was read, Jeanne began to speak and said that she would hold to all that the judges and the Church said, and obey in everything their ordinance and will. And there in the presence of the above-named and of the great mult.i.tude a.s.sembled she made her abjuration in the manner that follows:

And she said several times that since the Church said her apparitions and revelations should not be sustained or believed, she would not sustain them; but in everything submit to the judges and to our Mother the Holy Church.

In this strange, brief, subdued manner is the formal record made.

Manchon writes on his margin: _At the end of the sentence Jeanne, fearing the fire, said she would obey the Church_. Even into the bare legal doc.u.ment there comes a hush as of awe, the one voice responding in the silence of the crowd, with a quiver in it; the very animation of the previous outcry enhancing the effect of this low and faltering submission, _timens igneum_--in fear of the fire.

The more familiar record, and the recollections long after of those eye-witnesses, give us another version of the scene. erard, from his pulpit, read the form of abjuration prepared. But Jeanne answered that she did not know what abjuration meant, and the preacher called upon Ma.s.sieu to explain it to her. "And he" (we quote from his own deposition), "after excusing himself, said that it meant this: that if she opposed the said articles she would be burnt; but he advised her to refer it to the Church universal whether she should abjure or not. Which thing she did, saying to erard, 'I refer to the Church universal whether I should abjure or not.' To which erard answered, 'You shall abjure at once or you will be burnt.' Ma.s.sieu gives further particulars in another part of the Rehabilitation process. erard, he says, asked what he was saying to the prisoner, and he answered that she would sign if the schedule was read to her; but Jeanne said that she could not write, and then added that she wished it to be decided by the Church, and ought not to sign unless that was done: and also required that she should be placed in the custody of the Church, and freed from the hands of the English. The same erard answered that there had been ample delay, and that if she did not sign at once she should be burned, and forbade Ma.s.sieu to say any more."

Meanwhile many cries and entreaties came, as far as they dared, from the crowd. Some one, in the excitement of the moment, would seem to have promised that she should be transferred to the custody of the Church.

"Jeanne, why will you die? Jeanne, will you not save yourself?" was called to her by many a bystander. The girl stood fast, but her heart failed her in this terrible climax of her suffering. Once she called out over their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"--her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the Church, and that she should at once be transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. Other suggestions are made, namely, that it was a very short doc.u.ment upon which she hastily in her despair made a cross, and that it was a long one, consisting of several pages, which was shown afterwards with _Jehanne_ scribbled underneath. "In fact," says Ma.s.sieu, "she abjured and made a cross with the pen which the witness handed to her:" he, if any one must have known exactly what happened.

No doubt all this would be imperfectly heard on the other platform.

But the agitation must have been visible enough, the spectators closing round the young figure in the midst, the pleadings, the appeals, seconded by many a cry from the crowd. Such a small matter to risk her young life for! "Sign, sign; why should you die!" Cauchon had gone on reading the sentence, half through the struggle. He had two sentences all ready, two courses of procedure, cut and dry: either to absolve her--which meant condemning her to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water: or to carry her off at once to the stake. The English were impatient for the last. It is a horrible thing to acknowledge, but it is evidently true. They had never wished to play with her as a cat with a mouse, as her learned countrymen had done those three months past; they had desired at once to get her out of their way. But the idea of her perpetual imprisonment did not please them at all; the risk of such a prisoner was more than they chose to encounter. Nevertheless there are some things a churchman cannot do. When it was seen that Jeanne had yielded, that she had put her mark to something on a paper flourished forth in somebody's hand in the sunshine, the Bishop turned to the Cardinal on his right hand, and asked what he was to do? There was but one answer possible to Winchester, had he been English and Jeanne's natural enemy ten times over. To admit her to penitence was the only practicable way.

Here arises a great question, already referred to, as to what it was that Jeanne signed. She could not write, she could only put her cross on the doc.u.ment hurriedly read to her, amid the confusion and the murmurs of the crowd. The _cedule_ to which she put her sign "contained eight lines:" what she is reported to have signed is three pages long, and full of detail. Ma.s.sieu declares certainly that this (the abjuration published) was not the one of which mention is made in the trial; "for the one read by the deponent and signed by the said Jeanne was quite different." This would seem to prove the fact that a much enlarged version of an act of abjuration, in its original form strictly confined to the necessary points and expressed in few words--was afterwards published as that bearing the sign of the penitent. Her own admissions, as will be seen, are of the scantiest, scarcely enough to tell as an abjuration at all.