The Life of Joan of Arc Part 67

Saints were commonly visited by doves. One day when Saint Catherine of Sienna was kneeling in the fuller's house, a dove as white as snow perched on the child's head.[1574]

[Footnote 1573: _Journal du siege_, p. 294. _Chronique de l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt de la fete_, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 294.]

[Footnote 1574: AA. SS., April 3rd. Didron, _Iconographie chretienne_, pp. 438, 439. Alba Mignati, _Sainte Catherine de Sienne_, p. 16.]

A tale then in circulation is interesting as showing the idea which prevailed concerning the relations of the King and the Maid; it serves, likewise, as an example of the perversions to which the story of an actual fact is subject as it pa.s.ses from mouth to mouth. Here is the tale as it was gathered by a German merchant.

On a day, in a certain town, the Maid, hearing that the English were near, went into the field; and straightway all the men-at-arms, who were in the town, leapt to their steeds and followed her. Meanwhile, the King, who was at dinner, learning that all were going forth in company with the Maid, had the gates of the town closed.

The Maid was told, and she replied without concern: "Before the hour of nones, the King will have so great need of me, that he will follow me immediately, spurless, and barely staying to throw on his cloak."

And thus it came to pa.s.s. For the men-at-arms shut up in the town besought the King to open the gates forthwith or they would break them down. The gates were opened and all the fighting men hastened to the Maid, heedless of the King, who threw on his cloak and followed them.

On that day a great number of the English were slain.[1575]

[Footnote 1575: Eberhard Windecke, p. 103.]

Such is the story which gives a very inaccurate representation of what happened at Orleans on the 6th of May. The citizens hastened in crowds to the Burgundian Gate, resolved to cross the Loire and attack Les Tourelles. Finding the gate closed, they threw themselves furiously on the Sire de Gaucourt who was keeping it. The aged baron had the gate opened wide and said to them, "Come, I will be your captain."[1576] In the story the citizens have become men-at-arms, and it is not the Sire de Gaucourt but the King who maliciously closes the gates. But the King gained nothing by it; and it is astonishing to find that so early there had grown up in the minds of the people the idea that, far from aiding the Maid to drive out the English, the King had put obstacles in her way and was always the last to follow her.

[Footnote 1576: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 116, 117.]

Seen through this chaos of stories more indistinct than the clouds in a stormy sky, Jeanne appeared a wondrous marvel. She prophesied and many of her prophecies had already been fulfilled. She had foretold the deliverance of Orleans and Orleans had been delivered. She had prophesied that she would be wounded, and an arrow had pierced her above the right breast. She had prophesied that she would take the King to Reims, and the King had been crowned in that city. Other prophecies had she uttered touching the realm of France, to wit, the deliverance of the Duke of Orleans, the entering into Paris, the driving of the English from the holy kingdom, and their fulfilment was expected.[1577]

[Footnote 1577: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 55, 84 _et seq._, 133, 174, 232, 251, 252, 254, 331; vol. iii, pp. 99, 205, 254, 257, _pa.s.sim_.

_Journal du siege_, pp. 34, 44, 45, 48. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, pp.

212, 295. Perceval de Cagny, p. 141. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 320.

Lefevre de Saint-Remy, vol. ii, p. 143. The Clerk of the Chamber of Accounts of Brabant, in _Trial_, vol. iv, p. 426. _Chronique de Tournai_ (vol. iii, _du recueil des chroniques de Flandre_), p. 411.

Morosini, vol. iii, p. 121.]

Every day she prophesied and notably concerning divers persons who had failed in respect towards her and had come to a bad end.[1578]

[Footnote 1578: Morosini, vol. iii, p. 57.]

At Chinon, when she was being taken to the King, a man-at-arms who was riding near the chateau, thinking he recognised her, asked, "Is not that the Maid? By G.o.d, an I had my way she should not be a maid long."

Then Jeanne prophesied and said "Ha, thou takest G.o.d's name in vain, and thou art so near thy death!"

Less than an hour later the man fell into the water and was drowned.[1579]

[Footnote 1579: Brother Pasquerel's evidence, in _Trial_, vol. iii, p.

102.]

Straightway this miracle was related in Latin verse. In the poem which records this miraculous history of Jeanne up to the deliverance of Orleans, the lewd blasphemer, who like all blasphemers, came to a bad end, is n.o.ble and by name Furtivolus.[1580]

[Footnote 1580: Anonymous poem on the Maid, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 38, lines 105 _et seq._]

_... generoso sanguine natus, Nomine Furtivolus, veneris moderator iniquus._

Captain Glasdale called Jeanne strumpet and blasphemed his Maker.

Jeanne prophesied that he would die without shedding blood; and Glasdale was drowned in the Loire.[1581]

[Footnote 1581: Evidence of J. Luillier and Brother Pasquerel, in _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 25, 108.]

Many of these tales were obvious imitations of incidents in the lives of the saints, which were widely read in those days. A woman, who was a heretic, pulled the ca.s.sock of Saint Ambrose, whereupon the blessed bishop said to her, "Take heed lest one day thou be chastised of G.o.d."

On the morrow the woman died, and the Blessed Ambrose conducted her to the grave.[1582]

[Footnote 1582: The _Golden Legend_. Life of Saint Ambrose.]

A nun, who was then alive and who was to die in an odour of sanct.i.ty, Sister Colette of Corbie, had met her Furtivolus and had punished him, but less severely. On a day when she was praying in a church of Corbie, a stranger drew near and spoke to her libidinous words: "May it please G.o.d," she said, "to bring home to you the hideousness of the words you have just uttered." The stranger in shame went to the door.

But an invisible hand arrested him on the threshold. Then he realised the gravity of his sin; he asked pardon of the saint and was free to leave the church.[1583]

[Footnote 1583: Abbe J. Th. Bizouard, _Histoire de sainte Colette et des clarisses en Franche-Comte, d'apres des doc.u.ments inedits et des traditions locales_, Paris, 1888, in 8vo.]

After the royal army had departed from Gien, the Maid was said to have prophesied that a great battle would be fought between Auxerre and Reims.[1584] When such predictions were not fulfilled they were forgotten. Besides, it was admitted that true prophets might sometimes utter false prophecies. A subtle theologian distinguished between prophecies of predestination which are always fulfilled and those of condemnation, which being conditioned, may not be fulfilled and that without reflecting untruthfulness on the lips that uttered them.[1585]

Folk wondered that a peasant child should be able to forecast the future, and with the Apostle they cried, "I praise thee, O Father, because thou hast hidden those things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes."

[Footnote 1584: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 148, 156. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 103, 105, 187. Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 1585: Lanery d'Arc, _Memoires et consultations_, pp. 220, 222. Theodore de Leliis, in _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 39, 42. Le P.

Ayroles, _La Pucelle devant l'eglise de son temps_, p. 342. Abbe Hyacinthe Cha.s.sagnon, _Les voix de Jeanne d'Arc_, Lyon 1896, in 8vo, pp. 312, 313.]

The Maid's prophecies were speedily spread abroad throughout the whole of Christendom.[1586] A clerk of Spiers wrote a treatise on her, ent.i.tled _Sibylla Francica_, divided into two parts. The first part was drawn up not later than July, 1429. The second is dated the 17th of September, the same year. This clerk believes that the Maid practised the art of divination by means of astrology. He had heard a French monk of the order of the Premonstratensians[1587] say that Jeanne delighted to study the heavens by night. He observes that all her prophecies concerned the kingdom of France; and he gives the following as having been uttered by the Maid: "After having ruled for twenty years, the Dauphin will sleep with his fathers. After him, his eldest son, now a child of six, will reign more gloriously, more honourably, more powerfully than any King of France since Charlemagne."[1588]

[Footnote 1586: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 138 _et seq._ Morosini, vol.

iii, pp. 62-63.]

[Footnote 1587: The monastery of the Premonstratensians, near Laon, was founded in 1122, by St. Norbert (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1588: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 422 _et seq._, 433, 434, 465; vol. v, pp. 475, 476.]

The Maid possessed the gift of beholding events which were taking place far away.

At Vaucouleurs, on the very day of the Battle of the Herrings, she knew the Dauphin's army had suffered grievous hurt.[1589]

[Footnote 1589: _Journal du siege_, p. 44. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 272.]

On a day when she was dining, seated near the King, she began to laugh quietly. The King, perceiving, asked her: "My beloved, wherefore laugh ye so merrily?"

She made answer that she would tell him when the repast was over. And, when the ewer was brought her, "Sire," she said, "this day have been drowned in the sea five hundred English, who were crossing to your land to do you hurt. Therefore did I laugh. In three days you will know that it is true."

And so it was.[1590]

[Footnote 1590: Eberhard Windecke, p. 117.]

Another time, when she was in a town some miles distant from the chateau where the King was, as she prayed before going to sleep, it was revealed to her that certain of the King's enemies wished to poison him at dinner. Straightway she called her brothers and sent them to the King to advise him to take no food until she came.

When she appeared before him, he was at table surrounded by eleven persons.

"Sire," she said, "have the dishes brought."