The Life of Joan of Arc Part 98

Interrogated as to the occupations of her childhood, she replied that she was busy with household duties and seldom went into the fields with the cattle.

"For spinning and sewing," she said, "I am as good as any woman in Rouen."[2229]

[Footnote 2229: _Ibid._]

Thus even in things domestic she displayed her ardour and her chivalrous zeal; at the spinning-wheel and with the needle she challenged all the women in a town, without knowing one of them.

Questioned as to her confessions and her communions, she answered that she confessed to her parish priest or to another priest when the former was not able to hear her. But she refused to say whether she had received the communion on other feast-days than Easter.[2230]

[Footnote 2230: _Ibid._, pp. 51, 52.]

In order to take her unawares, Maitre Jean Beaupere proceeded without method, pa.s.sing abruptly from one subject to another. Suddenly he spoke of her Voices. She gave him the following reply:

"Being thirteen years of age, I heard the Voice of G.o.d, bidding me lead a good life. And the first time I was sore afeard. And the Voice came almost at the hour of noon, in summer, in my father's garden...."

She heard the Voice on the right towards the church. Rarely did she hear it without seeing a light. This light was in the direction whence the Voice came.[2231]

[Footnote 2231: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 52.]

When Jeanne said that her Voice spoke to her from the right, a doctor more learned and more kindly disposed than Maitre Jean would have interpreted this circ.u.mstance favourably; for do we not read in Ezekiel that the angels were upon the right hand of the dwelling; do we not find in the last chapter of Saint Mark, that the women beheld the Angel seated on the right, and finally does not Saint Luke expressly state that the Angel appeared unto Zacharias on the right of the altar burning with incense; whereupon the Venerable Bede observes: "he appeared on the right as a sign that he was the bringer of divine mercy."[2232] But such things never occurred to the examiner. Thinking to embarra.s.s Jeanne, he asked how she came to see the light if it appeared at her side.[2233] Jeanne made no reply, and as if distraught, she said:

"If I were in a wood I should easily hear the Voices coming towards me.... It seems to me to be a Voice right worthy. I believe that this Voice was sent to me by G.o.d. After having heard it three times I knew it to be the voice of an angel."

[Footnote 2232: Brehal, _Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc_, ed. Lanery d'Arc, p. 409.]

[Footnote 2233: See Appendix I, Letter from Doctor G. Dumas.]

"What instruction did this Voice give you for the salvation of your soul?"

"It taught me to live well, to go to church, and it told me to fare forth into France."[2234]

[Footnote 2234: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 52.]

Then Jeanne related how, by the command of her Voice, she had gone to Vaucouleurs, to Sire Robert de Baudricourt, whom she had recognised without ever having seen him before, how the Duke of Lorraine had summoned her to cure him, and how she had come into France.[2235]

[Footnote 2235: _Ibid._, pp. 53, 54.]

Thereafter she was brought to say that she knew well that G.o.d loved the Duke of Orleans and that concerning him she had had more revelations than concerning any man living, save the King; that she had been obliged to change her woman's dress for man's attire and that her _Council_ had advised her well.[2236]

[Footnote 2236: _Ibid._, p. 54.]

The letter to the English was read before her. She admitted having dictated it in those terms, with the exception of three pa.s.sages. She had not said _body for body_ nor _chieftain of war_; and she had said _surrender to the King_ in the place _of surrender to the Maid_. That the judges had not tampered with the text of the letter we may a.s.sure ourselves by comparing it with other texts, which did not pa.s.s through their hands, and which contain the expressions challenged by Jeanne.[2237]

[Footnote 2237: _Ibid._, pp. 55, 56; vol. v, p. 95.]

In the beginning of her career, she believed that Our Lord, the true King of France, had ordained her to deliver the government of the realm to Charles of Valois, as His deputy. The words in which she gave utterance to this idea are reported by too many persons strangers one to another for us to doubt her having spoken them. "The King shall hold the kingdom as a fief (_en commande_); the King of France is the lieutenant of the King of Heaven." These are her own words and she did actually say to the Dauphin: "Make a gift of your realm to the King of Heaven."[2238] But we are bound to admit that at Rouen not one of these mystic ideas persists, indeed there they seem altogether beyond her.

In all her replies to her examiners, she seems incapable of any abstract reasoning whatsoever and of any speculation however simple, so that it is hard to understand how she should ever have conceived the idea of the temporal rule of Jesus Christ over the Land of the Lilies. There is nothing in her speech or in her thoughts to suggest such meditations, wherefore we are led to believe that this politico-theology had been taught her in her tender, teachable years by ecclesiastics desiring to remove the woes of Church and kingdom, but that she had failed to seize its spirit or grasp its inner meaning. Now, in the midst of a hard life lived with men-at-arms, whose simple souls accorded better with her own than the more cultivated minds of the early directors of her meditations, she had forgotten even the phraseology in which those suggested meditations were expressed. Interrogated concerning her coming to Chinon, she replied:

"Without let or hindrance I went to my King. When I reached the town of Sainte-Catherine de Fierbois, I sent first to the town of Chateau-Chinon, where my King was. I arrived there about the hour of noon and lodged in an inn, and, after dinner, I went to my King who was in his castle."

[Footnote 2238: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 456; vol. iii, pp. 91, 92.

Morosini, vol. iii, p. 104. Eberhard Windecke, pp. 152, 153. J.

Quicherat, _Apercus nouveaux_, pp. 131-133. Le P. Ayroles, _La vraie Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. iv, p. 440, ch. i, _La royaute de Jesus Christ_.]

If we may believe the registrars, they never ceased wondering at her memory. They were amazed that she should recollect exactly what she had said a week before.[2239] Nevertheless her memory was sometimes curiously uncertain, and we have reason for thinking with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d that she waited two days at the inn before being received by the King.[2240]

[Footnote 2239: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 89, 142, 161, 176, 178, 201.]

[Footnote 2240: _Ibid._, p. 4.]

With regard to this audience in the castle of Chinon, she told her judges she had recognised the King as she had recognised the Sire de Baudricourt, by revelation.[2241]

[Footnote 2241: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 56.]

The interrogator asked her: "When the Voice revealed your King to you, was there any light?"[2242]

[Footnote 2242: _Ibid._, p. 56.]

This question bore upon matters which were of great moment to her judges; for they suspected the Maid of having committed a sacrilegious fraud, or rather witchcraft, with the complicity of the King of France. Indeed, they had learnt from their informers that Jeanne boasted of having given the King a sign in the form of a precious crown.[2243] The following is the actual truth of the matter:

[Footnote 2243: We find it impossible to agree with Quicherat (_Apercus nouveaux_) and admit that Jeanne gradually invented the fable of the crown during her examination and while her judges were questioning her as to "the sign." The manner in which the judges conducted this part of their examination proves that they were acquainted with the whole of the extraordinary story.]

The legend of Saint Catherine relates that on a day she received from the hand of an angel a resplendent crown and placed it on the head of the Empress of the Romans. This crown was the symbol of eternal blessedness.[2244] Jeanne, who had been brought up on this legend, said that the same thing had happened to her. In France she had told sundry marvellous stories of crowns, and in one of these stories she imagined herself to be in the great hall of the castle at Chinon, in the midst of the barons, receiving a crown from the hand of an angel to give it to her King.[2245] This was true in a spiritual sense, for she had taken Charles to his anointing and to his coronation. Jeanne was not quick to grasp the distinction between two kinds of truth. She may, nevertheless, have doubted the material reality of this vision.

She may even have held it to be true in a spiritual sense only. In any case, she had of her own accord promised Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret not to speak of it to her judges.[2246]

[Footnote 2244: _Legenda Aurea_, ed. 1846, pp. 789 _et seq._]

[Footnote 2245: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 120-122.]

[Footnote 2246: _Ibid._, p. 90.]

"Saw you any angel above the King?"

She refused to reply.[2247]

[Footnote 2247: _Ibid._, p. 56.]

This time nothing more was said of the crown. Maitre Jean Beaupere asked Jeanne if she often heard the Voice.

"Not a day pa.s.ses without my hearing it. And it is my stay in great need."[2248]

[Footnote 2248: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 57.]

She never spoke of her Voices without describing them as her refuge and relief, her consolation and her joy. Now all theologians agreed in believing that good spirits when they depart leave the soul filled with joy, with peace, and with comfort, and as proof they cited the angel's words to Zacharias and Mary: "Be not afraid."[2249] This reason, however, was not strong enough to persuade clerks of the English party that Voices hostile to the English were of G.o.d.

[Footnote 2249: Jean Brehal, _Memoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc_, ed. Lanery d'Arc, p. 409.]

And the Maid added: "Never have I required of them any other final reward than the salvation of my soul."[2250]