Part 113 (1/2)

”But that is not sufficient. We cannot go so far to seek the Pope.

Each Ordinary is judge in his own diocese. Wherefore it is needful for you to appeal to Our Holy Mother Church, and to hold as true all that clerks and folks well learned in the matter say and determine touching your actions and your sayings.”[2469]

[Footnote 2469: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 445, 446.]

Admonished with yet a third admonition, Jeanne refused to recant.[2470]

With confidence she awaited the deliverance promised by her Voices, certain that of a sudden there would come men-at-arms from France and that in one great tumult of fighting-men and angels she would be liberated. That was why she had insisted on retaining man's attire.

[Footnote 2470: _Ibid._, p. 446.]

Two sentences had been prepared: one for the case in which the accused should abjure her error, the other for the case in which she should persevere. By the first there was removed from Jeanne the ban of excommunication. By the second, the tribunal, declaring that it could do nothing more for her, abandoned her to the secular arm. The Lord Bishop had them both with him.[2471]

[Footnote 2471: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 146.]

He took the second and began to read: ”In the name of the Lord, Amen.

All the pastors of the Church who have it in their hearts faithfully to tend their flocks....”[2472]

[Footnote 2472: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 473.]

Meanwhile, as he read, the clerks who were round Jeanne urged her to recant, while there was yet time. Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur exhorted her to do as he had recommended, and to put on woman's dress.[2473]

[Footnote 2473: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 146.]

Maitre Guillaume Erard was saying: ”Do as you are advised and you will be delivered from prison.”[2474]

[Footnote 2474: _Ibid._, vol. ii, pp. 17, 331; vol. iii, pp. 52, 156.]

Then straightway came the Voices unto her and said: ”Jeanne, pa.s.sing sore is our pity for you! You must recant what you have said, or we abandon you to secular justice.... Jeanne, do as you are advised.

Jeanne, will you bring death upon yourself!”[2475]

[Footnote 2475: _Ibid._, p. 123.]

The sentence was long and the Lord Bishop read slowly:

”We judges, having Christ before our eyes and also the honour of the true faith, in order that our judgment may proceed from the Lord himself, do say and decree that thou hast been a liar, an inventor of revelations and apparitions said to be divine; a deceiver, pernicious, presumptuous, light of faith, rash, superst.i.tious, a soothsayer, a blasphemer against G.o.d and his saints. We declare thee to be a contemner of G.o.d even in his sacraments, a prevaricator of divine law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanction, seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, having committed a thousand errors against religion, and by all these tokens rashly guilty towards G.o.d and Holy Church.[2476]”

[Footnote 2476: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 474, 475.]

Time was pa.s.sing. Already the Lord Bishop had uttered the greater part of the sentence.[2477] The executioner was there, ready to take off the condemned in his cart.[2478]

[Footnote 2477: _Ibid._, p. 473 note.]

[Footnote 2478: _Ibid._, vol. iii, pp. 65, 147, 149, 273. De Beaurepaire, _Recherches sur le proces_, p. 358.]

Then suddenly, with hands clasped, Jeanne cried that she was willing to obey the Church.[2479]

[Footnote 2479: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 323.]

The judge paused in the reading of the sentence.