Part 125 (2/2)
The Maid of Le Mans was examined in like manner as the Maid Jeanne had been, but the result was unfavourable; she was found wanting in everything. Brought before the ecclesiastical court she was convicted of imposture. It appeared that she was no maid, but was living in concubinage with a cleric, that certain persons in the service of my Lord of Le Mans instructed her in what she was to say, and that such was the origin of the revelations she made to the Reverend Father in G.o.d, Messire Martin Berruyer, under the seal of the confession.
Convicted of being a hypocrite, an idolatress, an invoker of demons, a witch, a magician, lascivious, dissolute, an enchantress, a mine of falsehood, she was condemned to have a fool's cap put on her head and to be preached at in public, in the towns of Le Mans, Tours and Laval.
On the 2nd of May, 1461, she was exhibited to the folk at Tours, wearing a paper cap and over her head a scroll on which her deeds were set forth in lines of Latin and of French. Maitre Guillaume de Chateaufort, Grand Master of the Royal College of Navarre, preached to her. Then she was cast into close confinement in a prison, there to weep over her sins for the s.p.a.ce of seven years, eating the bread of sorrow and drinking the water of affliction;[2745] at the end of which time she rented a house of ill fame.[2746]
[Footnote 2744: Chastellain, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vol. iii, p.
444.]
[Footnote 2745: Jacques du Clercq, _Memoires_, vol. iii, pp. 107 _et seq._]
[Footnote 2746: Antoine du Faur, _Livre des femmes celebres_, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 336.]
On Wednesday, the 22nd of July, 1461, covered with ulcers internal and external, believing himself poisoned and perhaps not without reason, Charles VII died, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, in his Chateau of Mehun-sur-Yevre.[2747]
[Footnote 2747: De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. vi, pp.
442, 451. _Chronique Martiniane_, ed. P. Champion, p. 110.]
On Thursday, the 6th of August, his body was borne to the Church of Saint-Denys in France and placed in a chapel hung with velvet; the nave was draped with black satin, the vault was covered with blue cloth embroidered with flowers-de-luce.[2748] During the ceremony, which took place on the following day, a funeral oration was delivered on Charles VII. The preacher was no less a personage than the most highly renowned professor at the University of Paris, the doctor, who according to the Princes of the Roman Church was ever aimable and modest, he who had been the stoutest defender of the liberties of the Gallican Church, the ecclesiastic who, having declined a Cardinal's hat, bore to the threshold of an ill.u.s.trious old age none other t.i.tle than that of Dean of the Canons of Notre Dame de Paris, Maitre Thomas de Courcelles.[2749] Thus it befell that the a.s.sessor of Rouen, who had been the most bitterly bent on procuring Jeanne's cruel condemnation, celebrated the memory of the victorious King whom the Maid had conducted to his solemn coronation.
[Footnote 2748: Mathieu d'Escouchy, vol. ii, p. 422. Jean Chartier, _Chronique_, vol. iii, pp. 114-121.]
[Footnote 2749: _Gallia Christiana_, vol. vii, col. 151 and 214.
Hardouin, _Acta Conciliorum_, vol. ix, col. 1423. De Beaucourt, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol. vi, p. 444.]
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
LETTER FROM DOCTOR G. DUMAS
My Dear Master,--You ask for my medical opinion in the case of Jeanne d'Arc. Had I been able to examine it at my leisure with the Doctors Tiphaine and Delachambre, who were summoned before the tribunal at Rouen, I might have found it difficult to come to any definite conclusion. And even more difficult do I find it now, when my diagnosis must necessarily be retrospective and based upon examinations conducted by persons who never dreamed of attempting to discover the existence of any nervous disease. However since they ascribed what we now call disease to the influence of the devil, their questions are not without significance for us. Therefore with many reservations I will endeavour to answer your question.
Of Jeanne's inherited const.i.tution we know nothing; and of her personal antecedents we are almost entirely ignorant. Our only information concerning such matters comes from Jean d'Aulon, who, on the evidence of several women, states[2750] that she was never fully developed, a condition which frequently occurs in neurotic subjects.
[Footnote 2750: _Trial_, vol. iii. p. 219.]
We should, however, be unable to arrive at any conclusion concerning Jeanne's nervous const.i.tution had not her judges, and in particular Maitre Jean Beaupere, in the numerous examinations to which they subjected her, elicited certain significant details on the subject of her hallucinations.
Maitre Beaupere begins by inquiring very judiciously whether Jeanne had fasted the day before she first heard her voices. Whence we infer that the interdependence of inanition and hallucinations was recognised by this ill.u.s.trious professor of theology. Before condemning Jeanne as a witch he wanted to make sure that she was not merely suffering from weakness. Some time later we find Saint Theresa suspecting that the visions said to have been seen by a certain nun were merely the result of long fasting. Saint Theresa insisted on the nun's partaking of food, and the visions ceased.
Jeanne replies that she had only fasted since the morning, and Maitre Beaupere proceeds to ask:
_Q._ ”In what direction did you hear the voice?”
_A._ ”I heard it on the right, towards the church.”
<script>