CHAPTER XIII — THE PUBLIC EXAMINATION. FEBRUARY, 1431.
It was in the chapel of the Castle of Rouen, on the 21st of February, that the trial of Jeanne was begun. The judges present numbered about forty, and are carefully classed as doctors in theology, abbots, canons, doctors in canonical and civil law, with the Bishop of Beauvais at their head (the archepiscopal see of Rouen being vacant, as is added: but not that my lord of Beauvais hoped for that promotion). They were assembled there in all the solemnity of their priestly and professional robes, the reporters ready with their pens, the range of dark figures forming a semicircle round the presiding Bishop, when the officer of the court led in the prisoner, clothed in her worn and war-stained tunic, like a boy, with her hair cut close as for the helmet, and her slim figure, no doubt more slim than ever, after her long imprisonment. She had asked to be allowed to hear mass before coming to the bar, but this was refused. It was a privilege which she had never failed to avail herself of in her most triumphant days. Now the chapel—the sanctuary of God contained for her no sacred sacrifice, but only those dark benches of priests amid whom she found no responsive countenance, no look of kindness.
Jeanne was addressed sternly by Cauchon, in an exhortation which it is sad to think was not in Latin, as it appears in the Procès. She was then required to take the oath on the Scriptures to speak the truth, and to answer all questions addressed to her. Jeanne had already held that conversation with L'Oyseleur in the prison which Cauchon and Warwick had listened to in secret with greedy ears, but which Manchon, the honest reporter, had refused to take down. Perhaps, therefore, the Bishop knew that the slim creature before him, half boy half girl, was not likely to be overawed by his presence or questions; but it cannot have been but a wonder to the others, all gazing at her, the first men in Normandy, the most learned in Paris, to hear her voice, assez femme, young and clear, arising in the midst of them, "I know not what things I may be asked," said Jeanne. "Perhaps you may ask me questions which I cannot answer." The assembly was startled by this beginning.
"Will you swear to answer truly all that concerns the faith, and that you know?"
"I will swear," said Jeanne, "about my father and mother and what I have done since coming to France; but concerning my revelations from God I will answer to no man, except only to Charles my King; I should not reveal them were you to cut off my head, unless by the secret counsel of my visions."
The Bishop continued not without gentleness, enjoining her to swear at least that in everything that touched the faith she would speak truth; and Jeanne kneeling down crossed her hands upon the book of the Gospel, or Missal as it is called in the report, and took the required oath, always under the condition she stated, to answer truly on everything she knew concerning the faith, except in respect to her revelations.
The examination then began with the usual formalities. She was asked her name (which she said with touching simplicity was Jeannette at home but Jeanne in France), the names of her father and mother, godfather and godmothers, the priest who baptised her, the place where she was born, etc., her age, almost nineteen; her education, consisting of the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo, which her mother had taught her.
Here she was asked, a curious interruption to the formal interrogatory, to say the Pater Noster—the reason of which sudden demand was that witches and sorcerers were supposed to be unable to repeat that prayer. As unexpected as the question was Jeanne's reply. She answered that if the Bishop would hear her in confession she would say it willingly. She had been refused all the exercises of piety, and she was speaking to a company of priests.
There is a great dignity of implied protest against this treatment in such an answer. The request was made a second time with a promise of selecting two worthy Frenchmen to hear her: but her reply was the same. She would say the prayer when she made her confession but not otherwise. She was ready it would seem in proud humility to confess to any or to all of her enemies, as one whose conscience was clear, and who had nothing to conceal.
She was then commanded not to attempt to escape from her prison, on pain of being condemned for heresy, but to this again she demurred at once. She would not accept the prohibition, but would escape if she could, so that no man could say that she had broken faith; although since her capture she had been bound in chains and her feet fastened with irons. To this, her examiner said that it was necessary so to secure her in order that she might not escape. "It is true and certain," she replied, "whatever others may wish, that to every prisoner it is lawful to escape if he can." It may be remarked, as she forcibly pointed out afterwards, that she had never given her faith, never surrendered, but had always retained her freedom of action.
The tribunal thereupon called in the captain in charge of Jeanne's prison, a gentleman called John Gris in the record, probably John Grey, along with two soldiers, Bernoit and Talbot, and enjoined them to guard her securely and not to permit her to talk with any one without the permission of the court. This was all the business done on the first day of audience.
On the 22d of February at eight o'clock in the morning, the sitting was resumed. In the meantime, however, the chapel had been found too small and too near the outer world, the proceedings being much interrupted by shouts and noises from without, and probably incommoded within by the audience which had crowded it the first day. The judges accordingly assembled in the great hall of the castle; they were forty-nine in number on the second day, the number being chiefly swelled by canons of Rouen. After some preliminary business the accused was once more introduced, and desired again to take the oath. Jeanne replied that she had done so on the previous day and that this was enough; upon which there followed a short altercation, which, however, ended by her consent to swear again that she would answer truly in all things that concerned the faith. The questioner this day was Jean Beaupère (Pulchri patris, as he is called in the Latin), a theologian, Master of Arts, Canon of Paris and of Besançon, "one of the greatest props of the University of Paris," a man holding a number of important offices, and who afterwards appeared at the Council of Bâle as the deputy of Normandy. He began by another exhortation to speak the truth, to which Jeanne replied as before that what she did say she would say truly, but that she would not answer upon all subjects. "I have done nothing but by revelation," she said.
These preliminaries on both sides having been gone through, the examination was resumed. Jeanne informed the court in answer to Beaupère's question that she had been taught by her mother to sew and did not fear to compete with any woman in Rouen in these crafts; that she had once been absent from home when her family were driven out of their village by fear of the Burgundians, and that she had then lived for about fifteen days in the house of a woman called La Rousse, at Neufchâteau; that when she was at home she was occupied in the work of the house and did not go to the fields with the sheep and other animals; that she went to confession regularly to the Curé of her own village, or when he could not hear her, to some other priest, by permission of the Curé; also that two or three times she had made her confession to the mendicant friars—this being during her stay in Neufchâteau (where presumably she was not acquainted with the clergy); and that she received the sacrament always at Easter. Asked whether she had communicated at other feasts than Easter, she said briefly that this was enough. "Go on to the rest," passez outre, she added, and the questioner seems to have been satisfied. Then came the really vital part of the matter. She proceeded—no direct question on the point being recorded, though no doubt it was made—to tell how when she was about thirteen she heard voices from God bidding her to be good and obedient. The first time she was much afraid. The voice came about the hour of noon, in summer, in her father's garden. She was fasting but had not fasted the preceding day. The voice came from the right, towards the church; and came rarely without a great light. This light came always from the side whence the voice proceeded, and was a very bright radiance. When she came into France she still continued to hear the same voices.
She was then asked how she could see the light when it was at the side; to which foolish question Jeanne gave no reply, but "turned to other matters," saying voluntarily with a soft implied reproof of the noise around her—that if she were in a wood, that is in a quiet place, she could hear the voices coming towards her. She added (going on, one could imagine, in a musing, forgetting the congregation of sinners about her) that it seemed to her a noble voice, and that she believed it came from God, and that when she had heard it three times she knew it was the voice of an angel; the voice always came quite clearly to her, and she understood it well.
She was then asked what it said to her concerning the salvation of her soul.
She said that it taught her to rule her life well, to go often to church: and told her that it was necessary that she, Jeanne, should go to France. The said Jeanne added that she would not be questioned further concerning the voice, or the manner in which it was made known to her, but that two or three times in a week it had said to her that she must go to France; but that her father knew nothing of this. The voice said to her that she should go to France, until she could endure it no longer; it said to her that she should raise the siege, which was set against the city of Orleans. It said also that she must go to Robert of Baudricourt, in the city of Vaucouleurs, who was captain of that place, and that he would give her people to go with her; to which she had answered that she was a poor girl who knew not how to ride, nor how to conduct war. She then said that she went to her uncle and told him that she wished to go with him for a little while to his house, and that she lived there for eight days; she then told her uncle that she must go to Vaucouleurs, and the said uncle took her there. Also she went on to say that when she came to the said city of Vaucouleurs, she recognised Robert of Baudricourt; though she had never seen him before she knew him by the voice that said to her which was he. She then told this Robert that it was necessary that she should go to France, but twice over he refused and repulsed her; the third time, however, he received her, and gave her certain men to go with her; the voice had told her that this would be so.
She said also that the Duke of Lorraine sent for her to come to him, and that she went under a safe conduct granted by him, and told him that she must go to France. He asked her whether he should recover from his illness; but she told him that she knew nothing of that, and she talked very little to him of her journey. She told the Duke that he ought to send his son and his people with her to take her to France, and that she would pray God to restore his health; and then she was taken back to Vaucouleurs. She said also that when she left Vaucouleurs she wore the dress of a man, without any other arms than a sword which Robert de Baudricourt had given her; and that she had with her a chevalier, a squire, and four servants, and that they slept for the first night at St. Urbain, in the abbey there. She was then asked by whose advice she wore the dress of a man, but refused to answer. Finally she said that she charged no man with giving her this advice.
She went on to say that the said Robert de Baudricourt exacted an oath from those who went with her, that they would conduct her to the end of her journey well and safely; and that he said, as she left him, "Go, and let come what will." She also said that she knew well that God loved the Duke of Orleans, concerning whom she had more revelations than about any other living man, except him whom she called her King. She added that it was necessary for her to wear male attire, and that whoever advised her to do so had given her wise counsel.
She then said that she sent a letter to the English before Orleans, in which she required them to go away, a copy of which letter had been read to her in Rouen; but there were two or three mistakes, especially in the words which called upon them to surrender to the Maid instead of to surrender to the King. (There is no indication why these two latter statements should have been introduced into the midst of her narrative of the journey; it may have been in reply to some other question interjected by another of her examiners: Passez outre, as she herself says. She immediately resumes the simple and straightforward tale.)
The said Jeanne went on to say that her further journey to him whom she called her King was without any impediment; and that when she arrived at the town of St. Catherine de Fierbois she sent news of her arrival to the town of Chasteau-Chinon where the said King was. She arrived there herself about noon and went to an inn(1); and after dinner went to him whom she called her King, who was in the castle. She then said that when she entered the chamber where he was, she knew him among all others, by the revelation of her "voices." She told her King that she wished to make war against the English.
She was then asked whether when she heard the "voices" in the presence of the King the light was also seen in that place. She answered as before: Passez outre: Transeatis ultra. "Go on," as we might say, "to the other questions."
She was asked if she had seen an angel hovering over her King. She answered: "Spare me; passez outre." She added afterwards, however, that before he put his hand to the work, the King had many beautiful apparitions and revelations. She was asked what these were. She answered: "I will not tell you; it is not I who should answer; send to the King and he will tell you."
She was then asked if her voices had promised her that when she came to the King he would receive her. She answered that those of her own party knew that she had been sent from God and that some had heard and recognised the voices. Further, she said that her King and various others had heard and seen(2) the voices coming to her—Charles of Bourbon (Comte de Clermont) and two or three others with him. She then said that there was no day in which she did not hear that voice; but that she asked nothing from it except the salvation of her soul. Besides this, Jeanne confessed that the voice said she should be led to the town of St. Denis in France, where she wished to remain—that is after the attack on Paris—but that against her will the lords forced her to leave it: if she had not been wounded she would not have gone: but she was wounded in the moats of Paris: however she was healed in five days. She then said that she had made an assault, called in French escarmouche (skirmish), upon the town of Paris. She was asked if it was on a holy day, and said that she believed it was on a festival. She was then asked if she thought it well done to fight on a holy day, and answered, "Passez outre." Go on to the next question.
This is a verbatim account of one day of the trial. Most of the translations which exist give questions as well as answers: but these are but occasionally given in the original document, and Jeanne's narrative reads like a calm, continuous statement, only interrupted now and then by a question, usually a cunning attempt to startle her with a new subject, and to hurry some admission from her. The great dignity with which she makes her replies, the occasional flash of high spirit, the calm determination with which she refuses to be led into discussion of the subjects which she had from the first moment reserved, are very remarkable. We have seen her hitherto only in conflict, in the din of battle and the fatigue, yet exuberant energy, of rapid journeys. Her circumstances were now very different. She had been shut up in prison for months, for six weeks at least she had been in irons, and the air of heaven had not blown upon this daughter of the fields; her robust yet sensitive maidenhood had been exposed to a hundred offences, and to the constant society, infecting the very air about, of the rudest of men; yet so far is her spirit from being broken that she meets all those potent, grave, and reverend doctors and ecclesiastics, with the simplicity and freedom of a princess, answering frankly or holding her peace as seems good to her, afraid of nothing, keeping her self-possession, all her wits about her as we say, without panic and without presumption. The trial of Jeanne is indeed almost more miraculous than her fighting; a girl not yet nineteen, forsaken of all, without a friend! It is less wonderful that she should have developed the qualities of a general, of a gunner, every gift of war—than that in her humiliation and distress she should thus hold head against all the most subtle intellects in France, and bear, with but one moment of faltering, a continued cross-examination of three months, without losing her patience, her heart, or her courage.
The third day brought a still larger accession of judges, sixty-two of them taking their places on the benches round the Bishop in the great hall; and the day began with another and longer altercation between Cauchon and Jeanne on the subject of the oath again demanded of her. She maintained her resolution to say nothing of her voices. "We" according to the record "required of her that she should swear simply and absolutely without reservation." She would seem to have replied with impatience, "Let me speak freely:" adding "By my faith you may ask me many questions which I will not answer": then explaining, "Many things you may ask me, but I will tell you nothing truly that concerns my revelations; for you might compel me to say things which I have sworn not to say; and so I should perjure myself, which you ought not to wish." This explains several statements which she made later in respect to her introduction to the King. She repeated emphatically: "I warn you well, you who call yourselves my judges, that you take a great responsibility upon you, and that you burden me too much." She said also that it was enough to have already sworn twice. She was again asked to swear simply and absolutely, and answered, "It is enough to have sworn twice," and that all the clerks in Rouen and Paris could not condemn her unless lawfully; also that of her coming she would speak the truth but not all the truth; and that the space of eight days would not be enough to tell all.
"We the said Bishop" (continues the report) "then said to her that she should ask advice from those present whether she ought to swear or not. She replied again that of her coming she would speak truly and not otherwise, nor would it be fit that she should talk at large. We then told her that it would throw suspicion on what she said if she did not swear to speak the truth. She answered as before. We repeated that she must swear precisely and absolutely. She answered that she would say what she knew, but not all, and that she had come on the part of God, and appealed to God from whom she came. Again requested and admonished to swear on pain of every punishment that could be put on her, again answered 'Passez outre.' Finally she consented to swear that she would speak the truth in everything that concerned the trial."
Her examination was then resumed by Beaupère as before, who elicited from her that she had fasted (he seems to have wished to make out that the fasting had something to do with her visions) since noon the day before (it was Lent); and also that she had heard her voices both on that day and the day before, three times on the previous day, the first time in the morning when she was asleep, and awakened by them. Did she kneel and thank them? She thanked them, sitting up in her bed (to which she was chained, as her questioner knew) and clasping her hands. She asked them what she was to do, and they told her to answer boldly.
It may be remarked here that more frequently as the examination goes on, part of Jeanne's words are quoted in the first person, as if the reporters had been specially struck by them, while the bulk of her evidence goes on more calmly in the third person, the narrative form. After saying that she was bidden to answer boldly, she seems to have turned to the Bishop, and to have addressed him individually: "You say you are my judge; I warn you to take care what you are doing, for I am sent from God, and you are putting yourself in much peril" (magno periculo: gallice, adds the reporter, en grant dangier).
She was then asked if her voices ever changed their meaning, and answered that she had never heard two speak contrary to each other; what they had said that day was that she should speak boldly. Asked, if the voice forbade her to reply to questions asked, she replied; "I will not answer you. I have revelations touching the King which I will not tell you." Asked, if the voices forbade her to reveal these revelations, she answered, "I have not consulted them; give me fifteen days' delay and I will answer you"; but being again exhorted to reply, said: "If the voice forbade me to speak, how many times should I tell you?" Again asked, if she were forbidden to speak, answered, "I believe I am not forbidden by men"—repeating that she would not reply, and knew not how far she should reply, for it had not been revealed to her; but that she believed firmly, as firmly as the Christian faith, and that God had redeemed us from the pains of hell, that this voice came from Him.
Questioned concerning the voice, what it appeared to be when it spoke, if that of an angel, or from God Himself; or if it was the voice of a saint or of saints (feminine), answered: "The voice comes from God; and I believe that I should not tell you all I know, for I should displease these voices if I answered you; and as for this question I pray you to leave me free." Asked if she thought that to speak the truth would displease God, she answered, "What the voices say I am to tell to the King, not to you," adding that during that night they had said much to her for the good of the King, and that if she could but let him know she would willingly drink no wine up to Easter (the reader will remember that her frugal fare consisted of bread dipped in the wine and water, which is justly called eau rougie in France). Asked, if she could not induce the voices to speak to her King directly, she answered that she knew not whether her voices would consent, unless it were the will of God, and God consented to it, adding, "They might well reveal it to the King; and with that I should be content." Asked, if the voices could not communicate with the King as they did in her presence, she answered, that she did not know whether this was God's will; and added, that unless it were the will of God she would not know how to act. Asked, if it was by the advice of her voices that she attempted to escape from her prison, she answered, "I have nothing to say to you on that point." Asked, if she always saw a light when the voices were heard, she answered: "Yes: that with the sound of the voices light came." Asked if she saw anything else coming with the voices, answered: "I do not tell you all. I am not allowed to do so, nor does my oath touch that; the voices are good and noble, but neither of that will I answer." She was then asked to give in writing the points on which she would not reply. Then she was asked if her voices had eyes and ears, and answered, "You shall not have this either," adding, that it was a saying among children that men were sometimes hanged for speaking the truth.
She was then asked if she knew herself to be in the grace of God. She replied: "If I am not so, may God put me in His grace; if I am, may God keep me in it. I should be the most miserable in the world if I were not in the grace of God." She said besides, that if she were in a state of sin she did not believe her voices would come to her, and she wished that everyone could understand them as she did, adding, that she was about thirteen when they came to her first.
She was then asked, whether in her childhood she had played with the other children in the fields, and various other particulars about Domremy, whether there were any Burgundians there? to which Jeanne answered boldly that there was one, and that she wished his head might be cut off, adding piously, "that is, if it pleased God"(3); she was also asked whether she had fought along with the other children against the children of the neighbouring Burgundian village of Maxy (Maxey sur Meuse): why she hated the Burgundians, and many questions of this kind, with a close examination about a certain tree near the village of Domremy, which some called the Tree of the good Ladies, and others, the Fairies' Tree; and also about a well there, the Fairies' Well, of which poor patients were said to drink and get well. Jeanne (no doubt relieved by the simple character of these questions) made answer freely and without hesitation, in no way denying that she had danced and sung with the other children, and made garlands for the image of the Blessed Marie of Domremy; but she did not remember whether she had ever done so after attaining years of discretion, and certainly she had never seen a fairy, nor worked any spell by their means. At the end, after having thus been put off her guard, she was suddenly asked about her dress (a capital point in the eyes of her judges): whether she wished to have a woman's dress. Probably she was, as they hoped, tired, and expecting no such question, for she answered quickly yet with instant recovery: "Bring me one to go home in and I will accept it; otherwise no. I prefer this, since it pleases God that I should wear it." The recollection of Domremy and of the pleasant fields, must have carried her back to the days when the little Jeanne was like the rest in her short, full petticoats of crimson stuff, free of any danger: what could be better to go home in? but she immediately remembered the obvious and excellent reasons she had for wearing another costume now. So ended the third day.
In the meantime there had been, we are told, various interruptions during the examination; perhaps it was then that Nicolas de Houppeville protested against Bishop Cauchon as a partisan and a Burgundian, and therefore incapable by law of judging a member of the opposite party: and had been rudely silenced, and afterwards punished, as we have already heard. Another kind of opposition less bold had begun to be remarked, which was that one of the persons present, by word and sign, whispering suggestions to her, or warning her with his eyes, was helping the unfortunate prisoner in her defence. Probably this did little good, "for she was often troubled and hurried in her answers," we are told; but it was a sign of good-will, at least. When Frère Isambard, who was the person in question, speaks at a later period he tells us that "the questions put to Jeanne were too difficult, subtle, and dangerous, so that the great clerks and learned men who were present scarcely would have known how to answer them, and that many in the assembly murmured at them." Perhaps the good Frère Isambard might have spared himself the trouble; for Jeanne, however she may have suffered, was probably more able to hold her own than many of those great clerks, and did so with unfailing courage and spirit. One of the other judges, Jean Fabry, a bishop, declared afterwards that "her answers were so good, that for three weeks he believed that they were inspired." Manchon, the reporter, he who had refused to take down the private conversation of Jeanne in her prison with the vile traitor, L'Oyseleur, makes his voice heard also to the effect that "Monseigneur of Beauvais would have had everything written as pleased him, and when there was anything that displeased him he forbade the secretaries to report it as being of no importance for the trial." On another day a humbler witness still, Massieu, one of the officers of the court, who had the charge of taking Jeanne daily from her prison to the hall, and back again, met in the courtyard an Englishman, who seems to have been a singing man or lay clerk "of the King's chapel in England," probably attached to Winchester's ecclesiastical retinue. This man asked him: "What do you think of her answers? Will she be burned? What will happen?" "Up to this time," said Massieu, "I have heard nothing from her that was not honourable and good. She seems to me a good woman, but how it will all end God only knows!"
No doubt conversations of this kind were being carried on all over Rouen. Would she be burned? What would happen? Could any one stand and answer like that hour after hour and day by day, inspired only by the devil? There was no popular enthusiasm for her even now. How should there have been in that partisan province, more English than French? But a chill doubt began to steal into many minds whether she was so bad as had been thought, whether indeed she might not after all be something quite different from what she had been thought? Nature had begun to work in the agitated place, and even in that black-robed, eager assembly. If there was a vile L'Oyseleur trying to get her confidence in private, and so betray her, there was also a kind Frère Isambard, privately plucking at her sleeve, imploring her to be cautious, whispering an answer probably not half so wise as her own natural reply, yet warming her heart with the suggestion of a friend at hand.
On the fourth day, Jeanne was again required to swear, and replied as before, that so far as concerned the trial she would answer truly, but not all she knew. "You ought to be satisfied: I have sworn sufficiently," she said; and with this her judges seem to have been content. Beaupère then resumed his questions, but first asked her, perhaps with a momentary gleam of compassion and a sudden consciousness of the pallor and weariness of the young prisoner, how she did. She answered, one can imagine with what tone of indignant disdain: "You see how I am: I am as well as I can be." He then cross-examined her closely as to what voices she had heard since her last appearance in court, but drew from her only the same answer, "The voice tells me to answer boldly," and that she would tell them as much as she was permitted by God to tell them, but concerning her revelations for the King of France she would say nothing except by permission of her voices.
She was then asked what kind of voices they were which she heard, were they voices of angels, or of saints (sancti aut sanctæ, male or female saints) or from God Himself? She answered that the voices were those of St. Catherine and St. Margaret, whose heads were crowned with beautiful crowns, very rich and precious. "So much as this God allows me to say. If you doubt send to Poitiers, where I was questioned before." (It may perhaps be permissible to suppose that the kind whisperer at her elbow might have suggested the repeated references to Poitiers that follow, but which are not to be found before: though it was most