Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And DeathOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Jeanne D'Arc: Her Life And Death
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
France -- History; Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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