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
The most significant and the most curious after-scene, a pendant to the
remorse and pity of so many of the humbler spectators, was the assembly
held on the Thursday after Jeanne's death, how and when we are not told.
It consisted of "nos judices antedicti," but neither is the place of
meeting named, nor the person who presided. Its sole testimonial is
that the manuscript is in the same hand which has written the previous
records: but whereas each page in that record was signed at the bottom
by responsible notaries, Manchon and his colleagues, no name whatever
certifies this. Seven men, Doctors and persons of high importance, all
judges on the trial, all concerned in that last scene in the prison,
stand up and give their report of what happened there--part of which
we have quoted--their object being to establish that Jeanne at the last
acknowledged herself to be deceived. According to their own showing it
was exactly such an acknowledgment as our Lord might have been supposed
to make in the moment of his agony when the words of the psalm, "My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" burst from his lips. There seems
no reason that we can see, why this evidence should not be received as
substantially true. The inference that any real recantation on Jeanne's
part was then made, is untrue, and not even asserted. She was deceived
in respect to her deliverance, and felt it to the bottom of her heart.
It was to her the bitterness of death. But the flames of her burning
showed her the truth, and with her last breath she proclaimed her
renewed conviction. The scene at the stake would lose something of its
greatness without that momentary cloud which weighed down her troubled
soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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