Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, as Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents
History
Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, as Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents
Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431 -- Trials, litigation, etc.
I have heard it said that the Bishop, and others concerned in the
Process, wished to have letters of guarantee from the King of England,
and received them; and these are the letters now shewn, signed with the
sign manual of Maître Laurence Calot, whose signature I know well.
Maître Jean Lemaitre, Sub-Inquisitor, who was concerned in the Trial and
who often went with me, was compelled to attend. Brother Ysambard de la
Pierre, who was a friend of the Inquisitor, desired on one occasion to
direct Jeanne, but was told to hold his tongue, and that, if he did not
henceforward abstain from such interference, he would be thrown into the
Seine.
On the day of her death I was with her until her last breath. One
present said he wished his soul might be where he believed Jeanne’s soul
was. After the reading of the sentence, she came down from the platform
on which the preaching had been, and was led by the executioner, without
any sentence from the secular Judges, to the place where the pile was
prepared for her burning. The pile was on a scaffold, and the
executioner lighted it from below. When Jeanne perceived the fire, she
told me to descend and to hold up the Cross of the Lord on high before
her that she might see it.
When I was with her, and exhorting her on her salvation, the Bishop of
Beauvais and some of the Canons of Rouen came over to see her; and, when
Jeanne perceived the Bishop, she told him that he was the cause of her
death; that he had promised to place her in the hands of the Church, and
had relinquished her to her mortal enemies.
Up to the end of her life she maintained and asserted that her Voices
came from God, and that what she had done had been by God’s command. She
did not believe that her Voices had deceived her: [but that] the
revelations which she had received had come from God.
MESSIRE NICOLAS TAQUEL, _Priest, Rector of Basqueville, in the Diocese
of Rouen: First Examination, May 8th, 1452._
About half-way through the Process I was called by the two notaries to
assist them. I saw Jeanne in a prison in the Castle of Rouen, in a
certain tower near the fields. I never perceived any kind of fear, nor
did I know of prohibitions or coercion by the English. I do not remember
that she asked to have Counsel, or that they were offered to her; I was
not at the opening of the Case. I knew well that Jeanne was in prison. I
saw her there, in irons, notwithstanding her weakness. There was an
Englishman who had charge of her in the room, without whose leave no
one, not even the Judges, might have access to her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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