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 know that the whole Process was written in French. I believe it was
afterwards translated into Latin. [To his account of her resumption of
the man’s dress he adds:] On the morrow, after she had been seen in the
resumed dress, her woman’s dress was restored to her.
At the beginning of the Process, Jeanne asked for Counsel in her
replies, she said she was too unlearned to reply; but they answered,
that she must speak for herself as best she could, for she should not
have Counsel.
[He adds to his account of her last Communion the fact that he was
himself present.]
_Further examined, December 17th, 1455, and May 12th, 1456._
[_Additional evidence_:]
Once, when I was conducting her before the Judges, she asked me, if
there were not, on her way thither, any Chapel or Church in which was
the Body of Christ. I replied, that there was a certain Chapel in the
Castle. She then begged me to lead her by this Chapel, that she might do
reverence to God and pray, which I willingly did, permitting her to
kneel and pray before the Chapel; this she did with great devotion. The
Bishop of Beauvais was much displeased at this, and forbade me in future
to permit her to pray there.
Many [in the Trial] had a great hate against her, principally the
English, who feared her greatly: for, before she was captured, they did
not dare to appear where they believed her to be. I heard it said that
the Bishop of Beauvais did everything at the instigation of the King of
England and his Council, who were then in Rouen.
Among the Assessors there was complaint that Jeanne was in the hands of
the English. Some of them said that she ought to be in the hands of the
Church; but the Bishop did not care, and sent her away to the English.
Maître Jean Lefèvre, of the Order of the Hermit Friars of Saint
Augustine, now Bishop of Démétriade, seeing Jeanne much fatigued with
the questioning as to whether she were in a state of grace, and
considering that, though her answers seemed sufficient, she was
over-worried by many questioners, remarked that she was being too much
troubled. Then the questioners ordered him to be silent: I do not
remember who they were.
She was imprisoned in the Castle of Rouen in a room on the second floor,
to which one ascended by eight steps. There was a bed in which she slept
and a great piece of wood to which she was fastened by iron chains.
There were five English of wretched estate [_houcepailliers_] who kept
guard over her; they much desired her death and often derided her, and
with this she reproached them.
I learnt from Etienne Castille, locksmith, that he had constructed for
her an iron cage in which she was held by the neck, hands and feet, and
that she was in this state from the time she was first brought to the
town of Rouen until the beginning of the Process. I never saw her in
this cage, for, when I fetched her, she was always out of irons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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