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.
ARTICLE XIII. Jeanne attributes to God, His Angels and His Saints,
orders which are against the modesty of the sex, and which are
prohibited by the Divine Law, things abominable to God and man,
interdicted on pain of anathema by ecclesiastical censure, such as
dressing herself in the garments of a man, short, tight, dissolute,
those underneath as well as above. It is in virtue of these pretended
orders that she hath attired herself in sumptuous and stately raiment,
cloth-of-gold and furs; and not only did she wear short tunics, but she
dressed herself in tabards, and garments open at both sides; and it is
notorious that she was taken prisoner in a loose cloak of cloth-of-gold.
She was always seen with a cap on her head, her hair cut short and
a-round in the style of a man. In one word, putting aside the modesty of
her sex, she acted not only against all feminine decency, but even
against the reserve which beseems men of good morals, wearing ornaments
and garments which only profligate men are accustomed to use, and going
so far as to carry arms of offence. To attribute all this to the order
of God, to the order which had been transmitted to her by the Angels and
even by Virgin Saints, is to blaspheme God and His Saints, to destroy
the Divine Law and violate the Canonical Rules; it is to libel the sex
and its virtue, to overturn all decency, to justify all examples of
dissolute living, and to drive others thereto.
“What have you to say to this Article?”
“I have not blasphemed God nor His Saints.”[243]
ARTICLE XIV. Jeanne affirms that she has done right in attiring herself
in garments worn only by dissolute men; she doth profess that she will
continue to retain them until she shall have received, by revelation,
the express order of God: by this, she outrages God, the Angels, and the
Saints.
“What have you to say to this Article?”
“I do no wrong in serving God; to-morrow I will answer you.”
[One of the Assessors]: “Did you have revelation or order to wear a
man’s dress?”
“I have already answered that elsewhere. I refer to my previous sayings.
To-morrow I will answer. I know well who made me take a man’s dress; but
I do not know how I can reveal it.”[244]
ARTICLE XV. Jeanne, having many times asked that she might be permitted
to hear Mass, hath been invited to quit the dress she now wears and to
take again her woman’s dress; she hath been allowed to hope that she
will be admitted to hear Mass and to receive Communion, if she will
renounce entirely the dress of a man and take that of a woman, as
beseems her sex; she hath refused. In other words, she hath chosen
rather not to approach the Sacraments nor to assist in Divine Service,
than to put aside her habit, pretending that this would displease God.
In this appears her obstinacy, her hardness of heart, her lack of
charity, her disobedience to the Church, and her contempt of Divine
Sacraments.
“What have you to say to this Article?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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