The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2France, Anatole
History
The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2
France, Anatole
Joan, of Arc, Saint, 1412-1431
[Footnote 756: _Lettres de Gerard Machet_, Bibl. nat. Latin documents,
no. 8577. Launoy, _Regii Navarrae Gymnasii Parisiensis historia_,
Paris, 1682 (2 vols. in 4to), vol. ii, pp. 533, 557. Du Boulay, _Hist.
Univ. Parisiensis_, vol. v, p. 875. Vallet de Viriville, in _Nouvelle
biographie generale_.]
[Footnote 757: De Beaucourt, _Extrait du catalogue des actes de
Charles VII_, p. 18.]
The damsel was interrogated concerning her Voices, which she called
her Council, and her saints, whom she imagined in the semblance of
those sculptured or painted figures peopling the churches.[758] The
doctors objected to her having cast off woman's clothing and had her
hair cut round in the manner of a page. Now it is written: "The woman
shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man
put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the
Lord thy God" (Deuteronomy xxii, 5). The Council of Gangres, held in
the reign of the Emperor Valens, had anathematised women who dressed
as men and cut short their hair.[759] Many saintly women, impelled by
a strange inspiration of the Holy Ghost, had concealed their sex by
masculine garb. At Saint-Jean-des-Bois, near Compiegne, was preserved
the reliquary of Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria, who lived for
thirty-eight years in man's attire in the monastery of the Abbot
Theodosius.[760] For these reasons, and because of these precedents,
the doctors argued: since Jeanne had put on this clothing not to
offend another's modesty but to preserve her own, we will put no evil
interpretation on an act performed with good intent, and we will
forbear to condemn a deed justified by purity of motive.
[Footnote 758: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 71, 72, 73, 171.]
[Footnote 759: Labbe, _Sacro-Sancta Consilia_ (1671), vol. ii, pp.
413, 434.]
[Footnote 760: Surius, _Vitae S.S._ (1618), vol. i, pp. 21-24. Gabriel
Brosse, _Histoire abregee de la vie et de la translation de Sainte
Euphrosine, Vierge d'Alexandrie, patronne de l'abbaye de
Beaulieu-les-Compiegne_, Paris, 1649, in 8vo.]
Certain of her questioners inquired why she called Charles Dauphin
instead of giving him his title of King. This title had been his by
right since the 30th of October, 1422; for on that day, the ninth
since the death of the King his father, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, in the
chapel royal, he had put off his black gown and assumed the purple
robe, while the heralds, raising aloft the banner of France, cried:
"Long live the King!"
She answered: "I will not call him King until he shall have been
anointed and crowned at Reims. To that city I intend to take
him."[761]
[Footnote 761: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 20.]
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