But why was it to the interest of the English to have Joan declared a witch? Their motives were as personal as those of the French king. The English felt humiliated to think that a mere woman had whipped them, and therefore they were determined to prove that she was more than a woman--an agent of the devil. There was no secret about this. Their motive was very plain. It was to their interest to show that Joan was the personification of satan, and that consequently the English should not be blamed for running away from her presence, because who could withstand the devil? The English army did not go down before a girl, but before a sorceress. Even as the King of France did not wish it said that he owed his victory over the English to a witch, or that he was made king by an apostate, the English did not wish it said that they were conquered by a saint, for that would make God the enemy of the English. One king wanted Joan damned, and the Church accommodated him by damning her; another wanted Joan beatified, and the Church beatified her. It is admitted that the English could not have burned Joan as a witch without the consent of the Church. They could have burned her as a prisoner, but that would not have answered their purpose--she must be declared a witch in order to vindicate the amour propre of the English people. It is the exclusive prerogative of the Church to decide questions of orthodoxy or heresy. No king has the right to admit or exclude any one from the communion of the Church. Whether or not Joan was a witch was a theological question and could only be decided by the ecclesiastical court. Neither could the King of France declare Joan of Arc innocent of heresy without the consent of the Church. It follows then that the principal actor in the trial, the condemnation and the death of the young woman under the English, and her subsequent vindication and beatification, was the Church of Rome, since without its consent the English could not have made a heretic of her, nor the French a saviour and a saint. A secular government may declare who shall be its military heroes, or who shall be court-martialed and disgraced, but only the Church enjoys the right to damn or to canonize. This point is so clinching that even the most zealous papist must admit that at one time, when all Europe was Catholic--England as much so as France--and the pope was as supreme in one country as in the other, a girl of nineteen, who had rendered heroic services to her oppressed country, could not have been declared a heretic and cast into the fire at the door of a cathedral, in the presence of bishops, priests, a cardinal and a representative of the holy Inquisition, without the knowledge and consent of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.