"Will you not submit to our holy father, the Pope?" they asked her. "Bring me before the Pope, and I will answer," she replied. In other words, they were trying to have her admit that she had no right to think for herself or to exercise any independence at all. But she was too serious and earnest a person to subscribe to any such doctrine. She had never understood that to be a Catholic meant to be a bondswoman. "Take care," she said, turning her fiery glance upon her inquisitors, "take care that you do not put yourselves in the place of God." By such an answer, the young woman, still in her teens, had shot the Catholic Church in the heart. The nature of the charges against Joan as formulated by her judges also goes to prove that she was considered a heretic and condemned to death for that offense. The eleventh charge against her reads: "She has adored her saints without taking clerical advice." Charge twelfth reads: "She refuses to submit her conduct and revelation to the church." When asked if she would obey the church, her reply was, "God first being served." Luther said no more than that--and the Catholic church was split in two. Everything goes to show that the Domremy peasant girl was a private thinker, that is to say, a heretic. Listen to this: "I will believe that our Holy Father, the pope of Rome and the bishops and other churchmen are for the guarding of the Christian faith and the punishment of heretics, _but as for me and my facts, I will only submit to the church of heaven_." To be sure that is insubordination; it is placing herself not only on an equality with the pope, but even above him. Of course, Joan was not a Rationalist--far from it--but she was an independent Catholic--that is to say--not subject to the church--and that is heresy. Is it any wonder that her sentence read: "Therefore we pronounce you a rotten limb, and as such to be lopped off from the church." And the reason this sentence gave satisfaction to the Catholics all over the world was because such initiative and self-respect as Joan had manifested, if tolerated, would bring about the collapse of the infallible authority of the church. The University of Paris wrote to the pope, to the king of England and the bishops, lauding the priests who had purged the church of this dangerous girl with her "I think so," or "I believe so,"--with the emphasis on the "I." In this same letter the Bishop of Beauvais, the evil genius of Joan, to whom she said, when she saw the stake awaiting her, "Bishop, I die through you!" is commended for "his great gravity and holy way of proceeding, which ought to be most satisfactory to all."