Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
[Footnote 50: There is a quaint suggestion of repentance for all this
in the cathedral of to-day. If you enter by the Portail des Libraires
and stand beside the north-east pillar of the great lantern, at your
feet is the tombstone of one of these unjust judges, Denis Gastinel,
and beneath it is the great Calorifere that warms the building, a
suggestively gruesome foretaste of the punishment which the modern
canons evidently think his conduct towards Jeanne d'Arc deserves.]
Early in the week of Palm Sunday she was formally summoned to the
great hall of the castle to hear the seventy articles of the Act of
Accusation against her. The web of calumny that had been spun out of
her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though
silent for the most part, she quickly contradicted some statements,
and pointed out the fallacy of others. Reproached for her unwomanly
behaviour, she replied at once, "As for woman's work, there are plenty
of other women who can do that"; and asserted that before fighting at
all, she had made every effort to obtain her wishes peacefully. She
even recited the short prayer it was her custom to make when she
needed the counsel of her heavenly visitors.
After this the seventy articles were reduced to twelve, which resumed
the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They
were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her
visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her attitude towards the
Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the
Archbishop of Reims, instead of to Pierre Cauchon, his subordinate.
On Thursday the 6th of April Erard Emengard held a meeting in the
chapel of the Archbishop's Palace at Rouen to deliberate over the
twelve articles. You may still see the place where this went on. As
you enter the gateway of the Screen to the Portail des Libraires from
the Rue St. Romain, on the left of the forecourt before the great
carved door, you will see an old building which in the August of 1897
was being repaired and reconstructed to provide a school for the
children of the Cathedral choir. This house forms itself the western
side of a courtyard into which a door has no doubt by this time
(December 1898) been opened from the Rue St. Romain, between the large
turret that projects on the left of the old screened entrance in the
street and the next octagonal turret with a sharply pointed roof that
is built on the wall of the Cathedral buildings. By whatever entrance
practicable, you must go into this courtyard and see the private
chapel of the Archbishop, the old "Chapelle des Ordres" which touches
the north wall of the Cathedral choir. Within this chapel the council
was held, that by its approval of the Twelve Articles of Accusation
pronounced the death-warrant of Jeanne d'Arc.[51]
[Footnote 51: The actual death-sentence, pronounced on the 29th of May
by the forty-two judges in full council ran as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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