No one perhaps will ever be able to say what it is that makes a trial for heresy and sorcery,especially in the days when fire and flame,the rack and the stake,stood at the end,so exciting and horribly attractive to the mind.Whether it is the revelations that are hoped for,of these strange commerces between earth and the unknown,into which we would all fain pry if we could,in pursuit of some better understanding than has ever yet fallen to the lot of man;whether it is the strange and dreadful pleasure of seeing a soul driven to extremity and fighting for its life through all the subtleties of thought and fierce attacks of interrogation--or the mere love of inflicting torture,misery,and death,which the Church was prevented from doing in the common way,it is impossible to tell;but there is no doubt that a thrill like the wings of vultures crowding to the prey,a sense of horrible claws and beaks and greedy eyes is in the air,whenever such a tribunal is thought of.The thrill,the stir,the eagerness among those black birds of doom is more evident than usual in the headlong haste of that demand./Sous l'influence de l'Angleterre/,say the historians;the more shame for them if it was so;but they were clearly under influence wider and more infallible,the influence of that instinct,whatever it may be,which makes a trial for heresy ten thousand times more cruel,less restrained by any humanities of nature,than any other kind of trial which history records.
That is what the Inquisitor demanded after a long description of Jeanne,"called the Maid,"as having "dogmatised,sown,published,and caused to be published,many and diverse errors from which have ensued great scandals against the divine honour and our holy faith.""Using the rights of our office and the authority committed to us by the Holy See of Rome we instantly command,and enjoin you in the name of the Catholic faith,and under penalty of the law:and all other Catholic persons of whatsoever condition,pre-eminence,authority,or estate,to send or to bring as prisoner before us with all speed and surety the said Jeanne,vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy,that proceedings may be taken against her before us in the name of the Holy Inquisition,and with the favour and aid of the doctors and masters of the University of Paris,and other notable counsellors present there."It was the English who put it into the heads of the Inquisitor and the University to do this,all the anxious Frenchmen cry.We can only reply again,the more shame for the French doctors and priests!But there was very little time to bring that influence to bear;and there is an eagerness and precipitation in the demand which is far more like the headlong natural rush for a much desired prize than any course of action suggested by a third party.Nor is there anything to lead us to believe that the movement was not spontaneous.It is little likely,indeed,that the Sorbonne nowadays would concern itself about any inspired maid,any more than the enlightened Oxford would do so.But the ideas of the fifteenth century were widely different,and witchcraft and heresy were the most enthralling and exciting of subjects,as they are still to whosoever believes in them,learned or unlearned,great or small.
It must be added that the entire mind of France,even of those who loved Jeanne and believed in her,must have been shaken to its depths by this catastrophe.We have no sympathy with those who compare the career of any mortal martyr with the far more mysterious agony and passion of our Lord.Yet we cannot but remember what a tremendous element the disappointment of their hopes must have been in the misery of the first disciples,the Apostles,the mother,all the spectators who had watched with wonder and faith the mission of the Messiah.Had it failed?had all the signs come to nothing,all those divine words and ways,to our minds so much more wonderful than any miracles?Was there no meaning in them?Were they mere unaccountable delusions,deceptions of the senses,inspirations perhaps of mere genius--not from God at all except in a secondary way?In the three terrible days that followed the Crucifixion the burden of a world must have lain on the minds of those who had seen every hope fail:no legions of angels appearing,no overwhelming revelation from heaven,no change in a moment out of misery into the universal kingship,the triumphant march.That was but the self-delusion of the earth which continually travesties the schemes of Heaven;yet the most terrible of all despairs is such a pause and horror of doubt lest nothing should be true.
But in the case of this little Maiden,this handmaid of the Lord,the deception might have been all natural and perhaps shared by herself.
Were her first triumphs accidents merely,were her "voices"delusions,had she been given up by Heaven,of which she had called herself the servant?It was a stupor which quenched every voice--a great silence through the country,only broken by the penitential psalms at Tours.
