Chapter 7 - Cauchon Weaves a Net About Saint Joan

It was in January that Pierre Cauchon began to assemble his court. England, not wishing to incur the odium which might result from it, gave Cauchon a free hand in the trial, in order that it might seem that she was being tried by her own countrymen. It is notable that no Englishman appeared there. Saint Joan, who still had faith in her friendly compatriots, had asked in vain that some of her judges be taken from among them.

She had been in captivity nine months, during which time she had been taken from place to place, subjected to all kinds of indignities which had, indeed, broken her bodily strength, but not her dauntless spirit. She had been asked, time and again, to resume her woman's dress, but she had refused to do so, because the warlike mission on which she had been sent "was not yet finished."

When Saint Joan appeared before her judges, men skilled in the law, in politics, in statecraft and duplicity, she did not shrink or vacillate. They saw before them a slender girl of nineteen, dressed in a page's suit of black, her short black hair framing her small pale face, lit up by a pair of large, gray, candid eyes, fearless, yet not bold, long lashes falling modestly on her smooth cheeks, or uplifted in firm denial of the accusations brought against her as the moments passed. Calm, cool, and undismayed, meeting each subtle question with the skill of a lawyer, or turning venom into harmlessness with the simplicity of a child who did not know the meaning of hypocrisy and treachery, the Maid founded her faith on the promises that had been made to her, her strength on the whisperings of the Voices, which never deserted her in this last great battle of her life.

Saint Joan was tried for witchcraft and not a single scrap of evidence was produced to show that she had ever had any dealing whatsoever with the powers of darkness. She was condemned as a witch after this mockery of a trial, which proved beyond a doubt, even to her enemies, that her soul was white as snow.

Required to take an oath, she answered with great prudence:

"I do not know on what you wish to question me; perhaps you will ask me about things which I ought not to tell you."

And again: "Of my father and my mother, and of what I did after taking the road to France, willingly will I swear; but of the revelations which have come to me from God to no one will I speak, save to Charles - my King."

Poor Saint Joan! Faithful to the last to a cowardly monarch, who never by word or deed ever again acknowledged that she had served him well!

"From whence do you come?" they asked.

"Well you know from whence I come," she replied. "Nevertheless, I will tell you that Domremy is my birthplace and I am well-known there from that day."

"Who taught you to pray?"

"From my father and mother I learned my Pater, my Ave Maria, and my Credo. From whom else should I have learned them? And very well you know that there is not a child in Domremy who has not been taught to pray."

"Repeat your Pater"

There was a belief in those days that a witch could only say the Lord's Prayer backward. Saint Joan knew this well, and although the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in the proper manner would have been, in the minds of many, a refutation of the charge of witchcraft on her part, she refused to fall in with the purpose of her captors and replied with great adroitness:

"Here is no place for the Lord's Prayer. In confession I will say it willingly."

"What did you learn to do in Domremy?" was asked of her.

Saint Joan replied:

"All that a woman should know of household tasks I learned to do; to spin and sew. In sewing and spinning I fear no woman in Rouen."

"From whence do your Voices come?"

"They come to me from God."

"Do you know if you are in the grace of God?"

"If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, so may God keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I was not in the grace of God."

These questions were not all asked the Maid at one time, but during the different days of her trial. Once the judges tried to confuse her, speaking all together or interrupting each other.

"Fair Sirs," she said, calmly, sweeping them with her steadfast eyes, "one after another, I pray you!"

"What have you to say of our Lord the Pope, and who is the true Pope?" they inquired.

"Are there two Popes?" the Maid answered adroitly, and they were silent.

Cauchon, commenting on her attempted escape from the Tower of Beaurevoir, forbade her to leave the prison without permission, under pain of being punished for the crime of heresy, though what heresy had to do with her desire of freedom it is difficult to imagine.

Saint Joan raised her head and answered him unfalteringly, as follows:

"I do not accept such prohibition. If ever I do escape no one shall reproach me with having broken my word to any one, whoever it may be. Is is not lawful and natural for a prisoner to wish to escape, and to try to do so?"

"Did those of your party firmly believe that you were sent by God?" was asked of her.

"I do not know if they believed it. Refer to themselves in that matter," was the grave answer. "But even though they do not believe it, yet am I sent by God!"

Once they inquired,

"Does Saint Margaret speak English?"

She regarded her questioners gravely.

"Why should she speak English to me, who do not understand it? Why should she speak English when she is not on the English side?"

We fancy a smile must have sought the lips of some of her sober-minded accusers at this astute reply.

There were six public examinations at the trial. As one of her jailers, Massieu, was leading the Maid from the courtroom to the prison they passed the chapel of the Castle. The Host was in the Tabernacle, and Saint Joan begged leave to "kneel and adore her Lord." Permission was granted her. It was done several times. A satellite of Cauchon, d'Estivet, more cruel even than his master, once saw the incident and attacked Massieu for having permitted the favor. Thenceforth she was not allowed the privilege, and always as they reached the chapel she would inquire in a sweet, low voice, "Is not the Body of Our Lord in the Chapel?" And to the affirmative reply she would bend her head in adoration as she passed, comforted and soothed that her God was there.

- taken from A Child's Life of Saint Joan of Arc, by Mary Ellen Mannix