but it does not appear that her position had any other warrant than the moral influence which her prodigious exploits and the belief in her divine mission afforded. Charles’s gratitude gave her a handsome establishment. She was magnificently attired, noble damsels were assigned to her service, with a maître d’hotel, pages, and valets; she had five war-horses, with seven or more roadsters, and at the time of her capture she had in her hands ten or twelve thousand francs, which, as she told her judges, was little enough to carry on war with. Shortly after his coronation, Charles, at her request, granted to Domremy and Greux the privilege of exemption from all taxes, a favor which was respected until the Revolution; and in December, 1429, he spontaneously ennobled her family and all their posterity, giving them as arms on a field azure two fleurs-de-lis or, traversed by a sword, and authorizing them to bear the name of Du Lis—in all a slender return for the priceless service rendered, and affording to her judges another count in the indictment on her trial.[373]

All Europe was aroused with so portentous an apparition. It was not only statesmen and warriors that watched with astonishment the strange vicissitudes of the contest, but learned men and theologians were divided in opinion as to whether she was under the influence of heavenly or of infernal spirits, and were everywhere disputing and writing tracts to uphold the one opinion or the other. In England, of course, there was no dissent from the popular belief which Shakespeare puts in the mouth of Talbot—

So general, indeed, was the terror that she excited that when, in May, 1430, it was proposed to send Henry VI. to Paris for coronation, both captains and soldiers in the levies appointed for his escort deserted and lay in hiding; and when, in December, after Joan lay a prisoner in Rouen Castle and the voyage was performed, the same trouble was experienced, requiring another proclamation to the sheriffs for the arrest of those who were daily deserting, to the great peril of the royal person and of the kingdom of France. Elsewhere the matter was not thus taken for granted, and was elaborately argued with all the resources of scholastic logic. Some tracts of this character attributed to Gerson have been preserved, and exhibit to us the nature of the doubts which suggested themselves to the learned of the time—whether Joan is a woman or a phantasm; whether her acts are to be considered as divine or phitonic and illusory; whether, if they are the result of supernatural causes, they come from good or evil spirits. To Joan’s defenders the main difficulty was her wearing male attire and cutting her hair short—an offence which in the end proved to be the most tangible one to justify her condemnation. Even her advocates in the schools felt that in this the case was weak. It had to be admitted that the Old Law prohibits a woman from wearing man’s garments, but this, it was argued, was purely juridical, and was not binding under the New Law; it had merely a moral object, to prevent indecency, and the circumstances and objects were to be considered, so that the law could not be held to prohibit manly and military vesture to Joan, who was both manly and military. The cutting of her hair, prohibited by the Apostle, was justified in the same manner.[374]

For a few weeks after the coronation Joan was at the culmination of her career. An uninterrupted tide of success had demonstrated the reality of her divine mission. She had saved the monarchy, and no one could doubt that the invader would shortly be expelled from France. Possibly she may, as has been represented, have declared that all which God had appointed her to do had been accomplished, and that she desired to return to her parents and herd their cattle as she had been accustomed of old. In view of what followed, this was the only way to uphold the theory of divine inspiration, and such a statement inevitably formed part of her legend, whether it was true or not. In her subsequent failures, as at Paris and La Charité, Joan naturally persuaded herself that they had been undertaken against the counsel of her Voices, but all the evidence goes to prove that at the time she was as confident of success as ever. Thus a letter written from Reims on the day of coronation, evidently by a well-informed person, states that the army was to start the next day for Paris, and that the Pucelle had no doubts as to her reducing it to obedience. Nor did she really consider her mission as ended, for she had at the commencement proclaimed the liberation of Charles of Orleans as one of her objects, and on her trial she explained that she proposed either to invade England to set him free or to capture enough prisoners to force an exchange: her Voices had promised it to her, and had she not been captured she would have accomplished it in three years.[375]

Be this as it may, from this time the marvellous fortune which had attended her disappears; alternations of success and defeat show that either the French had lost the first flush of confident enthusiasm, or that the English had recovered from their panic and were doggedly resolved to fight the powers of hell. Bedford managed to put a respectable force in the field, with the assistance of Cardinal Beaufort, who made over to him, it was said for a heavy bribe, four thousand crusaders whom he was leading from England to the Hussite wars. He barred the way to Paris, and three times the opposing armies, of nearly equal strength, lay face to face, but Bedford always skilfully chose a strong position which Charles dared not attack, showing that human prudence had replaced the reckless confidence of the march to Reims. We catch a glimpse of the intrigues of the factions surrounding Charles in the attempted retreat to the Loire, frustrated at Bray-sur-Seine, when the defeat of the courtiers who assailed the English guarding the passage of the river was hailed with delight by Joan, Bourbon, Alençon, and the party opposed to La Trémouille. Charles, perforce, remained in the North. Towards the end of August, Bedford, fearing an inroad on Normandy, marched thither, leaving the road to Paris open, and Charles advanced to St. Denis, which he occupied without resistance, August 25. On September 7 an attempt was made to capture Paris by surprise, with the aid of friends within the walls, and this failing, on the 8th, the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, an assault in force was made at the Porte St. Honoré. The water in the inner moat, however, was too deep and the artillery on the walls too well served: after five or six hours of desperate fighting the assailants were disastrously repulsed with a loss of five hundred killed and one thousand wounded. As usual Joan had been at the front till she fell with an arrow through the leg, and her standard-bearer was slain by her side. Joan subsequently averred that she had had no counsel from her Voices to make this attempt, but had been over-persuaded by the eager chivalry of the army; but this is contradicted by contemporary evidence, and her letter to d’Armagnac promises him a reply when she shall have leisure in Paris, showing that she fully expected to capture the city.[376]

From this time her checkered career was rather of evil fortune than of good. If at St. Pierre-les-Moustiers the old enthusiasm made the forlorn hope imagine that it ascended the breach as easily as a broad stairway, the siege of La Charité, to which it was a preliminary, proved disastrous, and again Joan averred that she had undertaken this without orders from her Voices. It was freely said that La Trémouille had sent her on the enterprise with insufficient forces and had withheld the requisite succors. During the winter she was at Lagny, where occurred a little incident which was subsequently used to confirm the charge of sorcery. A child was born apparently dead; the parents, dreading to have it buried without baptism, had it carried to the church, where it lay, to all appearance, lifeless for three days; the young girls of the town assembled in the church to pray for it, and Joan joined them. Suddenly the infant gave signs of life, gaped thrice, was hurriedly baptized, died, and was buried in consecrated ground, and Joan had the credit of working a miracle, to be turned subsequently to her disadvantage. Probably about the same time, there was trouble about a horse of the Bishop of Senlis, which Joan took for her own use. She found it worthless for her purposes and sent it back to him, and also caused him to be paid two hundred saluts d’or for it (the salut d’or was equivalent to twenty-two sols parisis), but on her trial the matter was gravely charged against her, showing how eagerly every incident in her career was scrutinized and utilized.[377]

As the spring of 1430 opened, the Duke of Burgundy came to the assistance of his English allies by raising a large army for the recovery of Compiègne. The activity of Joan was unabated. During Easter week, about the middle of April, we hear of her in the trenches at Melun, where her Voices announced to her that she would be a prisoner before St. John’s day, but would give her no further particulars. Before the close of the month she attacked the advancing Burgundians at Pont-l’Évêque, with her old comrade-in-arms Pothon de Xaintrailles, and was worsted. Then she had a desperate fight with a Burgundian partisan, Franquet d’Arras, whom she captured with all his troop; he had been a notorious plunderer, the magistrates of Lagny claimed him for trial, and after an investigation which lasted for fifteen days they executed him as a robber and murderer, for which Joan was held responsible, his death being one of the most serious charges pressed against her. About May 1 Compiègne was invested. Its siege was evidently to be the decisive event of the campaign, and Joan hastened to the rescue. Before daylight on the morning of the 5th she succeeded in entering the town with reinforcements. In the afternoon of the same day a sally was resolved upon, and Joan as usual led it, with Pothon and other captains by her side. She fell upon the camp of a renowned knight of the Golden Fleece named Bauldon de Noyelle, who, though taken by surprise, made a gallant resistance. From the neighboring lines troops hastened to his assistance, and the tide of battle swayed back and forth. A force of a thousand Englishmen on their way to Paris had tarried to aid Philip of Burgundy, and these were brought up between the French and the town to take them in the rear. Joan fell back and endeavored to bring her men off in safety, but while covering the retreat she was unable to regain the fortifications, and was taken prisoner by the Bâtard de Vendôme, a follower of Jean de Luxembourg, Comte de Ligny, second in command to the duke. There was naturally talk of treachery, but it would seem without foundation.. Pothon was likewise captured, and it evidently was but the fortune of war.[378]

Great was the joy in the Burgundian camp when the news spread that the dreaded Pucelle was a prisoner. English and Burgundians gave themselves up to rejoicing, for, as the Burgundian Monstrelet, who was present, informs us, they valued her capture more than five hundred fighting men, for there was no captain or chief of whom they were so afraid. They crowded around her quarters at Marigny, and even the Duke of Burgundy himself paid her a visit and exchanged some words with her. At once the question arose as to her possession. She was a prisoner of war, belonging to Jean de Luxembourg, and, in those days of ransoming, prisoners were valuable property. Under existing customs, Henry VI., as chief of the alliance, had the right to claim the transfer of any captured commanding general or prince on paying the captor ten thousand livres—a sort of eminent domain, for in the wars of Edward III. Bertrand du Guesclin had been held at a ransom of one hundred thousand livres, the Constable de Clisson at the same, and in 1429 it had cost the Duc d’Alençon two hundred thousand crowns to effect his liberation from the English. In the exhausted state of the English exchequer, however, even ten thousand livres was a sum not readily procurable. It was a matter of absolute necessity to the English to have her, not only to prevent her ransom by the French, but to neutralize her sorceries by condemning and executing her under the jurisdiction of the Church. To accomplish this the Inquisition was the most available instrumentality: inside the English lines Joan was publicly reported to be a sorceress, and as such was judiciable by the Inquisition, which therefore had a right to claim her for trial. Accordingly, but a few days had elapsed after her capture when Martin Billon, Vicar of the Inquisitor of France, formally demanded her surrender, and the University of Paris addressed two letters to the Duke of Burgundy urging that she should be promptly tried and punished, lest his enemies should effect her deliverance. We have seen how by this time the importance of the Inquisition in France had shrunken, and Jean de Luxembourg was by no means disposed to surrender his valuable prize without consideration. Then another device was adopted. Compiègne, where Joan was captured, was in the diocese of Beauvais. Pierre Cauchon, the Count-bishop of Beauvais, though a Frenchman of the Remois, was a bitter English partisan, whose unscrupulous cruelty at a later period excited the cordial detestation even of his own faction. He had been driven from his see the previous year by the returning loyalty of its people under the impulse given by Joan, and may be assumed to have looked upon her with no loving eye. He was told to claim her for trial under his episcopal jurisdiction, but even he shrank from the odious business, and refused unless it could be proved that it was his duty. Possibly the promise of the reversion of the bishopric of Lisieux, with which he was subsequently rewarded, may have assisted in convincing him, while the authority of the University of Paris was invoked to quiet his scruples. July 14, the University addressed letters to Jean de Luxembourg reminding him that his oath of knighthood required him to defend the honor of God and the Catholic faith, and the holy Church. Through Joan, idolatries, errors, false doctrines, and evils innumerable had spread through France, and the matter admitted of no delay. The Inquisition had earnestly demanded her for trial, and Jean was urgently begged to surrender her to the Bishop of Beauvais, who had likewise claimed her; all inquisitor-prelates are judges of the faith, and all Christians of every degree are bound to obey them under the heavy penalties of the law, while obedience will acquire for him the divine grace and love, and will aid in the exaltation of the faith. When furnished with this, Pierre Cauchon lost no time. He left Paris at once with a notary and a representative of the University, and on the 16th presented it to the Duke of Burgundy in the camp before Compiègne, together with a summons of his own addressed to the Duke, Jean de Luxembourg, and the Bâtard de Vendôme, demanding the surrender of Joan for trial before him on charges of sorcery, idolatry, invocation of the devil, and other matters involving the faith—trial which he is ready to hold, with the assistance of the inquisitor and of doctors of theology, for the exaltation of the faith and the edification of those who have been misled by her. He further offered a ransom of six thousand livres and a pension to the Bâtard de Vendôme of two or three hundred livres, and if this was not enough the sum would be increased to ten thousand livres, although Joan was not so great a person as the king would have a right to claim on giving that amount; if required, security would be furnished for the payment. These letters the duke transferred to Jean de Luxembourg, who after some discussion agreed to sell her for the stipulated sum. He would not trust his allies, however, even with security, and refused to deliver his prisoner until the money was paid. Bedford was obliged to convene the states of Normandy and levy a special tax to raise it, and it was not till October 20 that Jean received his price and transferred his captive.[379]

During all this long delay Charles, to his eternal dishonor, made no effort to save the woman to whom he owed his crown. While her prolonged trial was under way he did not even appeal to Eugenius IV. or to the Council of Basle to evoke the case to their tribunal, an appeal which would hardly have been rejected in a matter of so much interest. It is true that her recent labors had not been so brilliantly successful as those of the earlier period: he may have recognized that after all she was but human; or he may have satisfied his conscience with the reflection that if she were an envoy of God, God might be trusted to extricate her. Besides, the party of peace in his court, headed by La Trémouille, the favorite, had no desire to see the heroine at large again, and the weak and self-indulgent monarch abandoned her to her fate as, twenty years later, he abandoned Jacques Cœur.

Meanwhile Joan had been carried, strictly guarded to prevent her escape by magic arts, from Marigny to the Castle of Beaulieu, and thence to the Castle of Beaurevoir. In the latter prison she excited the interest of the Dame de Beaurevoir, and of the Demoiselle de Luxembourg, aunt of Jean. The latter earnestly remonstrated with her nephew when she learned that he was treating with the English, and both ladies endeavored to persuade Joan to adopt female habiliments. They must have impressed her with their kindness, for she subsequently declared that she would have made the change for them rather than for any other ladies in France. Her restless energy chafed at the long captivity, and twice she made attempts to escape. Once she succeeded in shutting her guards up in her cell, and would have got off but that her jailer saw her and secured her. Again, when she heard that she was to be surrendered to the English, she despairingly threw herself from her lofty tower into the ditch, careless whether it would kill her or not. Her Voices had forbidden the attempt, but she said that she had rather die than fall into English hands—and this was subsequently charged against her as an attempted suicide and a crime. She was picked up for dead, but she was reserved for a harsher fate and speedily recovered. She might well regret the recovery when she was carried to Rouen, loaded with chains and confined in a narrow cell where brutal guards watched her day and night. It is even said that an iron cage was made, into which she was thrust with fetters on wrist, waist, and ankles. She had been delivered to the Church, not to the secular authorities; she was entitled to be kept in an ecclesiastical prison, but the English had paid for her and would listen to no reclamations. Warwick had charge of her and would trust her to no one.[380]

Pierre Cauchon still was in no haste to commence the iniquitous work which he had undertaken. After a month had passed, Paris grew excited at the delay. The city, so ardently Anglicized, had a special grudge against Joan, not only on account of believing that she had promised her soldiers on the day of assault to allow them to sack the city and put the inhabitants to the sword, but because they were exposed to the greatest privations by the virtual blockade resulting from the extension of the royal domination caused by her successes. This feeling found expression in the University, which from the first pursued her with unrelenting ferocity. Not content with having intervened to procure her surrender to the English, it addressed letters, November 21, to Pierre Cauchon, reproaching him with his tardiness in commencing the process, and to the King of England, asking that the trial be held in Paris, where there are so many learned and excellent doctors. Still Cauchon hesitated. Doubtless when he came to consider the evidence on which he would have to act he recognized, as irresponsible partisans could not, how flimsy it was, and he was busy in obtaining information as to all the points in her career—for the interrogatories showed a marvellous familiarity with everything that could possibly be wrested against her. Besides, there were indispensable preliminaries to be observed. His jurisdiction arose from her capture in his diocese, but he was an exile from it, and was expected to try her not only in another diocese, but in another province. The archbishopric of Rouen was vacant, and he adopted the expedient of requesting of the chapter permission to hold an ecclesiastical court within their jurisdiction. The request was granted, and he selected an assembly of experts to sit with him as assessors. A number came willingly from the University, whose expenses were paid by the English government, but it was more difficult to find accomplices among the local prelates and doctors. In one of the early sessions, Nicholas de Houppeland plainly told Cauchon that neither he nor the rest, belonging to the party hostile to Joan, could sit as judges, especially as she had already been examined by the Archbishop of Reims, who was the metropolitan of Beauvais. For this Nicholas was imprisoned in the Castle of Rouen, and was threatened with banishment to England and with drowning, but his friends eventually procured his liberation. Undoubtedly every man who sat on the tribunal had the conviction that any leaning to the accused would expose him to English vengeance, and it was found necessary to impose a fine on any one who should absent himself from a single session. Eventually a respectable body of fifty or sixty theologians and jurists was got together, including such men as the Abbots of Fécamp, Jumièges, Ste. Catharine, Cormeilles, and Préaux, the Prior of Longueville, the archdeacon and treasurer of Rouen, and other men of recognized position. On January 3, 1431, royal letters-patent were issued ordering Joan to be delivered to Pierre Cauchon whenever she was wanted for examination, and all officials to aid him when called upon. As though she were already convicted, the letters recited the heresies and evil deeds of the culprit, and significantly concluded with a clause that if she was acquitted she was not to be liberated, but to be returned to the custody of the king. Yet it was not until the 9th that Cauchon assembled his experts, at that time eight in number, and laid before them what had been already done. They decided that the informations were insufficient and that a further inquest was necessary, and they also protested ineffectually against Joan’s detention in a state prison. Measures were at once taken to make the investigations required. Nicholas Bailly was despatched to obtain the details of Joan’s childhood, and as he brought back only favorable details Cauchon suppressed his report and refused to reimburse his expenses. The inquisitorial method of making the accused betray herself was adopted. One of the assessors, Nicholas l’Oyseleur, disguised himself as a layman and was introduced into her cell, pretending to be a Lorrainer imprisoned for his loyalty. He gained her confidence, and she grew into the habit of talking to him without reserve. Then Warwick and Cauchon with two notaries ensconced themselves in an adjoining cell of which the partition wall had been pierced, while l’Oyseleur led her on to talk about her visions; but the scheme failed, for one of the notaries, unfamiliar with inquisitorial practice, pronounced the whole proceeding to be unlawful, and courageously refused to act. Then Jean Estivet, the prosecutor and canon of Beauvais, tried the same expedient, but without success.[381]

It was not until February 19 that the articles of accusation were ready for submission to the assessors, and then a new difficulty arose. Thus far the tribunal had contained no representative of the Inquisition, and this was recognized as a fatal defect. Frère Jean Graveran was Inquisitor of France, and had appointed Frère Jean le Maître, in 1424, as his vicar or deputy for Rouen. Le Maître seems to have had no stomach for the work, and to have kept aloof, but he was not to be let off, and at the meeting of February 19 it was resolved to summon him, in the presence of two notaries, to take part in the proceedings and to hear read the accusation and the depositions of witnesses. Threats are said to have been freely employed, and his repugnance was overcome. Another session was held in the afternoon, at which he appeared, and on being summoned to act professed himself willing to do so, if the commission which he held was sufficient authorization. The scruple which he alleged was ingenious. He was Inquisitor of Rouen, but Cauchon was bishop in a different province, and, as he was exercising jurisdiction belonging to Beauvais in the “borrowed territory,” le Maître doubted his powers to take part in it. It was not till the 22d that his doubts were overcome, and, while awaiting enlarged powers from Graveran, he consented to assist, for the discharge of his conscience and to prevent the whole proceedings from being null and void, which by common consent seems to have been assumed would be the case if carried on without the participation of the Inquisition. It was not until March 12 that he received a special commission from Graveran, who declined to come personally, after which he presided in conjunction with Cauchon; sentence was rendered in their joint names, and he was duly paid by the English for his services.[382]

At length, on February 21, Jean Estivet, the prosecutor, demanded that the prisoner be produced and examined. Before she was introduced Cauchon explained that she had earnestly begged the privilege of hearing mass, but, in view of the crimes whereof she was accused and her wearing male attire, he had refused. This prejudgment of the case was acquiesced in, and Joan was brought in with fetters on her legs. Of this cruelty she complained bitterly. Even the Templars, as we have seen, had their irons removed before examination, but Joan was only nominally in the hands of the court, and Cauchon accepted the responsibility for the outrage by telling her that it was because she had repeatedly tried to escape, to which she replied that she had a right to do so, as she had never given her parole. Then Cauchon called up the English guard who accompanied her and went through the farce of swearing them to watch her strictly—apparently for the futile purpose of asserting some control over them.[383]

It would be superfluous to follow in detail the examinations to which she was subjected during the next three months, with an intermission from April 18 to May 11 on account of sickness which nearly proved mortal. The untaught peasant girl, enfeebled by the miseries of her cruel prison, and subjected day after day to the shrewd and searching cross-questions of the trained and subtle intellects of her carefully selected judges, never lost her presence of mind or clearness of intellect. Ingenious pitfalls were constructed for her, which she evaded almost by instinct. Questions puzzling to a theologian of the schools were showered upon her; half a dozen eager disputants would assail her at once and would interrupt her replies; the disorder at times was so great that the notaries finally declared themselves unable to make an intelligent record. Her responses would be carefully scrutinized, and she would be recalled in the afternoon, the same ground would be gone over in a different manner, and her pursuers would again be foiled. In the whole series of interrogatories she manifested a marvellous combination of frank simplicity, shrewdness, presence of mind, and firmness that would do honor to a veteran diplomat. She utterly refused to take an unconditional oath to answer the questions put to her, saying, frankly, “I do not know what you will ask me; perhaps it may be about things which I will not tell you:” she agreed to reply to all questions about her faith and matters bearing upon her trial, but to nothing else. When Cauchon’s eagerness over-stepped the limit she would turn on him and warn him, “You call yourself my judge: I know not if you are, but take care not to judge wrongfully, for you expose yourself to great danger, and I warn you, so that if our Lord chastises you I shall have done my duty.” When asked whether St. Michael was naked when he visited her, she retorted, “Do you think the Lord has not wherewith to clothe his angels?” When describing a conversation with St. Catharine about the result of the siege of Compiègne, some chance expression led her examiner to imagine that he could entrap her, and he interrupted with the question whether she had said, “Will God so wickedly let the good folks of Compiègne perish?” but she composedly corrected him by repeating, “What! will God let these good folks of Compiègne perish, who have been and are so loyal to their lord?” She could hardly have known that an attempt to escape from an ecclesiastical court was a sin of the deepest dye, and yet when tested with the cunning question whether she would now escape if opportunity offered, she replied that if the door was opened she would walk out; she would try it only to see if the Lord so willed it. When an insidious offer was made to her to have a great procession to entreat God to bring her to the proper frame of mind, she quietly replied that she wished all good Catholics would pray for her. When threatened with torture, and told that the executioner was at hand to administer it, she simply said, “If you extort avowals from me by pain I will maintain that they are the result of violence.” Thus alternating the horrors of her dungeon with the clamors of the examination-room, where perhaps a dozen eager questioners would bait her at once, she never faltered through all those weary weeks.[384]

In this she was sustained by the state of habitual spiritual exaltation resulting from the daily and nightly visions with which she was favored, and the unalterable conviction that she was the chosen of the Lord, under whose inspiration she acted and whose will she was prepared to endure with resignation. In her prison her ecstatic raptures seem to have become more frequent than ever. Her heavenly visitants came at her call, and solved her difficulties. Frequently she refused to answer questions until she could consult her Voices and learn whether she was permitted to reveal what was wanted, and then, at a subsequent hearing, she would say that she had received permission. The responses evidently sometimes varied with her moods. She would be told that she would be delivered with triumph, and then again be urged not to mind her martyrdom, for she would reach paradise. When she reported this she was cunningly asked if she felt assured of salvation, and on her saying that she was as certain of heaven as if she was already there, she was led on with a question whether she held that she could not commit mortal sin. Instinctively she drew back from the dangerous ground—“I know nothing about it; I depend on the Lord.”[385]

Finally, on one important point her judges succeeded in entrapping her. She was warned that if she had done anything contrary to the faith she must submit herself to the determination of the Church. To her the Church was represented by Cauchon and his tribunal; to submit to them would be to pronounce her whole life a lie, her intercourse with saints and angels an invocation of demons, herself a sorceress worthy of the stake, and only to escape it through the infinite mercy of her persecutors. She offered to submit to God and the saints, but this, she was told, was the Church triumphant in heaven, and she must submit to the Church militant on earth, else she was a heretic, to be inevitably abandoned to the secular arm for burning. Taking advantage of her ignorance, the matter was pressed upon her in the most absolute form. When asked if she would submit to the pope she could only say, “Take me to him and I will answer to him.” At last she was brought to admit that she would submit to the Church, provided it did not command what was impossible; but, when asked to define the impossible, it was to abandon doing what the Lord had commanded, and to revoke what she had asserted as to the truth of her visions. This she would submit only to God.[386]

The examinations up to March 27 had been merely preparatory. On that day the formal trial commenced by reading to Joan a long series of articles of accusation based upon the information obtained. A lively debate ensued among the experts, but at last it was decided that she must answer them seriatim and on the spot, which she did with her wonted clearness and intrepidity, declining the offer of counsel, which Cauchon proposed to select for her. Sundry further interrogatories followed; then her sickness delayed the proceedings, and on May 12, twelve members of the tribunal assembled in Pierre Cauchon’s house to determine whether she should be subjected to torture. Fortunately for the reputation of her judges this infamy was spared her. One of them voted in favor of torture to see whether she could be forced to submit to the Church; another, the spy, Nicholas l’Oyseleur, humanely urged it as a useful medicine for her; nine were of opinion either that it was not yet required, or that the case was clear enough without it; Cauchon himself apparently did not vote. Meanwhile a secret junto, selected by Cauchon, had reduced the articles of accusation to twelve, which, though grossly at variance with the truth, were assumed to have been fully proved or confessed, and these formed the basis of the subsequent deliberations and sentence. We have seen, in the case of Marguerite la Porete, that the Inquisition of Paris, in place of calling an assembly of experts, submitted to the canonists of the University a written statement of what was assumed to be proved, and that the opinion rendered on this, although conditioned on its being a true presentation of the case, was equivalent to a verdict. This precedent was followed in the present case. Copies of the articles were addressed to fifty-eight learned experts, in addition to the Chapter of Rouen and the University of Paris, and their opinions were requested by a certain day. Of all those appealed to, the University was by far the most important, and a special mission was despatched to it bearing letters from the royal council and the Bishop of Beauvais. In view of the tendencies of the University this might seem a superfluous precaution, and its adoption shows how slender was the foundation on which the whole prosecution was based. The University went through an elaborate form of deliberation, and caused the faculties of theology and law to draw up its decision, which was adopted May 14 and sent to Rouen.[387]

On May 19 the assessors were assembled to hear the report from the University, after which their opinions were taken. Some were in favor of immediate abandonment to the secular arm, which would have been strictly in accordance with the regular inquisitorial proceedings, but probably the violent assumption that the articles represented truthfully Joan’s admissions was too much for some of the assessors, and the milder suggestion prevailed that Joan should have another hearing, in which the articles should be read to her, with the decision of the University, and that the verdict should depend upon what she should then say. Accordingly, on May 23, she was again brought before the tribunal for the purpose. A brief abstract of the document read to her will show, from the triviality of many of the charges and the guilt ascribed to them, how conviction was predetermined. The University, as usual, had guarded itself by conditioning its decision on the basis of the articles being fully proved, but no notice was taken of this, and Joan was addressed as though she had confessed to the articles and had been solemnly condemned.

I. The visions of angels and saints.—These are pronounced superstitious and proceeding from evil and diabolical spirits.

II. The sign given to Charles of the crown brought to him by St. Michael.—After noting her contradictions, the story is declared a lie, and a presumptuous, seductory, and pernicious thing, derogatory to the dignity of the angelic Church.

III. Recognizing saints and angels by their teaching and the comfort they bring, and believing in them as firmly as in the faith of Christ.—Her reasons have been insufficient, and her belief rash; comparing faith in them to faith in Christ is an error of faith.

IV. Predictions of future events and recognition of persons not seen before through the Voices.—This is superstition and divination, presumptuous assertion, and vain boasting.

V. Wearing men’s clothes and short hair, taking the sacrament while in them, and asserting that it is by command of God.—This is blaspheming God, despising his sacraments, transgressing the divine law, holy writ, and canonical ordinances, wherefore, “thou savorest ill in the faith, thou boastest vainly and art suspect of idolatry, and thou condemnest thyself in not being willing to wear thy sex’s garments and in following the customs of the heathen and Saracen.”

VI. Putting Jesus, Maria, and the sign of the cross on her letters, and threatening that if they were not obeyed that she would show in battle who had the best right.—“Thou art murderous and cruel, seeking effusion of human blood, seditious, provoking to tyranny, and blaspheming God, his commandments and revelations.”

VII. Rendering her father and mother almost crazy by leaving them; also promising Charles to restore his kingdom, and all by command of God.—“Thou hast been wicked to thy parents, transgressing the commandment of God to honor them. Thou hast been scandalous, blaspheming God, erring in the faith, and hast made a rash and presumptuous promise to thy king.”

VIII. Leaping from the tower of Beaurevoir into the ditch and preferring death to falling into the hands of the English, after the Voices had forbidden it.—This was pusillanimity, tending to desperation and suicide; and in saying that God had forgiven it, “thou savorest ill as to human free-will.”

IX. Saying that St. Catharine and St. Margaret had promised her paradise if she preserved her virginity, feeling assured of it, and asserting that if she were in mortal sin they would not visit her.—“Thou savorest ill as to the Christian faith.”

X. Saying that St. Catharine and St. Margaret spoke French and not English because they were not of the English faction, and that, after knowing that these Voices were for Charles, she had not loved the Burgundians.—This is a rash blasphemy against those saints and a transgression of the divine command to love thy neighbor.

XI. Reverencing the celestial visitants and believing them to come from God without consulting any churchman; feeling as certain of it as of Christ and the Passion; and refusing to reveal the sign made to Charles without the command of God.—“Thou art an idolater, an invoker of devils, erring in the faith, and hast rashly made an illicit oath.”

XII. Refusing to obey the mandate of the Church if contrary to the pretended command of God, and rejecting the judgment of the Church on earth.—“Thou art schismatic, believing wrongly as to the truth and authority of the Church, and up to the present time thou errest perniciously in the faith of God.”[388]

Maître Pierre Maurice, who read to her this extraordinary document, proceeded to address her with an odious assumption of kindness as “Jehanne ma chere amie” urging her earnestly and argumentatively to submit herself to the judgment of the Church, without which her soul was sure of damnation, and he had shrewd fears for her body. She answered firmly that if the fire was lighted and the executioner ready to cast her in the flames she would not vary from what she had already said. Nothing remained but to cite her for the next day to receive her final sentence.[389]

On the 24th preparations for an auto de fé were completed in the cemetery of St. Ouen. The pile was ready for lighting, and on two scaffolds were assembled the Cardinal of Beaufort and other dignitaries, while on a third were Pierre Cauchon, Jean le Maître, Joan, and Maître Guillaume Erard, who preached the customary sermon. In his eloquence he exclaimed that Charles VII. had been proved a schismatic heretic, when Joan interrupted him, “Speak of me, but not of the king; he is a good Christian!” She maintained her courage until the sentence of relaxation was partly read, when she yielded to the incessant persuasion mingled with threats and promises to which she had been exposed since the previous night, and she signified her readiness to submit. A formula of abjuration was read to her, and after some discussion she allowed her hand to be guided in scratching the sign of the cross, which represented her signature. Then another sentence, prepared in advance, was pronounced, imposing on her, as a matter of course, the customary penance of perpetual imprisonment on bread and water. Vainly she begged for an ecclesiastical prison. Had Cauchon wished it he was powerless, and he ordered the guards to conduct her back whence she came.[390]

The English were naturally furious on finding that they had overreached themselves. They could have tried Joan summarily in a secular court for sorcery and burned her out of hand, but to obtain possession of her they had been obliged to call in the ecclesiastical authorities and the Inquisition, and they were too little familiar with trials for heresy to recognize that inquisitorial proceedings were based on the assumption of seeking the salvation of the soul and not the destruction of the body. When they saw how the affair was going a great commotion arose at what they inevitably regarded as a mockery. Joan’s death was a political necessity, and their victim was eluding them though in their grasp. In spite of the servility which the ecclesiastics had shown, they were threatened with drawn swords and were glad to leave the cemetery of St. Ouen in safety.[391]

In the afternoon Jean le Maître and some of the assessors visited her in her cell, representing the mercy of the Church and the gratitude with which she should receive her sentence, and warning her to abandon her revelations and follies, for if she relapsed she could have no hope. She was humbled, and when urged to wear female apparel she assented. It was brought and she put it on; her male garments were placed in a bag and left in her cell.[392]

What followed will never be accurately known. The reports are untrustworthy and contradictory—mere surmises, doubtless—and the secret lies buried in the dungeon of Rouen Castle. The brutal guards, enraged at her escape from the flames, no doubt abused her shamefully; perhaps, as reported, they beat her, dragged her by the hair, and offered violence to her, till at last she felt that her man’s dress was her only safety. Perhaps, as other stories go, her Voices reproached her for her weakness, and she deliberately resumed it. Perhaps, also, Warwick, resolved to make her commit an act of relapse, had her female garments removed at night, so that she had no choice but to resume her male apparel. The fact that it was left within her reach and not conveyed away shows at least that there was a desire to tempt her to resume it. Be this as it may, after wearing her woman’s dress for two or three days word was brought to her judges that she had relapsed and abandoned it. On May 28 they hastened to her prison to verify the fact. The incoherence of her replies to their examination shows how she was breaking down under the fearful stress to which she had been subjected. First she merely said that she had taken the dress; then that it was more suitable since she was to be with men; nobody had compelled her, but she denied that she had sworn not to resume it. Then she said that she had taken it because faith had not been kept with her—she had been promised that she should hear mass and receive the sacrament, and be released from her chains; she would rather die than be kept in fetters—could she hear mass and be relieved of her irons she would do all that the Church required. She had heard the Voices since her abjuration, and had been told that she had incurred damnation by revoking to save her life, for she had only revoked through dread of the fire. The Voices are of St. Catharine and St. Margaret, and come from God: she had never revoked that, or, if she had, it was contrary to truth. She had rather die than endure the torture of her captivity, but if her judges wish she will resume the woman’s dress; as for the rest she knows nothing more.[393]

These rambling contradictions, these hopeless ejaculations of remorse and despair, so different from her former intrepid self-confidence, show that the jailers had understood their work, and that body and soul had endured more than they could bear. It was enough for the judges; she was a self-confessed relapsed, with whom the Church could have nothing more to do except to declare her abandoned to the secular arm without further hearing. Accordingly, the next day, May 29, Cauchon assembled such of his assessors as were at hand, reported to them how she had relapsed by resuming male apparel and declaring, through the suggestion of the devil, that her Voices had returned. There could be no question as to her deserts. She was a relapsed, and the only discussion was on the purely formal question, whether her abjuration should be read over to her before her judges abandoned her to the secular arm. A majority of the assessors were in favor of this, but Cauchon and le Maître disregarded the recommendation.[394]

At dawn on the following day, May 30, Frère Martin l’Advenu and some other ecclesiastics were sent to her prison to inform her of her burning that morning. She was overcome with terror, threw herself on the ground, tore her hair and uttered piercing shrieks, declaring, as she grew calmer, that it would not have happened had she been placed in an ecclesiastical prison, which was an admission that only the brutality of her dungeon had led her to revoke her abjuration. She confessed to l’Advenu and asked for the sacrament. He was puzzled and sent for instructions to Cauchon, who gave permission, and it was brought to her with all due solemnity. It has been mistakenly argued that this was an admission of her innocence, but the sacrament was never to be denied to a relapsed who asked for it at the last moment, the mere asking, preceded by confession, being an evidence of contrition and desire for reunion to the Church.[395]

The platform for the sermon and the pile for the execution had been erected in the Viel Marché. Thither she was conveyed amid a surging crowd which blocked the streets. It is related that on the way Nicholas l’Oyseleur, the wretched spy, pierced the crowd and the guards and leaped upon the tumbril to entreat her forgiveness, but before she could grant it the English dragged him off and would have slain him had not Warwick rescued him and sent him out of Rouen to save his life. On the platform Nicholas Midi preached his sermon, the sentence of relaxation was read, and Joan was handed over to the secular authorities. Cauchon, le Maître, and the rest left the platform, and the Bailli of Rouen took her and briefly ordered her to be carried to the place of execution and burned. It has been assumed that there was an informality in not having her sentenced by a secular court, but this, as we have seen, was unnecessary, especially in the case of a relapsed. On her head was placed a high paper crown inscribed “Heretic, Relapsed, Apostate, Idolater,” and she was carried to the stake. One account states that her shrieks and lamentations moved the crowd to tears of pity; another that she was resigned and composed, and that her last utterance was a prayer. When her clothes were burned off the blazing fagots were dragged aside, that the crowd might see, from her blackened corpse, that she really was a woman, and when their curiosity was satisfied the incineration was completed, the ashes being thrown into the Seine.[396]

It only remained for those who had taken part in the tragedy to justify themselves by blackening the character of their victim and circulating false reports as to the proceedings. That the judges felt that, in spite of sheltering themselves behind the University of Paris, they had incurred dangerous responsibility is shown by their obtaining royal letters shielding them from accountability for what they had done, the king pledging himself to constitute himself a party in any prosecution which might be brought against them before a general council or the pope. That the regency felt that justification was needed in the face of Europe is seen in the letters which were sent to the sovereigns and the bishops in the name of Henry VI., explaining how Joan had exercised inhuman cruelties until the divine power had in pity to the suffering people caused her capture; how, though she could have been punished by the secular courts for her crimes, she had been handed to the Church, which had treated her kindly and benignantly, and on her confession had mercifully imposed on her the penance of imprisonment; how her pride had burst forth in pestilential flames, and she had relapsed into her errors and madness; how she had then been abandoned to the secular arm, and, finding her end approaching, had confessed that the spirits which she invoked were false and lying, and that she was deceived and mocked by them, and how she had finally been burned in sight of the people. This official lying was outdone by the reports which were industriously circulated about her and her trial. The honest Bourgeois of Paris, in entering her execution in his journal, details the offences for which she was condemned, mixing up with the real articles others showing the exaggerations which were industriously circulated. According to him she habitually rode armed with a great staff with which she cruelly beat her people when they displeased her, and in many places she pitilessly slew men and women who disobeyed her; once, when violence was offered her, she leaped from the top of a lofty tower without injury, and boasted that, if she chose, she could bring thunder and other marvels. He admits, however, that even in Rouen there were many who held her to be martyred for her lawful lord.[397] It evidently was felt that in her dreadful death she had fitly crowned her career, and that sympathy for her fate was continuing her work by arousing popular sentiment, for, more than a month later, on July 4, an effort was made to counteract it by a sermon preached in Paris by a Dominican inquisitor—probably our friend Jean le Maître himself. At great length he expatiated on her deeds of wickedness, and the mercy which had been shown her. She had confessed that from the age of fourteen she had dressed like a man, and her parents would have killed her could they have done so without wounding their consciences. She had therefore left them, accompanied by the devil, and had thenceforth lived by the homicide of Christians, full of fire and blood, till she was burned. She recanted and abjured, and would have had as penance four years’ prison on bread and water, but she did not suffer this a single day, for she had herself served in prison like a lady. The devil appeared to her with two demons, fearing greatly that he would lose her, and said to her, “Wicked creature, who through fear hast abandoned thy dress, be not afraid, for we will protect thee from all.” Then at once she disrobed and dressed herself in her male attire, which she had thrust in the straw of her bed, and she so trusted in Satan that she said she repented of having abandoned it. Then, seeing that she was obstinate, the masters of the University delivered her to the secular arm to be burned, and when she saw herself in this strait she called on the devils, but after she was judged she could not bring them by any invocation. She then thought better of it, but it was too late. The reverend orator added that there were four of them, of whom we have caught three, this Pucelle, and Péronne and her companion, and one who is with the Armagnacs, named Catharine de la Rochelle, who says that when the host is consecrated she sees wonders of the highest secrets of the Lord.[398]

This last allusion is to certain imitators of Joan. The impression which she produced on the popular mind inevitably led to imitation, whether through imposture or genuine belief. The Péronne referred to was an old woman of Britanny who, with a companion, was captured at Corbeil, in March, 1430, and brought to Paris. She not only asserted that Joan was inspired, but swore that God often appeared to her in human form, with a white robe and vermilion cape, ordering her to assist Joan, and she admitted having received the sacrament twice in one day—Frère Richard being the person who had given it to her at Jargeau. The two were tried by the University; the younger woman recanted, but Péronne was obstinate, and was burned September 3. Catharine de la Rochelle was another of the protegées of the impressionable Frère Richard, who was much provoked with Joan for refusing to countenance her. She came to Joan at Jargeau and again at Montfaucon in Berri, saying that every night there appeared to her a white woman clad in cloth-of-gold, telling her that the king would give her horses and trumpets, and she would go through the cities proclaiming that all who had money or treasure should bring it forth to pay Joan’s men, and if they concealed it she would discover all that was hidden. Joan’s practical sense was not to be allured by this proposition. She told Catharine to go home to her husband and children, and on asking counsel of her Voices was told that it was all folly and falsehood. Still, she wrote to the king on the subject and accepted Catharine’s offer to exhibit to her the nightly visitant. The first night Joan fell asleep and was told on waking that the apparition had shown itself during her slumber. Then she took a precautionary sleep during the day, and lay awake all night without seeing the white lady. Catharine was probably an impostor rather than an enthusiast, and seems to have escaped the Inquisition.[399]

During Joan’s imprisonment her place for a time was taken by a peasant, variously known as Pastourel or Guillaume le Berger, who professed to have had divine revelations ordering him to take up arms in aid of the royal cause. He demonstrated the truth of his mission by exhibiting stigmata on hands, side, and feet, like St. Francis, and commanded wide belief. Pothon de Xaintrailles, Joan’s old companion-in-arms, placed confidence in him and carried him along in his adventurous forays. Guillaume’s career, however, was short. He accompanied an expedition into Normandy under the lead of the Maréchal de Boussac and Pothon, which was surprised and scattered by Warwick. Pothon and the shepherd were both captured and carried in triumph to Rouen. Experience of inquisitorial delays in the case of Joan probably caused the English to prefer more summary methods, and the unlucky prophet was tossed into the Seine and drowned without a trial. His sphere of influence had been too limited to render him worth making a conspicuous example.[400]

Thus Joan passed away, but the spirit which she had aroused was beyond the reach of bishop or inquisitor. Her judicial murder was a useless crime. The Treaty of Arras, in 1435, withdrew Burgundy from the English alliance, and one by one the conquests of Henry V. were wrenched from the feeble grasp of his son. When, in 1449, Charles VII. obtained possession of Rouen he ordered an inquest on the spot into the circumstances of her trial, for it ill comported with the dignity of a King of France to owe his throne to a witch condemned and burned by the Church. The time had not come, however, when a sentence of the Inquisition could be set aside by secular authority, and the attempt was abandoned. In 1452 another effort was made by Archbishop d’Estouteville of Rouen, but though he was a cardinal and a papal legate, and though he adjoined in the matter Jean Brehal, Inquisitor of France, he could do nothing beyond taking some testimony. The papal intervention was held to be necessary for the revision of a case of heresy decided by the Inquisition, and to obtain this the mother and the two brothers of Joan appealed to Rome as sufferers from the sentence. At length, in 1455, Calixtus III. appointed as commissioners to hear and judge their complaints the Archbishop of Rouen, the Bishops of Paris and Coutances, and the Inquisitor Jean Brehal. Isabelle Darc and her sons appeared as plaintiffs against Cauchon and le Maître, and the proceedings were carried on at their expense. Cauchon was dead and le Maître in hiding—concealed probably by his Dominican brethren, for no trace of him could be found. Although the University of Paris does not appear in the case, every precaution was taken to preserve its honor by emphasizing at every stage the fraudulent character of the twelve articles submitted to its decision, and in the final judgment special care was taken to characterize them as false and to order them to be judicially torn to pieces, though it may well be doubted whether they were any more deceptive than innumerable reports made habitually by inquisitors to their assemblies of experts. Finally, on July 7, 1456, judgment was rendered in favor of the complainants, who were declared to have incurred no infamy; the whole process was pronounced to be null and void; the decision was ordered to be published in Rouen and all other cities of the kingdom; solemn processions were to be made to the place of her abjuration and that of her execution, and on the latter a cross was to be erected in perpetual memory of her martyrdom. In its restored form it still remains there as a memorial of the utility of the Inquisition as an instrument of statecraft.[401]

CHAPTER VI.

SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS.

Europe thus was the unhappy inheritor of an accumulated mass of superstitions which colored the life and controlled the actions of every man. They were vivified with a peculiar intensity by the powerful conception of the Mazdean Ahriman—the embodiment of the destructive forces of nature and the evil passions of man—which, transfused through Judaism and adorned with the imaginings of the Haggadah, became a fixed article of the creed as the fallen prince of angels, Satan, who drew with him in rebellion half of the infinite angelic hosts, and thenceforth devoted powers inferior only to those of God himself to the spiritual and material perdition of mankind. Omnipresent, and well-nigh omnipotent and omniscient, Satan and his demons were ever and everywhere at work to obtain, by cunning arts, control over the souls of men, to cross their purposes, and to vex their bodies. The food of these beings was the suffering of the damned, and human salvation their most exquisite torment. To effect their objects human agents were indispensable, and Satan was always ready to impart a portion of his power, or to consign a subordinate demon, to any one who would serve him. Thus a dualistic system sprang up, less hopeful and inspiring than that of Zarathustra Spitama, which in its vivid realization of the ever-present and ever-acting Evil Principle, cast a sombre shadow over the kindly teachings of Christ. Some even held that human affairs were governed by demons, and this belief grew sufficiently prevalent to induce Chrysostom to undertake its refutation. He admitted that they were inspired with a fierce and irreconcilable hatred for man, with whom they carried on an immortal war, but he argued that the evil of the world was the just punishment inflicted by God.[402]

Man thus lived surrounded by an infinite world of spirits, good and bad, whose sole object was his salvation or his perdition, and who were ever on the watch to save him or to lure him to destruction. Thus was solved the eternal problem of the origin of evil, which has perplexed the human soul since it first began to think, and thus grew up a demonology of immense detail which formed part of the articles of faith. Almost every race has shared in such belief, whether the evil spirits were of supernatural origin, as with the Mazdeans and Assyrians, or whether, as with the Buddhists and Egyptians, they were the souls of the damned seeking to gratify their vindictiveness. Although Greece and Rome had no such distinctive class, yet had they peopled the world with a countless number of genii and inferior supernatural beings, who were accepted by Christianity and placed at the service of Satan. As theology grew to be a science in which every detail of the dealings of God with man was defined with the most rigid precision, it became necessary to determine the nature and functions of the spirit world with exactitude, and the ardent intellects which framed the vast structure of orthodoxy did not shrink from the task. The numberless references to the character and attributes of demons in patristic literature show how large a space the subject occupied in the thoughts of men and the confidence which was felt in the accuracy of knowledge concerning it.[403]

Origen informs us that every man is surrounded by countless spirits eager to help or harm him. His virtues and good deeds are attributable to good angels; his sins and crimes are the work of demons of pride and lust and wrath, and of all passions and vices. Powerful as these are, however, the human soul is still superior to them and can destroy their capacity for evil; if a holy man baffles the spirit of lust who has tempted him, the conquered demon is cast into outer darkness or into the abyss, and loses his potency forever. This was received throughout the Middle Ages as orthodox doctrine. Gregory the Great tells us how the nun of a convent, walking in the garden, ate a lettuce-leaf without making the cautionary sign of the cross, and was immediately possessed of a demon. St. Equitius tortured the spirit with his exorcisms till the unhappy imp exclaimed, “What have I done? I was sitting on the leaf and she ate me;” but Equitius would listen to no excuse and forced him to depart. Cæsarius of Heisterbach relates a vast number of cases proving the perpetual interference of demons with human affairs, though he asserts as a well-known fact that Satan drew with him only one tenth of the hosts of heaven, and he proceeds to show, on the authority of Gregory the Great, that at the Day of Judgment the saved will be nine times as numerous as the devils, and of course the damned greatly more in excess; yet at the death-bed of a monk of Hemmenrode fifteen thousand demons gathered together, and at that of a Benedictine abbess more assembled than there are leaves in the forest of Kottinhold. Thomas of Cantimpré, though less profuse in his illustrative examples, is equally emphatic in showing that man is surrounded with evil spirits, who lose no opportunity to tempt, to seduce, to mislead, and to vex him. The blessed Reichhelm, Abbot of Schöngau, about 1270, had received from God the gift of being able to discern the aerial bodies of these creatures, and often saw them as a thick dust, or as motes in a sunbeam, or as thickly falling rain. He describes their numbers as so great that the atmosphere is merely a crowd of them; all material sounds, water falling, stones clashing, winds blowing, are their voices. Sometimes they would materialize as a woman to tempt him, or as a huge cat or a bear to terrify him, but their efforts were mostly directed to diverting the thoughts from pious duties and contemplations, and to inciting to evil passions, which they could well do, as an innumerable army was assigned to each individual man. These enemies of man were ever on the watch to take advantage of every unguarded thought or act. Sprenger tells us that if an impatient husband says to a pregnant wife, “Devil take you,” the child will be subject to Satan; such children, he says, are often seen; five nurses will not satisfy the appetite of one, and yet they are miserably emaciated, while their weight is great. Thus man was at all times exposed to the assaults of supernatural enemies, striving to lead him to sin, to torture his body with disease, or to afflict him with material damage. We cannot understand the motives and acts of our forefathers unless we take into consideration the mental condition engendered by the consciousness of this daily and hourly personal conflict with Satan.[404]

It is true that all demons were not equally malignant. The converted Barbarians of Europe could not wholly give up their belief in helpful spirits, and as Christianity classed them all as devils, it was necessary to find an explanation by suggesting that their characters varied with the amount of pride and envy of God which they entertained before the fall. Those who merely followed their companions and have repented are not always malicious. Cæsarius tells us of one who faithfully served a knight for a long while, saved him from his enemies, and cured his wife of a mortal illness by fetching from Arabia lion’s milk with which to anoint her. This aroused the knight’s suspicions, and the demon confessed, explaining that it was a great consolation to him to be with the children of men. Fearing to retain such a servitor, the knight dismissed him, offering half of his possessions as a reward, but the demon would accept only five sous, and these he returned, asking the knight to purchase with them a bell and hang it on a certain desolate church, that the faithful might be called to divine service on Sundays. Froissart’s picturesque narrative is well known of the demon Orton, who served the Sieur de Corasse out of pure love, bringing to him every night tidings of events from all parts of the world, and finally abandoning him in consequence of his imprudent demand to see his nocturnal visitor. Froissart himself was at Ortais in 1385, when the Count of Foix miraculously had news of the disastrous battle of Aljubarotta in Portugal the day after it occurred, and the courtiers explained that he heard of it through the Sieur de Corasse. Thus, for good or for evil, the barriers which divided the material from the spiritual world were slight, and intercourse between them was too frequent to excite incredulity.[405]

It was inevitable that this facility of intercourse should encourage belief in the Incubi and Succubi who play so large a part in mediæval sorcery, for such a belief has belonged to superstition in all ages. The Akkads had their Gelal and Kiel-Gelal, the Assyrians their Lil and Lilit, and the Gauls their Dusii, lustful spirits of either sex who gratified their passions with men and women, while the Welsh legends of the Middle Ages show the continuance of the belief among the Celtic tribes. The Egyptians drew a distinction and admitted of Incubi but not of Succubi. The Jews accepted the text concerning the sons of God and daughters of men (Gen. VI. 1) as proving that fruitful intercourse could occur between spiritual and human beings, and they had their legends of the evil spirit Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who bore to him the innumerable multitude of demons. The anthropomorphic mythology and hero-worship of Greece consisted of little else, and the name of Satyr has passed into a proverb. The simpler and purer Latin pantheon had yet its Sylvans and Fauns, who, as St. Augustin tells us, “are commonly called Incubi.” The medical faculty in vain explained the belief by Ephialtes or nightmare, and recommended for it belladonna rather than exorcisms. Though St. Augustin, who did so much to transmit pagan superstitions to succeeding ages, hesitates to believe in the possibility of such powers on the part of aerial spirits, even he dares not deny it, and though Chrysostom ridiculed it, other authorities accepted it as a matter of course. Thus it came to be received as a truth which few thought of disputing. In 1249 an incubus child was born on the Welsh marches, which in half a year had a full set of teeth and the stature of a youth of seventeen, while the mother wasted away and died. The belief grew still more definite as perfected processes of trial enabled judges to extort from their victims whatever confessions they desired, such as that of Angèle de la Barthe, who, in the Toulousain in 1275, admitted that she had habitual intercourse with Satan, to whom, seven years before, at the age of fifty-three, she had borne a son—a monster with a wolf’s head and a serpent’s tail, which she fed for two years on the flesh of year-old babies whom she stole by night, after which it disappeared; or those of the witches of Arras, in 1460, who were brought to confess that their demon lovers wore the shapes of hares, or foxes, or bulls. Innocent VIII. asserts the existence of such connections in the most positive manner, and Silvester Prierias declares that to deny it is both unorthodox and unphilosophical, and could only be prompted by sheer wantonness.[406]