Conspicuous about this period, by their importance and iniquity, are the cases of the Pucelle d'Orléans and the catastrophe of Arras. Incited (it is a modern conviction) by a noble enthusiasm, by her own ardent imagination, the Pucelle divested herself of the natural modesty of her sex for the dress and arms of a warrior; and 'her inexperienced mind, working day and night on the favourite object, mistook the impulses of passion for heavenly inspiration.' Reviewing the last scenes in the life of that patriotic shepherdess, we hesitate whether to stigmatise more the unscrupulous policy of the English authorities or the base subservience of the Parliament of Paris. The English Regent and the Cardinal of Winchester, unable to allege against their prisoner (the saviour of her country, taken prisoner in a sally from a besieged town, had been handed over by her countrymen to the foreigner) any civil crime, were forced to disguise a violation of justice and humanity in the pretence of religion; and the Bishop of Beauvais presented a petition against her, as an ecclesiastical subject, demanding to have her tried by an ecclesiastical court for sorcery, impiety, idolatry, and magic. The University of Paris acquiesced. Before this tribunal the accused was brought, loaded with chains, and clothed in her military dress. It was alleged that she had carried about a standard consecrated by magical enchantments; that she had been in the habit of attending at the witches' sabbath at a fountain near the oak of Boulaincourt; that the demons had discovered to her a magical sword consecrated in the Church of St. Catherine, to which she owed her victories; that by means of sorcery she had gained the confidence of Charles VIII. Jeanne d'Arc was convicted of all these crimes, aggravated by heresy: her revelations were declared to be inventions of the devil to delude the people.67
Her ecclesiastical judges then consigned their prisoner to the civil power; and, finally, in the words of Hume, 'this admirable heroine—to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients would have erected altars—was, on pretence of heresy and magic, delivered over alive to the flames; and expiated by that dreadful punishment the signal services she had rendered to her prince and to her native country.'68
'Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,
I'll lop a member off, and give it you,
In earnest of a further benefit;
So you do condescend to help me now.
* * * * *
Cannot my body, nor blood-sacrifice,
Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?
Then take my soul; my body, soul, and all,
Before that England give the French the foil.
See! they forsake me.
* * * * *
My ancient incantations are too weak
And hell too strong for me to buckle with.'
But a worthier, if contradictory, origin is assigned for her enthusiasm when she replies to the foul aspersion of her taunting captors—
'Virtuous, and holy; chosen from above,
By inspiration of celestial grace,
To work exceeding miracles on earth,
I never had to do with wicked spirits.
But you—that are polluted with your lusts,
Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices—
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders, but by help of devils.'
Without detracting from the real merit of the patriotic martyr, it might be suspected that, besides her inflamed imagination, a pious and pardonable collusion was resorted to as a last desperate effort to rouse the energy of the troops or the hopes of the people—a collusion similar to that of the celebrated Constantinian Cross, or of the Holy Lance of Antioch. Every reader is acquainted with the fate of the great personages who in England were accused, politically or popularly, of the crime; and the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore are immortalised by Shakspeare. In 1417, Joan, second wife of Henry IV., had been sentenced to prison, suspected of seeking the king's death by sorcery; a certain Friar Randolf being her accomplice and agent. The Duchess of Gloucester, wife of Humphry and daughter of Lord Cobham, was an accomplice in the witchcraft of a priest and an old woman. Her associates were Sir Roger Bolingbroke, priest; Margery Jordan or Guidemar, of Eye, in Suffolk; Thomas Southwell, and Roger Only. It was asserted 'there was found in their possession a waxen image of the king, which they melted in a magical manner before a slow fire, with the intention of making Henry's force and vigour waste away by like insensible degrees.' The duchess was sentenced to do penance and to perpetual imprisonment; Margery was burnt for a witch in Smithfield; the priest was hanged, declaring his employers had only desired to know of him how long the king would live; Thomas Southwell died the night before his execution; Roger Only was hanged, having first written a book to prove his own innocence, and against the opinion of the vulgar.69 Jane Shore (whose story is familiar to all), the mistress of Edward IV., was sacrificed to the policy of Richard Duke of Gloucester, more than to any general suspicion of her guilt. Both the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely were involved with the citizen's wife in demoniacal dealings, and imprisoned in the Tower. As for the 'harlot, strumpet Shore,' not being convicted, or at least condemned, for the worse crime, she was found guilty of adultery, and sentenced (a milder fate) to do penance in a white sheet before the assembled populace at St. Paul's.70
More tremendous than any of the cases above narrated is that of Arras, where numbers of all classes suffered. So transparent were the secret but real motives of the chief agitators, that even the unbounded credulity of the public could penetrate the thin disguise. The affair commenced with the accusation of a woman of Douai, called Demiselle (une femme de folle vie). Put to the torture repeatedly, this wretched woman was forced to confess she had frequented a meeting of sorcerers where several persons were seen and recognised; amongst others Jehan Levite, a painter at Arras. The chronicler of the fifteenth century relates the diabolical catastrophe thus: 'A terrible and melancholy transaction took place this year (1459) in the town of Arras, the capital of the county of Artois, which said transaction was called, I know not why, Vaudoisie: but it was said that certain men and women transported themselves whither they pleased from the places where they were seen, by virtue of a compact with the devil. Suddenly they were carried to forests and deserts, where they found assembled great numbers of both sexes, and with them a devil in the form of a man, whose face they never saw. This devil read to them, or repeated his laws and commandments in what way they were to worship and serve him: then each person kissed his back, and he gave to them after this ceremony some little money. He then regaled them with great plenty of meats and wines, when the lights were extinguished, and each man selected a female for amorous dalliance; and suddenly they were transported back to the places they had come from. For such criminal and mad acts many of the principal persons of the town were imprisoned; and others of the lower ranks, with women, and such as were known to be of this sect, were so terribly tormented, that some confessed matters to have happened as has been related.