hell. Is that so?”
“I believe what they told me. I know that I shall be saved.”
“It is a weighty answer.”
“To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is a great treasure.”
“Do you think that after that revelation you could be able to
commit mortal sin?”
“As to that, I do not know. My hope for salvation is in holding fast
to my oath to keep by body and my soul pure.”
“Since you know you are to be saved, do you think it necessary to
go to confession?”
The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan’s simple and humble
answer left it empty:
“One cannot keep his conscience too clean.”
We were now arriving at the last day of this new trial. Joan had
come through the ordeal well. It had been a long and wearisome
struggle for all concerned. All ways had been tried to convict the
accused, and all had failed, thus far. The inquisitors were
thoroughly vexed and dissatisfied.
However, they resolved to make one more effort, put in one more
day’s work. This was done–March 17th. Early in the sitting a
notable trap was set for Joan:
“Will you submit to the determination of the Church all your
words and deeds, whether good or bad?”
That was well planned. Joan was in imminent peril now. If she
should heedlessly say yes, it would put her mission itself upon
trial, and one would know how to decide its source and character
promptly. If she should say no, she would render herself
chargeable with the crime of heresy.
But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a distinct line of
separation between the Church’s authority over her as a subject
member, and the matter of her mission. She said she loved the
Church and was ready to support the Christian faith with all her
strength; but as to the works done under her mission, those must
be judged by God alone, who had commanded them to be done.
The judge still insisted that she submit them to the decision of the
Church. She said:
“I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me. It would seem to me
that He and His Church are one, and that there should be no
difficulty about this matter.” Then she turned upon the judge and
said, “Why do you make a difficulty when there is no room for
any?”
Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion that there was but
one Church. There were two–the Church Triumphant, which is
God, the saints, the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in
heave; and the Church Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope,
Vicar of God, the prelates, the clergy and all good Christians and
Catholics, the which Church has its seat in the earth, is governed
by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err. “Will you not submit those
matters to the Church Militant?”
“I am come to the King of France from the Church Triumphant on
high by its commandant, and to that Church I will submit all those
things which I have done. For the Church Militant I have no other
answer now.”
The court took note of this straitly worded refusal, and would hope
to get profit out of it; but the matter was dropped for the present,
and a long chase was then made over the old hunting-ground–the
fairies, the visions, the male attire, and all that.
In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took the chair and
presided over the closing scenes of the trial. Along toward the
finish, this question was asked by one of the judges:
“You have said to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him
as you would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet
there are several questions which you continually refuse to answer.
Would you not answer the Pope more fully than you have
answered before my lord of Beauvais? Would you not feel obliged
to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God, more fully?”
Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky:
“Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to.”