movement, the applause which hails success; the soul is
overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at white heat;
weariness, despondency, inertia–these do not exist.
Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was
greatest in the Rouen trials.
There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human
nature, and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and
hopeless conditions all that her splendid equipment of moral and
intellectual forces could have accomplished if they had been
supplemented by the mighty helps of hope and cheer and light, the
presence of friendly faces, and a fair and equal fight, with the great
world looking on and wondering.
Chapter 18 Condemned Yet Unafraid
TOWARD THE END of the ten-day interval the University of
Paris rendered its decision concerning the Twelve Articles. By this
finding, Joan was guilty upon all the counts: she must renounce her
errors and make satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm
for punishment.
The University’s mind was probably already made up before the
Articles were laid before it; yet it took it from the fifth to the
eighteenth to produce its verdict. I think the delay may have been
caused by temporary difficulties concerning two points:
1. As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan’s
Voices; 2. As to whether her saints spoke French only.
You understand, the University decided emphatically that it was
fiends who spoke in those Voices; it would need to prove that, and
it did. It found out who those fiends were, and named them in the
verdict: Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. This has always seemed a
doubtful thing to me, and not entitled to much credit. I think so for
this reason: if the University had actually known it was those three,
it would for very consistency’s sake have told how it knew it, and
not stopped with the mere assertion, since it had made joan explain
how she knew they were not fiends. Does not that seem
reasonable? To my mind the University’s position was weak, and I
will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan’s angels were devils in
disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise themselves as
angels; up to that point the University’s position was strong; but
you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns around
and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while
denying the like ability to a person with as good a head on her
shoulders as the best one the University could produce.
The doctors of the University had to see those creatures in order to
know; and if Joan was deceived, it is argument that they in their
turn could also be deceived, for their insight and judgment were
surely not clearer than hers.
As to the other point which I have thought may have proved a
difficulty and cost the University delay, I will touch but a moment
upon that, and pass on. The University decided that it was
blasphemy for Joan to say that her saints spoke French and not
English, and were on the French side in political sympathies. I
think that the thing which troubled the doctors of theology was
this: they had decided that the three Voices were Satan and two
other devils; but they had also decided that these Voices were not
on the French side–thereby tacitly asserting that they were on the
English side; and if on the English side, then they must be angels
and not devils. Otherwise, the situation was embarrassing. You
see, the University being the wisest and deepest and most erudite
body in the world, it would like to be logical if it could, for the
sake of its reputation; therefore it would study and study, days and
days, trying to find some good common-sense reason for proving
the Voices to be devils in Article No. 1 and proving them to be
angels in Article No. 10. However, they had to give it up. They
found no way out; and so, to this day, the University’s verdict
remains just so–devils in No. 1, angels in No. 10; and no way to
reconcile the discrepancy.
The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and with it a letter for