The instruments were prepared; the two executioners, Mauger Leparmentier, a married clerk, and his companion, were in readiness close by her, awaiting the Bishop's orders.
Six days before Jeanne had received great comfort from her Voices. Now she replied resolutely: "Verily, if you were to tear my limbs asunder and drive my soul out of my body, naught else would I tell you, and if I did say anything unto you, I would always maintain afterwards that you had dragged it from me by force."[831]
My Lord of Beauvais decided to defer the torture, fearing that it would do no good to so hardened a subject.[832] On the following Saturday, he deliberated in his house, with the Vice-Inquisitor and thirteen doctors and masters; opinion was divided. Maître Raoul Roussel advised that Jeanne should not be tortured lest ground for complaint should be given against a trial so carefully conducted. It would seem that he anticipated the Devil's granting Jeanne the gift of taciturnity, whereby in diabolical silence she would be able to brave the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. On the other hand Maître Aubert Morel, licentiate in canon law, counsellor to the Official of Rouen, Canon of the Cathedral, and Maître Thomas de Courcelles, deemed it expedient to apply torture. Maître Nicolas Loiseleur, master of arts, Canon of Rouen, whose share in the proceedings had been to act Saint Catherine and the Lorraine shoemaker, had no very decided opinion on the subject, still it seemed to him by no means unprofitable that Jeanne for her soul's welfare should be tortured. The majority of doctors and masters agreed that for the present there was no need to subject her to this trial. Some gave no reasons, others alleged that it behoved them yet once again to warn her charitably. Maître Guillaume Erard, doctor in theology, held that sufficient material for the pronouncing of a sentence existed already.[833] Thus among those, who spared Jeanne the torture, were to be found the least merciful; for the spirit of ecclesiastical tribunals was such that to refuse to torture an accused was in certain cases to refuse him mercy.
To the trial of Marguerite la Porète, the judges summoned no experts.[834] Touching the charges held as proven, they submitted a written report to the University of Paris. The University gave its opinion on everything but the truth of the charges. This reservation was merely formal, and the decision of the University had the force of a sentence. In Jeanne's trial this precedent was cited. On the 21st of April, Maître Jean Beaupère, Maître Jacques de Touraine and Maître Nicolas Midi left Rouen, and, at the risk of being attacked on the road by men-at-arms, journeyed to Paris in order to present the twelve articles to their colleagues of the University.
On the 28th of April, the University, meeting in its general assembly at Saint-Bernard, charged the Holy Faculty of Theology and the Venerable Faculty of Decrees with the examination of the twelve articles.[835]
On the 14th of May, the deliberations of the two Faculties were submitted to all the Faculties in solemn assembly, who ratified them and made them their own. The University then sent them to King Henry, beseeching his Royal Majesty to execute justice promptly, in order that the people, so greatly scandalised by this woman, be brought back to good doctrine and holy faith.[836] It is worthy of notice that in a trial, in which the Pope, represented by the Vice-Inquisitor, was one judge, and the King, represented by the Bishop, another, the Eldest Daughter of Kings[837] should have communicated directly with the King of France, the guardian of her privileges.
According to the Sacred Faculty of Theology, Jeanne's apparitions were fictitious, lying, deceptive, inspired by devils. The sign given to the King was a presumptuous and pernicious lie, derogatory to the dignity of angels. Jeanne's belief in the visitations of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret was an error rash and injurious because Jeanne placed it on the same plane as the truths of religion. Jeanne's predictions were but superstitions, idle divinations and vain boasting. Her statement that she wore man's dress by the command of God was blasphemy, a violation of divine law and ecclesiastical sanction, a contemning of the sacraments and tainted with idolatry. In the letters she had dictated, Jeanne appeared treacherous, perfidious, cruel, sanguinary, seditious, blasphemous and in favour of tyranny. In setting out for France she had broken the commandment to honour father and mother, she had given an occasion for scandal, she had committed blasphemy and had fallen from the faith. In the leap from Beaurevoir, she had displayed a pusillanimity bordering on despair and homicide; and, moreover, it had caused her to utter rash statements touching the remission of her sin and erroneous pronouncements concerning free will. By proclaiming her confidence in her salvation, she uttered presumptuous and pernicious lies; by saying that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret did not speak English, she blasphemed these saints and violated the precept: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour." The honours she rendered these saints were nought but idolatry and the worship of devils. Her refusal to submit her doings to the Church tended to schism, to the denial of the unity and authority of the Church and to apostasy.[838]
The doctors of the Faculty of Theology were very learned. They knew who the three evil spirits were whom Jeanne in her delusion took for Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret. They were Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. Belial, worshipped by the people of Sidon, was sometimes represented as an angel of great beauty; he is the demon of disobedience. Satan is the Lord of Hell; and Behemoth is a dull, heavy creature, who feeds on hay like an ox.[839]
The venerable Faculty of Decrees decided that this schismatic, this erring woman, this apostate, this liar, this soothsayer, be charitably exhorted and duly warned by competent judges, and that if notwithstanding she persisted in refusing to abjure her error, she must be given up to the secular arm to receive due chastisement.[840] Such were the deliberations and decisions which the Venerable University of Paris submitted to the examination and to the verdict of the Holy Apostolic See and of the sacrosanct General Council.
Meanwhile, where were the clerks of France? Had they nothing to say in this matter? Had they no decision to submit to the Pope and to the Council? Why did they not urge their opinions in opposition to those of the Faculties of Paris? Why did they keep silence? Jeanne demanded the record of the Poitiers trial. Wherefore did those Poitiers doctors, who had recommended the King to employ the Maid lest, by rejecting her, he should refuse the gift of the Holy Spirit, fail to send the record to Rouen?[841] Before the Maid espoused their waning cause, these Poitiers doctors, these magistrates, these University professors banished from Paris, advocates and counsellors of an exiled Parlement, had not a robe to their backs nor shoes for their children. Now, thanks to the Maid, they were every day regaining new hope and vigour. And yet they left her, who had so nobly served their King, to be treated as a heretic and a reprobate. Where were Brother Pasquerel, Friar Richard, and all those churchmen who but lately surrounded her in France and who looked to go with her to the Crusade against the Bohemians and the Turks? Why did they not demand a safe-conduct and come and give evidence at the trial? Or at least why did they not send their evidence? Why did not the Archbishop of Embrun, who but recently gave such noble counsels to the King, send some written statement in favour of the Maid to the judges at Rouen? My Lord of Reims, Chancellor of the Kingdom, had said that she was proud but not heretical. Wherefore now, acting contrary to his own interests and honour, did he refrain from testifying in favour of her through whom he had recovered his episcopal city? Wherefore did he not assert his right and do his duty as metropolitan and censure and suspend his suffragan, the Bishop of Beauvais, who was guilty of prevarication in the administration of justice? Why did not the illustrious clerics, whom King Charles had appointed deputies at the Council of Bâle, undertake to bring the cause of the Maid before the Council? And finally, why did not the priests, the ecclesiastics of the realm, with one voice demand an appeal to the Holy Father?