Maître Guillaume Erard and sundry other assessors, among whom were Maîtres Marguerie, Loiseleur, Pierre Maurice, and Brother Martin Ladvenu, were of the opinion of my Lord Abbot of Fécamp.[929]
Maître Thomas de Courcelles advised the woman being again charitably admonished touching the salvation of her soul.
Such likewise was the opinion of Brother Isambart de la Pierre.[930]
The Lord Bishop, having listened to these opinions, concluded that Jeanne must be proceeded against as one having relapsed. Accordingly he summoned her to appear on the morrow, the 30th of May, in the old Market Square.[931]
On the morning of that Wednesday, the 30th of May, by the command of my Lord of Beauvais, the two young friars preachers, bachelors in theology, Brother Martin Ladvenu and Brother Isambart de la Pierre, went to Jeanne in her prison. Brother Martin told her that she was to die that day.
At the approach of this cruel death, amidst the silence of her Voices, she understood at length that she would not be delivered. Cruelly awakened from her dream, she felt heaven and earth failing her, and fell into a deep despair.
"Alas!" she cried, "shall so terrible a fate betide me as that my body ever pure and intact shall to-day be burned and reduced to ashes? Ah me! Ah me! Liefer would I be seven times beheaded than thus be burned. Alas! had I been in the prison of the Church, to which I submitted, and guarded by ecclesiastics and not by my foes and adversaries, so woeful a misfortune as this would not have befallen me. Oh! I appeal to God, the great judge, against this violence and these sore wrongs with which I am afflicted."[932]
While she was lamenting, the doctors and masters, Nicolas de Venderès, Pierre Maurice and Nicolas Loiseleur, entered the prison; they came by order of my Lord of Beauvais.[933] On the previous day thirty-nine counsellers out of forty-two, declaring that Jeanne had relapsed, had added that they deemed it well she should be reminded of the terms of her abjuration.[934] Wherefore, according to the counsel of these clerics, the Lord Bishop had sent certain learned doctors to the relapsed heretic and had resolved to come to her himself.
She must needs submit to one last examination.
"Do you believe that your Voices and apparitions come from good or from evil spirits?"