[!-- Note Anchor 20 --][Footnote 20: Figures from an article by Mr. Leonard Willoughby in the Pall Mall Magazine for November 1910.]
[!-- Note Anchor 21 --][Footnote 21: The Hero as Prophet, p. 65.]
XXIV
THE MAID
From the early morning of Sunday, August 18, 1909, till evening came, the Square of St. Peter's in Rome and the interior of the great basilica itself were thronged from end to end with worshippers and pilgrims. The scene was brilliant with innumerable lamps, with the robes of many cardinals and the vestments of bishops, archbishops, and all the ranks of priesthood. The ceremony of adding one more to the calendar of the Blessed was performed, a solemn "Te Deum" was sung in praise of God's eternal greatness, and Pontifical Mass was celebrated, with all the splendour of ancient ritual and music of the grandest harmony. In the afternoon Christ's Vicar himself entered from his palace, attended by fifteen cardinals, seventy of the archbishops and bishops of France, with an equal number of their rank from elsewhere, and, amid the gleaming lights of scarlet and gold, of green and violet, of jewels and holy flames, he prostrated himself before the figure of the Blessed One, to whom effectual prayer might now be offered even by the Head of the Church militant here on earth. Till late at night the vast cathedral was crowded with increasing multitudes assembled for the honour of one whom the Church which judges securely as the world, commanded them to revere.
It was a simple peasant girl—"just the simplest peasant you could ever see"—whom the Head of the Church thus worshipped and crowds delighted to honour. Short and deep-chested she was, capable of a man's endurance, and with black hair cut like a boy's. She could not write or read, was so ignorant as to astonish ladies, and had only the peasant arts. The earliest description tells of her "common red frock carefully patched." "I could beat any woman in Rouen at spinning and stitching," she said to her judges, who, to be sure, had no special knowledge of anything beyond theology. "I'm only a poor girl, and can't ride or fight," she said when first she conceived her mission, and she had just the common instincts of the working woman. We may suppose her fond of children, for wherever she went she held the newborn babies at the font. She hated death and cruelty. "The sight of French blood," she said, "always makes my hair stand on end," and even to the enemy she always offered peace. "Or, if you want to fight," she sent a message to the Duke of Burgundy, "you might go and fight the Saracens." She never killed anyone, she said at her trial. Just an ordinary peasant girl she seemed—"la plus simple bergerette qu'on veit onques"—with no apparent distinction but a sweet and attractive voice. To be sure, she could put that sweet voice to shrewd use when she pleased. "What tongue do your Visions speak?" a theologian kept asking her. "A better tongue than yours!" she answered with the retort of an open-air meeting. But in those days there were theologians who would try the patience of a saint, and Joan of Arc is not a saint even yet, having been only Beatified on that Sunday, nearly five centuries after her death.
And she was only nineteen when they burnt her. At least, she thought she was about nineteen, but was not quite sure. Few years had passed since she was a child dancing under the big trees which fairies haunted still. Her days of glory had lasted only a few months, and now she had lain week after week in prison, weighed down with chains and balls of iron, watched day and night by men in the cell, because she always claimed a prisoner's right to escape if she could. Her trial before the Bishop of Beauvais and all the learning and theology of Paris University lasted nearly three months. Sometimes forty men were present, sometimes over sixty, for it was a remarkable case, and gave fine opportunity for the display of the superhuman knowledge and wisdom upon which divines exist. Human compassion they displayed also, hurrying away just before the burning began one May morning, and shedding tears of pity over the sins of one so young. Indeed, their preachings and exhortations to her whilst the stake and fire were being arranged continued so long that the rude English soldiers, so often deaf to the beauty of theology, asked whether they were going to be kept waiting there past dinner-time.
However, the verdict of divine and human law could never be really doubtful from the first, for the charges on which she was found guilty comprehended many grievous sins. The inscription placed over her head as she stood while the flames were being kindled declared this Joan, who called herself the Maid, to be a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the people, a sorceress, superstitious, a blasphemer of God, presumptuous, a misbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It was a heavy crime-sheet for a mere girl, and there was no knowing into what a monster she might grow up. So the Bishop of Beauvais could not well hesitate in pronouncing the final sentence whereby, to avoid further infection to its members, this rotten limb, Joan, was cast out from the unity of the Church, torn from its body, and delivered to the secular power, with a request for moderation in the execution of the sentence. Accordingly she was burnt alive, and the Voices and Visions to which she had trusted did not save her from the agony of flames.