At first sight the contrast between these two scenes, enacted by the authority of the same Church, may appear a little bewildering. It might tempt us to criticise the consistency of ecclesiastic judgment, did we not know that in theology, as in metaphysics, extreme contradictions are capable of ultimate reconciliation. The Church's attitude was, in fact, definitely fixed in January 1909 by the Papal proclamation declaring that the girl's virtues were heroic and her miracles authentic. One can only regret that the discovery was not made sooner, in time to save her from the fire, when her clerical judges came to the very opposite conclusion. Yet we must not hastily condemn them for an error which, even apart from theological guidance, most of us laymen would probably have committed.
Let us for a moment imagine Joan herself appearing in the England of to-day on much the same mission. It is not difficult to picture the contempt, the derision, the ribaldry, with which she would be greeted. In nearly every point her reception would be the same as it was, except that fewer people would believe in her inspiration. We have only to read her trial, or even the account given in Henry VI, to know what we should say of her now. There would be the same reproaches of unwomanliness, the same reminders that a woman's sphere is the home, the same plea that she should leave serious affairs to men, who, indeed, had carried them on so well that the whole country was tormented with perpetual panic of an enemy over sea. There would be the same taunts of immodesty, the same filthy songs. Since science has presumed to take the place of theology, we should talk about hysteria instead of witchcraft, and hallucination instead of demoniacal possession. Physiologists would expound her enthusiasm as functional disorder of the thyroid gland. Historians would draw parallels between her recurring Voices and the "tarantism" of the Middle Ages. Superior people would smile with polite curiosity. The vulgar would yell in crowds and throw filth in her face. The scenes of the fifteenth century in France would be exactly repeated, except that we should not actually burn her in Trafalgar Square. If she escaped the madhouse, the gaol and forcible feeding would be always ready.
So that we must not be hard on that theological conclave which made the mistake of burning a Blessed One alive. They were inspired by the highest motives, political and divine, and they made the fullest use of their knowledge of spiritual things. Being under divine direction, they could not allow any weak sentiment of pity or human consideration to influence their judgment. Their only error was in their failure to discern the authenticity of the girl's miracles, and we must call that a venial error, since it has taken the Church nearly five centuries to give a final decision on the point. The authenticity of miracles! Of all questions that is the most difficult for a contemporary to decide. In the case of Joan's judges, indeed, the solution of this mystery must have been almost impossible, unless they were gifted with prophecy; for most of her miracles were performed only after her death, or at least only then became known. And as to the bare facts they knew of her life—the realities that everyone might have seen or heard, and many thousands had shared in—there was nothing miraculous about them, nothing to detain the attention of theologians. They were natural events.
For a hundred years the country had been rent and devastated by foreign war. The enemy still clutched its very centre. The south-west quarter of the kingdom was his beyond question. By treaty his young king was heir to the whole. The land was depopulated by plague and impoverished by vain revolution. Continuous civil strife tore the people asunder, and the most powerful of the factions fought for the invader's claim. Armies ate up the years like locusts, and there was no refuge for the poor, no preservation of wealth for men or honour for women. Even religion was distracted by schism, divided against herself into two, perhaps into three, conflicting churches. In the midst of the misery and tumult this girl appears, possessed by one thought only—the pity for her country. Modest beyond all common decency; most sensitive to pain, for it always made her cry; conscious, as she said, that in battle she ran as much risk of being killed as anyone else, she rode among men as one of themselves, bareheaded, swinging her axe, charging with her standard which all must follow, heartening her countrymen for the cause of France, striking the invading enemy with the terrors of a spirit. Just a clear-witted, womanly girl, except that her cause had driven fear from her heart, and occupied all her soul, to the exclusion of lesser things. "Pity she isn't an Englishwoman!" said one of the enemy who was near her after a battle, and he meant it for the most delicate praise. In a few months she changed the face of her country, revived the hope, inspired the courage, rekindled the belief, re-established the unity, staggered the invader with a blow in the heart, and crowned her king as the symbol of national glory. Within a few months she had set France upon the assured road to future greatness. Little over twenty years after they burnt her there was hardly a trace of foreign foot upon French soil.
It was all quite natural, of course. The theologians who condemned her to death, and those who have now raised her to Beatitude, were concerned with the authenticity of her miracles, and there is nothing miraculous in thus raising a nation from the dead. Considering the difficulty of their task, we may forgive the clergy some apparent inconsistency in their treatment. But for myself, as a mere layman, I should be content to call any human being Blessed for the natural magic of such a history; and compared with that deed of hers, I would not turn my head to witness the most astonishing miracle ever performed in all the records of the saints.
XXV
THE HEROINE
It is strange to think that up to August of 1910, a woman was alive who had won the highest fame many years before most people now living were born. To remember her is like turning the pages of an illustrated newspaper half-a-century old. Again we see the men with long and pointed whiskers, the women with ballooning skirts, bag nets for the hair, and little bonnets or porkpie hats, a feather raking fore and aft. Those were the years when Gladstone was still a subordinate statesman, earning credit for finance, Dickens was writing Hard Times, Carlyle was beginning his Frederick, Ruskin was at work on Modern Painters, Browning composing his Men and Women, Thackeray publishing The Newcomes, George Eliot wondering whether she was capable of imagination. It all seems very long ago since that October night when that woman sailed for Boulogne with her thirty-eight chosen nurses on the way to Scutari. I suppose that never in the world's history has the change in thought and manners been so rapid and far-reaching as in the two generations that have arisen in our country since that night. And it is certain that Florence Nightingale, when she embarked without fuss in the packet, was quite unconscious how much she was contributing to so vast a transformation.