“So certainly
As morn returneth in her radiant light
Infallibly the day of truth shall come”
said the Maid of Orleans.
That day of truth has come. Around Joan of Arc the charmed circle of the Church of Rome is drawn. Let no man dare to call evil that which the Church calls good; let no man dare to attribute imposture, hysterical exaltation, or necromantic might to one whom the Church calls Blessed. Vindicated, rehabilitated, restored, cherished, Blessed is now the Maid who died five hundred years ago burned at the stake as a witch.
Condemned by the University of Paris, an ecclesiastical tribunal? Yes. Hounded to the stake by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais? Yes. But the Church can shake off and disclaim the clinging hands of her children whose touch pollutes her; and the Church of all ages can outshine the lurid darkness of any one age, and deprecate, and deplore and denounce the deeds done in that lurid darkness. Splendidly, too, and with stern magnanimity, defying apparent self-contradiction, can the Church reverse the decrees of ecclesiastical tribunals, and stoop down to pick up and restore and rehabilitate and bless a strangely foolish child whom kings and courts and the great University of Paris had condemned and cast away.
The Church of the Middle Ages must ever stand darkly enigmatic to the non-Catholic student of history. He cannot rightly appreciate the binding force of spiritual authority. The withering away from fear of Church censure, the clinging claim upon all the powers of the soul in the prayers and ceremonies and sacraments of the Church, the isolating horrors of her excommunications, the abject fear of her spiritual punishments, powerful alike over prince and potentate and peasant—are practically meaningless to the non-Catholic.
That scene in “Richelieu” by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, well illustrates the power of the Church in the Middle Ages. King Louis XIII. has sent to demand that Julie de Mortemar, Cardinal Richelieu’s orphan ward, shall be immediately sent to the court subject to the king’s pleasure. The girl clings to the Cardinal for protection. To these messengers Cardinal Richelieu replies,
“To those who sent you!—