When Joan had raised the siege of Orleans and was urging the King to go to Rheims to be crowned, and he was distracted by the diversity of his councillors, a young prince, Guy de Laval, wrote on June 8th, 1429, to his mother about Joan as follows: “The King had sent for Joan to come and meet him at Selles-en-Berry. Some say that it was for my sake, in order that I might see her. She gave right good welcome to my brother and myself, and after we had dismounted at Selles I went to see her in her quarters. She ordered wine, and told me that she should soon have me drinking some at Paris. It seems a thing divine to look on her and listen to her. I saw her mount on horseback, clad all in white armour save her head, and with a little axe in her hand, on a great black charger, which at the door of her quarters was very restive and would not let her mount. Then said she, ‘Lead him to the cross,’ which was in front of the neighbouring church on the road. There she mounted him without his moving, and as if he were tied up; and turning towards the door of the church, which was very nigh at hand, she said in a soft womanly voice, ‘You priests and churchmen, make procession and prayer to God.’ Then she resumed her road, saying, ‘Push forward! push forward!’ She told me that three days before my arrival she had sent my dear grandmother a little golden ring, but that it was a very small matter, and she would have liked to send you something better, having regard to your dignity.”
JOAN TAKEN CAPTIVE AND BURNT AS A HERETIC (1431).
When Joan was taken prisoner at the siege of Compiégne, she was kept six months in various castles by John of Luxemburg; but her youth, virtue, and courage made friends of her gaolers. The governor, however, was a sordid creature, and sold her to her enemies for English gold. Then another brutal creature called a bishop of Beauvais, also an inquisitor, rose up and insisted on his right to judge her, as she was captured within his diocese. She was taken to Rouen to be tried as a rebel heretic. Joan had a presentiment of her fate, and said, “I know well that these English will put me to death; but were they a hundred thousand more Goddams than have already been in France, they shall never have the kingdom.” On hearing this, the English Earl of Stafford half drew his dagger to strike her, but was held back. As she was led to Rouen, great crowds came to see her; ladies of distinction went five leagues to speak comfort to her and encourage her, and wept on parting. The brutal bishop, like a vulture of the desert, seized on her as his prey; and though some lookers-on cried shame, and protested that the trial was illegal, this demon inquisitor had her locked in an iron cage, with irons on her feet, and kept in a dark room, guarded night and day in a castle tower, while a sham trial was kept up for forty days, and idle questions cast at her. The demon judge, after trying in vain to shake her fortitude, at last had her brought into the torture chamber. But Joan told him, “If you tear me limb from limb, you shall get nothing more from me; nay, if I were at the stake and saw the torch lighting the fagots, I shall say naught else.” Joan was declared a heretic and a rebel; she was harassed to sign an abjuration, and a mock signature being forced from her, she was at first condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Part of her alleged crime was the wearing of man’s clothes, and after a struggle she refused to give this up. She was tried and retried, and at last forty judges agreed that she must be burned at the stake. A woman’s dress was put on her, and she was dragged to the place of execution. Her last wish was to have the cross, whereon God hung, kept continually in her sight as long as she lived. She was then done to death, and even the demon bishop was said for once to drop a tear as the inspired maid was in her last agony.
OUTBREAK OF THE HERMIT ZEAL (A.D. 340).
Egypt afforded the first example of the monastic life; and at the head of the new zealots for macerating the body in order to perfect the soul was Antony, an illiterate youth, born in 305. After rehearsing the solitary life in Thebais and searching for a suitable site in the desert, he settled on Mount Colzim, near the Red Sea. He was a friend of Athanasius, the champion of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Others followed his example, and the region of the Nile soon swarmed with disciples. It was said that five thousand anchorites peopled the Desert of Nitria, south of Alexandria. Some thought that half of the population had taken to this sequestered mode of life, so that the old saying was repeated that in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man. Athanasius introduced the knowledge and admiration of the monastic life to the Roman senators who began to take an interest in this new philosophy. A Syrian youth, named Hilarion, was incited by his enthusiasm to follow Antony’s example, and fix his cell on a sandy beach seven miles from Gaza, where he lived forty-eight years. Even Basil once spent some time in a savage solitude in Pontus. And Martin of Tours, who was soldier, hermit, bishop, and saint, established the monasteries of Gaul. The fame of these hermits filled the whole earth wherever a knowledge of Christianity had spread. This pilgrim, visiting Jerusalem, carried there the habits of the new models of Christian life, and members of wealthy families yielded to the fashion of piety. Jerome himself persuaded Paula and her daughter Eustochium to retire to Bethlehem and found monasteries, and pursue a system of rigid self-mortification.
FIRST BEGINNINGS OF MONASTIC LIFE (A.D. 340).
The monastic life, as a system, was not much known till the end of the fourth century. It has been conjectured that the circumstances of the Decian persecution, about the middle of the third century, caused many persons in Egypt to retreat for safety to the desert, and then, finding complete security, this became a second nature, the climate being mild and cells and cottages being easily constructed. There were at first only individuals here and there, and no regular society till the peaceable reign of Constantine, when Pachomius is said to have founded some monasteries in Thebais. Antony, the first hermit of note, gave a contemporary of Pachomius this account: “When I first became a monk, there was as yet no monastery in any part of the world where one man was obliged to take care of another, but every one of the ancient monks, when the persecution was ended, exercised the monastic life by himself in private. Afterwards Father Pachomius, by the help of God, brought the monks to live in communities.” Before 250 those who lived a lonely life were called ascetics. Hilarion, who was scholar to Antony, was the first monk who ever lived in Palestine or Syria. Not long after this new mode of life spread to Armenia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus; then it reached Thrace and parts of Europe. It was not till Athanasius came to Italy and Rome in 340 that he introduced this mode of society. Marcella was the first noble woman who took to this life at Rome, being instructed by Athanasius during the Arian persecution. Pelagius, about 400, introduced monastic life into Britain. Monks at first were laymen and not clergy, their office being not to teach but to mourn. It was not till after 1311 that Pope Clement obliged all monks to take holy orders, so that they might say private Mass for the honour of God.
THE TEMPTATIONS OF ST. ANTONY (A.D. 340).
St. Antony, the founder of the monastic life in Egypt, who died in 356, at the age of one hundred and four, soon after he began to live in the tombs as a hermit was found in a trance, and carried to a church as one dead. He afterwards related that in the night the devil had sent his legions to terrify him. They upraised so great a clamour that the whole place seemed to quake, and, as if bursting through the four walls of the cell, devils rushed in upon him from all sides, transformed in the guise of wild beasts and creeping things, and the place was straightway filled with spectres of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, all of them in motion after their proper fashion,—the lion roaring as about to spring on him, the bull threatening to gore him, the serpent hissing, the wolf in the act of flying at him, but all in seeming only as under restraint, though dire were the noises and fierce the menaces of those phantoms crowding around him. And Antony mocked them and said, “Ye seek to terrify me with numbers, but this aping of wild beasts only proves your weakness. If you have any power, delay not, but come on; for faith in the Lord is my seal and my wall of salvation.” And they all gnashed their teeth at him, looking as if preparing to assail him. But the Lord meanwhile did not forget Antony, and came to his assistance. The saint, looking up, saw as it were the roof opened and a ray of light descending upon him. And the devils on a sudden disappeared; and the pain of his body was straightway assuaged, and the cell was clear as before. And Antony rose up and prayed, and received more strength than he ever had before.