The Story of Rouen

by Theodore Andrea Cook

They kept her first in an iron cage, then in one of the castle towers, with irons upon her feet, chained to a log of wood, and guarded night and day by four common soldiers. On the 9th of January 1431 the Bishop of Beauvais summoned in Rouen the council chosen for the trial, and appointed its officials. On the 20th, Jeanne, being summoned to make her appearance before the court at eight next morning, begged that her judges might be more fairly chosen, and that she might hear Mass. She was refused both, and appeared on the 21st, in the chapel of the castle. Asked to answer truly upon oath all the questions put to her, Jeanne replied—"I do not know on what points you wish to question me. You might perhaps ask me things which I will not tell you." After this she told how she was called "Jeannette" at home, and Jeanne "in France," and knew no surname; how she was baptised and born at Domrémy, of Jacques d'Arc and his wife Isabel about nineteen years ago; she refused to promise not to escape if she could; and would only recite the Lord's Prayer in confession to a priest. After Cauchon had begun, the next day's questioning was more gently taken by Jean Beaupère, to whom she told of her care of the house at home, and of her skill in needlework, "as good as any in Rouen." The inquirers then went on to reveal the story of her "voices," and she firmly repeated her refusal to bind herself by a general oath as to every answer, saying that she had more fear of God and of her "voices," than of her conduct in that trial. Asked whether she was sure of the favour of God (a double-edged question at which some even of her judges murmured) she passed the danger by saying, "If I am not, may God help me to it; and if I am, may God preserve me in it."

Baffled at this point by the innocent faith of this country girl, the university professor changed the attack, and approached questions of a more political importance, cleverly interwoven with the first appearance of her "voices" when she was a girl of thirteen at Domrémy. But neither of treasonable partisanship nor of local superstitions could he convict her. She gave the names of her heavenly councillors as St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael, the same saint whose fortress held out inviolable against every English attack among the quicksands and the rushing tides of the north coast. Unable to find anything heretic or infidel in her replies on religious subjects, and only getting candid common sense in return for their suspicions, her judges turned to the idea of satanic inspiration and support. But it proved equally useless. Her patriotism shone clear above every trivial element in her long examination.

The last public hearing of her evidence before all her judges was on the 3rd of March. The result of the inquiry was then collected to form the basis of a fresh interrogation in her prison, which was conducted on the 10th by Jean de la Fontaine for a whole week. At the end of it Jean Lemaître himself arrived by order of the Chief Inquisitor. Nothing was added to the information already gathered, and nothing shook the firmness of the girl's replies. For only explanation she repeated, "It pleased God to do this by means of a simple maid, in order to rebuff the enemies of the King." Throughout, her negligence of trifles, her insistence upon the important points, her swift common sense, were the more conspicuous, because her judges persisted in reading their own meaning into all she answered to their subtle questions. Did they ask her, for instance, "Does God hate the English?" she would reply, "I know nothing of the hatred or the love of God for Englishmen, but this I know, that they will soon be all thrust out of France, save those of them who leave their bodies here."

On the much-disputed question of her masculine attire, she said she would wear woman's dress only when she heard Mass, and woman's clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason for her dress, but they persisted—without result—in trying to trap her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an act of simple prudence.

Her judges, strong and clever men as most of them were, themselves were tired out by the closeness and the duration of the trial. Yet this young girl, fasting even from her prison-fare, was resolute enough to keep her head, and reply steadily through it all. But she refused to be troubled with unnecessary or merely reiterated questions, and claimed her right to feel as tired as were her judges when she felt it necessary. She was in fact perfectly natural and frank throughout, even when the open expression of her thoughts was hardly politic for one in her position. Without the help of counsel, or of any to assist her, French or English, layman or ecclesiastic, she was even deprived of the friendly countenance or signs of anyone whose sympathy overcame for the moment his very justifiable fear of her persecutors. Even the consolations of her religion were denied her. The only semblance of advice she got was in the base and hypocritical attempts of a scoundrelly canon of Rouen Cathedral to teach her certain answers which might afterwards be used against her by her accusers.[50] It is a shameful thing to have to record that the Earl of Warwick helped the Bishop of Beauvais to complete this villainy, and took clerks with him to listen at the door, but they refused to lend themselves to such dishonourable methods.

Early in the week of Palm Sunday she was formally summoned to the great hall of the castle to hear the seventy articles of the Act of Accusation against her. The web of calumny that had been spun out of her replies then first must have been apparent to her, and though silent for the most part, she quickly contradicted some statements, and pointed out the fallacy of others. Reproached for her unwomanly behaviour, she replied at once, "As for woman's work, there are plenty of other women who can do that"; and asserted that before fighting at all, she had made every effort to obtain her wishes peacefully. She even recited the short prayer it was her custom to make when she needed the counsel of her heavenly visitors.

After this the seventy articles were reduced to twelve, which resumed the whole accusation, and became the pivot of the prosecution. They were never communicated at all to the prisoner. They were based on her visions, her wearing of a man's dress, her attitude towards the Church, which meant, in fact, her obedience to Poitiers and to the Archbishop of Reims, instead of to Pierre Cauchon, his subordinate.

On Thursday the 6th of April Érard Émengard held a meeting in the chapel of the Archbishop's Palace at Rouen to deliberate over the twelve articles. You may still see the place where this went on. As you enter the gateway of the Screen to the Portail des Libraires from the Rue St. Romain, on the left of the forecourt before the great carved door, you will see an old building which in the August of 1897 was being repaired and reconstructed to provide a school for the children of the Cathedral choir. This house forms itself the western side of a courtyard into which a door has no doubt by this time (December 1898) been opened from the Rue St. Romain, between the large turret that projects on the left of the old screened entrance in the street and the next octagonal turret with a sharply pointed roof that is built on the wall of the Cathedral buildings. By whatever entrance practicable, you must go into this courtyard and see the private chapel of the Archbishop, the old "Chapelle des Ordres" which touches the north wall of the Cathedral choir. Within this chapel the council was held, that by its approval of the Twelve Articles of Accusation pronounced the death-warrant of Jeanne d'Arc.[51]

In the midst of all these machinations the prisoner herself fell ill. Doctors were hurried to her cell to save her for the vengeance of her judges, and the "processes of law" were pushed forward more hastily than ever. On the 2nd of May she was once more confronted with the accusations made against her, in a long speech by the Archdeacon. She would add nothing to what had been already said. "Even if I saw the flames before me I should say what I have already told you, and do what I have done;" and the clerk writes "Superba Responsio" opposite the entry.

Determined to leave no means untried to overcome this resistance, her judges summoned her on Wednesday the 9th of May into the "Grosse Tour du château de Rouen," the donjon which you can visit in the Rouen of to-day, by turning to the left as you go northward up the Rue Bouvreuil (see [Map D]). The room in which Jeanne stood to answer her accusers has been carefully restored, but it is obscured by the huge plaster cast of a statue by Mercié. The vaulting is the original work intact, and on the keystone is carved the oldest existing shield of the arms of France, the six truncated Fleurs de Lys of Philip Augustus, which are reproduced more clearly on the huge and lofty cowl above the chimney. Beneath the floor there is still the old well that supplied the garrison, a little to the left of the entrance, and rather further round is the small spiral staircase leading to the upper rooms, which are not so large.