Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/459

 420

JOAN OF ARC AND BLUEBEARD.

II. BY R. VASHON ROGERS. When the judgment of the University heresy; blasphemy then was punished by came, it was clear and distinct : Joan's visions death, as it was in Scotland (unless a person and "voices" were lies, either manufactured was distracted in his wits), in Virginia, Mary by herself, or proceeding from Satan, Belial or land and New England, even in the seven Behemoth; her story of the sign was a pre teenth century. In the Middle Ages heresy sumptuous, seductory and pernicious lie, de was not merely a sin, but the worst of all rogatory to the Churcli; she was declared crimes; the Old World had short and sum to be rash in her beliefs, guilty of supersti mary ways of deal ing with heretics and schis tious divination and vain boasting, murder matics for centuries after the sweet Maid was ous, cruel, bloodthirsty, seditious, tyrannical, done to death, and the New World, when its a blasphemer of God and his commandments day came, learned and practiced the same and revelations, undutiful to her parents, and dread lesson. Such being the judgment, tbe maker of rash promises to her king; she such the law, no hope was left for Joan. was called a coward and would-be suicide in Even after these decisions were read to leaping from Beaurevoir; she was unchari Joan she refused to obey and submit herself table, and spoke contrary to the true faith in to the Church. On the morning of May 24th, . her statements about her saintly visitants; an she was taken from her cell to the cemetery idolater, invoker of devils, unsound in the of St. Ouen for sentence and execution. The faith, a swearer of unlawful oaths, a blas pile was ready for lighting; a sermon was phemer of God, a despiser of His sacraments, preached exhorting her to repentance and a transgressor of the Divine law, Holy Writ submission; priests earnestly, persistently and canonical ordinances, a follower of the urged her to submit, but she would leave all customs of the heathen and the Saracen (in to God and to our Holy Father the Pope. wearing men's clothes), a schismatic, a mis Nothing seemed able to alter her determina believer, a heretic. When such was the ver tion. Cauchon at last, began to read the dict, what doubt could there be as to the sen sentence of condemnation which gave her tence? St. Paul had forbade short hair, over to the secular arm, that is, to death; Moses prohibited a woman wearing that then, to entreaties, promises and threats, the which pertained unto a man, such thing be poor girl yielded and offered to submit; she ing an abomination unto the Lord God; and suffered her hand to be guided in scratching the stern old Jew had also said that a stub the sign of the cross to the form of abjura born and rebellious child, disobedient to pa tion. Cauchon then gladly pronounced an rents, should be put to death (far down the other sentence, which he had ready with him. ages in Connecticut and New Haven that setting forth her crimes, her abjuration, her grim sentence was reechoed). According contrition and return to the bosom of the to the Canon Law, to attempt suicide was in Church, her release from excommunication, famous, and a self-destroyer died in mortal her sentence to perpetual imprisonment on sin and could no more enter Paradise than the bread of adversity and the water of afflic could Judas, surnamed Iscariot; it held out tion. Vainly she begged to be sent toan ec clesiastical prison. Back she had to go to no hope of mercy inter pontem et fontem, in ter gladinm etjugulum. To invoke devils was the vile cell she had known so long, to the