Note 364 — Chapter V · POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE STATE. (continued 3)

Procès, pp. 471, 475, 478, 482, 485.—Chronique, pp. 428, 454.—Görres, pp. 37-9.—Thomassin, pp. 537, 538.—Christine de Pisan (Buchon, p. 541).—Monstrelet, Liv. II. ch. 57.—Dynteri Chron. Duc. Brabant. Lib. VI. ch. 234.

Much has been recorded in the chronicles about the miracles with which she convinced Charles’s doubts—how she recognized him at first sight, although plainly clad amid a crowd of resplendent courtiers, and how she revealed to him a secret known only to God and himself, of prayers and requests made to God in his oratory at Loches (Chronique, pp. 429, 455; Jean Chartier, Hist. de Charles VII. Ed. Godefroy, p. 19; Görres, pp. 105-9). Possibly some chance expression of hers may have caught his wandering and uncertain thoughts and made an impression upon him, but the legend of the Pucelle grew so rapidly that miracles were inevitably introduced into it at every stage. Joan herself on her trial declared that Charles and several of his councillors, including the Duc de Bourbon, saw her guardian saints and heard their voices, and that the king had notable revelations (Procès, p. 472). She also told her judges that there had been a material sign, which under their skilful cross-examination developed, from a secret revealed to him alone (p. 477), into the extraordinary story that St. Michael, accompanied by Catharine and Margaret and numerous angels, came to her lodgings and went with her to the royal palace, up the stairs and through the doors, and gave to the Archbishop of Reims, who handed it to the king, a golden crown, too rich for description, such as no goldsmith on earth could make, telling him at the same time that with the aid of God and her championship he would recover all France, but that unless he set her to work his coronation would be delayed. This she averred had been seen and heard by the Archbishop of Reims and many bishops, Charles de Bourbon, the Duc d’ Alençon, La Trémouille, and three hundred others, and thus she had been relieved from the annoying examinations of the clerks. When asked whether she would refer to the archbishop to vouch for the story, she replied, “Let him come here and let me speak with him; he will not dare to tell me the contrary of what I have told you”—which was a very safe offer, seeing that the trial was in Rouen, and the archbishop was the Chancellor of France (Procès, pp. 482-6, 495, 502). His testimony, however, could it have been had, would not probably have been advantageous to her, as he belonged to the party of La Trémouille, the favorite, who was persistently hostile to her.