Saint Joan

not stop until it has brought the whole body of human society into sin and corruption, into waste and ruin. By it an Arab camel driver drove Christ and His Church out of Jerusalem, and ravaged his way west like a wild beast until at last there stood only the Pyrenees and God’s mercy between France and damnation. Yet what did the camel driver do at the beginning more than this shepherd girl is doing? He had his voices from the angel Gabriel: she has her voices from St. Catherine and St. Margaret and the Blessed Michael. He declared himself the messenger of God, and wrote in God’s name to the kings of the earth. Her letters to them are going forth daily. It is not the Mother of God now to whom we must look for intercession, but to Joan the Maid. What will the world be like when The Church’s accumulated wisdom and knowledge and experience, its councils of learned, venerable pious men, are thrust into the kennel by every ignorant laborer or dairymaid whom the devil can puff up with the monstrous self-conceit of being directly inspired from heaven? It will be a world of blood, of fury, of devastation, of each man striving for his own hand: in the end a world wrecked back into barbarism. For now you have only Muhammad and his dupes, and the Maid and her dupes; but what will it be when every girl thinks herself a Joan and every man a Muhammad? I shudder to the very marrow of my bones when I think of it. I have fought it all my life; and I will fight it to the end. Let all this woman’s sins be forgiven her except only this sin; for it is the sin against the Holy Ghost; and if she does not recant in the dust before the world, and submit herself to the last inch of her soul to her Church, to the fire she shall go if she once falls into my hand. Warwick Unimpressed. You feel strongly about it, naturally. Cauchon Do not you? Warwick I am a soldier, not a churchman. As a pilgrim I saw something of the Muhammadans. They were not so illbred as I had been led to believe. In some respects their conduct compared favorably with ours. Cauchon Displeased. I have noticed this before. Men go to the East to convert the infidels. And the infidels pervert them. The Crusader comes back more than half a Saracen. Not to mention that all Englishmen are born heretics. The Chaplain Englishmen heretics!!! Appealing to Warwick. My lord: must we endure this? His lordship is beside himself. How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms. Cauchon I absolve you, Messire de Stogumber, on the ground of invincible ignorance. The thick air of your country does not breed theologians. Warwick You would not say so if you heard us quarrelling about religion, my lord! I am sorry you think I must be either a heretic or a blockhead because, as a travelled man, I know that the followers of Muhammad profess great respect for our Lord, and are more ready to forgive St. Peter for being a fisherman than your lordship is to forgive Muhammad for being a camel driver. But at least we can proceed in this matter without bigotry. Cauchon When men call the zeal of the Christian Church bigotry I know what to think. Warwick They are only east and west views of the same thing. Cauchon Bitterly ironical. Only east and west! Only!! Warwick Oh, my Lord Bishop, I am not gainsaying you. You will carry The Church with you; but you have to carry the nobles also. To my mind there is a stronger case against The Maid than the one you have so forcibly put. Frankly, I am not afraid of this girl becoming another Muhammad, and superseding The Church by a great heresy. I think you exaggerate that risk. But have you noticed that in these letters of hers, she proposes to all the kings of Europe, as she has already pressed on Charles, a transaction which would wreck the whole social structure of Christendom? Cauchon Wreck The Church. I tell you so. Warwick Whose patience is wearing out. My lord: pray get The Church out of your head for a moment; and remember that there are temporal institutions in the world as well as spiritual ones. I and my peers represent the feudal aristocracy as you represent The Church. We are the temporal power. Well, do you not see how this girl’s idea strikes at us? Cauchon How does her idea strike at you, except as it strikes at all of us, through The Church? Warwick Her idea is that the kings should give their realms to God, and then reign as God’s bailiffs. Cauchon Not interested. Quite sound theologically, my lord. But the king will hardly care, provided he reign. It is an abstract idea: a mere form of words. Warwick By no means. It is a cunning device to supersede the aristocracy, and make the king sole and absolute autocrat. Instead of the king being merely the first among his peers, he becomes their master. That we cannot suffer: we call no man master. Nominally we hold our lands and dignities from the king, because there must be a keystone to the arch of human society; but we hold our lands in our own hands, and defend them with our own swords and those of our own tenants. Now by The Maid’s doctrine the king will take our lands⁠—our lands!⁠—and make them a present to God; and God will then vest them wholly in the king. Cauchon Need you fear that? You are the makers of kings after all. York or Lancaster in England, Lancaster or Valois in France: they reign according to your pleasure. Warwick Yes: but only as long as the people follow their feudal lords, and know the king only as a travelling show,