It was then the custom in matters of importance and in
times of great peril. The knights had three masses said, and
communicated three times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a
duel. It is what has been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard.
The workers of miracles, Joan's companions, who were submissive to
Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she
had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend.
God was "clad in a long white robe, etc."
Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible.
One of Joan's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas
_the Bird-Catcher_, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the
sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who
transcribed Joan of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege
in order to be murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough
courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was
condemned to be burned by forty-four French priests who immolated her
for the English faction.
It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness
to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and
with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext
for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime
worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt.
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