“If the beforesaid woman, charitably exhorted and admonished by competent judges, does not return spontaneously to the Catholic faith, publicly abjure her errors, and give full satisfaction to her judges, she is hereby given up to the secular judge to receive the reward of her deeds.”
The attendant judges, each in his place, now added their adhesion. Most of them simply stated their agreement with the judgment of the University, or with that of the Bishop of Fecamp, which was a similar tenor; a few wished that Jeanne should be again “charitably admonished”; many desired that on this selfsame day the final sentence should be pronounced. One among them, a certain Raoul Sauvage (Radulphus Silvestris), suggested that she should be brought before the people in a public place, a suggestion afterwards carried out. Frere Isambard desired that she should be charitably admonished again and have another chance, and that her final fate should still be in the hands of “us her judges.” The conclusion was that one more “charitable admonition” should be given to Jeanne, and that the law should then take its course. The suggestion that she should make a public appearance had only one supporter.
This dark scene in the chapel is very notable, each man rising to pronounce what was in reality a sentence of death,—fifty of them almost unanimous, filled no doubt with a hundred different motives, to please this man or that, to win favour, to get into the way of promotion,—but all with a distinct consciousness of the great yet horrible spectacle, the stake, the burning:—though perhaps here