JOAN OF ARG'S DEATH

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 20

JOAN OF ARG'S DEATH

THE SCEPTICAL DIARIST

The publication of an old chronicle covering the period 1405-49, under the title '' The diary of a bourgeois of Paris Tinder Charles VI. and Charles VJL-," throws an interesting light on the days of Joan of Are, and even on the Maid herself, states an overseas journal. The diary has already tieen quoted by the historian Michelet, ' ' who, however, thought little of the .author, whose politics he considered were blindly Burgundian. .: The name of the author is not known, but he appears to have been a member of the clergy, and. closely connected with • Paris University. His references tp Joan of. Arc are only casual, as if she was a minor incident in the country's history arid in no way a principal actor in it. ''In that time there was a Maid, as they said- on the River Loire,' who called herself a prophet and said, 'Such a thing will truly happen.' In veritate apoeryphum „ est." The sceptical chrbnieles then forgot Joan of Arc until her- attack on-Paris. "With them was someone in the form of a woman whom they-called the Maid (who was itf.f.Go.fl knows!)."- '■•■"" . ;;■ The.diarist records.stories of the_cruel manner'iiv which he had heard that the Maid treated those who disobeyed her, but the /ardent Burgundian tempers his pen in describing the" scene, of her death at 'Rouen, arid even seenis to share the doubts of the populace as to the nature of the "."justice'-.,'.: meted out by -the Church and the English. If he did not himself- witness' her death, the; account appears'to bo that of an eyewitness. _ "And preseritely all judged that she must die. She was bound to a stake which was on the scaffold, which was made of plaster and fire' on it. . • And it was soon put out and'her-dress all burned." He describes how the fire was "pulled back" so that the people might see the body tied to the stake, and have no doubt that the "sorceress was a woman. And when they -had seen her long enough dead, tied to the stake, the executioner made a great fire round her poor corpse, which was s.oon all burned, and .flesh and bones in cinders. Enough were there —there and elsewhere—who said that she was a martyr and lord in her right; others said no, and that it was an ill thing to have kept her so long. . . ..■: ''So said the people,..but whatever ill or good she had done, she was burned that day."