Not only France and England, but all Christendom was interested in the outcome. During all this time not only was there not a word of protest from Rome, but what is more significant, shortly after the trial and condemnation of Joan, the pope rewarded her accusers and persucutors with ecclesiastical promotion. Again, I must hasten to explain that I am not interested in embarrassing the Catholics; my point is to strike at dogma—which turns hearts into stone, and makes of the intellect a juggler's instrument. Joan was sacrificed, nay,—the honor of France, of Europe, of civilization, of humanity—was flung into the fire with Joan, to save—what? Dogma!

Not only did the church fail to punish a single one of the forty ecclesiastics who tried Joan, not to mention hundreds of others who cooperated with them to bring about her destruction, but, as intended, gifts were conferred upon the principal actors in this awful drama. Roussel, one of the ecclesiastics who figured prominently in the proceedings, was given the archepiscopacy of the city of Rouen—the very city in which a girl not yet twenty, and who had served France on the battlefield, and brought victory to her flag, was beaten and burnt to death. Pasquier, an ordinary priest when he was serving as one of the judges, was made a bishop after the execution of Joan. Two others, Gilles and Le Fevre, were also advanced to upper ranks in the church. Thomas Courcelles, one of the most merciless judges of Joan—who voted in favor of subjecting the prisoner to physical torture to compel her to admit she was a witch—this priest with the unenviable reputation was also promoted to a lucrative post in the famous church of Notre Dame, in Paris. Finally, the man who engineered the trial, who presided over the sessions, and to whom Joan said, "You are the cause of my misfortunes"—the Bishop of Beauvais, the man whom all Catholics justly execrate today—even he was rewarded by the "Holy Father"; he was given the episcopal seat of Lisieux. Does it look as though the crime against Joan were the work of a discredited minority in the Catholic Church? I repeat, it was dogma, it was revelation, it was infallibility, it was supernaturalism, and not this or that priest—that should be held guilty.

To meet these arguments the Catholic apologists call attention to the fact that the church "has a horror of blood," and that it has never put anyone to death for any cause whatever. But this is true only in a Pickwickian sense. It is like the head saying to the hands, "I have never committed the least violence against anyone." The hands, it is evident, commit the acts, but whose hands are they? The hands only obey the head, and for the head to blame the hands for carrying out its orders, realizing its thoughts and wishes, would not even be amusing, much less convincing. It is the judge, or the court, that takes the life of the culprit, for instance, and not the executioner. The Catholic Church demands the death of the heretic. Is this denied? Read Thomas Aquinas, the most honored saint and theologian of Catholicism; read the decrees of the general councils of the church and the encyclicals of St. Peter's successors, and a thousand, thousand proofs will be found in them to substantiate the statement. It is the Bible that commands the death of the heretic. No church founded on the Bible can afford to be tolerant. The theory of Christianity as well as of Mohammedanism is that the sword which the king carries has been blessed and put in his hands that he may put down the heretics. The civil authorities then, in bringing Joan of Arc to the fire were carrying out the instructions of the forty ecclesiastical judges who condemned her to death. Had these judges found her innocent, the state could not have destroyed her life; it was the will of the priestly court that she should die, and the secular authorities fulfilled its wish.

But was Joan a heretic? Strenuous efforts are made to show that she was not. This point is a vital one. The church, in self-defense, is bound to produce arguments to prove that Joan of Arc was an orthodox, obedient, and submissive child of the church. If she was not orthodox, then the church has sainted a heretic in the person of Joan of Arc. One of the questions they asked her at the trial was whether she would be willing to submit the question of her "visions" to the church; that is to say, would she consent to the findings of an ecclesiastical court concerning herself and her mission? To this the answer was that she held herself responsible only to God. This was considered a rebellious answer, and it was—from the church's point of view. According to Catholic theology the church is divided into two branches,—the church militant, which is composed of the pope, the priests and their flock; and the church triumphant, which is presided over by God and the saints in glory. Joan said she was prepared to submit to the church triumphant—the church on high, that is to say, to God, but to nobody else. This also was a heresy. Her clerical judges insisted that to be a good Catholic she must bow to the will of the church on earth—the pope and his representatives. Her heresy then was both real and serious. She appealed from the pope to God. She placed her own conscience above the authority of the church. She believed in private judgment, the exercise of which is forbidden by the church. In refusing to let the pope act as the middleman between God and herself she was threatening the very existence of the papacy. There is then no doubt that both by her independent conduct and by her original answers Joan attacked the very fundamentals of Catholicism. It follows, then, that the pope a few years ago made a saint out of a heretic.

Although Joan was an uncultivated girl, able neither to read nor write, she was gifted with good common sense. She saw at a glance that if she were to submit to the church she would thereby be casting doubts upon the genuineness of her "visions." She preferred to go to the stake rather than do that. She was really between two fires: the priests threatened her body; God in her conscience threatened her soul. She decided to obey the voice within. The decision cost her her life.

Some of the questions put to her and the answers which Joan made are really remarkable. They show the craft of her judges, on the one hand, and the courage and common sense of the victim, on the other.

"Will you not submit to our holy father, the Pope?" they asked her. "Bring me before the Pope, and I will answer," she replied. In other words, they were trying to have her admit that she had no right to think for herself or to exercise any independence at all. But she was too serious and earnest a person to subscribe to any such doctrine. She had never understood that to be a Catholic meant to be a bondswoman. "Take care," she said, turning her fiery glance upon her inquisitors, "take care that you do not put yourselves in the place of God." By such an answer, the young woman, still in her teens, had shot the Catholic Church in the heart.

The nature of the charges against Joan as formulated by her judges also goes to prove that she was considered a heretic and condemned to death for that offense. The eleventh charge against her reads: "She has adored her saints without taking clerical advice." Charge twelfth reads: "She refuses to submit her conduct and revelation to the church." When asked if she would obey the church, her reply was, "God first being served." Luther said no more than that—and the Catholic church was split in two. Everything goes to show that the Domremy peasant girl was a private thinker, that is to say, a heretic. Listen to this: "I will believe that our Holy Father, the pope of Rome and the bishops and other churchmen are for the guarding of the Christian faith and the punishment of heretics, but as for me and my facts, I will only submit to the church of heaven." To be sure that is insubordination; it is placing herself not only on an equality with the pope, but even above him. Of course, Joan was not a