MAÎTRE GUILLAUME MANCHON
Canon of the Collegiate Church of Notre Dame d’Audely; Curé of the Parish Church of Sainte-Nicotas-le-Peintiur at Rouen, and Notary of the Ecclesiastical Court; Notary of the Trial of Jeanne, from the beginning up to the end, and with him Maître Guillaume Colles, called Bois-Guillaume.
In my opinion, not only those who had charge of instituting and conducting the Trial to wit, My Lord of Beauvais and the Masters sent for from Paris for this Case but also the English, at whose instance the Trial was undertaken, proceeded rather from hatred and anger on account of the quarrel with the King of France, than owing to her support of his party, and for the following reasons:
First, one named Maître Nicolas Loyseleur, a familiar of my Lord of Beauvais, who held altogether to the English side for, formerly the King being before Chartres, he went to fetch the King of England to raise the Siege pretended that he belonged to the Maid’s country; by this means he found a way to have speech and familiar converse with her, telling her news of her country that would please her. He asked to be her confessor, and of what she told him privately he found means to inform the Notaries: indeed, at the beginning of the Trial, I and Boisguillaume, with witnesses, were put secretly in an adjoining room, where there was a hole through which we could hear, in order that we might report what she said to Loyseleur. As I think, what the Maid said or stated familiarly to Loyseleur he reported to the Notaries; and from this were made memoranda for questions in the Trial, to find some way of catching her unawares.
When the Trial had begun, Maître Jean Lohier, a grave Norman Clerk, came to this Town of Rouen, and communication was made to him of what the Bishop of Beauvais had written hereon; and the said Lohier asked for two or three days’ delay to look into it. To which he received answer that he should give his opinion that afternoon; and this he was obliged to do. And Maître Jean Lohier, when he had seen the Process, said it was of no value, for several reasons : first, because it had not the form of an ordinary Process; then, it was carried on in an enclosed and shut-up place, where those concerned were not in full and perfect liberty to say their full will; then, that this matter dealt with the honor of the King of France, whose side she [the Maid] supported, and that he had not been called, nor any who were for him; then, neither legal documents nor articles had been forthcoming, and so there was no guide for this simple girl to answer the Masters and Doctors on great matters, and especially those, as she said, which related to her revelations. For these things, the Process was, in his opinion, of no value. At which my Lord of Beauvais was very indignant against the said Lohier; and although my Lord of Beauvais told him that he might remain to see the carrying out of the Trial, Lohier replied that he would not do so. And immediately my Lord of Beauvais, then lodging in the house where now lives Maitre Jean Bidaut, near Saint-Nicolas-le-Peinteur, came to the Masters to wit, Maître Jean Beaupère, Maître Jacques de Touraine, Nicolas Midi, Pierre Maurice, Thomas de Courcelles, and Loyseleur – and said to them: “This Lohier wants to put fine questions into our Process: he would find fault with everything, and says it is of no value. If we were to believe him, everything must be begun again, and all we have done would be worth nothing!” And, after stating the grounds on which Lohier found fault, my Lord of Beauvais added: “It is clear enough on which foot he limps. By Saint John! we will do nothing in the matter, but will go on with our Process as it is begun!” This was on a Saturday afternoon in Lent; and the next morning I spoke with the said Lohier at the Church of Notre Dame at Rouen, and asked him what he thought of the said Trial and of Jeanne? He replied: “You see the way they are proceeding. They will take her, if they can, in her words as in assertions where she says, ‘I know for certain,’ as regards the apparitions but if she said, ‘I think’ instead of the words ‘I know for certain’ it is my opinion that no man could condemn her. It seems they act rather from hate than otherwise; and for that reason, I will not stay here, for I have no desire to be in it.” And in truth he thenceforward lived always at the Court of Rome, where he died Dean of Appeals. (“Doyen de la Role “-Court of Appeals at Rome.)
At the beginning of the Trial, because I was putting in writing for five or six days the answers and excuses of the said Maid, the Judges several times wished to compel me, speaking in Latin, to put them in other terms, by changing the sense of her words or in other ways such as I had not heard. By command of the Bishop of Beauvais, two men were placed at a window near where the Judges sat, with a curtain across the window, so that they could not be seen. These two men wrote and reported what there was in thecharge against Jeanne, keeping silence as to her excuses; and, in my opinion, this was Loyseleur. After the sitting was over, in the afternoon, while comparing notes of what had been written, the two others reported differently from me, and had put in none of the excuses; at which my Lord of Beauvais was greatly angry with me. Where ‘Nota’ (On the Minute of Manchon, which was in the hands of the judges of the Rehabilitation in 1455.) is written in the Process there was disagreement, and questions had to be made upon it; and it was found that what I had written was true.
In writing the said Process, I was often opposed by my Lord of Beauvais and the Masters, who wanted to compel me to write according to their fancy, and against what I had myself heard. And when there was something which did not please them, they forbade it to be written, saying that it did not serve the Process; but I nevertheless wrote only according to my hearing and knowledge.
Maître Jean Delafontaine, from the beginning of the Trial up to the week after Easter, 1431, took the place of my Lord of Beauvais, to interrogate her, in the absence of the Bishop; and was always present with the Bishop in the conduct of the said Trial. And when the time came that the Maid was summoned to submit herself to the Church by this same Delafontaine, and by Brothers Ysambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenu, they advised her that she should believe in, and rely on, our Lord the Pope and those who preside in the Church Militant; and that she should make no question about submitting to our Holy Father the Pope and to the Holy Council; for that there were among them as many of her own side as of the other, many of them notable Clerics, and that if she did not do this, she would put herself in great danger. The day after she had been thus advised, she said that she wished certainly to submit to our Holy Father the Pope and to the Holy Council. When my Lord of Beauvais heard this, he asked who had spoken with the Maid. The Guard replied that it was Maître Delafontaine, his lieutenant, and the two Friars. And at this, in the absence of the said Delafontaine and the Friars, the Bishop was much enraged against Maître Jean Lemaitre, the Deputy Inquisitor, and threatened to do him an injury. And when Delafontaine knew that he was threatened for this reason, he departed from Rouen, and did not again return. And as for the Friars, they would have been in peril of death, but for the said Lemaitre, who excused them and besought for them, saying that if any harm were done to them, he would never again come to the Trial. And, from that time, the Earl of Warwick forbade any one to visit the Maid, except the Bishop of Beauvais or those sent by him; and the Deputy Inquisitor was not allowed to go without him.
At the end of the sermon at Saint Ouen, after the abjuration of the Maid, because Loyseleur said to her, “Jeanne, you have done a good day’s work, if it please God, and have saved your soul,” she demanded, “Now, some among you people of the Church, lead me to your prisons, that I may no longer be in the hands of the English.” To which my Lord of Beauvais replied, “Lead her back whence she was taken!” For this reason she was taken back to the Castle which she had left. The following Sunday, which was Trinity Sunday, the Masters, Notaries, and others concerned in this Trial were summoned; and we were told that she had resumed her man’s dress and had relapsed; and when we came to the Castle, in the absence of my Lord of Beauvais, there came upon us eighty or a hundred English soldiers, or thereabouts, who spoke to us in the courtyard of the Castle, telling us that all of us Clergy were deceitful, traitorous Armagnacs and false counselors; so that we had great trouble to escape and get out of the Castle, and did nothing for that day. The following day I was summoned; but I replied that I would not go if I had not a surety, on account of the fright I had had the day before; and I would not have gone back if one of the followers of my Lord of Warwick had not been sent as a surety. And thus I returned, and was at the continuation of the Trial, up to the end except that I was not at a certain examination made by people who had spoken with her privately, (This was the Examination called the ‘Acta Posterius,’ which, though included by Cauchon in the Process, is not signed by the Official Registrars, Manchon, Boisguillaume, and Taquel.) as privileged persons; nevertheless, the Bishop of Beauvais wanted to compel me to sign, and this I would not do.
I saw Jeanne led to the scaffold (Jeanne was burnt in the Market Place at Rouen, where an inscribed stone marks the site. It is stated that the execution took place in front of the Church of St. Sauveur, and facing the principal street which leads to the Market Place, thus accommodating a larger number of spectators than was possible in any other part of the Place. There is still some dispute as to the actual spot; but as the Cemetery was religious ground and the execution was, nominally at least, a secular one, the ground chosen must have been on land belonging to the municipality of Rouen. Probably this was in the Marché aux Veaux, as we find an order for the burning of a heretic there in 1522, “lieu accoutumé faire lelles exéculions.”) and there were seven or eight hundred soldiers around her, bearing swords and staves; so that no one was so bold as to speak to her except Brother Martin Ladvenu and Maître Jean Massieu.
Patiently did she hear the sermon right through afterwards she repeated her thanksgiving, prayers, and lamentations most notably and devoutly, in such manner that the Judges, Prelates, and all present were provoked to much weeping, seeing her make these pitifulregrets and sad complaints. Never did I weep more for anything that happened to me; and, for a month afterwards, I could not feel at peace. For which reason, with a part of the money I had for my services I bought a little Missal, so that I might have it and might pray for her. In regard to final repentance, I never saw greater signs of a Christian.
I remember that at the sermon given at Saint Ouen by Maître Guillaume Erard, among other words were said and uttered these: “Ah! noble House of France, which had always been the protectress of the Faith, have you been so abused that you would adhere to a heretic and schismatic? It is indeed a great misfortune.” To which the Maid made answer, what I do not remember, except that she gave great praise to her King, saying that he was the best and wisest Christian in the world. At which Erard and my Lord of Beauvais ordered Massieu to “Make her keep silence.”