violation of the Church's laws, at any rate as an unjustifiable abuse
of the sacrament.[1880] A menacing theological tempest was then
gathering and was about to break over the heads of Friar Richard's
daughters in the spirit. A few days after the attack on Paris, the
venerable University had had composed or rather transcribed a
treatise, _De bono et maligno spiritu_, with a view probably to
finding therein arguments against Friar Richard and his prophetess
Jeanne, who had both appeared before the city with the Armagnacs.[1881]

[Footnote 1879: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 106.]

[Footnote 1880: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 271.]

[Footnote 1881: Morosini, vol. iii, pp. 232, 233. Le P. Denifle and
Chatelain, _Cartularium Univ. Paris_, vol. iv, p. 515.]

About the same time, a clerk of the faculty of law had published a
summary reply to Chancellor Gerson's memorial concerning the Maid. "It
sufficeth not," he wrote, "that one simply affirm that he is sent of
God; every heretic maketh such a claim; but he must prove the truth of
that mysterious mission by some miraculous work or by some special
testimony in the Bible." This Paris clerk denies that the Maid has
presented any such proof, and to judge her by her acts, he believes
her rather to have been sent by the Devil than by God. He reproaches
her with wearing a dress forbidden to women under penalty of anathema,
and he refutes the excuses for her conduct in this matter urged by
Gerson. He accuses her of having excited between princes and Christian
people a greater war than there had ever been before. He holds her to
be an idolatress using enchantments and making false prophecies. He
charges her with having induced men to slay their fellows on the two
high festivals of the Holy Virgin, the Assumption and the Nativity.
"Sins committed by the Enemy of Mankind, through this woman, against
the Creator and his most glorious Mother. And albeit there ensued
certain murders, thanks be to God they were not so many as the Enemy
had intended."

"All these things do manifestly prove error and heresy," adds this
devout son of the University. Whence he concludes that the Maid
should be taken before the Bishop and the Inquisitor; and he ends by
quoting this text from Saint Jerome: "The unhealthy flesh must be cut
off; the diseased sheep must be driven from the fold."[1882]

[Footnote 1882: Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage sur Jeanne d'Arc_,
Paris, 1907, in 8vo, 19 pages.]

Su