strars
were stationed at a peep-hole in an adjoining room.[2187] If we may
believe the rumours current in the town, Maitre Nicolas also disguised
himself as Saint Catherine, and by this means brought Jeanne to say
all that he wanted.

[Footnote 2187: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 10, 342; vol. iii, pp. 140, 141,
156, 160 _et seq._]

He may not have been proud of such deceptions, but at any rate he made
no secret of them.[2188] Many famous masters approved him; others
censured him.[2189]

[Footnote 2188: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 181.]

[Footnote 2189: _Ibid._, p. 141.]

The angel of the schools, Thomas de Courcelles, when Nicolas told him
of his disguises, counselled him to abandon them.

Afterwards the registrars pretended that it had been extremely
repugnant to them thus to overhear in hiding a conversation so
craftily contrived. The golden age of inquisitorial justice must have
been well over when so strict a doctor as Maitre Thomas was willing
thus to criticise the most solemn forms of that justice. Inquisitorial
proceedings must indeed have fallen into decay when two notaries of
the Church dream of eluding its most common prescriptions. The clerks
who disguised themselves as soldiers, the Promoter who took on the
semblance of a poor prisoner, were exercising the most regular
functions of the judicial system instituted by Innocent III.

In acting the shoemaker and Saint Catherine, if he were seeking the
salvation and not the destruction of the sinner, if, contrary to
public report, far from inciting her to rebellion, he was reducing her
to obedience, if, in short, he were but deceiving her for her own
temporal and spiritual good, Maitre Nicolas Loiseleur was proceeding
in conformity with established rules. In the _Tractatus de Haeresi_ it
is written: "Let no man approach the heretic, save from time to time
two persons of faith and tact, who may warn him with precaution and as
having compassion upon him, to eschew death by confessing his errors,
and who may promise him that by so doing he shall escape death by
fire; for the fear of death, and the hope of life may peradventure
soften a heart which could be touched in no other wise."[2190]

[Footnote 2190: _Tractatus de haeresi pauperum de Lugduno_, apud
Martene, _Thesaurus anecd._, vol. v, col. 1787. J. Quicherat, _Apercus
nouveaux_, pp. 131, 132.]

The duty of registrars was laid down in the following manner:

"Matters shall be ordained thus, that certain persons sh