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Winchester, the English cardinal, brother of Bedford, uncle of the young king Henry VI-Winchester, who is to preside later at the trial of Jeanne d’Arc in a high way, the active work being delegated to Cauchon—now becomes one of the most powerful figures in the drama.

He was one of those opulent and ‘aspiring church- men who in that age had utterly forgotten or ignored the solemn words of their Divine Master—“My King- dom is not of this world!” To this world, its riches and honors, its pleasures and complaisances of every sort, they zealously devoted themselves. The most exalted ones amongst them borrowed the purple of Cesar in order to vie in pride and pomp with the kings of Europe, over whom they claimed a real sov- ereignty. Alas! not a few of them stained it with the crimes of Nero, the vices of Domitian. Great wealth, splendid palaces, sumptuous retinues, marked the por- tentous and astonishing change that had supervened in the Christian prelacy. Pride increased in equal proportion. Those lofty priests might justly claim to have invented for themselves a more exacting eti- quette and a more august ceremonial than any of the royal courts of Europe.

Priests of a lower order—the grades were numer- ous—sought promotion and enrichment by means often culpable. Pluralists, simoniacs, intriguants swarmed in the ranks of the church militant, fighting greedily for the good things of this world, walking upon the faces of the poor, rebuking the powerful with a pride more intolerant than their own, crushing the disdainful with a disdain which no mere layman might pretend to face unabashed. Forgotten or ig- nored was Christ’s injunction to the twelve: “Not one amongst you is greater than another’; ironical was the sense which his unworthy followers drew from the mandate, “Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart.”

Everywhere priests were active in the higher secu- lar politics, managing both worlds, as it seemed, with equal address; advising, administering the highest offices of state, sometimes even ruling kings and orinces, making or annulling their marriages at will, depressing or elevating them at pleasure. Sometimes this work was capably and worthily done, serving the interest of society at large. But it was not the proper business of the Fisherman, and in the end it con- tributed to destroy, as much as any other cause, the fabric of Christian unity. Gerson, one of the greatest minds and purest Christians of the age, has these solemn words upon the evils then infesting the church, speaking as with the voice of God:

“I made thee beautiful to ravishment, and all the nations admired thy charms. But thou hadst too much confidence in thy beauty, namely, in thy temporal good and in thy secular power, and thou becamest guilty of fornication in granting to favor and to money what was due only to virtue. Behold, saith the Lord, I shall deliver thee to those who hate thee; they shall destroy the places which thou hast soiled with thy infamies; where thou didst commit injustices and simonies; they shall strip thee of the vestments of thy glory and leave thee full of ignominy.”

Again hearken to these impressive words of Gerson: “Yes, there are two churches, that which is made up of all Christians and whose head is Jesus Christ; the other which speaks only of territories, of money, of sovereignty, of hierarchy, and which occupies itself only with this lower world.”

Such conditions in the church had brought on the great schism which the council of Constance was in- voked to heal (1414) by one of the three rival popes, John XXIII. Him, supreme pontiff, the council ac- cused as follows:

“From his childhood he had been without docility or modesty, without good faith or respect for his parents. He made himself able in every species of simony, in order to advance himself to ecclesiastical dignities. In the embassies he was the scourge of peo- ple committed to his authority. During the time he has been Pope he has performed none of his duties; he has neither fasted nor recited the divine office, nor observed the days of abstinence. He has been the exploiter of the poor, an enemy of justice, a merchant of benefices, of reliques, and of sacraments, a waster of the property of the church, a poisoner, a homicide, a perjurer, a favorer of schism. He has respected neither the modesty of virgins, nor the sanctity of marriage, nor the immunity of convents,.nor the laws of nature, nor those of kinship.”

This terrible indictment does not, however, mark an extreme singularity in the case of John XXIII, for the council did just about as handsomely for his competitors. All three were repudiated, and this was well done, but the harm they had inflicted upon the church, the scandal they had spread wide in the fold of Christ, long survived them and bore fruit after its kind in the heresies and divisions of a later time.

Further deploring conditions in the church due to wealth- and power-seeking priests, the pious Gerson exclaims: “Is it not an abomination to see such a prelate who possesses two hundred benefices [church livings] and this other who controls three hundred? . . . Why the bishops, the abbés, the monks are rather officers of state than of the church, since they occupy them- selves chiefly with sitting in the parliaments.”

Thus only a few years before the date which we have reached in our narrative, the highest voice in the church of France signalized the tares that had sprung up in the vineyard, and especially condemned the type of churchman whom we shall soon see raging for the blood of Jeanne d’Arc.

Gerson died in July while Charles VII, conducted by the Maid, was making his triumphal march upon Orleans. In the paper which he had drawn up concerning Jeanne and her mission the worthy priest used these significant and prophetic words: “Let the party of the just cause take heed lest it render useless by incredulity or ingratitude the divine help which has manifested itself so miraculously.” !

The foregoing explanation will help the reader to a clearer understanding of the final dark passages of Jeanne’s career, in which the malice, bigotry, and monstrous injustice of a large body of men attached to the church and wearing the livery of Christ, cul- minated in a crime that has never since ceased to shock and bewilder the Christian world.

The writer himself has set down naught in malice, nor has it been agreeable to him to recall those an- cient abuses from which the church has long since freed herself. He well knows that even in that cor- rupt time there were good priests, worthy of their Divine Master, who would have prevented the deed which brought so much odium and ignominy upon their order, and upon the Christian name. He is also content to believe that the great crime was perhaps compensated by the regeneration of the true faith and spirit of Christianity to which, in long result, it has so powerfully contributed.

2“-ne must recognize that if there has presented itself, since the death of Christ and the conversion of Constantine, a.situation in which, from a Christian and especially Catholic point of view, the intervention of Providence seemed necessary, it was at the hour when Jeanne d’Arc appeared.”—G. HANOTAUX.