Pope Calixtus III.

entertained the request preferred, not by the King of France, but in the name of Isabel Romee, Joan's mother, and her whole family.

Regular proceedings were commenced and followed up for the rehabilitation of the martyr; and, on the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court assembled at Rouen quashed the sentence of 1431, together with all its consequences, and ordered "a general procession and solemn sermon at St.Ouen Place and the Vieux- Marche," where the said maid had been cruelly and horribly burned; besides the planting of a cross of honor (crucis honestee) on the Vieux-Marche, the judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision "throughout the cities and notable places of the realm." The city of Orleans responded to this appeal by raising on the bridge over the Loire a group in bronze representing Joan of Arc on her knees before Our Lady between two angels.

This monument, which was broken during the religious wars of the sixteenth century and repaired shortly afterwards, was removed in the eighteenth century, and, Joan of Arc then received a fresh insult; the poetry of a cynic was devoted to the task of diverting a licentious public at the expense of the saint whom, three centuries before, fanatical hatred had brought to the stake.

In 1792 the council of the commune of Orleans, "considering that the monument in bronze did not represent the heroine's services, and did not by any sign call to mind the struggle against the English," ordered it to be melted down and cast into cannons, of which "one should bear the name of Joan of Arc." It is in our time that the city of Orleans and its distinguished bishop, Mgr.