Such a disposition is manifest in the excellent and erudite Quicherat, who all unconsciously introduces into the piety of the Maid a great deal of eclectic philosophy.

This point was not without its drawbacks.

It led free-thinking historians to a ridiculous exaggeration of Jeanne's intellectual faculties, to the absurdity of attributing military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel.
The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth.

Unfortunately the Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the Catholic Church down the ages.

In their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted.