Parisiensis_, vol.v, p.875.Vallet de Viriville, in _Nouvelle biographie generale_.] [Footnote 757: De Beaucourt, _Extrait du catalogue des actes de Charles VII_, p.

18.] The damsel was interrogated concerning her Voices, which she called her Council, and her saints, whom she imagined in the semblance of those sculptured or painted figures peopling the churches.[758] The doctors objected to her having cast off woman's clothing and had her hair cut round in the manner of a page.

Now it is written: "The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deuteronomy xxii, 5).

The Council of Gangres, held in the reign of the Emperor Valens, had anathematised women who dressed as men and cut short their hair.[759] Many saintly women, impelled by a strange inspiration of the Holy Ghost, had concealed their sex by masculine garb.

At Saint-Jean-des-Bois, near Compiegne, was preserved the reliquary of Saint Euphrosyne of Alexandria, who lived for thirty-eight years in man's attire in the monastery of the Abbot Theodosius.[760] For these reasons, and because of these precedents, the doctors argued: since Jeanne had put on this clothing not to offend another's modesty but to preserve her own, we will put no evil interpretation on an act performed with good intent, and we will forbear to condemn a deed justified by purity of motive.
[Footnote 758: _Trial_, vol.i, pp.