Otherwise they might have held it to be trespassing on the rights of the Church, who, as the guardian of the Holy Books, is their jealous interpreter, and does not suffer the authority of Scripture to be set up against the decisions of Councils.[764] What were those books, which without having read she judged to be contrary to those of Our Lord, wherein with mind and spirit she seemed to read plainly?
They would seem to be the Sacred Canons and the Sacred Decretals.

This child's utterance sapped the very foundations of the Church.

Had the doctors of Poitiers been less zealously Armagnac they would henceforth have mistrusted Jeanne and suspected her of heresy.

But they were loyal servants of the houses of Orleans and of France.

Their cassocks were ragged and their larders empty;[765] their only hope was in God, and they feared lest in rejecting this damsel they might be denying the Holy Ghost.
Besides, everything went to prove that these words of Jeanne were uttered without guile and in all ignorance and simplicity.