132.] [Footnote 738: Canon Dunand, _La legende anglaise de Jeanne_, Paris, 1903, in 8vo, p.

118.] Here was a large assembly of doctors for the cross-examination of one shepherdess.

But we must remember that in those days theology subtle and inflexible dominated all human knowledge and forced the secular arm to give effect to its judgment.

Therefore, as soon as an ignorant girl caused it to be believed that she had seen God, the Virgin, the saints, and the angels, she must either pass from miracle to miracle, through an edifying death to beatification, or from heresy to heresy through an ecclesiastical prison, to be burnt as a witch.

And, as the holy inquisitors were fully persuaded that the Devil easily entered into a woman, the unhappy creature was more likely to be burnt alive than to die in an odour of sanctity.