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To complete the list of the other French clergy French only by birth and nationality indeed must be added the names of Chatillon, Archdeacon of Evreux; Erard, Canon of Langres, Laon, and Beauvais; Martin Ladvenu, a Dominican priest, one of the few who showed some humanity to the prisoner.
When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at first to grief and terror. "Alas!" she cried, "am I to be so horribly and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would seven times rather be beheaded than burned!"
It was Ladvenu who heard her confession on the day of her execution, and who after her death testified to her saintliness. Isambard de la Pierre, also a Dominican. Although he voted for her death, de la Pierre showed signs of pity and compassion for his victim, and assisted her at her last moments. Testimony to her pure character was given by him in the time of her rehabilitation.
When Joan perceived the flames rising, she urged her confessor, the Dominican brother, Martin Ladvenu, to go down, at the same time asking him to keep holding the cross up high in front of her, that she might never cease to see it.
He also relates that the executioner was ordered to collect the ashes and all that remained, and to throw those few relics of humanity into the Seine, which was accordingly done. Martin Ladvenu followed Massieu. Ladvenu was a Dominican friar: he was one of the few priests who showed some humanity to the victim.
He had been an acolyte of the Vice-Inquisitor, Lemaître; he too, like Ladvenu, had shown sympathy with the sufferer, had given her advice during the trial, and had helped to soothe her last moments.
When Joan of Arc was taken forth to die, there mounted with her on to the cart the two priests, Martin Ladvenu and Isambard. Eight hundred English troops lined the road by which the death-cart and its load passed from the castle to the old market-place; they were armed with staves and with axes.
Cauchon and the others having left her alone with Martin Ladvenu, she made her confession to him, and when that was finished she begged that the Sacrament might be administered to her. Without Cauchon's leave Ladvenu did not dare to obtain this supreme consolation for the martyr. He despatched a messenger to the Bishop, who, after consulting with some of the clergy, gave his permission.
We stood silent awhile, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly: "Joan." She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said: "Speak. Have you a message for me?" "Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?" "Yes" very softly, and her head drooped again.
"Master Peter," said she to him, "where shall I be to-night?" "Have you not good hope in God?" asked the doctor. "O! yes," she answered; "by the grace of God I shall be in paradise." Being left alone with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he was to do.
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