oly Ghost,
and to render oneself unworthy of divine succour, as Gamaliel said of
the Apostles in the Council of the Jews."[791]

[Footnote 791: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 391, 392.]

In short, the doctors' conclusion was that as yet nothing divine
appeared in the Maid's promises, but that she had been examined and
been found humble, a virgin, devout, honest, simple, and wholly good;
and that, since she had promised to give a sign from God before
Orleans, she must be taken there, for fear that in her the gift of the
Holy Ghost should be rejected.

Of these conclusions a great number of copies were made and sent to
the towns of the realm as well as to the princes of Christendom. The
Emperor Sigismond, for example, received a copy.[792]

[Footnote 792: Eberhard Windecke, pp. 32, 41.]

If the doctors of Poitiers had intended this six weeks inquiry,
culminating in a favourable and solemn conclusion, to bring about the
glorification of the Maid and the heartening of the French people by
the preparation and announcement of the marvel they had before them,
then they succeeded perfectly.[793]

[Footnote 793: The conclusions of the Poitiers commission were
circulated everywhere. Traces of them are to be found in Brittany
(Buchon and _Chronique de Morosini_), in Flanders (_Chronique de
Tournai_ and _Chronique de Morosini_), in Germany (Eb. Windecke), in
Dauphine (Buchon).]

That prolonged investigation, that minute examination reassured those
doubting minds among the French, who suspected a woman dressed as a
man of being a devil; they flattered men's imaginations with the hope
of a miracle; they appealed to all hearts to judge favourably of the
damsel who came forth radiant from the fire of ordeal and appeared as
if glorified with a celestial halo. Her vanquishing the doctors in
argument made her seem like another Saint Catherine.[794] But that she
should have met difficult questions with wise answers was not enough
for a multitude eager for marvels. It was imagined that she had been
subjected to a strange probation from which she had come forth by
nothing short of a miracle. Thus a few weeks after the inquiry, the
following wonderful story was related in Brittany and in Flanders:
when at Poitiers she was preparing to receive the communion, the
priest had one wafer that was consecrated and another that was not. He
wanted to give her the unconsecrated wafer. She took it in her hand
and told the priest that it was not the body