McGrath, it was through the authority and actions of the Church and the Pope(s) of the time that the infamous trials of the Inquisition (including Joan's) and the body of Canon Law which supported them were carried out. According to this article

"Long charged with the investigation of cases involving superstition, the medieval inquisition found its activity increased in 1484, when Innocent VIII directed Jacob Sprenger and Henry Kramer, inquisitors in Germany, to examine persons accused of witchcraft ... Sprenger and Kramer published a better-known book and one that long exercised a decided influence on witchcraft trials. Their Hammer of Witches (Malleus maleficarum) dealt with the nature and evils of witchcraft and the court procedures for trying cases. Designed as a help to inquisitors, it became the textbook on sorcery and witchcraft and lay on the desk of jurists and judges, Catholic and Protestant, for a long time to come. It is still held up as a notorious symbol of the mass hysteria that spread over Catholic and Protestant Europe for several centuries."

Here is Sprenger and Kramer's (those darlings of Pope Innocent (???) VIII The Malleus Malificarum (Hammer of Witches). And a couple of it's Church-ordained decrees about women, to whet your appetite ...

"Thus Saint John Chrysostom says, about the text "it is not good to marry" [from Matthew 19], "what else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors...

Others again have given other reasons why there are more superstitious women than men. And the first is, that they are more credulous; and since the chief aim of the devil is to corrupt faith, therefore he attacks them. See Ecclesiasticus 19: "He that is quick to believe is light-minded, and shall be brought down."

The second reason is that women are naturally more impressionable, and more ready to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit, and that when they use this quality well they are very good, but when they use it badly they are very evil.

The third reason is that they have slippery tongues, and are unable to conceal from their fellow-women those things which they know through their evil arts. And since they are weak, they find a secret and easy manner of vindicating themselves by witchcraft.... Since they are feebler both in mind and body, it is not surprising that they should come more under the spell of witchcraft. For as regards intellect, of the understanding of spiritual things, they seem to be of a different nature than men...

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives."


The fact that Joan was spared having to defend herself against the divine wisdom of the yet-unwritten "Witch's Hammer" doesn't appear to have helped her too much as she faced the Church's Inquisitors. Oh well, after reading all that, methinks this imperfect animal needs to to go put her Hair Shirt back on.

Or maybe just say 10 Hail Marys or something?     ;-)