Isaac Robotham Mrs. Wrubel A.P. Lang 25 September 2024 The Inquisition of Joan The Inquisitor is giving a speech to the French Clerics in order to convict Joan of heresy. They are in an era where God is feared, misogyny is evident, a Theocracy is in place, and Divine Judgement has the final say. Because of his knowledge of his audience, the Inquisitor establishes his credibility, dramatizes heresy, trivializes the difference between Joan and heresy, and undercuts their forgiveness to effectively manipulate them to believe that Joan should be persecuted. In the beginning, the Inquisitor uses his position and experience to establish credibility with the clerics. His first sentence starts with, “If you have seen what I have seen of heresy.” This …show more content…
After establishing his credibility, the Inquisitor dramatizes heresy and its effects in order to make the situation appear more grave than it is. He starts off by using a slippery slope in order to discredit the heretics. He does this by stating that a woman who “puts on the dress of a man” will surely follow the path that leads to “polygamy, and ends by incest.” He then repeatedly brings up his experience when he states “I have seen this again and again” and when he says “if you saw it at work as I have seen it.” These two statements increase the credibility of the surrounding statements which are describing heresy as a “monstrous horror.” He proceeds by stating that we must not “fall into the common error of mistaking these simple This sets the tone that heretics do not always stand out in a crowd. Through these statements he discredits the heretics and paints them as awful people while also further increasing his credibility that was already established in the beginning. In the last half, the Inquisitor relates heresy back to Joan in order to trivialize the difference between Joan’s life and what he just described heresy