"The Lord William, Archbishop of that city (Rheims) and uncle to King Philip, was riding one day for pastime without the city, attended by his clergy; when one of his clerks, Master Gervase of Tilbury, seeing a maiden walking alone in a vineyard, and impelled by the wanton curiosity of youth, went aside to her ... Having saluted her and asked whence she came, and who were her parents, and what she did there alone, having also observed her comeliness for a while, he began at last to address her in a courtly fashion and prayed her of love ...
'Nay,' replied she, with a simple gesture and a certain gravity in her words, scarce deigning to look at the youth, 'Nay, good youth, God forbid that I should ever be thy leman [sweetheart / mistress] or any other man's; for if I were once thus defiled, and lost my virginity, I should doubtless suffer eternal damnation beyond all help. 'Hearing which Master Gervase forthwith knew her for one of this most impious sect of Publicans [Manicheans], who in those days were sought out on every hand and destroyed ...
While therefore the clerk aforesaid disputed with the maiden, confuting this answer of hers', then the Archbishop came up and bade them take the girl and bring her with him to the city. Then, when he had addressed her in the presence of his clergy, and proposed many texts and reasonable arguments to confute her error, she answered that she herself was not so well-instructed as to refute such weighty objections, but confessed she had a mistress in the city who would easily refute all by her reasonings ....
The crone was forthwith sought out by the servants and set before the Archbishop. She, therefore - being assaulted on all sides with texts from Holy Scripture, both by the Archbishop himself and by his clergy, that they might convince her of so heinous an error - yet she, by a certain sinister subtlety of interpretation, so perverted all the texts they cited, that they all understood clearly how the Spirit of All Error spake through her mouth. For she replied so easily, with so ready a memory, to all the texts and stories objected to her, whether from the Old or New Testament, as though she had acquired a knowledge of the whole Scriptures, and had been always in answers of this kind; mingling falsehood with truth, and baffling the true explanation of our faith with a certain pernicious understanding. Since therefore the obstinate minds of both women could be recalled neither by fair words nor foul ... they were shut up in his prison till the morrow.
On the next day they were again they were publicly challenged to renounce their errors ... Yet they ... persisted immovably in the errors they had conceived; wherefore they were unanimously adjudged to the stake. When therefore the fire was already kindled in the city, and they should have been dragged by the serjeants to the penalty to which they had been condemned, then that wicked mistress of error cried aloud: 'O madmen and unjust judges! Think ye to burn me now with your fires? I fear not your doom, nor shudder at the flames which ye have prepared.'
With these words she suddenly drew from her bosom a spool of thread, which she cast through a great window of the hall, yet keeping the clue [a ball of thread or yarn] in her hand, and crying with a loud voice in all men's hearing 'Catch!' No sooner had she spoken this word than she was caught up from the ground, and followed the ball like a bird through the window, under all the men's eyes .... But what became of that witch, or whither she was spirited away, no man of that company could discover.
Meanwhile, the maiden, who had not yet come to such a pitch of madness in that sect, remained behind. No persuasion of reason, no promise of riches, could recall her from her foolish obstinacy; wherefore she was burned to death, to the admiration [wonder] of many who marked how she uttered no sighs, no tears, no laments, but bore with constancy and cheerfulness all torments of the consuming flames, even as the martyrs of Christ (yet for how different a cause!) who were slain in old times by the heathen in defence of the Christian religion. Petrus Cantor, a father of the Church was well aware that women were abused in this way: 'Moreover, certain honest matrons, refusing to consent to the lasciviousness of priests ... have been written by such priests in the book of death, and accused as heretics ... while rich heretics were simply blackmailed and suffered to depart."