Joan of Arc

 This 1429 sketch by Clèment de Fauquembergue appeared in the protocol of the parliament of Paris.  

The case of Joan of Arc is one where 'divine guidance' was associated with a teenager personally taking up arms and inspiring troops to victory.  According to trial transcripts, the first voice that came to her was that of Saint Michael.  She is quoted as having declared: "I saw him before my eyes; he was not alone, but quite surrounded by the Angels of Heaven."  St. Michael told her that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite would be her aids.  Another quotation of Joan is: "I have done nothing except by revelation from God."

Jules Michelet included a biographical profile of Jeanne in a historical book about France and this portion was published as Joan of Arc: or, The Maid of Orleans (1858).  Michelet wrote that Jeanne was the daughter of laborer Jacques Darc and Isabella Romèe.  The meeting with the future Charles VII was described by Michelet as follows:

“Gentle dauphin,” she addressed him, “my name is Jehanne la Pucelle.  The King of heaven sends you word by me that you shall be consecrated and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of heaven, who is king of France.”  The king then took her aside, and, after a moment’s consideration, both changed countenance.  She told him, as she subsequently acknowledged to her confessors: — “I am commissioned by my Lord to tell you, that you are the true heir to the French throne, and the king’s son.”*

*According to a somewhat later, but still very probable account, she reminded him of a circumstance known to himself alone; namely, that one morning in his oratory he had prayed to restore his kingdom to him if he were the lawful heir, but that if he were not, that He would grant him the mercy not to be killed or thrown into prison but to be able to take refuge in Spain or in Scotland.— Sala, Exemples de Hardiesse, MS. Français, de la Bibl. Royale, No. 180.

Although detailed documentation of the life of Joan of Arc has been preserved, the records cannot be considered to provide verbatim accounts of Joan's commentary, as Donald Spoto suggested in Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (2007):

During Joan's trial hundreds of questions were put to her by the Church court.  The interrogations of ecclesiastical judges and theological inquisitors, along with her replies, were recorded each day in French by the chief notary, Guillaume Manchon, and by his two assistants, Guillaume Colles (also called Boisguillaume) and Nicholas Taquel.  Every evening the three men compared, collated, and corrected their notes.  The original of this document is lost to us, but notarized copies have been preserved at the Bibliothèque Municipale in Orléans.

The final and official register of the trial, prepared at the order of the chief judge, Bishop Pierre Cauchon, was based on Manchon's minutes but included much more: in fact, Cauchon ordered the record deliberately falsified at crucial points in order to secure Joan's condemnation and execution.  The trial document was completed in Latin by Thomas Courcelles, who was himself one of Joan's judges.

Spoto also revealed that what had long been presumed to be the abjuration of Joan of Arc was "a complete fabrication composed later by Thomas de Courcelles under orders from Pierre Cauchon."

"What she signed," according to Massieu, who was at her side and whose testimony was supported by the others, "was a paper of no more than eight lines, saying that she would not again bear arms, wear men's clothing, or cut her hair.  That was what I read to her.  But another document, not this one, was put into the trial record.  She had no idea what was on it, nor what were the consequences of signing."

I found an interesting military anecdote about the June 18, 1429 Battle of Patay in Joan of Arc: Her Story (1999) by Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin (translated and revised by Jeremy duQuesnay Adams).  Participant Jean de Wavrin's description of what had occurred was quoted.

A series of accidents shattered the English array.  The vanguard gave warning of the French approach and then assumed its position among the support wagons and artillery "all along the hedges that were near Patay."  Talbot then posted himself where he thought the French would pass, "guessing that he would be able to hold that passage until the arrival of troop reinforcements."  But he was wrong, as Wavin remarked: "The French held tight formation and pursued their enemies, whom they could not yet see, nor did they know their positions, until by luck the scouts in front saw a stag leap from the woods and take the road toward Patay.  It jumped into the English formation, whereupon it uttered a great cry.  The French had not known that their enemies were so close to them."

The scouts ran to inform their companies.  The engagement began before the major units of the English force could come together, even in a disorderly fashion.

On the French side, three men were dead; on the English side, the Burgundian chroniclers estimated the casualties at 2,000.  Wavrin concluded: "Thus the French gained victory at the place called Patay, where they spent the night, thanking Our Lord for their fine adventure. . . . Because of its location, that battle will forever be called 'The Day of Patay.'" 

There were incidents that may have forewarned Joan that her continued military pursuits would not end favorably.  When the king ordered the march upon Paris, an arrow pierced Joan's thigh before she withdrew.  Another omen is mentioned in the Michelet biography.

. . . she was relentless towards the dissolute women who accompanied the camp.  One day she struck one of these wretched beings with St. Catherine's sword, with the flat of the sword only; but the virginal weapon, unable to endure the contact, broke, and it could never be reunited.

Joan was captured on May 23, 1430.   As Donald Spoto wrote in his biography of Joan, she became desperate when it became clear that she would be sold to the English.  "There was a seventy-foot drop from her tower keep to the ground, and she jumped from her cell . . . painfully bruised but otherwise unhurt, she was returned to her cell, unable to eat or drink anything for several days . . ."  

Michelet observed in The Maid of Orleans, "If the Pucelle herself were not tried, condemned and burned as a sorceress — if her victories were not set down as due to the devil, they would remain in the eyes of the people miracles, God's own works."

Here is the entry about Joan of Arc from The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (1959) by Rossell Hope Robbins with some redundant paragraphs omitted.

Joan of Arc.  Just as in 1590 King James of Scotland believed in Agnes Sampson when she told him what he said to his bride on their wedding night, so in 1429 Charles VII of France believed in Joan of Arc when she repeated his personal daily prayer to God.  But a superstitious king is a feeble reed, and when Joan was captured, Charles did nothing to rescue or ransom her.  Instead, he transferred his trust in some mystic savior to a young shepherd boy, who was speedily captured by the English and drowned in the Seine.  Joan of Arc's trial by the English and Burgandian allies was clearly political, designed to discredit the successes she had brought the French king: she was a witch and he owed his crown to witchcraft.  The priests who conducted her trial were for this reason more than usually scrupulous in restricting the process to matters of faith, i.e., heresy.

The literature on Joan of Arc now amounts to over 4,000 items.  The New York Public Library catalogues nearly 700 entries, but only one (a minor magazine article) mentions witchcraft.  It is often supposed that Joan of Arc was condemned as a witch.  This is inaccurate.  She was popularly  bruited a sorceress and originally alleged a witch; but she was officially condemned as a heretic and legally burned as a relapsed heretic.  This fact indicates the embryonic concept of witchcraft in 1431, when it was simpler to secure conviction for heresy than for sorcery.  Within the century the reverse would be true.

Joan of Arc [Jehanette or Jehanne Darc] was captured trying to raise the siege of Compiègne on May 23, 1430, by the Bastard of Wandomme, a knight in the service of Jean de Ligny (of the house of Luxembourg).  Three days after her capture, the Inquisitor General of France, Friar Martin Billorin, claimed inquisitorial jurisdiction over Joan "as one violently suspect of several errors savoring heresy."  On July 14 Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, a renegade Frenchman acting for the English, claimed episcopal jurisdiction over Joan as suspect of sorcery and invocation of devils.  For her person, he offered Ligny 10,000 francs in cash and to Wandomme an annuity of £300, money raised by taxes in Normandy.  Her captors, waiting for a counter offer as ransom from the French King, hesitated.  The English-oriented University of Paris assuaged their conscience by pointing out they should act "for the preservation of Holy Church and safe-guarding divine honor, and for the utmost benefit to this most Christian kingdom."  In mid-November, Joan was surrendered to Bishop Cauchon.  The Inquisitor, who had not been willing to compete in the bidding, had to be content with joining the Bishop in trying her.

Joan was imprisoned in the castle of Rouen, the English occupation forces claiming the ecclesiastical prison insecure.  En route, she was exhibited in a specially constructed iron cage, barely big enough for her to stand upright, chained by the neck, hands, and feet.

On January 9, 1431, Joan was given an informal hearing before a small, hand-picked court.  The nine ecclesiastics were well known and erudite, and pro-English, accepting the somewhat irregular jurisdiction of Bishop Cauchon, from a different diocese.  During the four sessions, Joan's high-minded answers created a favorable impression, enhanced by the testimony of women appointed by the Duchess of Bedford that Joan was a virgin (and therefore by implication not a witch), and by the favorable reports brought back by royal notaries from her neighbors at Domremy, her birthplace.  "They found nothing, they said, which they would not have wished to find in their own sister."  But Bishop Cauchon repressed this evidence and drew up several "articles."

After this informal hearing, the regular preparatory interrogations [procès d'office] began in Rouen Castle on February 21, 1431, before forty-two priests (seldom all present at the same time).  The Bishop of Beauvais presided but turned over the duty of "promoting" or prosecuting to his canon, Jean d'Estivet.  At the second session, February 22, the court was joined by the deputy of the Inquisitor General, the Inquisitor Jean le Maistre.  After the sixth session, Bishop Cauchon decided to conduct further hearings in camera before a few reliable examiners, "in order not to fatigue the rest."  From March 10, Joan was examined in her prison cell.  Her examination revolved around her claim that her voices or revelations from St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret were divine, and on her refusal to accept the authority of the Church in such matters.  The implication was that these voices came from the Devil, an interpretation heightened by questions about fairies, a holy tree, mandrakes, and catching butterflies.

As usual in such trials, the judges thought in scholastic terms and, to test Joan's orthodoxy, tried to confuse her by tricky questions.  Here are some random examples from the sixteen sessions (the last on March 17, 1431), later offered as proof of her heresy:

 

Q. Does she see St. Michael and the angels corporeally?
A. I see them with my own corporeal eyes, as well as I see you.  And when they leave, I weep, and I wish they would take me with them.
Q. What proof does she have the revelations come from God, and that St. Catherine and St. Margaret are really involved?
A. I have told you often enough that they are St. Catherine and St. Margaret.  Believe me if you want to.
Q. Does St. Margaret speak English?
A. Why should she speak English since she does not belong to the English party?
Q. How does she know that St. Catherine and St. Margaret hate the English?
A. They love what God loves and hate what God hates.
Q. Does God hate the English?
A. I know nothing about God's love or hatred for the English or what he will do about their souls.  But I do know they will be expelled from France, save those who die here.
Q. Does St. Michael have hair?
A. Why?  Do they want to cut it?
Q. Has she kissed St. Michael and St. Catherine.
A. Yes.
Q. Do they smell pleasant?
A. It's good to know that they smell pleasant.
Q. In embracing them, does she ever feel any warmth or anything else?
A. It is not possible for me to embrace them without feeling or touching them.
Q. What part has she embraced, the upper or lower?
A. It is more decorous to embrace them above rather than below.
Q. Was St. Michael nude?
A. Do you think then that God has nothing to clothe him with?

   

As a result of this preliminary process, on March 27 Joan of Arc was brought to formal "trial in ordinary" [procès ordinaire or procès de droit inquisitorial] in Rouen Castle before thirty-seven clerical judges (including two English priests, William Bralbester and John de Hampton), headed again by the Bishop of Beauvais and the Inquisitor.  Seventy counts were made against her:
  

Vehemently suspected, rumored, and notoriously delated by virtuous and sober persons . . . denounced and declared sorceress, witch, diviner, pseudo-prophetess, invoker of evil spirits, conjurer, superstitious, implicated in and given to the arts of magic, doubting the Catholic faith, schismatic . . . blasphemer against God and the saints, scandalous and seditious, perturber of the peace, inciter to war . . . indecent and shameless, seducer of princes and people . . . heretic or at least vehemently suspect of heresy.

 

After considerable testimony about her earlier life and the magic-ridden customs of Domremy, the main attack turned to her revelations.  Joan was trapped when she admitted disobeying her "voices" when she sought to escape from prison, jumping from a high tower at Beaurevoir Castle, and when she had urged an attack on Paris.  Logically she was caught in a dilemma: either she had  no revelations from God, or she had disobeyed revelations from God.  Furthermore, she admitted feeling impelled to jump from the tower; in this she had denied free will and had obeyed the Devil.

After thorough inspection of the evidence on these original seventy counts, on April 2 the court struck out all allegations of sorcery or witchcraft (which could hardly be sustained) and reduced the charges to twelve.  One covered her belief in apparitions, noting, "On all sides, men and women are rising up, feigning to have revelations of God and his angels, sowing lies and errors."  The two principal charges were her wearing of men's costume and her refusal to accept the Church militant.  "In case the Church wished her to do something contrary to the commandments she said came from God, she could not do it."  In this respect, Joan of Arc was simply a premature Protestant.

Reports on these twelve items were submitted to sixteen doctors of theology and six licentiates of law.  After three days, they declared the charges proved.  "She sets herself up as an authority, a doctor, a master," they complained.  With this backing, the chapter of Rouen Cathedral found Joan a heretic.

On April 18, 1431, the Bishop and the Inquisitor appealed to Joan to reconsider.  She refused.  Joan fell sick, but physicians cured her, for, as the Duke of Warwick was reported to have said, "the King of England had paid too much for her to be deprived of the pleasure of seeing her burn."  Another opportunity for Joan to recant came on May 2 at a solemn session in Rouen Castle before sixty theologians.  Joan was still obdurate.  On May 9 the instruments of torture were prepared, but on May 12 the judges decided against torture, on the curious grounds that since the whole procedure had been so meticulously conducted, no opportunity should be given for calumny that her confession was forced.

In an effort to hasten her execution, the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester had referred her case to the University of Paris.  From April 29 to May 14, the combined four faculties of the Sorbonne deliberated on the records of her trial.  The rector, Pierre de Gonda, returned their unanimous verdict: if she would not admit her errors, she should be "relaxed" to the secular authority.  This decision was pronounced at Rouen on May 23, 1431.  A canon of Rouen, Pierre Maurice, pleaded with Joan:
  

Suppose the King of France, by his authority, had entrusted to you the defense of some place, warning you to prevent any chance comer from entering.  Some one says he comes by authority of the King, without presenting to you any letter or certain token.  Well, should you believe him and admit him?  In the same way, God has delivered the rule of his Church to St. Peter and his successors. . . . Thus you should not have given credit to those who you say appeared to you.  Obey the Church and submit yourself to her judgment.

 

To all his persuasion, Joan replied:

 

Whatever I had said about my deeds and words in this trial, I let it stand and wish to reaffirm it.  Even if I should see the fire lit, the faggots blazing, and the hangman ready to begin the burning, and even if I were in the pyre, I could not say anything different.

 

On May 24, 1431, in the cemetery of St. Ouen in Rouen, before the English Cardinal Bishop of Winchester and the Bishop of Norwich and a host of distinguished clerics and laymen, the Rector of the University of Paris, Guillaume Erard, delivered a sermon, taking as his text, John xv.  6: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."  The executioner was standing by to translate this metaphor into reality.  Unexpectedly, Joan tried to make a last-minute appeal to the Pope, and then suddenly capitulated, promising to abjure her visions and obey the Church.  The English soldiery was furious at losing its victim and stoned the French ecclesiastics.
 
At the start of her life imprisonment "on the bread of grief and the water of affliction"—not in the church prison she had expected—her English guards took away the female attire she had resumed, and substituted men's clothes.  The procès de rèhabilitation, as biased as the process condemning her, said that eventually she was forced to put them on in order to go to relieve herself.  The ecclesiastical court, instantly informed of her change of dress, condemned her on May 28 as a relapsed heretic.  Joan retracted her confession and insisted her revelations were divine.  On May 29, two friars labored to induce her to repent.  The next day, May 30, 1431, the Bishop of Beauvais and the Inquisitor read the sentence of excommunication, "casting her forth and rejecting her from the communion of the Church as an infected limb, and handing her over to the secular justice."  There was no secular court, however, and as soon as the priests had left the Old Market Place, the Bailiff of Rouen ordered the execution.  The twenty-year-old girl, her head crowned with a miter reading "Relapsed, heretic, apostate, idolater," was placed high on the pyre so the flames would reach her slowly.  When her dress had been burned, the hangman slaked the fire so the mob could gaze on "all the secrets which can or should be in a woman. . . . And when the people had satisfied themselves and watched her die, tied to the stake, the hangman built up a huge fire on the poor corpse, which was soon completely burned, and bones and flesh turned to ashes." 
 
Just as this trial had been essentially political, to satisfy the dominant English, so the later process annulling it, on June 16, 1456, was similarly political, to justify the victorious French.  In the nineteenth century, interest in Joan of Arc was revived by the clerical party in France, as the Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed.) noted, "to advertise . . . the intimate union between patriotism and the Catholic faith."  On June 6, 1904, Joan was decreed "venerable" by Pope Pius X, and beatified on December 13, 1908.  On May 9, 1920, she was canonized by Pope Benedict XV, and on July 10, 1920, the French government declared her festival (May 30) a national holiday.

The signature of Joan of Arc.

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