Editing Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Saving Catholicism (section)

== The historical problem of Saint Joan ==

The most prominent modern biographer of Saint Joan is Régine Pernoud (1909-1998), a medieval scholar who warns,    <blockquote>Among the events which he expounds are some for which no rational explanation is forthcoming, and the conscientious historian stops short at that point.<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 387). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.</ref>   </blockquote>So the "conscientious historian" must contain himself to "the facts" and stick to sorting them out for description while avoiding explanation. It's not only impossible, it's historiographically useless: I can describe the Neolithic Revolution all day long, but if I don't attributed it to a cause I have learned nothing. Same with any historical moment, from the Roman ascension to the last American election. What good is history if it just says and does not explain? (If so, the entire profession would be out of a job.)  

But for Joan, so it is. Because her motives, actions, and outcomes are so improbable, to attribute them to anything other than divine guidance makes no sense. But since divine guidance is "ahistorical," or merely an article of faith to her and to us, Joan's motives don't matter. So Pernoud dismisses them altogether, falling back upon,   <blockquote>The believer can no doubt be satisfied with Joan’s explanation; the unbeliever cannot.<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 388). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.</ref></blockquote>So what does the "unbeliever" do with the evidence? We know she had voices. She testified to them consistently and honestly. No reading of the extensive record shows in her any hint of guile or manipulation. Like the Apostle Nathanael, "There is no duplicity in [her]."<ref>[https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/1?47 Jn 1:47]</ref> To say, then, that the "unbeliever cannot" accept Joan's own explanations is an easy out from what is plain to see.   

Instead we hear that it was schizophrenia or moldy bread, which at least recognize that Joan heard voices -- actually Joan didn't just hear voices of Saints, she interacted with them, telling her interrogators of kissing the feet of Saints Catherine and Margaret. Pernoud, however, neither asserts nor denies Joan's voices, which is a complete copout.    

Unlike the historian, the actors of Joan's day had to to decide: either Joan acted on voices of God -- or of Satan. There was no in between.   

Imagine writing a book on the life of Jesus as a non-believer.<ref>Actually, just go to the [[wikipedia:Jesus|Wikipedia entry "Jesus"]] and there you have it.</ref> You would get caught up in denying the Lord's virgin birth, denying the miracles, denying the resurrection, and, ultimately, as some do, denying his historical presence altogether -- understandably so, as the story of Christ makes no sense without his divinity.<ref>Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim tried to do it with "Jesus Christ Superstar," but all they did was to fashion a story that turned Judas into a hero.</ref> Accepting his historicity without the miraculous requires denying the authenticity of the Gospels and attributing them to ''post hoc'' contrivances.<ref>Constantine's vision that led him to put the ChiRho on the shields of his soldiers is said to be an after-the -fact  construct from a vision he told about later in his life. On the surface, it doesn't matter: he won the battle at the bridge. But then we're left with an entirely inexplicable conversion 

There is a stronger case to be made for that exact circumstance with the life of Mohammed and creation of Islam as a post hoc justification for Arab conquest through co-option of the Abrahamic religions.</ref> It gets messy and, frankly, serves merely to deny Christ rather than understand him. 

Similarly, once you see the divine hand in Saint Joan's story, it all makes sense, and you won't be able to conceive that what she did could have happened without God's hand. Deny the divinity and it makes no sense. And that's where Pernoud lands. She denies that Joan was, in CS Lewis' terms<ref>Lewis's formula, called a "trilemma," is most directly stated by him as, " Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse" (Mere Christianity, p 52 in my copy; it's at the end of Ch.3.), that is, he is either a lunatic, a liar, or God.  </ref>, a madman, but neither was she divinely guided. So all we have left is that she was a liar -- and thus of the devil, something Pernoud, a deep admirer of Joan, never broaches, although the English put her to death for it.

Lewis prefaces his argument by noting, <blockquote>I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. </blockquote>The logic applied to Joan goes the same way: treating her merely as an historical character debases what she was and did. So it is that Pernoud concludes that when "confronted by Joan" all we can do is to "admire" her, as the common people have since the 15th century, for "in admiring [they] have understood her":<blockquote>They canonised Joan and made her their heroine, while Church and State were taking five hundred years to reach the same conclusion.<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 391). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.</ref></blockquote>That's as close as Pernoud will come to an historical "saint" Joan -- that she was "canonized" in the hearts of her countrymen. While affirming Joan's popular canonization (okay), Pernoud incorrectly claims that the "Church and State" didn't understand her until 1921, forgetting that Joan's "Rehabilitation Trial" and its declaration of her innocence was, in Pernoud's own words, "in the name of the Holy See."<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 379). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition. </ref> Worse, this historian ought to know that very few of the laity were canonized before the 20th century, including the 16th century Saint Thomas More, who wasn't canonized until 1935, and with great hostility for it from the Anglican Church. Saint Joan's canonization underwent a similar dynamic, but was further delayed by the intervention of the French Revolution and subsequent 19th century European anti-clericalism and anti-monarchism. 

Free of having to address whether Joan's spiritual events were real or not, Pernoud's historiography leads her to this sentimentalized and historically insufficient view of Joan's contemporaries and her legacy. So we get these dumb, dull statements of Joan's legacy, such as at end of one of her books,<blockquote>It remains true that, for us, Joan is above all the saint<ref>note the lower case "saint"</ref> of reconciliation—the one whom, whatever be our personal convictions, we admire and love because, over-riding all partisan points of view, each one of us can find in himself a reason to love her.<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 391). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition. </ref></blockquote>That's no better than this, from the collective wisdom of contributors to "Joan of Arc"'s entry at Wikipedia,<blockquote>Joan's image has been used by the entire spectrum of French politics, and she is an important reference in political dialogue about French identity and unity.<ref>[[wikipedia:Joan_of_Arc#Legacy|Joan of Arc#Legacy - Wikipedia]]</ref></blockquote>It's just gross: Joan is in the eye of the beholder.  

Worse, my concern is that an historiography that frees itself of having to address whether Joan's spiritual events were real or not leads to a misreading of the facts. We cannot comprehend the motives and choices of Joan herself, much less those of her followers without it. Some girl showed up, led an army, got abandoned by her friends and killed by her enemies. Thanks a lot. No, Joan is only real if her visions were real. Just ask the English and Burgundians who knew full well what this young woman had done and why.<ref>See John, Duke of Bedford, his feelings are known to us from a letter which he wrote in 1434, summing up events in France for his nephew the King of England: “And alle thing there prospered for you, til thety me of the siege of Orleans taken in hand, God knoweth by what advis. At the whiche tyme, after the adventure fallen to the persone of my cousin of Salysbury, whom God assoille, there felle, by the hand of God, as it seemeth, a greet strook upon your peuple that was assembled there in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadde beleve, and of unlevefulle doubte that thei hadde of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fais enchauntements and sorcerie. The which strooke and discomfiture nought oonly lessed in grete partie the nombre of youre people, there, but as well withdrowe the courage of the remenant in merveillous wyse, and couraiged youre adverse partie and ennemys to assemble hem forthwith in grete nombre.”

Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 128). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition. </ref> The rage of the ecclesiastical Court and its English backers that condemned her is in inverse proportion to the glory of Joan's visions and the reality Joan and her people understood them to be. To read the epithet the English placed upon a placard by the stake is to understand just how real her voices were: <blockquote>Joan, self-styled the Maid, liar, pernicious, abuser of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, blasphemer of God; presumptuous, misbeliever in the faith of Jesus-Christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic.<ref>From the entry of an English recorder of the events on behalf of Parliament. On the "mitre" put on her head was, "heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater" (as quoted in Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 340). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition). </ref></blockquote>It ought not take much faith to see straight through to the Crucifixion of the Lord himself here and the fury of his executioners, which stand for us in the Gospels as more evidence of the Lord's divinity. Uninformed by faith, the condemnation is just hyperbolic political statement. Oh no, it wasn't. They meant it, and meant it hard. 

Listen to Jean Massieu, Joan's escort to and from the trial,<blockquote>I heard it said by Jean Fleury, clerk and writer to the sheriff, that the executioner had reported to him that once the body was burned by the fire and reduced to ashes, her heart remained intact and full of blood, and he told him to gather up the ashes and all that remained of her and to throw them into the Seine, which he did.</blockquote>Or Isambart de la Pierre, a Dominican priest who witnessed the trial, <blockquote>Immediately after the execution, the executioner came to me and my companion Martin Ladvenu, struck and moved to a marvellous repentance and terrible contrition, all in despair, fearing never to obtain pardon and indulgence from God for what he had done to that saintly woman; and said and affirmed this executioner that despite the oil, the sulphur and the charcoal which he had applied against Joan’s entrails and heart, nevertheless he had not by any means been able to consume nor reduce to ashes the entrails nor the heart, at which was he as greatly astonished as by a manifest miracle.<ref>Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (pp. 332-333). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition. </ref></blockquote>Now we're talking!   

So let's re-write this historian's own epithet for Joan, only with faith and love in Christ, as Joan's canonization is to be celebrated, not used as a weapon against Joan's own faith. <blockquote>They believed in Joan and made her their heroine, affirmed by Mother Church with her official and glorious canonization on May 9, 1921 and followed by State declaring July 10, her Feast Day, a national holiday.</blockquote>>>here   

After Joan's presentation to the Dauphin at Chinon, the Archbishop of Embrun, Jacques Gélu, warned the Dauphin to be careful with a peasant girl from a class that is "easily seduced." After Orleans, The Bishop had a change of heart. Applying the formula of the Evangelist, "by their fruits ye shall know them," he wrote, <blockquote>We piously believe her to be the Angel of the armies of the Lord.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/maidoffrancebein00languoft/page/146/mode/2up?q=Gelu The maid of France; being the story of the life and death of Jeanne d'Arc : Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912] (archive.org)</ref></blockquote>He advised the Dauphin,<blockquote>do every day some deed particularly agreeable to God and confer about it with the maid.<ref>Pernoud, Joan of Arc: her story; p. 184</ref></blockquote>
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[[Category:Saint Joan of Arc]]