Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle): Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
Line 10: | Line 10: | ||
Please note that the discussion of Saint Joan here is analysis not narrative, although the narrative is presented, if disjointedly. To review a straight chronology of her life, please see the [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc Timeline|Joan of Arc Timeline]] or find a good narrative treatment of her from the [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc bibliography|Joan of Arc bibliography]]. | Please note that the discussion of Saint Joan here is analysis not narrative, although the narrative is presented, if disjointedly. To review a straight chronology of her life, please see the [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc Timeline|Joan of Arc Timeline]] or find a good narrative treatment of her from the [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc bibliography|Joan of Arc bibliography]]. | ||
----<sub>'''Notes on page readability and navigation:''' | ---- | ||
<div style="background-color:#e8f0f2; border: 1px solid; margin:15px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right:15px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px;"> | |||
* | <sub>'''Notes on page readability and navigation:''' | ||
* | * Select expand menu on the top left to view and navigate between page sections (chapters). | ||
* | * Use the "Appearance" menu to the right to adjust text size and page content width. | ||
** | * This page employs extensive footnotes for reference and further discussion of the in-line text. | ||
** | ** for ease of reading references, hover over (or touch) the footnote number and the notes will appear. | ||
** | ** if you click on the footnote number, it will take you to the References section at the bottom of the page. | ||
** on mobile phones, touch and hold will show the footnote, whereas on Windows 11 tablets it will take you to the footnote; recommended is to your mouse hover either with a mouse or mousepad, or using the Windows virtual mousepad. | |||
</sub></div> | |||
----<sub>Copyright © Michael L. Bromley, 2024-2025. All rights reserved. All content provided on this website, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material is for informational purposes only. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.</sub><div style="text-align: center; border: 2px solid red; background-color: #ffe6e6; padding: 5px; width: 50%; margin: auto;"> | ----<sub>Copyright © Michael L. Bromley, 2024-2025. All rights reserved. All content provided on this website, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material is for informational purposes only. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.</sub><div style="text-align: center; border: 2px solid red; background-color: #ffe6e6; padding: 5px; width: 50%; margin: auto;"> | ||
Line 24: | Line 26: | ||
</div><sub>This website is built on MediaWiki, the same platform as Wikipedia. This site is unrelated to Wikipedia, although it does graphics hosted by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and which are in the Public Domain.</sub> | </div><sub>This website is built on MediaWiki, the same platform as Wikipedia. This site is unrelated to Wikipedia, although it does graphics hosted by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and which are in the Public Domain.</sub> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
<div style="background-color:#e8f0f2"> | <div style="background-color:#e8f0f2; border: 1px solid; margin:15px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right:15px; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px;"> | ||
<sub>Related pages: | <sub>Related pages: | ||
* | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Saving Catholicism|Saint Joan of Arc: Saving Catholicism]] presents a larger discussion of the historical context of Saint Joan's accomplishments and purpose.< | ||
* [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc Timeline| | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc Timeline|Joan of Arc Timeline</sub>]] | ||
* [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc bibliography| | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Joan of Arc bibliography|Joan of Arc bibliography</sub>]] | ||
* [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Kings of France and England| | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Kings of France and England|Kings of France and England]] | ||
* [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Popes and antipopes| | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/Popes and antipopes|Popes and antipopes]] | ||
* | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/People, places at terms in the story of Joan of Arc|Saint Joan of Arc Glossary]] for names, places & terms, as well as a flow chart of the lineage of French Kings (which can otherwise be confusing) | ||
* | * [[Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)/The Life of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel|The Life of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel]] (with Joan of Arc series from National Gallery of Art) | ||
Here for [[:Category:Saint Joan of Arc|Saint Joan of Arc category]] list of related pages | |||
</div> | </sub></div> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
== Joan the Maid ''(Jeanne la Pucelle)'' == | == Joan the Maid ''(Jeanne la Pucelle)'' == |
Revision as of 21:29, 23 January 2025
("Concerning the fact of the Maid and the faith due to her")[1]
Saint Joan of Arc (1412-1431) called herself, Jeanne la Pucelle,[2] meaning "Joan the Maid." Her followers called her, simply, La Pucelle. Her worst antagonists spitefully called her "the one who calls herself the Maid."[3]
It was not until after her martyrdom that she was called "Joan of Orleans" or "the Maid of Orléans" in reference to her miraculous intervention in the Hundred Years War, the turning point of which was the relief of the city of Orléans from an English siege conducted under Joan's improbable and brilliant military command.
While we know her in English as Joan of Arc, neither she nor her contemporaries used the surname, d'Arc, which only appeared during posthumous investigations called the Trial of Rehabilitation[4] starting in 1452, nine years after her death, in reference to her father's surname, Darc. [5]
Saint Joan of Arc saved France, and doing so saved Catholicism itself, which I propose was her mission all along. She was canonized by the Catholic Church on May 16, 1920.
These pages present a Catholic view of Saint Joan that is consistent with the historical record. It reviews the facts of the life and accomplishments of Saint Joan of Arc, as well as their historical context. It offers commentary and criticism of historical and academic views of Joan, especially as regards the secularization and ideological contortions of her life and legacy. The verity of Joan's visions (which we will call her "Voices") is assumed here, which enables important typological and scriptural connections to Joan's life and acts. Presented here, as well, is the theory that Joan's mission was not to save France so much as to save Roman Catholicism.
These pages assume everything that Saint Joan did, experienced, and testified, as testified in the historical record, was real, not just to her, but objectively real.
Please note that the discussion of Saint Joan here is analysis not narrative, although the narrative is presented, if disjointedly. To review a straight chronology of her life, please see the Joan of Arc Timeline or find a good narrative treatment of her from the Joan of Arc bibliography.
Notes on page readability and navigation:
- Select expand menu on the top left to view and navigate between page sections (chapters).
- Use the "Appearance" menu to the right to adjust text size and page content width.
- This page employs extensive footnotes for reference and further discussion of the in-line text.
- for ease of reading references, hover over (or touch) the footnote number and the notes will appear.
- if you click on the footnote number, it will take you to the References section at the bottom of the page.
- on mobile phones, touch and hold will show the footnote, whereas on Windows 11 tablets it will take you to the footnote; recommended is to your mouse hover either with a mouse or mousepad, or using the Windows virtual mousepad.
Copyright © Michael L. Bromley, 2024-2025. All rights reserved. All content provided on this website, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material is for informational purposes only. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
This website is built on MediaWiki, the same platform as Wikipedia. This site is unrelated to Wikipedia, although it does graphics hosted by Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and which are in the Public Domain.
Related pages:
- Saint Joan of Arc: Saving Catholicism presents a larger discussion of the historical context of Saint Joan's accomplishments and purpose.<
- Joan of Arc Timeline
- Joan of Arc bibliography
- Kings of France and England
- Popes and antipopes
- Saint Joan of Arc Glossary for names, places & terms, as well as a flow chart of the lineage of French Kings (which can otherwise be confusing)
- The Life of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (with Joan of Arc series from National Gallery of Art)
Here for Saint Joan of Arc category list of related pages
Joan the Maid (Jeanne la Pucelle)
At her "Trial of Condemnation[6] held under English authority," Joan testified as to her name, explaining,[7]
In my own country they call me Jeannette; since I came into France I have been called Jeanne. Of my surname I know nothing.
Jeanne, or Jehanne, is feminine for John, which means "God favors," and which is echoed by the name given her in the sole literary work composed during her time, the Pucelle de Dieu ("Maid of God").[8] Joan may have been called Petit-Jean, by her family, after her uncle Jean. More importantly, her "voices" -- God's messengers -- called her "Daughter of God":[9]
Before the raising of the Siege of Orleans and every day since, when they speak to me, they call me often, ‘Jeanne the Maid, Daughter of God.’
The name d'Arc arose as one of several varieties of her father's family name, Darc, Dars, Dai, Day, Darx, Dart, or d'Arc.[10] A possibility is that her father's family had originated in the village Arc-en-Barrois, which would have made for the surname "Arc" or "d'Arc".[11] Nevertheless, the name Arc is derived from the French for "arrow," which would be fitting for Joan's presence and effect upon her times. Besides, d'Arc is the coolest sounding of the batch, so perhaps that's why it stuck.
Joan testified that girls in her village did not use their paternal surname and instead used that of the mother. Hers was Romée, which makes for an interesting connection in that the name derives from "Rome," indicating a pilgrimage to Rome[12] at some point. Along with a similar possible etymological origin to her village name, Domrémy, the connection to Rome becomes interesting to us insofar as at her trial by the English Joan stood resoundingly for the Roman Pope over the schismatic antipope who had before been supported by her compatriots in France. Additionally, during the trial she affirmed she would say to the to the Holy See at Rome what she was telling the court in France,[13] a bit like Saint Paul appealing to Caesar and thus to Rome.
Her name, Joan, did not represent her mission or her role in it, which is why she used "Pucelle", or "Maid," which spoke to her divine charge.
Handmaid of the Lord
It is often observed that Joan used the term pucelle, for "maid," or "maiden," to emphasize her virginity.[14] In common usage today, the masculine puceau directly means a man who has not had sex. However, the feminine pucelle then and now means either "young girl" (maiden) or "virgin," but not necessarily both, although the association may be implied.[15]
But "maid" or "handmaid," as it could also be translated, makes a clear association with the greatest "handmaid" of them all, Our Lady, Mother of God. Joan was devoted to Mary,[16] and had inscribed her name atop her battle standard along with that of the Lord: "Jhesus † Maria".[17]
Joan, like anyone in her day, would have made a direct connection of the word pucelle to the words of Mary herself:
Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”[18]
They would have known the passage from the Latin Vulgate[19] with the term, ancilla, which is a female servant or slave and not necessarily a virgin:[20]
dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini
The Vulgate New Testament was translated from Greek, so we can go to the original Greek word in Luke 1:38, δούλη (doulē), which means "slave woman" or "female servant," both of which become in English, the traditional "handmaiden", the meaning of which is directly "female servant."[21] In her home parish, Joan would have heard the Gospel in Latin, but if her priest ever preached the passage in a homily -- a certainty -- Joan would have heard not just the direct translation into French,
Marie dit: Je suis la servante du Seigneur
but also the reference to Mary as
la Pucelle Maria
as "Virgin Mary" as was used commonly at the time.[22] So "pucelle" and "servant" are distinct but both accurate references to Mary. So if we think of la Pucelle solely as a virgin, we are missing the larger significance in the context of Luke 1:38, Mary's fiat,
May it be done to me according to your word.
The pucelle is a virgin -- and Joan was-- but more importantly God's loyal servant who follows the instructions of the Archangel. For Mary it was the Archangel Gabriel; for Joan it was the Archangel Michael. For both, it was the Word of God.
Virgin
To the modern, especially academic, audience, the matter of Joan's virginity is understood as a male obsession or instrument of the patriarchy, or whatever they say about these things. One theory holds that Joan called herself "the virgin" in order to fend off the soldiers around her,[23] while another claims she wanted to "emphasize her unique identity".[24] But to both Joan and her accusers at the Trial of Condemnation, the matter of her virginity presented a deadly serious theological question: if she was truly an ambassador from God, then she had to be a virgin; if not, as the English-backed court tried to prove, she was a witch, as a virgin, it was understood, was incorrupt of Satan's reach.
As the 19th century French historian Jules Michelet's explained,
The archbishop of Embrun, who had been consulted, pronounced similarly ; supporting his opinion by showing how God had frequently revealed to virgins, for instance, to the sibyls, what he concealed from men ; how the demon could not make a covenant with a virgin ; and recommending it to be ascertained whether Jehanne were a virgin.[25]
Both the French and the English-supported Burgundians submitted her to the physical test conducted by ladies who affirmed her purity. The French, who first examined Joan both physically and theologically, questions to which she answered consistently, simply, and strenuously, concluded, "The maid is of God."[26] They found nothing impure in her, which was important for fulfillment of the legend that Joan herself invoked, such as she told her uncle, Durand Lexart, and which had become current as she made her way to meet the prince of France, the Dauphin[27]:
"Has it not been said that France will be lost by a woman[28] and shall thereafter be restored by a virgin?[29]
At the Condemnation Trial under the English at Rouen, Joan was pressed several times on her virginity, which had already been affirmed by ladies of the English-allied Burgundian court. Her accusers wouldn't let it go. Having caught on to a story about a supposed marriage when she was younger, they pressed her,
“When you promised Our Saviour to preserve your virginity, was it to Him that you spoke?”
“It would quite suffice that I give my promise to those who were sent by Him—that is to say, to Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.”
“Who induced you to have cited a man of the town of Toul on the question of marriage?”
“I did not have him cited; it was he, on the contrary, who had me cited; and then I swore before the Judge to speak the truth. And besides, I had promised nothing to this man. From the first time I heard my Voices, I dedicated my virginity for so long as it should please God; and I was then about thirteen years of age. My Voices told me I should win my case in this town of Toul.”
Argued by Joan herself before the magistrate at Toul, the marriage claim was dismissed. She was neither bequeathed to nor married the man, and so there was no compromise of Joan for the court at Rouen to exploit. It's an odd part of her story, but one that importantly informs much about Joan. First, either her father, or some guy, or both, tried to marry her off to him[30]. A young girl like Joan would normally have no say in the matter: instructed by her voices, she stood it down. Secondly, it's the first direct event upon which her voices guided her, and she believed and obeyed. Well convinced of her mission to "go to France," Joan wouldn't let this claim upon her get in her way. One wonders, even, why it happened, if not to disrupt her trajectory.
Getting no where with that topic, which had the dual purpose of accusing her of disobedience to her parents and to suggest that she was not a virgin, her persecutors at the Trial of Condemnation moved on, focusing on her use of men's clothing. But they couldn't let the matter of her virginity go. Five days later, the questions returned to,[31]
“Was it never revealed to you that if you lost your virginity, you would lose your happiness, and that your Voices would come to you no more?”
“That has never been revealed to me.”
“If you were married, do you think your Voices would come?”
“I do not know; I wait on Our Lord.
This line of questioning becomes rather sinister when Joan is later on tricked, compelled, more actually, into wearing women's clothes in prison, which turned her into a target of rape by her English guards.[32] She knew that men's clothing that she insisted on wearing kept her safe from the possibility, so the Rouen Court was playing into that situation, whereby, were she raped they could say she no longer had valid visions. But she refused to answer that question ("I wait upon Our Lord") and, thankfully, while attacked at one point by the guards, it seems she was not actually violated. It did become the very point upon which she was executed.
As for Joan's own view of her virginity, it was what and who she was, and she promised the Saints that she would stay chaste. Whatever the historians' argument that pucelle means maid or virgin or both, we can see from Joan's perspective that her virginity was essential to her mission both as sign of purity and, more importantly, selfless dedication to the Lord.[33]
Saint Paul explains it in 1 Corinthians 7:34:
An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit.
Catholic Joan
Joan of Arc makes no sense unless we recognize her fundamental, pure Catholicity.
Given most biographies and depictions of her, it's rather hard to appreciate her Catholicism -- it is simply ignored or denied. Such historians "contextualize" her amidst a backwards, superstitious, Middle Ages Catholic world, perhaps recognizing that Joan was more devout -- to a backwards religion, apparently -- than were others. Worst of all, some historians place her amidst a syncretic mysticism, a mix of "medieval Catholicism", "folk religion", and paganism, and so attribute her experiences to it.[34] No.
Joan was fundamentally, authentically and thoroughly Catholic.
Mooney's 1897 biography is one of the few that does not question Joan's Catholicism. In the 1919 edition, issued just after the Great War in which Joan's rallying example helped save France, and just before Joan's canonization, the introduction, written by Catholic author Blanche Mary Kelly, gets it:[35]
Without the Catholic Faith, she is inexplicable. More than on her sword, she relied on the Mass; more than bread, the sacraments were her sustenance.
Three Masses marked a good day for Joan.[36] She was seen constantly in prayer, and asked for Confession whenever possible. Father Jean Massieu recalled that during her trial at Rouen Joan dropped to the floor at the doors of a chapel when told that a consecrated Host lay inside:
Once, when I was conducting her before the Judges, she asked me, if there were not, on her way thither, any Chapel or Church in which was the Body of Christ. I replied, that there was a certain Chapel in the Castle. She then begged me to lead her by this Chapel, that she might do reverence to God and pray, which I willingly did, permitting her to kneel and pray before the Chapel; this she did with great devotion. The Bishop of Beauvais was much displeased at this, and forbade me in future to permit her to pray there.
and,
And, besides, as I was leading Jeanne many times from her prison to the Court, and passed before the Chapel of the Castle, at Jeanne’s request, I suffered her to make her devotions in passing; and I was often reproved by the said Benedicite, the Promoter, who said to me “Traitor! what makes thee so bold as to permit this Excommunicate to approach without permission? I will have thee put in a tower where you shall see neither sun nor moon for a month, if you do so again.”
The English-backed Bishop of Beauvais' anger at her prayer before the chapel was recognition of her Catholic authenticity, which it was his job to deny in order to put her to death. We can never know if he actually believed her to be a witch and a heretic, although we have plenty of evidence to demonstrate bad faith in his motives. Either way, he could not allow for her presentation as a true and faithful Catholic, which is why her worship, on learning that the Lord was present in the chapel, so angered him. Historians say Joan was merely conforming to norms of her day. It's an interesting point that, for, even if just a social norm, Joan's Catholic devotion well-surpassed that of those around her. Not only did witnesses affirm her distinct piety, she brought them into it themselves. From her soldiers and fellow officers, to the people of France, she affirmed the faith for believers and converted many, including, most famously, one of her captains, La Hire, who became known for prayer before battle, which he learned from Joan.[37] The cleric Séguin de Séguin recalled,[38]
When she heard any one taking in vain the Name of God, she was very angry; she held such blasphemies in horror: and Jeanne told La Hire, who used many oaths and swore by God, that he must swear no more, and that, when he wanted to swear by God, he should swear by his staff. And afterwards, indeed, when he was with her, La Hire never swore but by his staff.
Her enemies teach us, as well. With the evidence before us from antagonistic points of view, we can learn much about Joan from the attacks upon her. The English-backed Rouen ecclesiastical court pushed her on orthodoxy.
The formal charges against her started with a claim of authority from the court,[39]
Article I. And first, according to Divine Law, as according to Canon and Civil Law, it is to you, the Bishop, as Judge Ordinary, and to you, the Deputy, as Inquisitor of the Faith, that it appertaineth to drive away, destroy, and cut out from the roots in your Diocese and in all the kingdom of France, heresies, witchcrafts, superstitions, and other crimes of that nature; it is to you that it appertaineth to punish, to correct and to amend heretics and all those who publish, say, profess, or in any other manner act against our Catholic Faith: to wit, sorcerers, diviners, invokers of demons, those who think ill of the Faith, all criminals of this kind, their abettors and accomplices, apprehended in your Diocese or in your jurisdiction, not only for the misdeeds they may have committed there, but even for the part of their misdeeds that they may have committed elsewhere, saving, in this respect, the power and duty of the other Judges competent to pursue them in their respective dioceses, limits, and jurisdictions. And your power as to this exists against all lay persons, whatever be their estate, sex, quality, and pre-eminence: in regard to all you are competent Judges.
The statement is a rote declaration of authority and purpose, likely not much different from any other such trial, especially the mandate to stamp out "sorcerers, diviners", etc. The problem for them in this case is that there was no evidence of Satan's works upon Joan outside of her having defeated the English in battle. They went after her village's legends about a charms and fairies, from which they illogically inferred that Joan, too, believed in them (which in modern courts is called "speculative" as opposed to "circumstantial" evidence.[40] Worse for them, they were never able to pierce the consistent Catholic logic of her replies to their examinations. The worst they could find was that she had kissed the feet of Saints, who, by Church dogma, were understood not to have bodies.
This is a girl whose mother taught her to recite in Latin the Our Father, Ave Maria, and Credo prayers. Her religious upbringing was entirely orthodox. Her devoutness to it irrepressible. Her military standard read, "Jhesus Maria," and her final words were "Jesus" repeated as the flames consumed her and while staring at a cross she asked be held before her.
To Article I of the formal charges, Joan replied,
I believe surely that our Lord the Pope of Rome, the Bishops, and other Clergy, are established to guard the Christian Faith and punish those who are found wanting therein: but as for me, for my doings I submit myself only to the Heavenly Church— that is to say, to God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the Saints in Paradise. I firmly believe I have not wavered in the Christian Faith, nor would I waver.
Joan was simply and thoroughly Catholic.
The historical problem of (Saint?) Joan of Arc
The most prominent modern biographer of Saint Joan is Régine Pernoud (1909-1998), a medieval scholar who warns,
Among the events which he expounds are some for which no rational explanation is forthcoming, and the conscientious historian stops short at that point.[41]
So the "conscientious historian" must contain himself to "the facts" and stick to sorting them out for description while avoiding explanation, much less inference from those facts. It's not only impossible, it's historiographically useless: I can describe the American 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, Joan's motives don't matter. So Pernoud dismisses them altogether, falling back upon,
The believer can no doubt be satisfied with Joan’s explanation; the unbeliever cannot.[42]
What, then, does the "unbeliever" do with the evidence? She experienced voices and visions. 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]."[43] To say, then, that the "unbeliever cannot" accept Joan's own explanations is an easy out from what is plain to see. If they were not real, then how to explain their effects? Such is a core Catholic tenant, drawn from the Gospel of Matthew 12:33[44], in which Jesus declares to the Pharisees,
Either declare the tree good and its fruit is good, or declare the tree rotten and its fruit is rotten, for a tree is known by its fruit.
Historians have two outs here: the first is to deny the source of Joan's Voices while admitting their effects; the second is to deny their effects. To the first strategy, historians like Pernoud step around the problem by denying the sources or even reality of her Voices but taking their effects at face value,[45] while others minimize Joan's historical role altogether, i.e. lesser effects.[46] Or they use both. So we hear that it was schizophrenia or moldy bread, which at least recognize that Joan heard voices.[47] Others who question the reality of the Voices at all fall back on pseudo-psychological conjecture and sociological babble. Feminist, witch historian Ann Lelwyn Barstow argues that subjects of Joan's visions were those Saints with which she most closely identified and was familiar:[48]
One gets the picture of a lively Christianity informing the mind of the young Joan through legends. well-known across Europe ... That she was visited instead [of the Virgin Mary] by Michael, Catherine and Margaret attest to the potency of their legends in Lorraine, to their particular usefulness to a young patriot in time of national distress, and their appropriateness for an independent-minded woman.
The Church in Domrémy held (and apparently still holds[49]) a statue of Saint Margaret; Saint Catherine was the patron Saint of nearby church; Saint Michael was venerated in Lorraine and was considered the defender of France; so there you have it. One may suppose that some other Saint, say, Saint Drogo, might have equally conveyed God's message to a thirteen year old in rural eastern France, as, while notoriously butt-ugly, he was from the northeast of the country and spoke French.
Of course, God sent the Saints that Joan already knew and trusted. To paraphrase Joan, “Do you think God has not wherewithal to select the right Saints for Joan?"[50]
If Joan's visions were real, then we have perfectly explainable historical causation, including Joan's flustered recantation of her Voices when threatened in public before the stake. Skeptical historians point to this moment as evidence that Joan had just made it all up, ignoring that only two weeks before this threatening and demeaning public ceremony, when threated with torture, she had told the court,
Truly if you were to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul and body, I will tell you nothing more; and, if I were to say anything else, I should always afterwards declare that you made me say it by force.[51]
One theory claims that, fatigued and confused, Joan gave the hostile and abusive English-backed court what it wanted and made up stories of the Saints, whom, this theory (incorrectly) holds, she had not before mentioned.[52] Similarly, it goes, both supporters and detractors of Joan were just using her for convenience, and that the historical record itself reflects that self-interest and not the truth about Joan.[53] To any extent they admit of Joan's role in those events, they simply cannot explain the village girl's astonishing natural and supernatural abilities. Medieval historian Juliet Barker sees Joan's career as entirely political in terms of her own ambitions and those of those around her. As such, Barker credits the pro-French Armagnacs for using her to push their war against the English-allied Burgundians, even so as to credit the Armagnacs for having engineered not just Joan's introduction to the Dauphin but to the her ability to identify him hidden amidst the courtiers.[54] Of course there is no evidence for such trickery, but the theory does legitimately point to the Dauphin's equivocal position between the anti-Burgundian and reconciliation factions around him. The problem with the view is that is treats the Dauphin as merely going along for a ride with the Maid just to see what might happen.[55] It's nonsense. As the Dauphin's advisor, Bishop Jean é observed, allowing a girl to lead an army isn't a trial balloon. In his apologia for Joan written shortly after her victory at Orleans, to give an army to a woman isn't just crazy, it's dangerous:
"The king's council and the men-at-arms were led to believe the word of this Maid and to obey her in such a way that, under her command and with one heart, they exposed themselves with her to the dangers of war, trampling under foot all fear of dishonor. What a shame, indeed, if, fighting under the leadership of a woman, they had been defeated by enemies so audacious! What derision on the part of all those who would have heard of such an event![56]
Historians reply that the Dauphin was obsessed with prophesy, so he naturally fell to the latest seer. Again that is insufficient to explain the events. Or, as does Barker, the Dauphin's military situation was not as dire as Joan's "cheerleaders" have claimed, so, by implication, she wasn't the essential actor in the moment.[57] But not even Barker claims that without Joan's involvement the French would have won at Orléans.
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.
Just ask the English and Burgundians who knew full well what this young woman had done and why.[58] 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:
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.[59]
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,
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.
Or Isambart de la Pierre, a Dominican priest who witnessed the trial,
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.[60]
All our skeptics can do is to question the motives of these testimonies, saying that de la Pierre and Ladvenu were covering up their own shameful involvement in the Trial for heresy. Perhaps, but even if true, the testimony affirms Joan's innocence. The details, though, are hard to ignore: "her heart remained intact", "the oil, the sulphur and the charcoal" -- memory works this way, not imagination.
It's the same as writing a book on the life of Jesus as a non-believer.[61] You'd 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.[62] Actually, Thomas Jefferson did this, conducting a now obscure and theologically meaningless cut and paste job on the New Testament, from which he extracted the angels, prophesies, miracles, and the Resurrection.[63]
Accepting the historicity of Christ without the miraculous requires denying the authenticity of the Gospels and attributing them to post hoc contrivances.[64] It gets messy and, frankly, serves merely to deny Christ rather than understand him.
And with Joan of Arc that's where our historians land. Pernoud denies that Joan was, in CS Lewis' terms[65], 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 about Christ's divinity by noting,
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.
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":
They canonised Joan and made her their heroine, while Church and State were taking five hundred years to reach the same conclusion.[66]
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, 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."[67] 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,
It remains true that, for us, Joan is above all the saint[68] 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.[69]
That's no better than this, from the collective wisdom of contributors to the "Joan of Arc" entry at Wikipedia:
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.[70]
So Joan is in the eye of the beholder.
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.
Crazy, witch, saint... or irrelevant?
Having liberated Orleans and then leading the French army across France to clear the way for the Dauphin's coronation at Rheims, there was no question that Joan was either a witch or a prophet -- possessed by fiends, or of God.
At 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,
We piously believe her to be the Angel of the armies of the Lord.[71]
and he advised the Dauphin,
do every day some deed particularly agreeable to God and confer about it with the maid.[72]
Whatever reservations the French clerics had held about her before Orléans turned after the battle either to acknowledgement of her as emissary of God, such as we see from Gélu and his fellow Bishop, Jean Gerson who immediately wrote an apologia for the Maid, or, in the case of the Archbishop of Reims and newly installed Chancellor of France, Regnault de Chartres, acquiescence to events that were beyond his control. However, detraction is easier to sustain than faith, so the English held to their hatred of Joan longer than did the French hold love for her. Following the coronation of Charles VII, with Joan at the height of her popularity, the Chancellor, whose goal was ever reconciliation with the Burgundian faction, not its defeat, worked to undermine her. For him, the Maid had at best served to put the issue on the table, but most inconvenient was all this insistence on taking Paris, which was a Burgundian property.[73] The Chancellor did not want an attack upon Paris, which is why immediately after the coronation of Charles VII, which he administered as Archbishop of Rheims, he went to St. Denis to negotiate a truce with the English to work around all this trouble the Maid had caused. Talk of the Maid as a living Saint was most inconvenient for these purposes. Upon her capture by the Burgundians in May of 1430, the Chancellor was downright enthusiastic:
God had suffered that Joan the Maid be taken because she had puffed herself up with pride and because of the rich garments which she had taken it upon herself to wear, and because she had not done what God had commanded her, but had done her own will.[74]
Gerson had died by then, but Gélu's diocese issued prayers for her release, including,[75]
that the Maid kept in the prisons of the enemies may be freed without evil, and that she may complete entirely the work that You have entrusted to her.
But overall, de Chartres dominated French policy, and, against regular Burgundian duplicity, kept trying to negotiate a settlement.
Historians have attributed Charles' treatment of Joan after his coronation to cynicism and opportunism. I'm not convinced, as he was subject to the machine as much as he was its head. He ended up playing both sides, letting Joan go forth against the English and Burgundians while withholding the resources she needed to prosecute the program. Joan's capture, which was a direct consequence of the French transition from Joan's warfare to the Chancellor's diplomacy, became the excuse to abandon her program altogether.
>>here
The source of the historians' problem is incredulity in Joan's divine mission. Absent authentic Voices something else is needed to explain it all, so it must be this or that or something else; anything but God. So let's look at what she actually did, which might reveal whether she was just crazy, a witch, a saint, or... just whatever.
To save France, she needed to crown the Dauphin legitimate King of France; to crown the King, she needed to relieve the city of Orléans from the English siege; to take the city of Orléans, she needed to lead the French army; to lead the army, she needed the support of the Dauphin and his court; to convince the court, she had to demonstrate Catholic orthodoxy to the Dauphin's investigators of her; to get the support of the Dauphin she needed to she needed to convince him of her divine mission; to convince him of her divine mission she had to do meet with him; to meet with him, she had to generate enthusiasm and curiosity as to who she might be; to convince people she was the "girl" who would save France, she had to be thoroughly convinced of it herself.
To those ends, several accomplishments stand out:
- She believed and obeyed the Voices;
- She wouldn't take no;
- She accurately prophesized;
- She generated tremendous enthusiasm from the people, which forced the French court to support her;
- She breathed confidence and discipline into the French army, which had been browbeaten and self-defeated until she inspired them;
- She exercised decisive military and political leadership;
- She scared the crap out of the English;[76]
As to that last, we know just how much she scared them from a letter to the King of England from one of his generals,
a greet strook upon your peuple that was assembled there [at Orleans] in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadded believe, and of unlevefull doubte that thei hadded of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchauntements and sorcerie. The which strooke and discomfiture nought oonly lessed in grete partie the mobre of youre people.[77]
Translation: she's a witch!
>> to move Just ask the English and Burgundians who knew full well what this young woman had done and why.[58] 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:
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.[59]
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,
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.
Or Isambart de la Pierre, a Dominican priest who witnessed the trial,
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.[60]
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.
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.
<<to move
>> here
Joan's biographers like to present Joan with a letter[78] she composed to the King of England, the child-king Henry VI, the day she was given authority[79] over the French army. It's a marvelous, crazy letter, almost arrogant at first glance. A second look, though, and the letter yields instead Joan's simplicity and directness. Indeed, she is hardly arrogant: just bluntly honest:
Jhesus † Maria King of England; and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the Kingdom of France; you, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; John, Lord Talbot; and you, Thomas, Lord Scales, who call yourselves Lieutenants to the said Duke of Bedford: give satisfaction to the King of Heaven: give up to the Maid,[80] who is sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns in France which you have taken and broken into. She is come here by the order of God to reclaim the Blood Royal. She is quite ready to make peace, if you are willing to give her satisfaction, by giving and paying back to France what you have taken.
It's a useful letter for the biographer, because it tells her story perfectly. But left unexplained or unattributed to anything but "voices", as they tend rather agnostically to leave it, it makes no sense: okay, so this illiterate girl from a little village hears voices that tell her she will save France and crown the King. She insists on an introduction to that prince, gets the interview, somehow picking him out of a crowd, undergoes three weeks of questions by all the king's finest minds, and passing the test is given a horse, lance, and suit of armor -- and command of the French army, whereupon she writes a letter to the King of England demanding his surrender of all his possessions in France. Okay...got it. Thank you, historians.
Let's try it this way:
God sends Saint Michael the Archangel and Saints Margaret and Catherine to visit with a worthy young girl in a small town in eastern France. Her country is both at war and civil war. The Church is in a state of disruption, with two ongoing antipope claimants, proto-protestant rumblings, and the "conciliarism" movement against papal authority gaining strength as a result of the various papal schisms. Over three years, the Archangel and the Saints prepare the young girl spiritually for her mission. In 1428, as the city of Orléans is subjected to a siege by English forces, they now tell her what she will do: save the city and crown the king in Rheims, a city held by the enemy. Following her divine voices, she gains an audience with the King of France, convinces him of her divine mission and is made a leader of the French army. Then, invoking God's instructions, she sends a letter to the King of England and his commanders, demanding surrender of his French holdings. The English refuse, and, guided by providence, she leads the French Army to an improbable victory, which she duplicates in a series of battles that clear the way for the French prince to triumphantly arrive at Rheims, the traditional city of coronations, where he is crowned King of France, Charles VII.
Now we can better understand her letter, which went on to explain that the English would do everyone a favor, saving them all much pain, were they to abandon Orléans and France itself according to God's will. Her letter is astonishing.
She concluded with the warning to the English commander,
You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and enjoins you, that you do not come to grievous hurt. If you will give her satisfactory pledges, you may yet join with her, so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom. And answer, if you wish to make peace in the City of Orleans; if this be not done, you may be shortly reminded of it, to your very great hurt. Written this Tuesday in Holy Week, March 22nd, 1428.
At her Trial of Condemnation at Rouen under the English, this letter was presented as incriminating evidence of witchcraft.[81]
“Do you know this letter?” “Yes, excepting three words. In place of ‘give up to the Maid,’ it should be ‘give up to the King.’ The words ‘Chieftain of war’ and ‘body for body’ were not in the letter I sent. None of the Lords ever dictated these letters to me; it was I myself alone who dictated them before sending them. Nevertheless, I always shewed them to some of my party."
Then, without any prompting or context, she proclaimed,[81]
"Before seven years are passed, the English will lose a greater wager than they have already done at Orlėans; they will lose everything in France. The English will have in France a greater loss than they have ever had, and that by a great victory which God will send to the French."
"How do you know this?"
"I know it well by revelation, which has been made to me, and that this will happen within seven years; and I am sore vexed that it is deferred so long. I know it by revelation, as clearly as I know that you are before me at this moment."
"When will this happen?"
"I know neither the day nor the hour."
"In what year will it happen?"
"You will not have any more. Nevertheless, I heartily wish it might be before Saint John’s Day."[82]
The prediction came on March 1, 1431. Six years and six months later, in September of 1437, Paris was delivered to the French through the Treaty of Arras, which ended the English alliance with the Duke of Burgundy and from which, in the Hundred Years War, the English would never recover.[83] In 1449 the French recovered Rouen, where Joan was martyred, and in 1453 the English suffered a final defeat at the Battle of Castillon. Those later victories were only possible with the Burgundian realignment at the Treaty of Arras, which was only made possible by Joan's military and political victories at Orléans and Rheims.
Outside of her declarations regarding Orleans and the crowning of the Dauphin, this prophesy is her most significant -- and one that no one would have contemplated at the time. Despite the setbacks following Joan's campaigns, the English were reinvigorated by her capture and had Henry VI crowned at Paris later in the year after her execution.
Upon Joan's capture, the Duke of Burgundy issued a public acclamation of victory, announcing,
‘Very dear and well-beloved, knowing that you desire to have news of us, we[84] signify to you that this day, the 23rd May, towards six o’clock in the afternoon, the adversaries of our Lord the King[85] and of us, who were assembled together in great power, and entrenched in the town of Compiègne, before which we and the men of our army were quartered, have made a sally from the said town in force on the quarters of our advanced guard nearest to them, in the which sally was she whom they call the Maid, with many of their principal captains .... and by the pleasure of our blessed Creator, it had so happened and such grace had been granted to us, that the said Maid had been taken ... The which capture, as we certainly hold, will be great news everywhere; and by it will be recognized the error and foolish belief of all those who have shewn themselves well disposed and favourable to the doings of the said woman. And this thing we write for our news, hoping that in it you will have joy, comfort, and consolation, and will render thanks and praise to our Creator, Who seeth and knoweth all things, and Who by His blessed pleasure will conduct the rest of our enterprizes to the good of our said Lord the King and his kingdom, and to the relief and comfort of his good and loyal subjects.
We see just how important to the English and Burgundians was Joan's fall: she is not of divine origin and her successes are not legitimate, including, by reference to the English King, the coronation Joan engineered of the French King. Royal legitimacy relied on faith in God's plan, so Joan's capture justified the English cause. The next year, after Joan's execution, the English king Henry VI was coronated at Paris in an elaborate ceremony as Henry II, King of France. It was not just English assertion of the Treaty of Troyes, in which Charles VI yielded the French throne to the English upon his death, it was the English declaration of victory over the Maid.
Ultimately, the English-Burgundian alliance would unravel, but meanwhile, following Joan's capture, the French fell to episodic cat-and-mouse play, both militarily[86] and diplomatically[87], hoping to weaken the English while luring the Burgundians to their side. At the time of Joan's death, it had yielded no results. After her death, the strategy continued, and French military actions were focused on consolidation and not advance, defense.[88]
Yet Joan's prophesy happened. As the English-Burgundian alliance unwound, the English King returned home, the English leadership lost confidence, and the French under Joan's old warriors started taking more and more land, especially around Paris. In 1435, with the death of the English Duke of Bedford, the Burgundians abandoned the alliance and signed the Treaty of Arras with the French. Soon after, the citizens of Paris opened the city gates to the Bastard of Orleans and the French army. While it took another twenty years for the end of the Hundred Years War, the outcome by then was sealed, and Charles VII was able to not just consolidate his realm, but reorganize it politically and militarily, significantly contributing to the creation of the modern state in France.
At Rouen on March 1, 1431, when Joan predicted an English defeat in France, she was neither prophet nor liar to both English and French officialdom. Whatever she meant to the warring sides now, Orleans was saved and the King of France coronated. Her job was done.
Joan and the Saints
As we have seen, the standard modern histories go with Joan's testimony and experiences without affirming their reality. Joan was very clear they were real to her. Presented with the final indictment which denied her visions, Joan instead resoundingly affirmed them:[89]
As firmly as I believe Our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered death to redeem us from the pains of hell, so firmly do I believe that it was Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret whom Our Saviour sent to comfort and to counsel me.
That still leaves us with the problem of the effects of the Voices, i.e. divine intervention.
Ultimately, the ecclesiastical court at Rouen condemned Joan for reneging on her vow to wear women's clothes,[90] which was a setup. But her visions drove them crazy, and they spent much time challenging and arguing with her about her encounters with the Saints. She answered everything plainly, which, again, drove them crazy.
For a believer, what an an incredible opportunity to learn about the Saints! For example,[91]
“Was Saint Gabriel with Saint Michael when he came to you?”
“I do not remember.”
“Since last Tuesday, have you had any converse with Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?”
“Yes, but I do not know at what time.”
“What day?”
“Yesterday and to-day; there is never a day that I do not hear them.”
“Do you always see them in the same dress?”
“I see them always under the same form, and their heads are richly crowned. I do not speak of the rest of their clothing: I know nothing of their dresses.”
“How do you know whether the object that appears to you is male or female?”
“I know well enough. I recognize them by their voices, as they revealed themselves to me; I know nothing but by the revelation and order of God.”
“What part of their heads do you see?”
“The face.”
“These saints who shew themselves to you, have they any hair?”
“It is well to know they have.”
“Is there anything between their crowns and their hair?”
“No.”
“Is their hair long and hanging down?”
“I know nothing about it. I do not know if they have arms or other members. They speak very well and in very good language; I hear them very well.”
“How do they speak if they have no members?”
“I refer me to God. The voice is beautiful, sweet, and low; it speaks in the French tongue.”
“Does not Saint Margaret speak English?”
“Why should she speak English, when she is not on the English side?”
Just magnificent.
So where historians can simply dismiss her testimony as, well, something, taking it on face-value without affirming their reality, Joan here gives us a unique view into the experiences of a real mystic.
The English-backed court of course, was entirely antagonistic to her experiences, and reoriented her testimony and their questions constantly towards the accusations of witchcraft, such as the legend of a "Fairy Tree" at her hometown, Domrémy and mandrakes, a flowering plant which sorcerers were supposed to have used, and which were commonly kept by peasants as charms. Evidently their investigation into Joan's hometown found that mandrakes were used there, which would be affirmed by the village priest who in April 1429, after Joan had already departed, preached against them.[92] After Joan declares,
“Do you want me to tell you what concerns the King of France? There are a number of things that do not touch on the Case. I know well that my King will regain the Kingdom of France. I know it as well as I know that you are before me, seated in judgment. I should die if this revelation did not comfort me every day.”
the questioner turns away from that rather uncomfortable, for the English and their allies, prophesy, then turns to a textbook leading question regarding the mandrakes:
What have you done with your mandrake?
Joan had no counsel, so no one was there to point out that the question assumed she owned one. But no matter for Joan, who swatted it back at them,
I never have had one. But I have heard that there is one near our home, though I have never seen it. I have heard it is a dangerous and evil thing to keep. I do not know for what it is [used].[93]
Getting nowhere with the mandrake, the questioners turned back to the Saints:
“In what likeness did Saint Michael appear to you?”
“I did not see a crown: I know nothing of his dress.”
“Was he naked?”
“Do you think God has not wherewithal to clothe him?”
“Had he hair?”
“Why should it have been cut off? I have not seen Saint Michael since I left the Castle of Crotoy. I do not see him often. I do not know if he has hair.”
“Has he a balance?”[94]
“I know nothing about it. It was a great joy to see him; it seemed to me, when I saw him, that I was not in mortal sin. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret were pleased from time to time to receive my confession, each in turn. If I am in mortal sin, it is without my knowing it.”
Always deferring to another topic when the prior line of questioning got them nowhere, and seizing on any point Joan made that could be twisted or used against her, her interrogators must have nearly jumped from their seats in glee at this one:[95]
When you confessed, did you think you were in mortal sin?
But they were up against a Saint. Joan replied,
I do not know if I am in mortal sin, and I do not believe I have done its works; and, if it please God, I will never so be; nor, please God, have I ever done or ever will do deeds which charge my soul!
The next day, they went straight at her visions. The scribe noted that she had previously testified that Saint Michael "had wings" but nothing about the forms of Saints Catherine and Margaret. The scribe noted,[96]
Afterwards, because she had said, in previous Enquiries, that Saint Michael had wings, but had said nothing of the body and members of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, We asked her what she wished to say thereon.
Joan responded,
“I have told you what I know; I will answer you nothing more. I saw Saint Michael and these two Saints so well that I know they are Saints of Paradise.”
“Did you see anything else of them but the face?”
“I have told you what I know; but to tell you all I know, I would rather that you made me cut my throat. All that I know touching the Trial I will tell you willingly.”
“Do you think that Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel have human heads?”
“I saw them with my eyes; and I believe it was they as firmly as I believe there is a God."
“Do you think that God made them in the form and fashion that you saw?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that God did from the first create them in this form and fashion?”
“You will have no more at present than what I have answered.”
Time to move on, then, now to whether her voices told her she will escape, another point they used against her as she had attempted to escape from her original capture by the Burgundians. We also learn about Joan's relationship with the Saints, not just her interactions of guiding, consoling, and redirecting her. After being threatened with torture, Joan turned to them:[97]
I asked counsel of my Voices if I ought to submit to the Church, because the Clergy were pressing me hard to submit, and they said to me: ‘If thou willest that God should come to thy help, wait on Him for all thy doings.’ I know that Our Lord hath always been the Master of all my doings, and that the Devil hath never had power over them. I asked of my Voices if I should be burned, and my Voices answered me: ‘Wait on Our Lord, He will help thee.’
Joan knew full well the consequences of condemnation for heresy, so the stake was on her mind, likely throughout the ordeal. The court brought it up to her directly, though, in the public assembly at the cemetery of St. Ouen, where she was read the documents of abjuration.[98] After his public sermon in which he admonished Joan, the priest Érard, who was as violently against Joan as any, including the Bishop of Beauvais, read the charges that she was to abjure, adding that were she not to admit it, she'd burn. From the testimony at the Trial of Rehabilitation by the scribe, Father Jean Massieu,[99]
To which Jeanne replied, that she did not understand what abjuring was, and that she asked advice about it. Then Érard told me to give her counsel about it. After excusing myself for doing this, I told her it meant that, if she opposed any of the said Articles, she would be burned. I advised her to refer to the Church Universal as to whether she should abjure the said Articles or not. And this she did, saying in a loud voice to Érard: “I refer me to the Church Universal, as to whether I shall abjure or not.” To this the said Érard replied: “You shall abjure at once, or you shall be burned.” And, indeed, before she left the Square, she abjured, and made a cross with a pen which I handed to her.
There is much argument as to whether or not in the abjuration Joan knowingly denied the Saints.[100] We know she had earlier disobeyed her Voices when she leapt from captivity from the Burgundians,
About four months. When I knew that the English were come to take me, I was very angry; nevertheless, my Voices forbade me many times to leap. In the end, for fear of the English, I leaped, and commended myself to God and Our Lady. I was wounded. When I had leaped, the Voice of Saint Catherine said to me I was to be of good cheer, for those at Compiègne would have succour.[101] I prayed always for those at Compiègne, with my Counsel.
So perhaps facing the threat of the fire -- understandably so -- she signed the papers. A few days after her abjuration, she was brought back to the Rouen court for a "relapse" trial for having put back on the men's garments. It gave the court the opportunity to not only accuse her of breaking her vow to wear women's clothes but to force her into a denial of her recantation of the Saints. Now imminently facing the stake, Joan admitted that by signing the abjuration document she had betrayed the Saints:
“They said to me: ‘God had sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life!’ Before last Thursday, my Voices did indeed tell me what I should do and what I did on that day. When I was on the scaffold on Thursday, my Voices said to me, while the preacher was speaking: ‘Answer him boldly, this preacher!’ And in truth he is a false preacher; he reproached me with many things I never did. If I said that God had not sent me, I should damn myself, for it is true that God has sent me; my Voices have said to me since Thursday: ‘Thou hast done a great evil in declaring that what thou hast done was wrong.’ All I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.”
“Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?”
“Yes, I believe it, and that they come from God.”
Much has been made of this supposed recantation or betrayal of the Voices. It's rather simple, though,
All I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.
And now, as she knew full well, she was going to be led to the fire. There's no betrayal in that: rather a correction and support for what would follow, which would have followed, anyway, had during the sermon she had "Answer[ed] him boldly, this preacher!"[102] Neither Joan nor her Voices had let one another down.
Saint Catherine
Joan's virginity importantly signaled her connection to Saint Catherine, the virgin martyr. As did Joan, Saint Catherine precociously presented herself to a king, in Catherine's case, the Roman Emperor Maxentius, and boldly declared God's message. As did the sitting French ruler, the Dauphin, to Joan, Maxentius ordered an inquiry into Catherine by the emperor's finest theologians and philosophers. When these smartest men in the room were confounded by Catherine's theological arguments, the emperor had her imprisoned and tortured. Joan was also submitted to another but entirely antagonistic inquiry at the British-controlled French ecclesiastical Court at Rouen that condemned her but which she confounded with marvelous simplicity and irrefutable logic.
Next for Saint Catherine, Maxentius demanded that Catherine marry him and put her to death when she refused.[103] The parallel for Joan continues, as she was put to death after refusing a conciliatory but compromising offer from the court at Rouen, which is when she agreed to put on women's clothing, and is condemned for subsequently abandoning them for men's trousers.[104]
If you look up Saint Catherine you will see claims that she never existed, or that the stories about her are medieval fabrications.[105] But that's not how God works. God love types and bookends, and Saint Joan is clearly a "type" of Saint Catherine: when the Dauphin ordered the Church inquiry, no one was thinking, "My, that's just what happened to Saint Catherine!" And no such thoughts arose when the court at Rouen tried to force her into admission of heresy by showing her torture machines and then tricking her into signing a document to renounce her visions and to go back to wearing women's clothes -- at which point her guards threatened to rape her.[106] Therein is the very typology of Saint Catherine.
Saint Margaret
She was also visited by Saint Margaret, another virgin and maiden martyr who was killed after refusing to marry a Roman governor and to renounce her faith. Historians point out that Joan may have related herself to Saint Margaret over an incident in which Joan was accused by a man from her region of having broken a vow of marriage. She successfully argued to a magistrate that there was no such betrothal, and the accusation was dismissed. The typological connection holds here, although I don't see it as significant as the betrayals she suffered from Charles VII and, especially, the English-backed court at Rouen.
Saint Margaret's typology for Joan follows more closely Saint Margaret's vows of virginity, her refusal to renounce her faith in a public trial, and enduring imprisonment and torture. (Oh, and Saint Margaret spent her youth as a shepherd.) Additionally, Saint Margaret was burned, and that unsuccessful, thrown into a vat of boiling water, escaping both unharmed, so her martyrdom came at beheading. Joan was burned, of course, but her heart would not, as testified by the English guard who oversaw her execution.[107] Legend holds that while imprisoned, Saint Margaret was devoured by Satan in the form of a dragon, from which she was expelled due to the Cross she held. Here, again, is an important connection to Joan on the stake, as she asked that a cross be held before her and she repeated "Jesus" until she expired.
As with the accusation of engagement, Joan's visions started well before all these events, so she was not mimicking Saints Catherine and Margaret, and nor could she have anticipated those connections when she started out. Instead, she was, at their guidance, fulfilling their types.
Saint Michael the Archangel
It ought not be necessary to point out that Michael the Archangel is God's chief warrior. Let us remind ourselves that Joan was a farm girl, and farm girls in the 15th century didn't lead armies. Of course it was Saint Michael who came to her!
No sooner had she cut her hair and donned trousers at the start of her mission at Vaucouleurs[108] did Joan herself become a warrior. A farm life didn't prepare her for it, and neither did the festivals and children's games of Domrémy.[109] No where does Joan say or even suggest that St. Michael or the Holy Spirit endowed her with martial skills. Yet no where does she say that it was natural to her. Military prowess in all its forms was inherent to her mission, and since her mission was given her by the Archangel, we can only conclude that those skills needed to accomplish it were also given her as a divine Grace.
Another aspect of Saint Michael is seen in his scales of judgment, as he is traditionally depicted holding. Saint Michael appears but twice in the New Testament, the Epistle of Jude and, more famously, Revelation. In Jude, the Apostle teaches,[110]
Yet the archangel Michael, when he argued with the devil in a dispute over the body of Moses, did not venture to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”
In the Old Testament the Archangel appears as the angel "with a sword," such as in Daniel,[111]
“Your fine lie has cost you also your head,” said Daniel; “for the angel of God waits with a sword to cut you in two so as to destroy you both.”
As the lie had already "cost" -- i.e., judged, the Archangel was the instrument of God's punishment, and not himself the judge. Joan consistently treats her mission as that of carrying out God's will and not exercising herself any reason or justification for it. At the Rouen Trial, Joan was pressed about saying blasphemies, to which she replied,[112]
“No; sometimes I said: ‘bon gré Dieu’
meaning "by God's good will", which was Joan's way of conditionalizing insults or ill thoughts to God's will. Here we can point to Joan's statement to a friendly acquaintance in her home town whom she subjects to punishment should God will it, a story Mark Twain so enjoyed,[113]
I knew only one Burgundian at Domremy: I should have been quite willing for them to cut off his head—always had it pleased God.[114]
Her outburst here barely scratches her larger adherence to Saint Michael's role and example, by which Joan exercised mercy upon her enemies,[115]
On the Sunday after the taking of the Forts of the Bridge and of Saint Loup, the English were drawn up in order of battle before the town of Orleans, at which the greater part of [our] soldiers wished to give combat, and sallied from the town. Jeanne, who was wounded, was with the soldiers, dressed in her light surcoat. She put the men in array, but forbade them to attack the English, because, she said, if it pleased God and it were His will that they wished to retire, they should be allowed to go. And at that the men-at-arms returned into Orleans.
Her numerous displays of mercy towards the enemy shocked and even revulsed her commanders, who would have otherwise slaughtered the English stragglers -- as the English would have done to them. The point is that Joan was free of vengeance, exercising God's will but not exceeding it. Were her mission but to "save France," then murdering as many English and Burgundians as possible would contribute to it. At the trial a Rouen, the court concluded that,[116]
Jeanne hath boasted and affirmed that she did know how to discern those whom God loveth and those whom He hateth. “What have you to say on this Article?”
It's a core theological question: did Joan assume judgment upon her enemies?
“I hold by what I have already said elsewhere of the King and the Duke d’Orléans; of the others I know not; I know well that God, for their well-being, loves my King and the Duke d’Orléans better than me. I know it by revelation.”
They couldn't nail her down on this charge, and it infuriated the court. Joan stood firmly not as God's judge but his instrument for judgement. So back it went to wearing pants, which was the only charge they could hold upon her. Joan's intersection with Saint Michael ceased upon her delivery to the English at the Battle of Compiègne and her imprisonment by the Duke of Luxumbourt. She told the court at Rouen,
I have not seen Saint Michael since I left the Castle of Crotoy.[117]
With her delivery to the English at Crotoy, the duties of the warrior Saint Michael had ceased; however, Saints Catherin and Margaret, virgin captives and martyrs took over, and guided her from there, at times reluctantly on Joan's part, to her martyrdom.
Nevertheless, Joan turned to Saint Michael just before her martyrdom, during her crisis of faith, after having signed the documents of "abjuration" (admission of guilt) and, upon the stake. Her abjuration was conducted in public, followed by a puplic Mass, in which the priest insulted Joan (and when she defended the integrity of the King of France she was told to shut up).[118]
She afterwards prayed to the Archangel, at least twice. Pierre Lebouchier, a priest, testified that after Joan was denounced in the public by Father Érard. Joan turned to the Achangel:[119]
I was not present at the Process[120]; but, after the preaching at Saint-Ouen, Jeanne, with her hands joined together, said in a loud voice that she submitted to the judgment of the Church, and prayed to Saint Michael that he would direct and counsel her.
He also saw her martyrdom, before which he watched,
While they were tying her to the stake she implored and specially invoked Saint Michael.
Saint Michael was not just the warrior Angel, but also Joan's protector.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel
With histories of Joan we hear less of Saint Gabriel than of the others, although he also visited her. Joan had placed the two Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, on her battle standard to either side of the Lord who was depicted holding the world in his hands with Jhesus Maria written above. The standard was of great concern to the court at Rouen, not just for what her interrogators considered its presumptuous design, but because that standard was a key instrument in her victories over the English and was prominently displayed at the coronation of the Charles VII as King of France. To the English partisans, the standard was demonic. The formal charges included that she had been saying about her battle flags, a ring, some linens and her sword that,[121]
... these things were very fortunate. She made thereon many execrations and conjurations...
Joan replied,
In all I have done there was never any sorcery or evil arts. As for the good luck of my banner, I refer it to the fortune sent through it by Our Lord.
To an earlier interrogation over the banner and the Saints, Joan's responses are marvelous:[122]
“Did the two Angels painted on your standard represent Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel?”
“They were there only for the honour of Our Lord, Who was painted on the standard. I only had these two Angels represented to honour Our Lord, Who was there represented holding the world.”
“Were the two Angels represented on your standard those who guard the world? Why were there not more of them, seeing that you had been commanded by God to take this standard?”
“The standard was commanded by Our Lord, by the Voices of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, which said to me: ‘Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven’; and because they had said to me ‘Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven,’ I had this figure of God and of two Angels done; I did all by their command.”
“Did you ask them if, by virtue of this standard, you would gain all the battles wherever you might find yourself, and if you would be victorious?”
“They told me to take it boldly, and that God would help me.”
“Which gave most help, you to your standard, or your standard to you?”
“The victory either to my standard or myself, it was all from Our Lord.”
“The hope of being victorious, was it founded on your standard or on yourself?”
“It was founded on Our Lord and nought else.”
“If any one but you had borne this standard, would he have been as fortunate as you in bearing it?”
“I know nothing about it: I wait on Our Lord.”
“If one of the people of your party had sent you his standard to carry, would you have had as much confidence in it as in that which had been sent to you by God? Even the standard of your King, if it had been sent to you, would you have had as much confidence in it as in your own?”
“I bore most willingly that which had been ordained for me by Our Lord; and, meanwhile, in all I waited upon Our Lord.”
This exchange informed one of the seventy-seven formal charges, which read,[123]
Article LVIII Jeanne did cause to be painted a standard whereon are two Angels, one on each side of God holding the world in His hand, with the words “Jhésus Maria” and other designs. She said that she caused this standard to be done by the order of God, who had revealed it to her by the agency of His Angels and Saints. This standard she did place at Rheims near the Altar, during the consecration of Charles, wishing, in her pride and vain glory, that it should be peculiarly honoured. Also did she cause to be painted arms, in the which she placed two golden lilies on a field azure; between the lilies a sword argent, with a hilt and guard gilded, the point of the sword pointing upwards and surmounted with a crown, gilded. All this is display and vanity, it is not religion nor piety; to attribute such vanities to God and to the Angels, is to be wanting in respect to God and the Saints.
In that Archangel Gabriel's scriptural role is to announce or clarify[124] God's will and offer comfort in faith in it, Joan's design and use of the standard was by no means a vanity. With Saint Michael on one side, representing execution of God's judgment, and Saint Gabriel on the other, informing God's design, the banner was for Joan a beautiful act of Christian Hope.[125] When Joan was threatened by the torture machines it was Saint Gabriel who consoled her:[97]
I received comfort from Saint Gabriel; I believe it was Saint Gabriel: I knew by my Voices it was he.
The theological implications therein are significant. Saint Gabriel is God's trumpet -- the announcer of God's will. The Archangel, then, was preparing her for the martyrdom to soon come. Saint Gabriel appears in the Old Testament twice, both in Daniel. Here from Daniel 8:15-17:
While I, Daniel, sought the meaning of the vision I had seen, one who looked like a man stood before me, on the Ulai I heard a human voice that cried out, “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.” When he came near where I was standing, I fell prostrate in terror. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision refers to the end time.”
I can't imagine that Joan knew this passage, as it does not appear in the modern Roman Missal and likely not in hers. In Chapter 8, Gabriel is sent to Daniel to explain God's message -- something Joan may well have appreciated after being threatened with torture. In Daniel 9:21-23, he again appears to assure Daniel of God's purpose and support for him:
I was still praying, when the man, Gabriel, whom I had seen in vision before, came to me in flight at the time of the evening offering.
He instructed me in these words: “Daniel, I have now come to give you understanding.
When you began your petition, an answer was given which I have come to announce, because you are beloved. Therefore, mark the answer and understand the vision.
We can draw another connection to Daniel, again, one Joan would have been unlikely to know about, in that the Book of Daniel was written under Hellenistic oppression of Antiochus IV, the Seleucid Greek king who seized power amidst a succession crisis in which he usurped the throne from the proper heir, his brother's son. Gabriel's appearance to Daniel helped the prophet to sort out the Babylonian, and subsequently Seleucid oppressions, and focus on God's will. Joan would have been more familiar with Saint Gabriel's appearances in the New Testament in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In Luke, Gabriel brings glad tidings, not a message that they were about to be burned on the stake, as it was for Joan. Still, Zachariah, Mary, and the shepherds needed his consolation,[126]
Do not be afraid
Joseph, also, needs the Archangels' consolation, [127]
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid
A larger, less expected connection to the Archangel's appearance at this moment to Joan may be found in Daniel, "to give you understanding," as the Angel said to him in Chapter 9. The Archangel assured Daniel, as he did Zachariah, Mary and Joseph of God's purpose: thus he similarly gave Joan "comfort", as she testified. Other than Daniel, she might have known of the apocryphal Book of Enoch, 4:12, which informed Catholic traditions and the role of Gabriel to petition God to judgment:
And to Gabriel said the Lord, "Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication and destroy the children of the Watchers from amongst men. Send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle, for length of days shall they not have.
It's doubtful Joan would have known or have been thinking of that, but it definitely points to the end of the Hundred Years War, which was resolved, finally, with betrayal of the English by the Burgundians. Each side used the other, which is why they both so desperately needed Joan's removal, as she exposed their tenuous relationship in face of a resurgent France that Joan had launched.
Whatever it means, Saint Gabriel's comfort for Joan is not a side-story.
Joan the peasant girl
Let's next place Saint Joan's childhood within the context of the story.
Joan was a peasant girl, but not just a peasant girl.[128] Her father, Jacques, owned about 50 acres of land for cultivation and grazing and a house large and furnished enough to lodge visitors.[129] He served as the village doyen, which included responsibility to announce decrees of the village council, run village watch over prisoners and the village in general, collect taxes and rents, supervise weights and measures, and oversee production of bread and wine. He was not an inconsiderable man, although he was at best a big man in a very small village. Joan's mother was more formidable, coming from a modest but better off family. It was she, Isabelle Romée, who after Joan's death championed her to the Church and French government and forced the reassessment of the her condemnations and execution.
The name of the village itself, Domrémy, has an interesting connection to a possible Roman origin, Domnus Remigius, which placed it under the Archbishop of Rheims, St. Rémi, who baptized Clovis -- thus circling back to a fundamental goal of Saint Joan to coronate the King of France, Charles VII, at Rheims where, along with Clovis' baptism, Philip II, the first "King of France," was coronated, setting the precedent. Such connections may or may not mean anything, but we ought acknowledge them.
Joan grew up in this little village with daily chores on the farm and in the household, especially to spin wool. She tended the animals when she was younger but not much, she testified, after she reached "the age of understanding." She also helped with harvesting the fields,[130] and had certainly helped move the animals around, especially when the villagers fled for protection from raids. She knew cattle, mules and horses, but more likely as a herder would, not as a scout or soldier, so her natural aptitude as a knight, which astounded all who saw her ride,[131] including in battle gear, was informed by her childhood learning about animals.[132]
The formal charges in the Trial of Condemnation at Rouen claimed of Joan,[133]
In her childhood, she was not instructed in the beliefs and principles of our Faith; but by certain old women she was initiated in the science of witchcraft, divination, superstitious doings, and magical arts. Many inhabitants of these villages have been known for all time as using these kinds of witchcraft.
This, of course, ignored her own testimony during the trial such as that she had learned the basic Catholic prayers at home:[134]
From my mother I learned my Pater, my Ave Maria, and my Credo. I believe I learned all this from my mother.
The ecclesiastical court at Rouen had sent a notary to Domrémy to inquire into her reputation with the locals. His testimony here is from the Trial of Rehabilitation, the inquiry was done before Joan was killed, so the information he gathered was perfectly contemporaneous, making it historical gold:[135]
I was appointed... to proceed to an enquiry on the subject of Jeanne, at that time detained in prison at Rouen. Many times, in her youth, I saw Jeanne before she left her father’s house: she was a good girl, of pure life and good manners, a good Catholic who loved the Church and went often on pilgrimage to the Church of Bermont, and confessed nearly every month—as I learned from a number of the inhabitants of Domremy, whom I had to question on the subject at the time of the enquiry that I made with the Provost of Andelot. When I and the late Gerard made this enquiry, we examined twelve or fifteen witnesses.[136]
The Bishop in charge of the trial was outraged at the exculpatory evidence and refused to pay the man for his services, which further affirms the original evidence the notary had collected on her.[137] That Joan was an exemplary Catholic was affirmed by all who knew her at Domrémy, and no one, not even a Burgundian acquaintance of Joan's, contradicted.[138] Her extraordinary piety that was noted by her contemporaries in the village was from after her visions started. Before then, she was like any other child:
Ever since I knew that it was necessary for me to come into France, I have given myself up as little as possible to these games and distractions. Since I was grown up, I do not remember to have danced there. I may have danced there formerly, with the other children. I have sung there more than danced.
Joan's Voices would frequently accompany the ringing of the bells, and if the bells were late, Joan would chide the boy responsible for ringing them for being inattentive.[139] A contemporary recalled,[140]
I saw Jeannette very often. In our childhood, we often followed together her father’s plough, and we went together with the other children of the village to the meadows or pastures. Often, when we were all at play, Jeannette would retire alone to “talk with God.” I and the others laughed at her for this. She was simple and good, frequenting the Church and Holy places. Often, when she was in the fields and heard the bells ring, she would drop on her knees.
Another aspect of her personality her contemporaries noted was her kindliness and generosity.[141] Her father's house stood on an ancient road, and received passersby frequently, for whom Joan gave up her bed, or according to one witness from Domremy, for the poor.[142] Later, during preparations for the march on Orléans, as related by her confessor throughout her military campaigns, an Augustinian friar named Jean Pasquerel,[143]
She was, indeed, very pious towards God and the Blessed Mary, confessing nearly every day and communicating frequently. When she was in a neighbourhood where there was a Convent of Mendicant Friars, she told me to remind her of the day when the children of the poor received the Eucharist, so that she might receive it with them; and this she did often: when she confessed herself she wept.
And this was on the way to battle.
To summarize, the young Saint Joan was illiterate, unschooled in all but the lessons of farming, wool spinning, Church, and local lore. She seems to have had a happy childhood growing up with other children who played together, joined village festivals, went to Church every week and on occasional pilgrimages. Additionally, she was compassionate and kindly.
This description of her childhood from Butler's 1894 "Lives of Saints" is apt:
While the English were overrunning the north of France, their future conqueror, untutored in worldly wisdom, was peacefully tending her flock, and learning the wisdom of God at a wayside shrine.[144]
It all changed when she was thirteen and was visited by the Archangel Saint Michael who told her from the beginning that she must go to "France" -- and to Church. The children noticed that she withdrew from their games and prayed constantly, and urged them all to go to Church. Joan testified,
"Since I learned that I must come into France , I took as little part as possible in games or dancing.
From then on, it was a matter of instruction and timing.
Domrémy
Today called Domrémy-la-Pucelle, after "the Maid," Joan's home village of Domrémy lay along the upper Meuse River in northeastern France. The town itself was divided by a stream called "Three Fountains," as it was fed by springs, along one of which grew the "Fairie Tree," a beech made famous in her Trial of Condemnation as an implication of sorcery.[145] The village was considered geographically in the general region of Lorraine, thus the later name for her, "the Maid of Lorraine," but it was politically under the Duchy of Bar, and not the Duchy of Lorraine, indicative of the transient and complex nature of medieval borders and allegiances. When Joan said that her voices told her to go to "France,"[146] it made perfect sense to everyone, as she was speaking to the distinction between these regions and territories and their various alliances. The Duchy of Bar lay across both French and Holy Roman Empire (Germany) lands, with Domrémy in the western part that was a fief of the Kingdom of France.[147] France itself was elsewhere.
At Domrémy the Meuse was yet a small river, but significant enough to contain an island that Joan's father negotiated with its landowners to use to protect and hide the villagers and their livestock during military raids during the ongoing civil war between French factions and the overall Hundred Years War between the French and English. These raids came in the late 1420s as the English expanded control of northern France.[148]
In the early 1400s, a lull in the ongoing war had heated up as Henry V of England took advantage of a breach in French factions, the Armagnacs, ultimately siding with the King of France under the House of Orléans, and the Burgundians, under the House of Burgundy, ultimately siding with the English.[149] (It's more complicated, but we can see it largely under the theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend.) By 1429, the English-Burgundian alliance was the stronger. The Duke of Burgundy held Paris, Troyes, Burgundy, and Flanders (his economic base with trade to England), as well as pockets of lands and loyalties across Champagne and Bar, admist which Domrémy lay.[149] The all-important city of Rheims, the traditional site of coronation of the king of France, while aligned with France, was surrounded by Burgundian lands, and so the city's loyalty was uncertain. Finally, starting in late 1428, the Armagnac stronghold of Orléans, which was the doorway to lower France, risked falling to the English.
The people of Domrémy were loyal to the French cause, which supported the son of Charles VI, called "the Dauphin", for prince or heir to the throne. The Dauphin Charles, however, was disinherited by his father, who through marriage of his daughter to the English King Henry V, gave the royal succession to Henry and his English heirs. At the near coincidental death of both kings the title passed to Henry VI, the infant king. The Dauphin, meanwhile, asserted his claim to the throne and ruled in lands loyal to him as king of France, although through ascension not coronation.
Domrémy itself was politically and economically unimportant, but was nevertheless mixed up in the ongoing war that went on around it, on the periphery but susceptible to raids, cross-alliances, and fluid feudal land arrangements.
Across the region, a map of loyalties would look like Swiss cheese, or, to be more French, a melted Camembert, with pockets and shoots of loyalties across the various regions. The larger border dividing the English and the French was to the center-north, along the Loire River and principally at the city of the Orléans, which was under an English siege as Joan commenced her mission.
Three towns of importance to Joan's story prior to leaving the region to meet with the Dauphin (and onward to save France), Domrémy, Vaucouleurs, and Neufchâteau, were all on the margins of these opposed loyalties, which followed the path of the upper Meuse.[150] When Joan's home village, Domrémy, was pillaged by Burgundian forces, it was part of an operation ordered by the English to take the loyalist French garrison at Vaucouleurs.[151] During one raid, Joan's family fled to Neufchâteau and stayed at the inn of Madame la Rousse, whom the court at Rouen would intimate was a brothel-keeper and thus Joan supposedly worked there as a prostitute. As she did during her stays at Vaucouleurs, at Neufchâteau, Joan helped her hosts with domestic chores, and carried herself admirably and piously.
Vaucouleurs
Vaucouleurs lay along the Meuse to the north of Domrémy. The city was loyal to the French cause, but was precariously located along disputed lands between France, English-aligned Burgundy, and the neutral Holy Roman Empire. The town was fortified and held by a French garrison led by Captain Robert de Baudricourt, an exceptional commander who managed to maintain his position against the Burgundians and the English. His hold on the city was due to deft negotiations as well as the city's elaborate fortifications.[152] By the time Baudricourt met Joan, he had already agreed to yield official control of the city to the Burgundian, Antoine de Vergy, but had not yet handed it over. Ultimately, Baudricourt never actually ceded the city, although he was forced into a a pledge of neutrality. (Don't play poker with Baudricourt.)
Perhaps coincidentally, or not, a similar surrender to that which Baudricourt refused to conclude was submitted by one Étienne de Vignolles, who will be known to us in the story of Saint Joan as "La Hire", one of her most loyal commanders and a key warrior in the ultimate French victory in the war.[153] La Hire sported a, shall we say, vibrant personality, as did many of those who were attracted to and served her cause.[154] The Burgundian official he delivered the city of Vitry to was one Pierre Cauchon, a French Bishop allied with the Burgundians and an unapologetic English-loyalist, and the very guy who orchestrated Joan's trial and execution.
These odd alignments across the rejoin conjoin to form an essential contingency for Joan's mission, especially her instruction to "go to France." Situated amidst shifting and restless alliances, Baudricourt's loyalty to the Dauphin was necessary for Joan's introduction to the Dauphin.[155] Her voices told her to go to Vaucouleurs and that she would recognize Baudricourt once there.[156] Additionally, it was on the dangerous ride through Burgundian territories from Vaucouleurs to the Dauphin's residence at Chinon that Joan's companions, including a knight, realized her purity, piety, and honesty, and the divine nature of her mission. Their testimonials upon arrival at Chinon played a significant role not only in Joan's introduction to the Dauphin but to the growing public enthusiasm over her arrival.
Baudricourt dismissed Joan twice before agreeing to send her to Chinon. At her first encounter, he famously instructed her uncle who had brought her to him to,[157]
take her back to her father and to box her ears.
We can hear his annoyance in his exchanges with Joan, as related by one of Baudricourt's squires,[158]
She told him that “she came to him in the name of her Lord; that the Dauphin must be compelled to persevere and to give battle to his enemies, that the Lord would give him succour before the middle of Lent; that the kingdom belonged not to him, the Dauphin, but to her Lord; that her Lord would have the Dauphin King and hold the kingdom in trust; that she would make him King, in spite of his enemies, and would conduct him to his coronation.” “But who is this Lord of whom you speak?” asked Robert of her. “The King of Heaven,” she replied.
He even had a priest, to whom Joan had confessed, say an exorcism prayer over her:[159]
One day, I saw Robert de Baudricourt—then captain of Vaucouleurs—and Messire Jean Fournier, our Curé, come in to our house to visit her. After they were gone, she told me that the Priest had his stole, and that, in presence of the said captain, he adjured her, saying: “If you are an evil spirit, avaunt! If you are a good spirit, approach!” Then Jeanne drew near the Priest and threw herself at his knees: she said he was wrong to act so, for he had heard her in confession.
By her second encounter in early 1429, people had got curious about her, including two of Baudricourt's lieutenants, both of whom would later lead her to Chinon. Her steadfast witness to her mission had raised much curiosity and wonder. Word of her arrived to the Duke of Lorraine, a rather substantial figure who had ties to both the Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin's House of Valois, although he declared himself a neutral party as the civil war arose.[160] The Duke sent for Joan. Jean Morel testified at the Trial of Rehabilitation,[161]
I heard it said that the Lord Charles, then Duke of Lorraine, wished to see her, and gave her a black horse.
The Duke, though, was less interested in saving France than in his own health. As Joan explained to the court at Rouen,[162]
The Duke of Lorraine gave orders that I should be taken to him. I went there. I told him that I wished to go into France. The Duke asked me questions about his health; but I said of that I knew nothing. I spoke to him little of my journey. I told him he was to send his son with me, together with some people to conduct me to France, and that I would pray to God for his health. I had gone to him with a safe-conduct: from thence I returned to Vaucouleurs.
We see from the Duke's request just how much Joan had stirred up the region. The Duke of Lorraine was huge. His ambiguity after meeting her, expressed by the gift of a horse and some francs, lay in his disappointment that she didn't cure him and instead told him to drop the mistress and get right with God.[163] Joan told of this encounter to court Lady at Chinon, who testified, [164]
Jeanne told me that the Duke de Lorraine who was ill, wished to see her, that she talked with him, and told him that he was not living well, and that he would never be cured unless he amended; also she exhorted him to take back his good wife.
The Duke of Lorraine gave her a horse and four francs, and sent her back to Vaucouleurs,[165] where she has her third encounter with Baudricourt. This time Baudricourt engages Joan, although we have few details other than that she told him,
“To-day the gentle Dauphin hath had great hurt near the town of Orleans, and yet greater will he have if you do not soon send me to him.”[166]
That day was February 12, the day of the "Battle of the Herrings" over 200 miles away, and so when news arrived to Vaucouleurs of the French disaster, Baudricourt sent her to the Dauphin tout-de-suite, as they say in France.
Joan told the Rouen court about her meeting with Baudricourt,[167]
The third time, he received me, and furnished me with men; the Voice had told me it would be thus.
Armagnacs v Burgundians
English claims on the throne of France during the 14th and 15th centuries have as bookends several scandals that led to succession crises of the French throne. Just prior to his death in 1314, French King Philip IV's daughter, Isabella of France, who was English King Edward II's wife and thus queen of England, accused the wives of Philip's three sons of adultery. One of those, Margaret of Burgundy, was the Queen to King Louis I of Navarre, who later that year became King Louis X of France.[168] Margaret was jailed for the adultery charges, and so became Queen of France from prison.[169]
In a further complication that reflects upon the story of Saint Joan, Louis X was unable to divorce her, as Pope Clement V died that April and the Papal See remained empty for two years over disputes between the French and Italian Cardinals (see Popes and antipopes flowchart). By the time in 1315 that Margaret either got around to dying of a bad cold from poor conditions in prison, or was helped to to not breath any more (cause of death is disputed), Louis had only one child, Joan. He quickly remarried and the queen duly got pregnant, but Louis died at her fourth month, apparently after drinking too much chilled wine (?), or perhaps wine laced with poison. On his deathbed, he named his daughter by Margaret, Joan, his heir.
The French nobility wouldn't have it, and invoked the ancient Salic Law from Clovis that barred women from inheriting the throne. So Joan became Joan II of Navarre but not Queen of France. Louis' second wife's child was a boy, but he died at four months,[170] leaving Louis' brother, who was regent following Louis' death, to the throne. The brother ruled as Philip V from 1316 to 1322, but issued not male heirs, so the throne passed to the third brother, who had also married one of the woman who had been accused of adultery along with Margaret. Philip's wife Joan was cleared of the charges, but the wife of the third brother, who became Charles IV, was sent to prison, as well, and was divorced after he took the throne upon Philip V's death.[171] A next wife died during a premature birth, and all but one daughter of the third wife died young. So upon the death of Charles IV, there was no male heir.
From these events eventually arose the opportunity for Edward III of England, whose mother was the very "She-Wolf of England" who had launched the series of miseries that followed the charges of adultery of her brothers wives, as well as to usurp her husband and place her son on the English throne. As the nephew of Charles IV through his mother, Edward III was the most direct heir to the French crown,[172] but the French nobility again asserted Salic Law and so in 1328 gave the throne to Charles' paternal cousin, Philip of Valois, who as Philip VI started the House of Valois dynasty, to which the Dauphin of Joan's day belonged. Nine years and many disputes later, Edward III declared himself legitimate King of France and invaded the continent.
Charles VII, the Dauphin to Joan, was last heir standing of five older brothers.[173] When he asserted his right to the French throne, his legitimacy was questioned, as his mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, was accused of having him through the renowned womanizer, the Duke of Orléans -- the brother of the King, Charles VI. True or not, it may have been part of the excuse for Charles VI to bypass his supposedly illegitimate son and hand the French throne over the the English King, Henry V, who descended from Edward III and his French mother (who was daughter of Philip IV and sister to the three last Capetian kings). Ostensibly, Charles VI disinherited his son Charles over the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy in 1417, which, if so, is not only petty but would defy the vengeance in the act of the early Burgundian assassination of the father of the Duke of Orléans in 1407.
It's all very complicated and, honestly, defies historical analysis, as the Charles the Dauphin did not necessarily order the death of the Duke of Burgundy -- the murder was carried out by his men, a difference without a distinction, at least to the extent to cause a long seated regret in the mind of the Dauphin. But it gets really complicated when we consider that the successor to said dead Duke of Burgundy was married to the Dauphin's sister, Michelle. Moreover the elder brother of Michelle (and of the younger brother Charles), Louis, in 1409 married Margaret of Burgundy, a name that resonates loudly from a century before with Margaret of Burgundy, married to Louis X in 1305. Meanwhile, the next in line John, had been married off to a "Low Countries" (Holland) Countess, which was never intended to be a principal alliance for the King of France. But when Louis died, John and his wife, Jacqueline, were next in line, which threw the alliances into a jumble. John died two years later in 1417, after the latest English invasion and victory at Agincourt in 1415. After Jacqueline's death in 1433, her lands passed to the Duke of Burgundy, further expanding his holdings in the north of France and the Low Countries. When Charles VI died in 1422, the claims upon his inheritance were clear and clearly contested.
>> armagnac-burgundy war
The older brother died without any male heirs ..
>> illegitimacy of Charles
>> his sister Michelle married Duke of Burgundy
>> fight wteween Orelans and Burgundy
Burgundy: >>
Robert II instituted primogeniture for his lands, thus avoiding their partitioning and strengthening subsequent Dukes of Burgundy.
The Burgundian hold of Paris and other areas of northern France was due to the English military presence, so it was an alliance that was mutually beneficial but not mutual in purpose. For example, the English needed to hold Paris to maintain their claim on the French crown, but they also needed the Burgundians to administer and defend it.
A prime actor in and beneficiary of those entanglements was the priest Pierre Cauchon who became Joan's chief persecutor at Rouen. Cauchon was allied with the Duke of Burgundy, and so where went the Duke, went Cauchon. He had participated in negotiations between the French King Charles VI and the Vatican in 1407 in an attempt to end the schism between a French-supported papal claimant (Avignon antipope) and the Pope at Rome.[174] In 1420, after holding various positions, such as dean at the University of Paris, chaplain of the Duke of Burgundy, archdeacon of Chartres and, in 1420, Bishop of Beauvais, the position under which he would exercise jurisdiction over Joan's Trial of Condemnation.[175] That same year, Cauchon helped negotiate the Treaty of Troyes, which granted to English King Henry V inheritance to the French throne following Charles VI. Cauchon's career took off as a primary liaison between the English and the Burgundians. He escorted the English royal claimant, Henry VI to France in 1430 and acted as Henry's personal counsellor at Rouen,[176] the Emglsh administrative center in France.
Had the English managed to push south of Orléans, an Armagnac stronghold and seat of the normal heir to the French throne, the Duke d'Orléans (who was imprisoned in England at the time), they would have very likely taken all of France and enforced the Treaty of Troyes, which gave French succession to the English. Defending Orléans was the Duke's half brother, John the Bastard[177], who arrived to the city in October of 1428. He huddled the people inside the city walls, abandoning buildings and churches outside the boundaries. A deal was proposed, not by the Bastard, but by terrified citizens of Orléans, to the Duke of Burgundy that would yield the city to him while upholding its neutrality. Ordered by the English, the Duke refused it. Meanwhile within Orléans, desperation set in, especially following the French humiliation at the Battle of the Herrings on February 12 (the outcome of which Joan had predicted to Captain Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs).
Soon after the Battle of Herrings, as things seemed to be falling apart, the Bastard received news of a mysterious "maid" who was going to rescue the city of Orléans. He was curious. He had received some reinforcements, but the situation was dire. He wrote,
It is told that there had lately passed through the town of Gien a maid [une pucelle], who proclaimed that she was on her way to Chinon to the gentle Dauphin, and said that she had been sent by God to raise the siege of Orléans and take the King to his anointing at Reims.[178]
So he sent emissaries to the King's court to see what was going on.
Crazed, witch, saint... or irrelevant?
Having liberated Orleans and then leading the French army across France to clear the way for the Dauphin's coronation at Rheims, there was no question that Joan was either a witch or a prophet -- possessed by fiends, or of God.
At 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,
We piously believe her to be the Angel of the armies of the Lord.[179]
and he advised the Dauphin,
do every day some deed particularly agreeable to God and confer about it with the maid.[180]
Whatever reservations the French clerics had held about her before Orléans turned after the battle either to acknowledgement of her as emissary of God, such as we see from Gélu and his fellow Bishop, Jean Gerson who immediately wrote an apologia for the Maid, or, in the case of the Archbishop of Reims and newly installed Chancellor of France, Regnault de Chartres, acquiescence to events that were beyond his control. However, detraction is easier to sustain than faith, so the English held to their hatred of Joan longer than did the French hold love for her. Following the coronation of Charles VII, with Joan at the height of her popularity, the Chancellor, whose goal was ever reconciliation with the Burgundian faction, not its defeat, worked to undermine her. For him, the Maid had at best served to put the issue on the table, but most inconvenient was all this insistence on taking Paris, which was a Burgundian property.[181] The Chancellor did not want an attack upon Paris, which is why immediately after the coronation of Charles VII, which he administered as Archbishop of Rheims, he went to St. Denis to negotiate a truce with the English to work around all this trouble the Maid had caused. Talk of the Maid as a living Saint was most inconvenient for these purposes. Upon her capture by the Burgundians in May of 1430, the Chancellor was downright enthusiastic:
God had suffered that Joan the Maid be taken because she had puffed herself up with pride and because of the rich garments which she had taken it upon herself to wear, and because she had not done what God had commanded her, but had done her own will.[182]
Gerson had died by then, but Gélu's diocese issued prayers for her release, including,[183]
that the Maid kept in the prisons of the enemies may be freed without evil, and that she may complete entirely the work that You have entrusted to her.
But overall, de Chartres dominated French policy, and, against regular Burgundian duplicity, kept trying to negotiate a settlement.
Historians have attributed Charles' treatment of Joan after his coronation to cynicism and opportunism. I'm not convinced, as he was subject to the machine as much as he was its head. He ended up playing both sides, letting Joan go forth against the English and Burgundians while withholding the resources she needed to prosecute the program. Joan's capture, which was a direct consequence of the French transition from Joan's warfare to the Chancellor's diplomacy, became the excuse to abandon her program altogether.
English Medieval historian Juliet Barker sees Joan's career as entirely political in terms of her own ambitions and those of those around her. As such, Barker credits the Armagnacs for using her to push their war against the Burgundians, even so as to credit the Armagnacs for having engineered not just Joan's introduction to the Dauphin but to the her ability to identify him hidden amidst the courtiers.[184] Of course there is no evidence for such trickery, but the theory does legitimately point to the Dauphin's equivocal position between the anti-Burgundian and reconciliation factions around him. The problem with the view is that is treats the Dauphin as merely going along for a ride with the Maid just to see what might happen.[185] Jean Gerson's warning, however, that allowing a girl to lead an army isn't a trial balloon cannot be ignored. Historians like Barker then reply that the Dauphin was obsessed with prophesy, so he naturally fell to the latest seer. Again that is insufficient to explain the events. Barker then says that the Dauphin's military situation was not as dire as Joan's "cheerleaders" have claimed, so, by implication, she wasn't the essential actor in the moment.[186] But not even Barker admits that without Joan the French would never have won the Battle of Orléans.
The source of the historians' problem is incredulity in Joan's divine mission. Absent authentic Voices something else is needed to explain it all, so it must be this or that or something else; anything but God. So let's look at what she actually did, which might reveal whether she was just crazy, a witch, a saint, or... just whatever.
So what did Joan actually do?
To save France, she needed to crown the Dauphin legitimate King of France; to crown the King, she needed to relieve the city of Orléans from the English siege; to take the city of Orléans, she needed to lead the French army; to lead the army, she needed the support of the Dauphin and his court; to convince the court, she had to demonstrate Catholic orthodoxy to the Dauphin's investigators of her; to get the support of the Dauphin she needed to she needed to convince him of her divine mission; to convince him of her divine mission she had to do meet with him; to meet with him, she had to generate enthusiasm and curiosity as to who she might be; to convince people she was the "girl" who would save France, she had to be thoroughly convinced of it herself.
To those ends, several accomplishments stand out:
- She believed and obeyed the Voices;
- She wouldn't take no;
- She accurately prophesized;
- She generated tremendous enthusiasm from the people, which forced the French court to support her;
- She breathed confidence and discipline into the French army, which had been browbeaten and self-defeated until she inspired them;
- She exercised decisive military and political leadership;
- She scared the crap out of the English;[187]
As to that last, we know just how much she scared them from a letter to the King of England from one of his generals,
a greet strook upon your peuple that was assembled there [at Orleans] in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadded believe, and of unlevefull doubte that thei hadded of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchauntements and sorcerie. The which strooke and discomfiture nought oonly lessed in grete partie the mobre of youre people.[188]
Translation: she's a witch! Joan's biographers like to present Joan with a letter[189] she composed to the King of England, the child-king Henry VI, the day she was given authority[190] over the French army. It's a marvelous, crazy letter, almost arrogant at first glance. A second look, though, and the letter yields instead Joan's simplicity and directness. Indeed, she is hardly arrogant: just bluntly honest:
Jhesus † Maria King of England; and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the Kingdom of France; you, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; John, Lord Talbot; and you, Thomas, Lord Scales, who call yourselves Lieutenants to the said Duke of Bedford: give satisfaction to the King of Heaven: give up to the Maid,[191] who is sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns in France which you have taken and broken into. She is come here by the order of God to reclaim the Blood Royal. She is quite ready to make peace, if you are willing to give her satisfaction, by giving and paying back to France what you have taken.
It's a useful letter for the biographer, because it tells her story perfectly. But left unexplained or unattributed to anything but "voices", as they tend rather agnostically to leave it, it makes no sense: okay, so this illiterate girl from a little village hears voices that tell her she will save France and crown the King. She insists on an introduction to that prince, gets the interview, somehow picking him out of a crowd, undergoes three weeks of questions by all the king's finest minds, and passing the test is given a horse, lance, and suit of armor -- and command of the French army, whereupon she writes a letter to the King of England demanding his surrender of all his possessions in France. Okay...got it. Thank you, historians.
Let's try it this way:
God sends Saint Michael the Archangel and Saints Margaret and Catherine to visit with a worthy young girl in a small town in eastern France. Her country is both at war and civil war. The Church is in a state of disruption, with two ongoing antipope claimants, proto-protestant rumblings, and the "conciliarism" movement against papal authority gaining strength as a result of the various papal schisms. Over three years, the Archangel and the Saints prepare the young girl spiritually for her mission. In 1428, as the city of Orléans is subjected to a siege by English forces, they now tell her what she will do: save the city and crown the king in Rheims, a city held by the enemy. Following her divine voices, she gains an audience with the King of France, convinces him of her divine mission and is made a leader of the French army. Then, invoking God's instructions, she sends a letter to the King of England and his commanders, demanding surrender of his French holdings. The English refuse, and, guided by providence, she leads the French Army to an improbable victory, which she duplicates in a series of battles that clear the way for the French prince to triumphantly arrive at Rheims, the traditional city of coronations, where he is crowned King of France, Charles VII.
Now we can better understand her letter, which went on to explain that the English would do everyone a favor, saving them all much pain, were they to abandon Orléans and France itself according to God's will. Her letter is astonishing.
She concluded with the warning to the English commander,
You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and enjoins you, that you do not come to grievous hurt. If you will give her satisfactory pledges, you may yet join with her, so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom. And answer, if you wish to make peace in the City of Orleans; if this be not done, you may be shortly reminded of it, to your very great hurt. Written this Tuesday in Holy Week, March 22nd, 1428.
At her Trial of Condemnation at Rouen under the English, this letter was presented as incriminating evidence of witchcraft.[81]
“Do you know this letter?” “Yes, excepting three words. In place of ‘give up to the Maid,’ it should be ‘give up to the King.’ The words ‘Chieftain of war’ and ‘body for body’ were not in the letter I sent. None of the Lords ever dictated these letters to me; it was I myself alone who dictated them before sending them. Nevertheless, I always shewed them to some of my party.
Then, without any prompting or context, she proclaimed,[81]
"Before seven years are passed, the English will lose a greater wager than they have already done at Orlėans; they will lose everything in France. The English will have in France a greater loss than they have ever had, and that by a great victory which God will send to the French."
"How do you know this?"
"I know it well by revelation, which has been made to me, and that this will happen within seven years; and I am sore vexed that it is deferred so long. I know it by revelation, as clearly as I know that you are before me at this moment."
"When will this happen?"
"I know neither the day nor the hour."
"In what year will it happen?"
"You will not have any more. Nevertheless, I heartily wish it might be before Saint John’s Day."[192]
The prediction came on March 1, 1431. Six years and six months later, in September of 1437, Paris was delivered to the French through the Treaty of Arras, which ended the English alliance with the Duke of Burgundy and from which, in the Hundred Years War, the English would never recover. In 1449 the French recovered Rouen, where Joan was martyred, and in 1453 the English suffered a final defeat at the Battle of Castillon. Those later victories were only possible with the Burgundian realignment at the Treaty of Arras, which was only made possible by Joan's military and political victories at Orléans and Rheims.
Outside of her declarations regarding Orleans and the crowning of the Dauphin, this prophesy is her most significant -- and one that no one would have contemplated at the time. Despite the setbacks following Joan's campaigns, the English were reinvigorated by her capture and had Henry VI crowned at Paris later in the year after her execution.
Upon Joan's capture, the Duke of Burgundy issued a public acclamation of victory, announcing,
‘Very dear and well-beloved, knowing that you desire to have news of us, we[193] signify to you that this day, the 23rd May, towards six o’clock in the afternoon, the adversaries of our Lord the King[194] and of us, who were assembled together in great power, and entrenched in the town of Compiègne, before which we and the men of our army were quartered, have made a sally from the said town in force on the quarters of our advanced guard nearest to them, in the which sally was she whom they call the Maid, with many of their principal captains .... and by the pleasure of our blessed Creator, it had so happened and such grace had been granted to us, that the said Maid had been taken ... The which capture, as we certainly hold, will be great news everywhere; and by it will be recognized the error and foolish belief of all those who have shewn themselves well disposed and favourable to the doings of the said woman. And this thing we write for our news, hoping that in it you will have joy, comfort, and consolation, and will render thanks and praise to our Creator, Who seeth and knoweth all things, and Who by His blessed pleasure will conduct the rest of our enterprizes to the good of our said Lord the King and his kingdom, and to the relief and comfort of his good and loyal subjects.
We see just how important to the English and Burgundians was Joan's fall: she is not of divine origin and her successes are not legitimate, including, by reference to the English King, the coronation Joan engineered of the French King. Royal legitimacy relied on faith in God's plan, so Joan's capture justified the English cause. The next year, after Joan's execution, the English king Henry VI was coronated at Paris in an elaborate ceremony as Henry II, King of France. It was not just English assertion of the Treaty of Troyes, in which Charles VI yielded the French throne to the English upon his death, it was the English declaration of victory over the Maid.
Ultimately, the English-Burgundian alliance would unravel, but meanwhile, following Joan's capture, the French fell to episodic cat-and-mouse play, both militarily[195] and diplomatically[196], hoping to weaken the English while luring the Burgundians to their side. At the time of Joan's death, it had yielded no results. After her death, the strategy continued, and French military actions were focused on consolidation and not advance, defense.[197]
Yet Joan's prophesy happened. As the English-Burgundian alliance unwound, the English King returned home, the English leadership lost confidence, and the French under Joan's old warriors started taking more and more land, especially around Paris. In 1435, with the death of the English Duke of Bedford, the Burgundians abandoned the alliance and signed the Treaty of Arras with the French. Soon after, the citizens of Paris opened the city gates to the Bastard of Orleans and the French army. While it took another twenty years for the end of the Hundred Years War, the outcome by then was sealed, and Charles VII was able to not just consolidate his realm, but reorganize it politically and militarily, significantly contributing to the creation of the modern state in France.
At Rouen on March 1, 1431, when Joan predicted an English defeat in France, she was neither prophet nor liar to both English and French officialdom. She was now merely an instrument of war for the English and, for the French officialdom an abandoned and forgotten "man on the field."
The Mission
Joan was hyperfocused on her mission, which had two parts: relieve Orlėans, then crown the the Dauphin at Rheims. The importance of Orlėans is easy to understand, as it saved France militarily.[198] But why the need for the coronation at Rheims? Sure, it was the traditional site of French coronations, and so held symbolic value. But, as the Dauphin and his advisors argued, it wasn't necessary and could wait.
Instead, let's try (try) to think like God, or a young lady inspired by God, for a moment and it becomes clearer:
The Dauphin was already King of France, Charles VII, having claimed the title at the death of his father in 1422,[199] in what is called "ascension" to the throne. There would normally be as little delay as possible between an ascension and coronation,[200] but the symbolism of the coronation was not necessary to hold the throne, and for the besieged House of Valois it wasn't very convenient to adhere to the tradition.
Nevertheless, as a religious ceremony affirming the divine rights of kings, the coronation was supremely important. Indeed, the coronation was called a "consecration." For Joan, he was not King until he was ceremonially and by the authority of the Church crowned. She told François Garivel, the King's Councillor-Genéral, [201]
When I asked Jeanne why she called the King Dauphin, and not King, she replied that she should not call him King till he had been crowned and anointed at Rheims, to which city she meant to conduct him.
But Rheims was held by the Burgundians. To much bewilderment, Joan insisted, and following the victory at Orléans she led the French army to continued victories that allowed for the passage of the court to Rheims for the coronation. There, she and her banner were the true light of the entire ceremony. From the Trial of Condemnation:
“Did not they wave your standard round the head of your King when he was consecrated at Rheims?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Why was it taken to the Church of Rheims for the consecration more than those of other captains?”
“It had shared the pain, it was only right it should share the honour.”[202]
Again, the ceremony did not have to take place, and without Joan's insistence it would not have taken place, at least not then and there. With the victory at Orléans (which Joan made possible with her standard[203]), the Dauphin and his court considered holding the coronation at Orléans instead of the rather inconvenient Burgundian-surrounded Rheims.[204] Joan wouldn't have it differently, and we can understand why: had the French not asserted control of Rheims, the English may have attempted to crown Henry VI as King of France there, as opposed to at Paris, which they did in 1431 after Joan's death. Rheims was under pressure from the Burgundians before Joan's campaign, so the coronation of Charles VII at Rheims was not merely symbolic, it required a military victory that very importantly denied the English use of that same symbolism. The path between the victory at Orléans and the the coronation at Rheims wrapped around a mixture of French court indecision, Joan's insistence on getting on with saving France, not just Orléans, and the next moves by the English. Joan's strategy was simple:[205]
Let us advance boldly in God’s Name
But a leader needs followers, which wasn't a simple matter of raising her standard. That standard won battles -- literally, as Joan testified at Rouen, “It had shared the pain.”[202] Joan had prepared the Army to follow that standard, which is why she insisted on its fabrication for her. It was a series of confidences that aligned for the loyalty of the French army. We see in the testimony of Sieur de Gaucourt that after the investigation into Joan ordered by the Dauphin, as frustrating as it was for her, as she wanted to get moving right away instead, the inquiries had the effect of ramping up enthusiasm. Joan was not alone in wanting to get moving to "save France." Sieur de Gaucourt recalled,
After numerous interrogations, they ended by asking her what sign she could furnish, that her words might be believed? “The sign I have to shew,” she replied, “is to raise the siege of Orleans!”
Imagine to hear that from this young girl with her hair shorn, and dressed like a squire. There she is, annoyed and impatient, and there they are, expectant but unsure, defaulting to, essentially, "we don't find anything wrong in her," and she goes straight at it.
Whereas desperate men make desperate decisions, this wasn't desperation, it was faith. Joan convinced the Dauphin (but not everyone around him), and, more importantly, his army, that she would win. There was no apparent deadline on Orleans, as it was holding, and had been for months. Only Joan knew it was about to be lost.
Joan was so self-sure, so pious, so consistent, and so competent that people believed her. She told everyone she met flatly, such as she said in front of the Dauphin's squire:[206]
I am come from the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans and to conduct the King to Rheims for his crowning and anointing.
At the Trial of Rehabilitation, the Count du Dunois, known in Joan's time as "the Bastard of Orléans," stated,[207]
I think that Jeanne was sent by God, and that her behaviour in war was a fact divine rather than human.
He says, "I think," not "I thought," so it was a reflection made years later. But at the time, the Bastard, who was in charge of the defense of Orléans. freely submitted to Joan's orders and leadership. Whatever he thought at the time, looking back, it only made sense to him that she was truly sent by God. Joan acted "boldly",[208] as she testified, but entirely free of pretense. When John II, Duc d'Alençon, arrived to Chinon having gotten word of "a young girl who said she was sent by God,"[209] he first encountered her in conversation with his distant cousin, the Dauphin,[210]
I found Jeanne talking with the King. Having approached them, she asked me who I was. “It is the Duke d’Alençon,” replied the King. “You are welcome,” she then said to me, “the more that come together of the blood of France the better it will be.”
The next day he saw her leading the Dauphin on a walk, carrying a lance:
Seeing her manage her lance so well I gave her a horse.
The Duke was convinced: Joan was authentic. Her prophesies had not yet been fulfilled, so he was acting on intuition and observation. After Orléans, of course, everyone believed, such as the until-then doubtful Bishop Gerson who upon Joan's victory at Orléans wrote his apologia for her. The Duke d’Alençon subsequently and personally experienced another of her miraculous interventions at the Battle of Jargeau, after Orléans:[211]
Jeanne said to me: “Go back from this place, or that engine”—pointing out an engine of war in the city—“will kill you.” I retired, and shortly after that very engine did indeed kill the Sieur de Lude in that very place from which she told me to go away. On this account I had great fear, and wondered much at Jeanne’s words and how true they came.
To follow Joan was to believe in her, for, as Bishop Gerson wrote, the downside to a defeat with a woman would be a disaster -- as it was when Joan was captured and confidence in her faded.
Until then, to confront Joan in battle was to believe, as well, as we heard from the English general's letter to his King, attributing his loss at Orléans to the French to his troop's "lack of firm faith, and unlawful doubt that they had of a disciple and limb of the devil, called the Maid, who used false enchantments and sorcery."[212] Indeed, we might attribute the ferocity of the Trial at Rouen and the rush to burn her to the shame of having been humiliated by a girl.[213]
Above all else, it was Joan's piety that astounded and gave foundation to her proclamations. So many of the witnesses at her Trial of Rehabilitation recall her in prayer, including at Vaucouleurs, Chinon and during the campaigns. (She even made it once to a Mass on the way to Chinon, although she wanted to go more).
On completing their investigation of Joan, which lasted almost a month, the Dauphin's theologians and experts concluded, according to the Dauphin's squire, Gobert Thibault, they were convinced,[214]
I heard the said Lord Confessor and other Doctors say that they believed Jeanne to be sent from God, and that they believed it was she of whom the prophecies spoke; because, seeing her actions, her simplicity, and conduct, they thought the King might be delivered through her; for they had neither found nor perceived aught but good in her, nor could they see anything contrary to the Catholic faith.
One of the Bishops who interviewed her, Gelu
Gelu >> here
Trust in Joan was the key. But she also exercised military genius.
Discipline
Jeanne stayed there two or three days; and from thence she went to Tours, and to Loches, where the King’s army was preparing to go to Jargeau; and from thence they went to attack that town.
In war time, she would not permit any of those in her company to steal anything; nor would she ever eat of food which she knew to be stolen. Once, a Scot told her that he had eaten of a stolen calf: she was very angry, and wanted to strike the Scot for so doing.
She would never permit women of ill-fame to follow the army; none of them dared to come into her presence; but, if any of them appeared, she made them depart unless the soldiers were willing to marry them.[215]
> Just as the English used it to justify her execution, the problem Joan's male attire was palpable for the French theologians. << St. Paul!
imagine the
She demanded the same of her soldiers, and personally ran the prostitutes out of their camps.
M P C , Priest, Licentiate in Law, Canon of Saint-Aignan. I have seen Jeanne, at the Elevation of the Host, weeping many tears. I remember well that she induced the soldiers to confess their sins; and I indeed saw that, by her instigation and advice, La Hire and many of his company came to confession. Murray p. 250
Leadership
Horsemanship is a sign of leadership. Horses are sensitive to human emotions and temperment. Joan became renowned for her control of horses:
Jeanne appears to have been a good horse-woman; she rode “horses so ill tempered that no one would dare to ride them.” The Duke de Lorraine, on her first visit to him, and the Duke d’Alençon, after seeing her skill in riding a course, each gave her a horse; and we read also of a gift of a war-horse from the town of Orleans, and “many horses of value” sent from the Duke of Brittany. She had entered Orleans on a white horse, according to the Journal du Siège d’Orléans; but seems to have been in the habit of riding black chargers in war; and mention is also made by Châtelain of a “lyart” or grey. A story, repeated in a letter from Guy de Laval, relates that, on one occasion (June 6th, 1428), when her horse, “a fine black war-horse” was brought to the door, he was so restive that he would not stand still. “Take him to the Cross,” she said; and there he stood, “as though he were tied,” while she mounted.
Strategic and tactical genius
It was said that Jeanne was as expert as possible in the art of ordering an army in battle, and that even a captain bred and instructed in war could not have shown more skill; at this the captains marvelled exceedingly[216]
>> artillery
, "won battles; Joan prepared the French to follow it.
rallied the French and routed the English.
the English retreated to Paris, although
> raising her standard
>>Loire Campaign (1429) - Wikipedia
On approaching Rheims, Joan her explained it to the King[217]:
“This is a good people,” she said to us; “I have seen none elsewhere who rejoiced as much at the coming of so noble a King. How happy should I be if, when my days are done, I might be buried here!”
“Jeanne,” then said the Archbishop to her, “in what place do you hope to die?”
“Where it shall please God,” she answered; “for I am not certain of either the time or the place, any more than you are yourself. Would it might please God, my Creator, that I might retire now, abandon arms and return to serve my father and mother and to take care of their sheep with my sister and my brothers, who would be so happy to see me again!”
Still, Joan didn't fully realize that once the King of France was duly crowned, her work was done. It's a very sad period that follows, in which, hampered by hedging and outright delays from the Court and military heads, she demands movement, and now, but got next to nothing in reply. With only a core of supporters, a fantastic group who play an important role in the eventual defeat of the English, Joan fails to take Paris and is captured at a minor battle soon after. She spends the next year shuffled between castles and prisons, and is fed up to the English who use a French ecclesiastic court to try her for heresy in a rigged show trial.
But without that trial we know very little about her. Without the trial, Joan could not have convicted her tormentors so thoroughly as she did. Without her trial, Joan did not need to be redeemed by her nation that had abandoned her. Without that redemption we would not have heard from the witnesses to her holiness. Without that testimony, she's just an unusual girl who led an army. Without her martyrdom, there is no Saint Joan of Arc.
So what did Joan do?
>>here
Having saved France, Joan got stuck in unproductive campaigns in the Loire, unsuccessfully attacked Paris, and was captured by the Burgundians and executed by the English. Was that part of the plan?
Well, her greatest act was to liberate Orléans; her highest moment was the coronation of Charles VII at Rheims; her greatest accomplishment was the eventual victory of France over England to end the Hundred Years War; and her greatest moment was her martyrdom on the stake, repeating the word, "Jesus." Her greatest legacy is the Catholic Church, having given to France the chance to be, as she told the English in her letter to the King and the Duke of Bedord,,
so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom.[218]
God's will be done
We all know from the Lord's Prayer,
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
and Jesus' prayer at the Garden[219],
Not my will but yours be done
Joan's journey is not so much fulfillment of God's will as her acceptance of it. Every step, every decision was God's will not hers.
What's additionally remarkable is her insistence upon delivering messages of warning and pleas for surrender of the English. Twice << before the Battle of Orleans Joan spoke to the English across the field to implore them to surrender and go away. They ridiculed her (reverse Monty Python scene) and her own military counselors deplored it. But why?
God wants us -- requires us -- to choose him. As his instrument, Joan gave the English the opportunity to choose
Saving Catholicism
We will review here other ways in which Joan characterized her mission as for Catholicism and not just for France, but the larger point is that had Joan not saved France, it may very well have lost its Catholicism under English rule. Had the victor of the Hundred Years War been English and not French, then the King of France during the Protestant reformation would have been English, if not under Henry VIII, likely another. With or without Henry VIII's Anglian church, an English-ruled France would have integrated with the Low Countries and thereby spread its rule into Germany while keeping the rising Spanish power out. Come Martin Luther and the Thirty Years War, we see how tenuous was the hold of the Holy Roman Empire upon Germany and central Europe. By the time the Spanish King seized the Holy Roman Empire, had England ruled France, and had France fallen to Anglicanism, there may not have been much of a Holy Roman Empire left to seize, leaving it, to borrow from Voltaire, "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."[220] Papal schisms in the Church leading up to Joan's day made it all inevitable.
Who knows, except that it would have been vastly different. But given the events of the 16th century, one can readily see Roman Catholicism as a victim of an English ruled France and northern Europe. Alternative histories are pure conjecture, as any number of contingencies may have changed the trajectory of an English-ruled France, including the War of Roses which brought Henry VIII's House of Tudor to power in England. Still, we have the plain fact that, as it happened, England separated itself from Rome and France did not, and by saving France from English rule, it was Joan of Arc who caused that possibility.
Victory at Orléans
A next character to introduce is the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault of Chartres, and Chancellor of France. At best, he distrusted Joan, at worst he resented or even loathed her. He was not her friend. Regnault and the Court council had ordered the Bastard of Orlėans to lead Joan's army away from the city to take Chécy first. The idea was to present a diversion to the English at Orléans. Joan was furious.
Are you the Bastard of Orléans?
Yes, I am, and I rejoice your coming.
Are you the one who gave orders for me to come here, on this side of the river so that I could not go directly to Talbot [English commander] and the English?
The Bastard explained that the "wisest" men around him had advised the action.
In God's name, the counsel of Our Lord God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought that you could fool me, and instead you fool yourself; I bring you better help than ever came to you from any soldier to any city: It is the help of the King of Heaven. This help comes not for love of me but from God Himself, who at the prayer of St. Louis and of St. Charlemagne has had pity on the city of Orléans. He has not wanted the enemy to have both the body of the lord of Orléans and his city.
Joan there goes for it -- Saints Louis and Charlemagne? These are not just founders of France, these are the founders of Catholic France.
To the Bastard's surprise, and in support of an order from Joan to move supplies by the river, the winds changed, allowing for the operation.[221] The army crossed the Loire and entered the besieged city, which was stirred up and hopeful, finally. But Joan was forced to wait as the French army gathered and prepared. During this time, she wanted out to an embankment and yelled at the English to go home. They replied with insults[222], including one from an English commander that she was a "cowherd" and would be burned at the stake.
Impatient, impetuous, and sure, Joan was frustrated at the delays. Finally, some skirmishes commenced, with Joan leading one that took an English embankment. It was a small victory, but the first by the French, and invigorating for them. Joan, for her part, was dismayed by the violence, and prayed ceaselessly for the souls of her fallen soldiers, especially those who she feared had not confessed before their deaths. On Ascension Thursday, she sent a third letter of warning to the English to go home, signed
Jesus-Maria Joan the Maid
Marvelous![223] Since the English had held her herald who brought the first two letters, she sent the last by arrow. They English shouted, "Here's news from the whore of the Armagnacs!", which greatly distressed her. Against various opinions, Joan ordered an assault, finally, and pushed the English back from a second fortification that they had moved to from a first which they abandoned. They were worried. The French commanders, though, exercised their usual defeatism, and begged Joan to just hold the city behind it's fortifications. Joan replied,
Get up tomorrow very early in the morning, earlier than you did today, and do the best you can; keep cose to me, for tomorrow I will have much to do, more than I have ever done before; and tomorrow blood will leave my body above my breast.
Joan led the assault, received an arrow in her upper chest, had it treated (without charms, as suggested, which she said would be sinful), and returned to the fight. An impasse followed, and even La Hire wanted to retire. Joan said, no, wait, and prayed in a nearby vineyard for about fifteen minutes. Then she grabbed her standard from her squire, and rushed towards the English embankment. The French army spontaneously erupted in a charge to follow her and took the English stronghold. Orléans was saved.[224] Joan's biographer makes an interesting notation following the description of the battle that the people of Orléans, who had been traumatized and abused by men at arms throughout the Hundred Years War, especially the mercenaries of one side or the other of the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war, received the army in celebration and joy:
Under the command of the Maid, even warfare had briefly changed its face back to a world of honor[225]
Visions not delusions
From the transcript of the Trial of Condemnation at Rouen in 1431, "Thursday, March 1st, in the same place, the Bishop and 58 Assessors present":
“Since last Tuesday, have you had any converse with Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?”
“Yes, but I do not know at what time.”
“What day?”
“Yesterday and to-day; there is never a day that I do not hear them.”
“Do you always see them in the same dress?”
“I see them always under the same form, and their heads are richly crowned. I do not speak of the rest of their clothing: I know nothing of their dresses.”
“How do you know whether the object that appears to you is male or female?”
“I know well enough. I recognize them by their voices, as they revealed themselves to me; I know nothing but by the revelation and order of God.”
“What part of their heads do you see?”
“The face.”
“These saints who shew themselves to you, have they any hair?”
“It is well to know they have.”
“Is there anything between their crowns and their hair?”
“No.”
“Is their hair long and hanging down?”
“I know nothing about it. I do not know if they have arms or other members. They speak very well and in very good language; I hear them very well.”
“How do they speak if they have no members?”
“I refer me to God. The voice is beautiful, sweet, and low; it speaks in the French tongue.”
“Does not Saint Margaret speak English?”
“Why should she speak English, when she is not on the English side?”[226]
Joan first met Saints Margaret and Catherine back at Domremy
Several events from her village life stand out. These pieces fall together for the launch of Joan's mission to save France (and/or Catholicism -- more on that later). They are seen by skeptics as to obvious to be true and so fabrications. But if you think about it, her trajectory is entirely contingent upon them, so rather than presenting evidence of fabrication, they are strong proofs:
- Saint Michael is patron Saint and savior of France, and Saints Catherine and Margaret were actively venerated in the region;
- Joan's visions started after a raid on her village by an English ally, the Burgundian Henri d'Orly[227] (note that Joan's village of Domrémy was located within territory controlled by the English-allied Burgundians and outside of the control of the Dauphin, the French claimant on the throne);
- A young man in the village claimed she was betrothed to him;
- An old beech tree in a grove by the village was said to be occupied by fairies, which village children;[228]
- Local legends held that an armed virgin or a virgin carrying a banner would save France[229]'
It would make absolutely no sense if Joan had come from a place or experience removed from any of the above. Rather than causing her visions, an assertion for which there is no evidence and that is based solely on rejection of divine inspiration, these contingencies affirmed and supported what the visions told her. The honest observer must accept the clear, incredibly well-documented historical facts of Joan's era, much of which was predicted in her visions. So those who deny her mission as divinely guided can only fall back on the idea that, heh, her visions were not real, but she thought they were, and that's what counts.[230]
For example, as for legends of a virgin savior of France, Joan probably knew of them all. But one, in particular was both more recent and more directly about Joan -- and she understood it early on to be about her. She had not told her parents or the local priest about her visions, which had been going on for several years.
The timeline here is interesting. From the beginning, her voices told her she would go to "France."[231] At some point, she was told specifically to go to Vaucouleurs and speak to Robert de Baudricourt, captain of the guards, who would take her to the Dauphin. By then, she was very clear on her mission, it's purpose and outcome. She told her uncle, whom she asked to introduce her to Baudricourt,
to ask him to lead her to the place where my dauphin was
because,
Was it not said that France would be ruined through a woman[232], and afterward restored by a virgin?
What "was said" was from old and recent legends and prophesies, the most recent about a woman who would don armor to save France. Joan knew of these and assumed it for herself. Again, academics will say that such prophesies are deliberately and usefully vague. Okay, a virgin savior - take your pick. But a woman putting on armor? That one was unique and directly fulfilled by Joan.[233] Her uncle went with it, and introduced her to the Captain. Joan laid it on him in full. As attested by a witness, a knight, Bertrand de Poulengy,
She said that she had come to him, Robert, on behalf of her Lord, to ask him to send word to the dauphin that he should hold still and not make war on his enemies, because the Lord would give him help before mid-Lent; and Joan also said that the kingdom did not belong to the dauphin, but to her Lord; and that her Lord wanted the dauphin to be made king, and that he would hold the kingdom in trust, saying that despite the dauphin's enemies he would be made king, and that she would lead him to be consecrated. Robert asked her who was her Lord, and she answered, 'The King of Heaven.'"
Another witness, Jean de Metz[234], a squire at Vaucouleurs, and who testified that Joan said to him,
"I have come here to the King's chamber[235] to speak to Messire Robert de Baudricourt, so that he will take me to the King or have me taken to him. And he hasn't troubled about me or my words. Nevertheless, before mid-Lent, I must go before the King even if I wear my feet off to the knees. For no kings or dukes or king of Scotland's[236] daughter or anybody else in the world can recover the Kingdom of France; there is no aid but myself although I should rather drown myself before the eyes of my poor mother, for it isn't of my estate. But it is necessary that I come, and that I do this, for Our Lord wills that I do it."
Okay, a lot going on there. Let's break it down:
- Joan clarified that she was following God ("her Lord") and God's will, not that of the Dauphin's or France;[237]
- The Dauphin should hold off any military action against the English until mid-Lent, which would be precisely when she would meet with him and organize her march on Orléans;
- She predicted here the coming advances of the English ("despite the dauphin's enemies"), who with the Burgundians subsequently launched major offenses, culminating in the siege of Orléans starting that October;
- She, Joan, herself would "lead" the Dauphin to his coronation.
Note that this occurred not only before the siege on Orléans, which she had already been told by her voices that she would liberate, but It was a month before the burning of Domrémy, which is often taken as a motive for Joan's subsequent actions.
Shortly after her return home, her village was attacked and all fled to another town, Neufchâteau[238]. It's an unclear and meaningless episode that the Court at Rouen seized upon to discredit Joan. Either she alone or with the family had lodged at an inn that served travelers, including monks, pilgrims, traveling merchants and soldiers. The owner, Jean Waldaires, "la Rousse" (redhead), was a widow, and thus the suggestion at the Trial that la Rousse was either a prostitute or running a brothel, and thus Joan was there for that purpose. Joan testified to having helped with chores there, and we know when she was not tending the cattle the villagers had driven there for protection from the raids, or helping with the inn, she was at church in prayer[239]. What does matter is that Joan's mind was not on anything but what her voices had been telling her. On her return to Domrémy, Joan told a friend,
There was a maid between Coussey[240] and Vaucouleurs who within a year would have the king of France anointed.
It was at this time that the English moved on Orléans, which, along the Loire River, was the key to the rest of France. There was at the time and has been speculation that at this time the Dauphin considered, in face of the English assault, escaping to Scotland or Spain.[241] Had Orléans fallen, this would have been a likely outcome. But it did not, so he did not.
She told her uncle Durand Laxart about it because she needed his help
Probably the first person she told about her own visions with any detail was her uncle, Durand Laxart (or Lassois), the husband of her mother's sister. Joan needed him, as he lived in the regional
Here's an example from a well documented history of the life of Joan as regards the idea that Joan was fulfilling a prophesy as silly:
Prophesies[242]
earliest visions:
"It taught me to be good, to go regularly to church. It told me that I should come into France ... This voice told me, two or three times a week, that I must go away and that I must come to France... It told me that I should raise the siege laid to the city of Orléans. The voice told me also that I should go to Robert de Baudricourt at the town of Vaucouleurs, who was the [garrison] commander of the town, and he would provide people to go with me. And I replied that I was a poor girl who knew neither how to ride nor lead in war."
I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me guide my behavior. And the first time I was very much afraid. And this voice came about the hour of noon, in the summer time, in my father's garden..."
Then she said that when she had to leave to see her king she was told by her voices: "Go boldly: [92] when thou art before the king he shall have a good sign to receive and believe in thee."(Trial, p 92)
A few days before she was taken prisoner, she told all those at a Mass in the Église de St. Jacques,
"My good friends, my dear little children, I am sold and betrayed. Soon I shall be given up to death. Pray to God for me, for I can no longer serve the King and the Kingdom of France."[243]
Why the betrayal?
It confounds the honest reader the betrayals, denials, and injustices that Joan suffered. It's tempting to recognize the interests and intrigues she provoked as normal reactions to the challenges to authority she presented on all sides, and including her parents.
This essay is not concerned with the particulars of the Trial at Rouen, except for Joan's clear demonstration in it of her divine mission. What I find more interesting is Joan's own confoundment at her situation. She knew which side she was on and which side they were on.
From a typological point of view, the situation is clear: Joan is a "type" of Christ, betrayed by a follower, abandoned by the rest (mostly[244]) ransomed by blood money, persecuted by local religious leaders using the authority of a foreign occupier, abandoned by her followers, tortured, suffered, and put to death by that foreign power.
The history depicts the typology explicitly. However, we can still ask, why'd she have to go through all this?
The Trial
The extent to which the English and Burgundians went to justify the execution of Joan, and the utter hatred of her that the court at Rouen exercised demonstrates by the opposing virtue how important and effective were Joan and her accomplishments.
Having been ransomed by the English from her captor, the Duke of Luxembourg, Joan was handed not to a military court but to an ecclesiastical court. For the English, it'd be an easy solution to put her death, as she had no noble protection that might complicate her execution.[245]Still, it was a tricky situation: this woman had brought great defeats upon them and roused the sentiments of loyal French. For those French who did support the English, it was upon explicit economic, military and political motives, and from popular devotion. The Burgundian people hated their French rivals, the Armagnacs, far more than they championed the English King. The alliance was one of convenience and self-preservation. The Burgundian elites, nobility and ecclesiastic, however, were, if not enthusiastic for English rule, were steadfast in its support, as it not only gave them power over their Armagnac rivals but it empowered them individually in their political economies. An English-ruled France would have put them right at the top.
Given top-down support and the dangers of bottom-up resentment or even potential rebellion that Joan represented, to the English and the Burgundian elites, she simply had to die. Only it had to be justified, and no greater justification could be found in the 15th century than that of the Church.
To get there, it had to be carefully orchestrated with clear lines of authority.
When Joan was captured by Burgundian forces under the Count of Luxembourg, she was de facto held by a Burgundian ally but de jure held by an independent entity. This was an important distinction because it took from English and the Duke of Burgundy direct responsibility for her.
>> from Luxembourg to the English to the Court << see p. 10 justifed every stop
The Rouen court had placed itself in a corner from the beginning.
To explain away the improbability in Joan's actions and words, the ecclesiastical court at Rouen developed a theory of "malice inherent in feminine nature."
Christology of Saint Joan
- born in poverty, among shepherds
- distrust of the leaders
- triumphant entry to Orleans
- betrayal
- Charles VII washing his hands of her
- championed by her mother
The prophecies of Joan of Arc
Jean Dunois testified that not all of Joan's prophesies were fulfilled[246],
Although Jeanne sometimes spoke in jest of the affairs of war, and although, to encourage the soldiers, she may have foretold events which were not realized, nevertheless, when she spoke seriously of the war, and of her deeds and her mission, she only affirmed earnestly that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleans, and to succour the oppressed people of that town and the neighbouring places, and to conduct the King to Rheims that he might be consecrated (emphasis added)
Prophecies of the coming of Saint Joan
- Merlin
- St. Bede
- Marie d'Avignon
Joan's own testimony on those prophesies
Joan told her Uncle , Durand Laxart, and a woman with whom she stayed on her second visit with him to Vaucouleurs,
“Was it not said that France would be ruined through a woman and afterwards restored by a virgin?”.
>> see Prophecies | Joan of Arc | Jeanne-darc.info
Testimony of Jean Dunois
Jeanne had expressly predicted that, before long, the weather and the wind would change; and it happened as she had foretold. She had, in like manner, stated that the convoy would enter freely into the town.[247]
Testimony of Brother Séguin de Séguin of four of Joan's prophesies
The Dominican friar participated in the inquiry into Joan ordered by the Dauphin after she presented herself to the Court at Chinon. The priest was a Professor of Theology and well-respected. He later testified that she made four prophesies
- Orléans would be liberated from the English
- the King would be crowned at Rheims (which
- Paris would liberated from the English
- the Duc d'Orléans (Duke of Orleans) would be freed from imprisonment in England
That last prophesy was significant because, while no more improbable than the others, it occurred ten years after her death and had the Duke[248] not returned to France he would never have fathered Louis of Orléans who was crowned Louis XII, King of France, in 1498.
Joan insisted upon the coronation of Charles VII at Rheims, which seemed not ridiculous but dangerous, Rheims was in Burgundy, held by the English allies under the Duke of Burgundy. çéans, Joan insisted upon the necessity that the coronation be held in Rheims, which was where Philip II, creator of modern France, was crowned, and was the site of the baptism of Clovis.
From Fr. Séguin's testimony:
I saw Jeanne for the first time at Poitiers. The King’s Council was assembled in the house of the Lady La Macée, the Archbishop of Rheims, then Chancellor of France, being of their number. I was summoned, as also were [list of names] ... The Members of the Council told us that we were summoned, in the King’s name, to question Jeanne and to give our opinion upon her. We were sent to question her at the house of Maître Jean Rabateau, where she was lodging. We repaired thither and interrogated her. And then she foretold to us—to me and to all the others who were with me—these four things which should happen, and which did afterwards come to pass: first, that the English would be destroyed, the siege of Orleans raised, and the town delivered from the English; secondly, that the King would be crowned at Rheims; thirdly, that Paris would be restored to his dominion; and fourthly, that the Duke d’Orléans should be brought back from England. And I who speak, I have in truth seen these four things accomplished.
Seeing through duplicity or providential foresight?
After the coronation, the Duke of Burgundy made overtures to the newly crowned Charles VII, who preferred the adulation of villages along his march towards Paris to actually entering Paris. A temporary peace was agreed upon, and under hopes that the Duke of Burgundy would join the French against the English. The Duke had no such intention, but took advantage of the lull to reinforce his position with the English who reinforced Paris.
Under Joan's insistence, the Duke of Alençon organized an attack upon Paris on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God. After an all-day assault that induced both panic and expectant enthusiasm within the city, as sundown fell and by the walls, Joan was struck in the thigh by a crossbow bolt. She called for a continued assault, but the nightfall and shock at her injury dissuaded her troops, who carried her out of a ditch back to the French camp.[249] The next day the King ordered a halt to the attacks and on the 13th a retreat back to the Loire, which meant back to Orléans.
Before leaving St. Denis, where Charles VII had resided during this time, Joan presented a complete set of white armor and a seized sword to the altar at the church of St. Denis, a traditional act of thanks giving by a wounded soldier.[250] After the King left St. Denis, the English took the armor and likely destroyed it.
From here, the usual story is the the King abandoned Joan, while allowing her limited, unsupported military campaigns, which is true. We know that the King and his court, which never really trusted Joan, was hoping for a settlement with the Duke of Burgundy. For her part, Joan "feared nothing but treason."[251]
But there's a bit more to it. The King was not wrong to seek a settlement, and with lingering baggage from the Armagnac-Burgundy dispute, which included the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy's father in 1419 during a tense meeting with Charles himself.[252] The assassination launched the civil war and opened the door for the English, who were already on the move in northern France, to sign the Treaty of Troyes[253] with Charles's weak and insane father, Charles VI. But the history weighed upon the new King. On August 16, 14>> the new King's representatives appealed to the Duke of Burgundy, "the grand duke of the west," they implored, with "greater offers of reparation than the royal majesty actually possessed."[254] King Charles VII thereby ceded authority over the war to his enemy.
Joan, meanwhile, had told the Duke of Burgundy off:
Jhesus † Mary
Great and formidable Prince, Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne the Virgin requests of you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, that the King of France and yourself should make a good firm lasting peace. Fully pardon each other willingly, as faithful Christians should do; and if it should please you to make war, then go against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, beg, and request as humbly as I can that you wage war no longer in the holy kingdom of France, and order your people who are in any towns and fortresses of the holy kingdom to withdraw promptly and without delay. And as for the noble King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, saving his honor; if you’re not opposed. And I tell you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, for your well-being and your honor and [which I affirm] upon your lives, that you will never win a battle against the loyal French, and that all those who have been waging war in the holy kingdom of France have been fighting against King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world, my rightful and sovereign Lord. And I beg and request of you with clasped hands to not fight any battles nor wage war against us – neither yourself, your troops nor subjects; and know beyond a doubt that despite whatever number [duplicated phrase] of soldiers you bring against us they will never win. And there will be tremendous heartbreak from the great clash and from
the blood that will be spilled of those who come against us. And it has been three weeks since I had written to you and sent proper letters via a herald [saying] that you should be at the anointing of the King, which this day, Sunday, the seventeenth day of this current month of July, is taking place in the city of Rheims – to which I have not received any reply. Nor have I ever heard any word from this herald since then.
I commend you to God and may He watch over you if it pleases Him, and I pray God that He shall establish a good peace.
Written in the aforementioned place of Rheims on the aforesaid seventeenth day of July.
Charles VII was not entirely deceived. But he was duplicitous with Joan. He feted her, brought her from castle to castle, but ignored her pleas to carry on the war. Her opportunity came when the need arose to put down Burgundian resistance[255] within the Loire region itself, at a town called Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier. Sent by the Court, Joan took the fortified town (protected by a moat) on Nov 4, 1429, but only after insisting upon a second assault and standing at foot of the walls inspiring or, perhaps berating, her troops forward. Afterwards, Charles enobled here and her family, both men and women.
The Council ordered to to attack another town in the region, La Charité, also fortified, but denied her additional artillery or funds. So Joan was forced to raise her own army for the attack, which was unsuccessful, her first defeat after Paris. The defeat gave the royal Council further excuse to ignore her and to adhere to the supposed truce with the Duke of Burgundy. Joan's next action was to move north to defend areas that Burgundy had attacked, despite the truce. That Joan knew it was going on means the Court knew it, but the Court deliberately ignored it under the guise of the truce. Whether or not Joan acted with the royal Council's authority, over which historians have argued uselessly, doesn't matter: they knew, she knew, they all knew the Duke of Burgundy was in violation of the truce. That Joan acted on her own authority or the Kings doesn't matter. What matters is that she went to defend Compiègne, which was under Burgundian and English attack, and in doing so
>> the po;int here is that Joan carried on the battles bc she knew that Burdundy was a liar. Chas was hoping it'd work out, but Burg was fortifying his position w/ the English all along. Joan's attacks back in the north forced the situation, flushing Burgundy into revealing himself.
At Compiegne, she was captured, but, as always, standing fast while her army ran away, only this time there was no rallying the troops, as they had gone into the city and the gate was closed on her and surrounded her
>>here
What we will see is that after the English are finally defeated,
> Joan continues her fight until she is captured
>> voices tell her she will be imprisoned
> not long after her death, Burgundy signs a treaty w/ Charles VII
> Henry VI crowned in P:aris in Dec 1831, after Joan exceuted May 30
> Burgundy abandons the English and signs Treaty of Arras on 20 Sept 1435, ending the 100 years war
Why Joan only now?
Jeanne d'Arc was canonized in 1905. It's not unusual for such a long delay in beatification, but there are reasons for it with Saint Joan. So why so long for her?
Once her work was done, she was easily forgotten, beginning with the Siege of Orleans and the coronation of Charles VII, upon which the French court did its best to ignore her. Given the opportunity to ransom her upon her capture, the King refused and, well, washed his hands of her. Once they had consolidated rule over France, the kings had every reason -- well, aside from honesty -- not to attribute the legitimacy of their rule to a peasant girl.
>
A rather interesting document is found from a publication, "The Rationalist" from 1913, The Story of Joan of Arc: the Witch Saint,"[256] which seems to have been in response to Pius X's beatification of Joan (final step towards canonization). The author contends that "modern thought" has led to her vindication and not the Catholic Church, which is just using her shrine and stories of miracle cures before it as a "new income." The author says his essay will save Catholicism from itself.
French Revolution
> anticlerical
>
Franco-Prussian War
Historical sources
The history of Joan of Arc is comparatively well-documented, even for the 1400s, a period that yields plenty of artifacts and primary sources. The facts of her life a clear and incontestable. In her day, she was the subject of various documented inquiries, an extended court trial, and subsequent inquiries that document witnesses and assessed evidence. We even know much about her mystical experiences -- or whatever they were, as she told the record about them.
The Trials of Jeanne d'Arc
> see Trials - Overview | Joan of Arc | Jeanne-darc.info
Popular accounts of the life of Joan of Arc
"The Life of Joan of Arc" by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel
- a children's book first published in 1895
- See entry here for more on Boutet de Monvel and his American sponsor for his Joan of Arch series of paintings
"Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" by Mark Twain
- Twain's masterful historical-fiction biography of Saint Joan, published in 1896
- See entry here for more on Twain's work on St. Joan
Others
"Saint Joan" by George Bernard Shaw
Not much to say about this one. Shaw was early in adulthood an atheist and seems to have wanted into Deism and perhaps belief if not in Christ but in Jesus. The play is considered one of Shaw's greatest works, and it has been repeated on stage through the 2000s and in film. Shaw wrote it after Joan's canonization, thus the title. But he wasn't celebrating it. He tries to humanize Saint Joan, whom he said was romanticized while her accusers were villainized. For Shaw, Joan's tormenters were motivated by the facts and situations before them; you know, it's just a matter of perspective. I can only say that to frame Bishop Cauchon as honestly motivated is akin to Andrew Lloyd Weber's sympathetic portrayal of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. Both did wrong, knew it, and did it anyway. And, worse, Shaw portrays Joan as Weber does Jesus, as an anti-establishment pop star. For Shaw, Joan is a rebel against authority, like his female ubermensch in Man and Superman. Meh.
See also
Here for list of pages on this site related to Saint Joan of Arc
Painting series "Jeanne D'Arc" (1895) by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel
In 1896, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel illustrated a children's book of the life of Joan of Arc.[257] Through the early 1900s, he expanded several of the images into full paintings, a collection of which are held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, called "La Vie de Jeanne d'Arc":
-
La Vision (Vision of the Archangel St. Michael)
-
Appeal to the Dauphin (The Dauphin had someone else sit on the throne and hid amidst the Court; Joan identified him immediately)
-
The Maid in Armor on Horseback (Now Commander of the French Armies, Joan marches the army to free Orleans from the English siege)
-
The Turmoil of Conflict (The Battle of Orleans, which is nearly lost after Joan is hit in the shoulder and neck by a bolt, but she returns to the field and leads the French to victory)
-
The Crowning at Rheims of the Dauphin (Joan's mission was to have the Dauphin properly crowned King by French custom and in the form of Charlemagne; the leadership thought it was unnecessary, but Joan understood that the people of France needed the ceremony at the traditional place for it at the Cathedral at Rheims)
-
The Trial of Joan of Arc (The King and his councilors betray Joan, leaving her to fight with a small army; she is captured by the French ally of the English. The French King refuses to pay a ransom for her, and she is tried in a French ecclesiastic court under English authority)
Here for more on Boutet de Monvel and his works.
- ↑ From De mirabli victoria cuiusdam Puellae de postfoetantes receptae in ducem belli exercitus régis Francorum contra Anglicos. (On the subject of the admirable triumph of a certain Pucelle, who when from guarding sheep to the head of the armies of the King of France at war with the English) by Jean Gerson, translated from French version at Traité de Jean Gerson sur la Pucelle (archive.org), pdf p. 23. Jean Gerson was Bishop of Puy and Chancellor of the University of Paris, and a renowned theologian. His apology for Joan was completed merely days after her victory at Orléans in 1429.
- ↑ She thus introduced herself to the Dauphin, ruler of France. She signed the few letters she dictated as Jehanne.
- ↑ "celle qui se dit Jehanne la Pucelle", from Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, dite La Pucelle (Archive.org); p. 204 or "Jehanne qui se did la Pucelle" (p. 192), which is translated as "Joan, commonly called the Maid" (Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France (Archive.org); p. 129). While the phrase was repeated at the Trial of Rehabilitation, at the first trial, the "Trial of Condemnation" under the English, and in letters by the English about her, the point was to avoid affirming that she was "a maid," i.e., a virgin (thus "she is called" not "she is"). The English-aligned Duke of Burgundy celebrated Joan's capture at a battle saying, "in the which sally [combat] was she whom they call the Maid." (Murray. p. 335)
- ↑ In 1841, Jules Quicherat published transcripts of Joan's trials, "PROCES DE CONDAMNATION ET DE RÉHABILITATION DE JEANNE D'ARC: DITE LA PUCELLE" ("Trials of Condemnation and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc: called the Maid") (Quicherat Trials of Joan of Arc transcript-french-latin procsdecondam01joanuoft.pdf) For this article, we will use an English translation from 1902 edited by T. D. Murray, titled, Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: being the story of her life, her achievements, and her death, as attested on oath and set forth in the original documents. Edited by T. D. Murray. With illustrations and a map
- ↑ For a discussion of her various names, see "Joan of Arc: her story" by Régine Pernoud and Marie Véronique Clin, English translation by Jeremy Duqesnay Adams, 1998; p. 220.
- ↑ The "Trial of Condemnation" was her ecclesiastical trial by the French Church at the English-held city of Rouen in 1431. (The young English King, Henry VI was present at Rouen throughout her trial). The "Trial of Rehabilitation" was a series of inquiries, starting 1452, into the validity of the 1431 trial. She was vindicated by the second trial.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf; p. 6
- ↑ Pucelle de Dieu, from a poem written in 1429 by Christine de Pizan after the coronation of Charles VII. The poet also wonderfully called her la Pucellette (little maiden). Here for the poem with both French and English Christine de Pizan | Joan of Arc | Jeanne-darc.info This translation of Pucelle de Dieu renders it, "Maiden sent from God," which is incorrect (see Joan of Arc: her story, p. 220 which translates it as "Maid of God." Note that the title of the poem, "Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc," was attached after Joan's death, as "Joan of Arc" was not used until 1455 during her Rehabilitation Trial.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf; p. 64
- ↑ Joan of Arc : her story, p. 221
- ↑ Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances (archive.org) places the first use of the name d'Arc in 1576 (p. 10).
- ↑ Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances (archive.org) p. 9
- ↑ Murray, p 33
- ↑ For example, the Wikipedia entry on Saint Joan, which calls her Joan of Arc and categorizes her as a "French folk heroine", says that she used "the maid" to emphasize her virginity (see Joan of Arc - Wikipedia)
- ↑ The French wikipedia entry on Pucelle — Wikipédia states that the term pucelle for Joan was not a reference to her virginity but to her age, and that 15th Century usage would make an explicit distinction between a young woman (pucelle) and a virgin (vierge). The source for that entry, Pucelle - Puella - Jeanne la Pucelle - Châteaux, Histoire et Patrimoine - montjoye.net states that it is modern usage that confuses pucelle with vierge, but in Joan's day it the words were not explicitly synonymous, although it was an "evident analogy": Le terme de Pucelle est aujourd'hui utilisé désignant une fille vierge, ce qui voudrait dire que Jeanne alors se désignait comme Jeanne la Vierge. Mais au XVe le terme de Pucelle dit en Latin Puellam, ou Puella, n'a pas du tout la même signification, en effet "Puella" en latin veut dire "jeune" fille en français,même si il y a une analogie évidente puisque jeune fille désigne en général une fille non mariée et pré-adolescente donc généralement vierge.
- ↑ As related by the scribe, she testified, "for her part she will in respect of her acts submit only to the Church in Heaven, that is to God, to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Saints of Paradise." ("The Trial of Jeaane d Arc", p. 141)
- ↑ Jhesus Maria is medieval Latin (instead of "Jesus" in the Vulgate). Joan had JHESUS MARIA inscribed at the top of letters she dictated to the English. At the Trial she was asked why she had that written on the letters: [LVIII] Asked what was the purpose of the sign that she put in her letters: JESUS MARIA, She said that the clerks who wrote her letters put them there; and that some said that it was correct to put these two words: JESUS MARIA. (1431trial 2 JoanofArcSociety.org)
- ↑ Lk 1:38
- ↑ From Latin Vulgate New Testament Bible - Luke 1. Vulgate is from vulgata for "common" or "popular" as in "used generally" or "in general use."
- ↑ The male would be a servus
- ↑ There may have been some French manuscript (handwritten) translations of the Bible at the time, but Joan would not have known them (she was illiterate). The formal French translation by Louis Segond, a Swiss theologian was from Greek. In it, Luke 1:38 reads, "Marie dit: 'Je suis la servante du Seigneur; qu'il me soit fait selon ta parole!'" (from BibleGateway)
- ↑ For example, In 1397, the Bishop of Puy, Jean de Gerson, gave a homily at the Feast of the Annunciation in a Mass for the Queen of France, Isabeau of Bavaria, in which he referred to Mary as "la Pucelle." This event marks an interesting connection to Joan's story, as we will discuss, in that the Queen was understood to have betrayed the French cause by supporting the Treaty of Troyes that delivered the French crown to the English king Henry V. Worse, though, Isabeau was commonly accused to have had an affair with her brother-in-law, Louis of Orléans, which gave credence to the illegitimacy of her son as heir, and thus her support of the Treaty of Troyes.
- ↑ From Joan of Arc Biography - Vaucouleurs (joan-of-arc.org) "Beginning at some point after this time, she began calling herself "la Pucelle", meaning "the maiden" or "virginal young girl", explaining that she had promised her saints to "maintain my virginity for as long as it pleases God". Some historians have pointed out that the term also served a practical purpose: now that she would be associating with soldiers, it was in her interest to distance herself from the primary variety of single women who accompanied armies: prostitutes, which the eyewitnesses said she particularly loathed. The best way to do this was to bluntly declare herself a virgin. Now that her mission was beginning in earnest, she would adopt this label as her official title, and it is by this term that she is most often referred to in the 15th century chronicles and eyewitness accounts."
- ↑ From Joan of Arc#Clothing - Wikipedia
- ↑ History of France : Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874 (archive.org); p. 137
- ↑ History of France : Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874 (archive.org); p. 137
- ↑ On the throne but yet called "Dauphin" as he was not yet ceremonially crowned.
- ↑ A reference to Queen Isabeau, wife of Charles VI.
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 39). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ She testified about her parents, " I obeyed them in everything, except in the case at Toul—the action for marriage." Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf p. 65
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf p 91
- ↑ The Wikipedia entry on her use of men's clothes cites "academics" who claim that her use of men's clothes would have been but "a minor deterrent to rape." Yah... (Joan of Arc - Wikipedia)
- ↑ Academics call this emphasis on virginity part of the "cult of Mary." In the book Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman", Feminist historian Anne Llewellyn Barstow relates Joan's virginity to Medieval Christian views on the "magic" of the Eucharist and "that the human body could not only contain a creative spirit, a daemon, but could itself be a magical vessel, a numen ... Women’s bodies were believed to contain this power more than men’s. The virginal female body, that is, had an enormous magical potential ... The church made good use of this tradition in its cult of Mary; and Joan of Arc..." (Joan of Arc : heretic, mystic, shaman : Barstow, Anne Llewellyn (Archive.org) pp. 17-18) To comprehend how a secular academic can describe the Eucharist as magic, know that Barstow claims that the "Church’s original eucharistic concept" was "a love feast providing communion with Christ" (p. 17). Needless to say, Saint Joan was immune from such nonsense.
- ↑ See Joan of Arc : heretic, mystic, shaman : Barstow, Anne Llewellyn (Archive.org), pp.
- ↑ From the Foreword to Joan of Arc : Mooney, John A. (John Aloysius) (Archive.org), written by Blanche Mary Kelly, who was a contributor to the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia (see Blanche Mary Kelly. Wikisource)
- ↑ At Rouen she testified, "“Yes, and I heard there [Saint Catherine de Fierbois] three Masses in one day." Murray, p. 28.
- ↑ The French captain and Joan loyalist whom she insisted not blaspheme and to confess himself and pray before battle.
- ↑ Murray, p. 306
- ↑ Article I of the formal charges, "Act of Accusation Prepared by the Promoter, dated March 27, 1431. (Murray, p. 342)
- ↑ For example, the court made a big deal that Joan admitted that her Godmother may have believed in the fairies, which it attempted to infer that thereby Joan did, too. (See Murray p. 21)
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 387). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 388). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Jn 1:47
- ↑ Matthew 12:33 (USCCB online Bible, accessed 1/22/2025). The idea is similarly expressed in the Latin phrase, void ab initiom, which means "fraud from the beginning taints everything."
- ↑ A typical dismissal of the reality of Joan's voices goes like this: "Some of these questions cannot be answered: they are a matter of personal religious faith or instinctive patriotism ... Whether this was true or not is irrelevant: the fact that she believed it to be so is what matters." (Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (p. 102-103). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.) See also p. 161: "Despite all the fallibilities of the evidence at both trials, what emerges indisputably and triumphantly is the Pucelle’s absolute faith in the divine origin of her mission and her utter conviction that her voices were real."
- ↑ Such arguments include that she wasn't really the military commander; her story is a product of French national myth-building; she was but a useful tool for the French leadership; or her two year contribution to the Hundred Years War was but a side event. None of these views are supported in the primary sources or in any unbiased view of the events themselves. Take out Joan of Arc, and things did not happen the way they did. That is, she was an unusually significant historical actor, whose motivations cannot be simply discarded with, "well, she believed it, that's all that matters."
- ↑ The one I like best is from a CIA psychologist who wanted the to learn about Saint Joan's paranormal powers. See JOAN OF ARC'S PROPHECIES (JEAN BARRY) The article assumes Joan's prophesies were real.
- ↑ Joan of Arc : heretic, mystic, shaman : Barstow, Anne Llewelly (Archive.org), p. 28. Note how if this is true, then the theory that she made it up about the Saints during the Trial at Rouen is out the window, and vice versa.
- ↑ Barstow says so, also affirmed by this site: Saint Margaret Statue · The Legend of Saint Margaret and Saint Marina
- ↑ At Rouen, Joan was asked what Saint Michael looked like. She replied, “I did not see a crown: I know nothing of his dress.” “Was he naked?” To which she replied, sublimely, “Do you think God has not wherewithal to clothe him?” “Had he hair?” “Why should it have been cut off? I have not seen Saint Michael since I left the Castle of Crotoy. I do not see him often. I do not know if he has hair." (Murray, p. 43)
- ↑ Murray, p. 118
- ↑ See Who was Joan of Arc? Gone Medieval podcast (from Dan Snow's History Hit), a podcast interview with Oxford historian Hannah Skoda (min 44:30, accessed 1/15/2025).
- ↑ From Barker, "A further complicating factor in the records of Jehanne d’Arc’s life is that they are biased to an unusual degree. It was not just that she was illiterate and therefore reliant on others to put her words into writing, but that those recording her words and actions were doing so for entirely partisan reasons: in 1431 to secure her conviction as a heretic and sorceress and in 1456 to reclaim her as the innocent victim of the hated English who had only recently been driven out of France. Both sides had every reason to twist the evidence for their own political and patriotic ends." (Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (p. 103). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.)
- ↑ Per podcast interview with Joan Barker, Joan of Arc - Dan Snow's History Hit, min. 13:32, accessed 2025-01-19
- ↑ Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (pp. 108-109). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition. Barke's book is on the ambitions of the Duke of Bedford to take over France. Ironically, it has for its cover image a young French girl triumphantly marching through the streets of Orleans. Note that authors have input but not final say on a book cover; whoever made the decision, it just shows how Saint Joan defined the period.
- ↑ Translation is mine. From the original: "Le conseil du roi et les hommes d'armes ont été conduits à croire à la parole de cette Pucelle et à lui obéir de telle sorte que, sous son commandement et d'un même cœur, ils se sont exposés avec elle aux dangers de la guerre, foulant aux pieds toute crainte de déshonneur. Quielle honte, en effet, si, combattant sous la conduite d'une femmelette, ils avaient été vaincus par des ennemis si auda- cieux Qiielle dérision de la part de tous ceux qui auraient appris semblable événement!" (Traite de Jean Gerson sur la Pucelle, p. 20)
- ↑ Whether the dauphin actually wanted that assistance was debatable. His position in the spring of 1429 was nothing like as calamitous as Jehanne d’Arc’s cheerleaders have claimed. The greater part of southern France was still in his hands; the truces with the duchy and county of Burgundy were holding and offered the prospect of a negotiated peace. Neither of Jehanne’s stated objectives was high on his agenda: the loss of Orléans to the English would be a blow, but not a catastrophe, and a coronation at Reims, though desirable, was not essential. He was, however, temperamentally drawn to those who said they could predict the future. Senior clergymen had already had cause to rebuke him for his reliance on astrology and some years earlier he had received Jehan de Gand, who had prophesied the birth of his heir and the expulsion of the English.30 Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (p. 107). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Jump up to: 58.0 58.1 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.
- ↑ Jump up to: 59.0 59.1 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).
- ↑ Jump up to: 60.0 60.1 Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (pp. 332-333). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Actually, just go to the Wikipedia entry "Jesus" and there you have it.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ He called his 1804 version, "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, being Extracted from the Account of His Life and Doctrines Given by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Being an Abridgement of the New Testament for the Use of the Indians, Unembarrased [uncomplicated] with Matters of Fact or Faith beyond the Level of their Comprehensions"
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 391). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 379). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ note the lower case "saint"
- ↑ Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 391). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Joan of Arc#Legacy - Wikipedia (accessed 12/28/2024)
- ↑ The maid of France; being the story of the life and death of Jeanne d'Arc : Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 (archive.org)
- ↑ Pernoud, Joan of Arc: her story; p. 184
- ↑ de Chartre's Paris residence had been confiscated by the Burgundians (Pernoud, Her Story, p. 178)
- ↑ Pernoud, Her Story, p. 99 What's remarkable about this statement is that it entirely endorses Joan's claims of divine guidance -- just says she lost it through pride. The historian Pernoud asserts that de Chartres "was finally converted to her view later, when it again became apparent that only the use of armed force would be effective" against the English, but she doesn't seem to pursue that line, noting in her summary of de Chartres that after the coronation, "from then on Regnault returned to his former grand design for peace through a rapprochement with Burgundy" (p. 178)
- ↑ Pernoud, Her Story, pp. 99-100
- ↑ See ...on May 3rd and December 12, 1430, two mandates were published “against the captains and soldiers, deserters terrified by the Maid’s enchantments”. These mandates were proclaimed in the name of the infant King of England by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester. Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (pp. 127-128). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Translation: "A great blow upon your people that was assembled there [at Orleans] in great number, caused in large part, as I believe, by lack of firm faith, and unlawful doubt that they had of a disciple and limb of the devil, called the Maid, who used false enchantments and sorcery. This blow and defeat not only diminished in large part the number of your people." Original text from Joan in her own words, p 223
- ↑ Douglas Murray, English translator of the Trials (Jeanne D‘arc: The Trials) states in his introduction, " But the letter to Henry VI. is of doubtful authority," (Murray, p. xiv) Regine Pernoud
- ↑ Joan was not given a specific military command, but was considered a "captain" of the French army, a term of reference for commanders in general. Overall, her authority came of what she exercised by ordering the other French "captains" and by her battlefield leadership.
- ↑ Joan testified that the letter should have read "give up to the King" (see Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook, p. 38)
- ↑ Jump up to: 81.0 81.1 81.2 81.3 Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, pp. 38-39
- ↑ The Feast of Saint John the Baptist is June 24.
- ↑ Detractors will point out the the "English-French dual monarchy" persisted on the Continent another twenty years. They might as well say it went on for another 300 years, as George III still employed the title, "King of France." It was dropped upon adoption of the Act of Union of 1801.
- ↑ The "royal we" -- it's useful to recall that monarchs and aristocrats claimed authority from God, placing themselves as leader, representative, and authority of their subjects, so the "royal we" marked that authority and responsibility on behalf of all the realm. Bishops might also have used the "royal we" at this time.
- ↑ The English King Henry VI, who was no yet crowned in France but had already assumed the title of King of England and France.
- ↑ A primary instigator of this strategy was the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres, who resented Joan and, as head of largely Burgundian region sought reconciliation of the French factions. He more importantly served as Chancellor of France itself, starting 1428, thus was a principal advisor to Charles VII.
- ↑ Even before Joan's capture, in October of 1429 the Chancellor of France and Archbishop of Rheims secretly negotiated directly with the English at St. Denis.
- ↑ The most significant French military victory following Joan's death came in August of 1432 as the Bastard of Orleans lifted the English siege of Lagny (see Jean de Dunois – History by Nicklin, accessed 1/17/25) See also Siège de Lagny-sur-Marne — Wikipédia
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 357
- ↑ The men's clothing was the excuse to charge her with "relapse," or going against her own formal rejection (abjuration) of her own heresies. As she was charged with the relapse, she reaffirmed her Voices, which was also a relapse of her abjuration.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, pp. 39-40
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 42 See footnote no. 45 for the sermon against them.
- ↑ The exchange continued: Question: “Where is this mandrake of which you have heard?” Joan: “I have heard that it is in the earth, near the tree of which I spoke before; but I do not know the place. Above this mandrake, there was, it is said, a hazel tree.” Question: “What have you heard said was the use of this mandrake?” Joan: “To make money come; but I do not believe it. My Voice never spoke to me of that.”
- ↑ Saint Michael is commonly depicting the scales of judgment. (He is not himself the judge.)
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 43
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, pp. 45-46
- ↑ Jump up to: 97.0 97.1 Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 118
- ↑ ab- (off or out of) + jure (swear) = to swear off, or deny under oath.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 173
- ↑ Thus she was to "abjure" or deny all that she had testified to. It is unclear what, exactly Joan had knowingly abjured, although she knew specifically that as a result of the abjuration she was to wear women's clothing.
- ↑ Another prophesy Joan received from her Voices was that the town of Compiègne, which she was defending when she was captured on May 23, 1430, would be saved, which happened in October of 1430 when the Burgundians gave up on trying to take it.
- ↑ What a marvel of divine inventive it would have been had she "‘Answer[ed] him boldly, this preacher!’"
- ↑ He ordered her execution by a torture machine, "the wheel," which would have the effect of being drawn and tortured; but each machine brought to her fell apart upon her touch, so he had them cut her head off. Instead of blood, a milky white fluid poured from her neck.
- ↑ This the "abjuration" episode in which after months of maltreatment by her jailers and the court, and facing, finally, formal heresy charges, she gave in and signed an unclear document (read to her in public and submitted to in writing but switched with a longer confession than that which she had signed). As part of the the abjuration she had agreed to wear women's clothing. After her guards threatened her, she refused to wear a dress, returning to the men's clothes. This was all the court needed to convict and burn her, for she had admitted to heresy, submitted to a remediation, then broke that agreement.
- ↑ See Catherine of Alexandria, Saint | Catholic Answers Encyclopedia which discussed the exaggerated stories attributed to Saint Catherine by medieval hagiographers. The Wikipedia entry on Saint Catherine flatly states that she probably never existed.
- ↑ On May 9, 1431 at Rouen, she shown "instruments of torture" (Murray p. 118) to which she sublimely replied, "Truly if you were to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul and body, I will tell you nothing more; and, if I were to say anything else, I should always afterwards declare that you made me say it by force." The court notary, a priest named Guillaume Manchon, testified at the Trial of Rehabilitation, without reference to date, that "Jeanne was treated with cruelty, and, towards the end of the Trial, was shown the torture" (Murray, p. 178). Regarding the threat or attempt of rape by her English guards at Rouen, shortly before her martyrdom, he testified, "And thus she put on man’s clothing and lamented that she did not dare to doff these, fearing that at night the guards might attempt some violence; and once or twice complaint was made to the Bishop of Beauvais, to the Sub-Inquisitor, and to Maître Nicolas Loyseleur that some of these guards had attempted to assault her. The Earl of Warwick, at the statement of the Bishop, the Inquisitor, and Loyseleur, uttered strong threats should they again presume to attempt this; and two other guards were appointed." (Murray, p. 179)
- ↑ Testimony of Brother Ysambard de la Pierre, of the Order of Saint Dominic, of the Convent at Rouen: "And the executioner said and affirmed that, notwithstanding the oil, the sulphur, and the charcoal which he had applied to the entrails and heart of the said Jeanne, in no way had he been able to burn them up, nor reduce to cinders either the entrails or the heart, at which he was much astonished, as a most evident miracle" (Murray, p. 162) Maitre Nicolas de Huoppeville, Bachelor of Theology, Rouen, similarly testified, "I heard it said by Jean Fleury, Clerk to the Bailly, that the executioner related how, when her body was burnt and reduced to powder, her heart remained whole and bleeding. I was told that her ashes and all that remained of her were collected and thrown into the Seine" (p. 207)
- ↑ From where she was sent with a letter of introduction to the French king, the Dauphin.
- ↑ In his fictionalized history of Joan, Mark Twain creates dialogs of Joan and other children of Domrémy imagining themselves marching to save France (Saint Joan of Arc_Mark Twain_Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc _archive-org_personalrecollec00twai.pdf, see pp. 696-7, 848, 858)
- ↑ Jude 1:9
- ↑ Daniel 13:59
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 78. The question was phrased, "“Since you have been in the prison, have you never blasphemed or cursed God?" which Joan understood to mean that they were watching her constantly for anything to use against her. Her full reply reads, “No; sometimes I said: ‘bon gré Dieu,’ or ‘Saint Jean,’ or ‘Notre Dame’: those who have reported otherwise may have misunderstood."
- ↑ Twain placed the quotation back at Domremy with a Burgundian priest saying a blessing for "Henry King of France and England." Twain's narrator describes the scene: "The people were white with wrath, and it tied their tongues for the moment, and they could not speak. But Joan was standing close by, and she looked up in his face, and said iu her sober, earnest way— " I would I might see thy head struck from thy body !" —then, after a pause, and crossing herself—"if it were the will of God." This is worth remembering, and I will tell you why : it is the only harsh speech Joan ever uttered in her life. When I shall have revealed to you the storms she went through, and the wrongs and persecutions, then you will see that it was wonderful that she said but one bit ter thing while she lived." (Saint Joan of Arc_Mark Twain_Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc _archive-org_personalrecollec00twai.pdf, pp 845-846
- ↑ Murray, p. 19
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 297
- ↑ A XXXV.
- ↑ Crotoy was a coastal fortress in northern France held by the English where Joan was sent upon delivery to the English from the Burgundians for a ransom. Crotoy, thereby, marked the final disposition of Joan's custody to the English. (Joan's testimony from Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 43)
- ↑ I remember that at the sermon given at Saint Ouen by Maître Guillaume Érard, among other words were said and uttered these: “Ah! noble House of France, which hath always been the protectress of the Faith, hast thou been so abused that thou dost adhere to a heretic and schismatic? It is indeed a great misfortune.” To which the Maid made answer, what I do not remember, except that she gave great praise to her King, saying that he was the best and wisest Christian in the world. At which Érard and my Lord of Beauvais ordered Massieu, “Make her keep silence. (Murray, p 171)
- ↑ He testified to the Trial of Rehabilitation, "While they were tying her to the stake she implored and specially invoked Saint Michael. She seemed to me a good Christian to the end; the greater number of those present, to the number of ten thousand, wept and lamented, saying that she was of great piety." (Murray p. 200)
- ↑ the Trial
- ↑ From Ariticle XX (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 349). As for the accusations regarding her sword, which she found behind an altar through divine knowledge, see Murray p. 30.
- ↑ JJeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, pp. 90-91
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 362
- ↑ Or both, as Zachariah found out the hard way when the Archangel muted him for doubting what the Angel had told him about the conception of his son, John. (Luke 1:20)
- ↑ Here for a lengthy discussion of the standard; Banner | Joan of Arc | Jeanne-darc.info The author says that on the banner Saint Michael held a sword as the "angel of justice" and Saint Gabriel a lily as the "angel of mercy". I'm not sure where the evidence of their handling a sword and lily is derived. Nor am I certain of the use of Saint Gabriel as the "angel of mercy."
- ↑ To Zachariah in Luke 1:13, to Mary in Luke 1:30, and to the shepherds in Luke 2:10,
- ↑ Matthew 1:20 The "angel of the Lord" goes unnamed, but would likely be God's messenger, Gabriel. From verses 19-21, the full passage reads, "Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,* yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord* appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,* because he will save his people from their sins.”
- ↑ One skeptical historian called hers "a prosperous peasant family," LOL. See Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances (archive.org)
- ↑ Jacques provides a textbook example of the fallout of the plague which ravaged France in the late 1340s, empowering survivors with higher wages and access to land.
- ↑ See Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances (archive.org) p. 21
- ↑ This memory was strong in the village priest who recalled that he "saw her mount on horseback" as she left Vaucouleurs for Chinon. It would have been shocking to see a girl ride like a man like that. At the Trial of Condemnation, she was attacked for having accepted a horse purchased from a Bishop, who, apparently, wanted it back. Joan told the court that "he might have his horse back if he wished" for it was "worth nothing for weight-carrying," and at another inquiry on it, "the horse was of no use for warfare." (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 52, 79)
- ↑ For a good review of Joan's horses and horsemanship see footnote 36 on p. 31 of Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf
- ↑ From Article IV (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 343)
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 6.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf p. See also, Procès de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc : Joseph Fabre (Archive.org) p 108 At the Trial of Rehabilitation, one of those who was interviewed by the notary, Michel Lebuin, recalled, "I knew Jeannette from my earliest youth. Of Jeanne’s departure for Vaucouleurs I knew nothing. But, one day—the Eve of Saint John the Baptist —she said to me: “Between Coussy and Vaucouleurs there is a young girl, who, before the year is gone, will have the King of France consecrated.” And, in truth, the following year the King was crowned at Rheims.[129] When Jeanne was a prisoner I saw Nicolas Bailly, Notary of Andelot, coming to Domremy, one day, with several other persons. At the request of Jean de Torcenay, Bailly of Chaumont for the pretended King of France and England, he proceeded to make enquiries into the conduct and life of Jeanne. But he could not induce the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs to depose. I believe that they questioned Jean Begot, at whose house they were staying. Their enquiry revealed nothing against Jeanne (p. 225
- ↑ Translated from historian Regine Pernoud: “Joan came from Domremy and from the parish of that place and her father was Jacques d’Arc, a good and honest farmer (laboureur) as I saw and knew him; I know it also by hearsay and upon the report of many, for I was tabellion appointed by messire Jean de Torcenay, then bailiff of Chaumont, who held his authority from him who was then called King of France and England, at the same time as Gerard Petit, defunct, at that time provost of Andelot, to hold an enquiry in the matter of Joan the Maid who was, as it was said, detained in prison in the city of Rouen. It was I, tabellion, who made (compiled) in her time the information to which I was commissioned by messire Jean de Torcenay . . . when myself and Gerard made (compiled) . . . this information on Joan; by our diligence we so wrought that we procured twelve or fifteen witnesses to certify this information. We did this before Simon de Thermes, esquire, acting as lieutenant to the captain of Chaumont, on the subject of Joan the Maid; we were suspect because we had not done this information badly (evilly); these witnesses, before the lieutenant, attested the evidence which they had given and as it was written in their interrogatory; then the lieutenant wrote again to messire Jean, bailiff of Chaumont, that that which was written in this interrogatory made by us, tabellion and provost, was true. And when this bailiff saw the lieutenant’s report, he said we the commissioners were false Armagnacs.” (R. 89–90) (from Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses p. 243. Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.)
- ↑ Jean Moreau, merchant: “I know that at the time when Joan was in Rouen and they were preparing a trial against her, someone important from the country of Lorraine came to Rouen. As I was of the same country I made his acquaintance. He told me that he had come from Lorraine to Rouen because he had been especially commissioned to gather information in Joan’s country of origin to learn what reputation she had there. Which he had done. And he had reported his information to the lord Bishop of Beauvais, thinking to have compensation for his work and his expenses; but the bishop told him that he was a traitor and a bad man and that he had not done what he should have done and was ordered to do. This man complained of it to me for, from what he said, he could not get his salary paid him because his informations were not useful to the bishop. He added that in the course of (collecting) his informations he had found nothing concerning Joan which he would not have liked to find about his own sister, although he had been for information to five or six parishes near Domremy and in that town itself.” (R.88–89) Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (p. 243-4). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ This man was Gerardin of Epinal, At the Trial of Rehabilitation, Gerardin related a conversation with Joan in which she said, “Gossip, if you were not a Burgundian, I would tell you something.” (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 221). At the Trial of Condemnation, Joan was asked which party were the people of Domremy aligned. Fantastically, she replied, " “I knew only one Burgundian at Domremy: I should have been quite willing for them to cut off his head—always had it pleased God." (p. 19). The reference was to Gerardin, but in no way indicated animosity towards him, just towards Burgundians, who were her enemy and who had turned her over to the English.
- ↑ The bell-ringer, Perrin le Drapier, testified, "When I forgot to ring for Service, Jeanne scolded me, saying I had done wrong; and she promised to give me some of the wool of her flock if I would ring more diligently" (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 219)
- ↑ Testimony at the Trial of Rehabilitation by J W , labourer, of Greux (from Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 220)
- ↑ Pierre le Drapier, of Domremy testified, "She was very charitable." (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 219). Mengette, also from Domemy, observed, "She was a good Christian, of good manners and well brought up. She loved the Church, and went there often, and gave alms from the goods of her father" (same, p. 222). Simonin Musnier recalled, "I was brought up with Jeannette, close to her house. I know that she was good, simple and pious, and that she feared God and the Saints. She loved Church and Holy places; she was very charitable, and liked to take care of the sick. I know this of a surety, for in my childhood, I fell ill, and it was she who nursed me. When the Church bells rang, I have seen her kneel down and make the sign of the Cross" (same, p. 221-2)
- ↑ From Isaballette, wife of Gerardin, a labourer, of Epinal: "She was very hospitable to the poor, and would even sleep on the hearth in order that the poor might lie in her bed" (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 222_
- ↑ Testimony at Trial of Rehabilitation of Brother Jean Pasqueral (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 284). The friar's testimony is incredibly valuable for understanding Saint Joan, for as her confessor he was as close to her as anyone. He testified, " When Jeanne left Tours to go to Orleans, she prayed me not to forsake her, and to remain always with her as her Confessor; this I promised to do." (p. 284)
- ↑ Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894], This is one of the first versions of Lives of Saints, which were widely distributed in 15th and 16th Century England, to include an entry on Joan. Let's say the English did not celebrate her back then...
- ↑ Joan testified, “Not far from Domremy there is a tree that they call ‘The Ladies’ Tree’—others call it ‘The Fairies’ Tree’; near by, there is a spring where people sick of the fever come to drink, as I have heard, and to seek water to restore their health. I have seen them myself come thus; but I do not know if they were healed. I have heard that the sick, once cured, come to this tree[27] to walk about. It is a beautiful tree, a beech, from which comes the ‘beau may’—it belongs to the Seigneur Pierre de Bourlement 19 20 Knight. I have sometimes been to play with the young girls, to make garlands for Our Lady of Domremy. Often I have heard the old folk—they are not of my lineage—say that the fairies haunt this tree. I have also heard one of my Godmothers, named Jeanne, wife of the Maire Aubery of Domremy, say that she has seen fairies there; whether it be true, I do not know. As for me, I never saw them that I know of. If I saw them anywhere else, I do not know. I have seen the young girls putting garlands on the branches of this tree, and I myself have sometimes put them there with my companions; sometimes we took these garlands away, sometimes we left them. Ever since I knew that it was necessary for me to come into France, I have given myself up as little as possible to these games and distractions. Since I was grown up, I do not remember to have danced there. I may have danced there formerly, with the other children. I have sung there more than danced. There is also a wood called the Oak wood, which can be seen from my father’s door; it is not more than half-a-league away. I do not know, and have never heard if the fairies appear there; but my brother told me that it is said in the neighbourhood: ‘Jeannette received her mission at the Fairies’ Tree.’ It is not the case; and I told him the contrary. When I came before the King, several people asked me if there were not in my country a wood, called the Oak wood, because there were prophecies which said that from the neighbourhood of this wood would come a maid who should do marvellous things. I put no faith in that.” (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 21)
- ↑ Here from the Trial of Condemnation, "The Voice said to me: ‘Go into France!’" (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 11) Witnesses at the Trial of Rehabilitation repeatedly testified as to her saying that she must "go into France".
- ↑ In 1297 King Philip IV of France invaded the Duchy as punishment for its support of the Flemish and English in the Franco-Flemish War, which was settled by the Treaty of Bruges, 1301, which places part of the Duchy under the King of France.
- ↑ Called chevauchées, these raids were designed to plunder or pillage enemy supplies and farms, as well as to punish inhabitants for supporting the opposition. Today we'd call it a "scorched earth" campaign. This tactic was introduced earlier in the Hundred Years War leading up to the Battle of Crécy by the English King Edward III, who, as the Old French term went, crier havot, or "cry out pillage" ("cry out" as in to order), which became "cry havoc," and simply, "havoc," in English.
- ↑ Jump up to: 149.0 149.1 The two Houses were at war with one another, with the House of Orléans siding with the French and the House of Burgundy the the English. (That latter alliance nearly broke apart with the Burgundians signing a mutual defense treaty with the Dauphin, but the English restored the alliance by 1425.) The Armagnac-Burgundian civil war started over a lovers' spat or spat of jealousy with the assassination of the Duke of Orléans, Louis I in 1407. The English took advantage of the turmoil, as well as the weakness of the French King, Charles VI, "the mad" (as in insane, and he was), and invaded France, crushing them at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Things were nominally settled in 1420 in the Treaty of Troyes, which named the English King, Henry V the royal successor of the French King Charles VI -- and disinheriting his son, the Dauphin Charles. The Dauphin, however, organized French loyalists to dispute the Treaty, and so left the country with English control of Northern France, the Dauphin's control of central-southern France, and their respective allies with other areas in and around those two larger powers, especially in the eastern region where Joan grew up.
- ↑ The source and very upper reaches of the Meuse was in Lorraine, which was nominally bound to the Holy Roman Empire and did not take part in the latter parts of the 100 Years War. The lower Meuse was controlled by the Burgundians.
- ↑ The commander there, Robert de Buadricourt, after two attempts by Joan, agreed to send her with some soldiers to meet the Dauphin at Chinon.
- ↑ See The Life of Joan of Arc (Contents), by Anatole France. (p. i. 77) and Joan of Arc : her story : Pernoud, Régine, p 17
- ↑ La Hire died in 1443, ten years before the formal end of the war. As Captain General of Normandy led the French reconquest of the region in the late 1430s and helped with seizure of English holdings in southwestern France in 1442, where he died the next year.
- ↑ Joan welcomed the enthusiastic types, such as Gaubert Thibaut, squire ot the King of France, who recalled of his first meeting her, "When we arrived at her house, Jeanne came to meet us, and striking me on the shoulder said to me that she would gladly have many men of such good-will as I." (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 265)
- ↑ Historian Régine Pernoud agrees that without Baudricourt's introduction, the Dauphin would never have admitted her to an audience (Joan of Arc : her story : Pernoud, Régine, p 22. Of Buadrircourt, from here out we don't hear much more until his name becomes of focus in the Trials.
- ↑ Joan testified, The Voice said to me: ‘Go into France!’ I could stay no longer. It said to me: ‘Go, raise the siege which is being made before the City of Orleans. ‘Go!’ it added, ‘to Robert de Baudricourt, Captain of Vaucouleurs: he will furnish you with an escort to accompany you.’ And I replied that I was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting. I went to my uncle and said that I wished to stay near him for a time. I remained there eight days. I said to him, ‘I must go to Vaucouleurs.’ He took me there. When I arrived, I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, although I had never seen him. I knew him, thanks to my Voice, which made me recognize him. I said to Robert, ‘I must go into France!’ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 11
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 226
- ↑ Testimony of Bertrand de Poulengey, Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 230
- ↑ Catherine, wife of Leroyer, with whom Joan stayed on one sojourn at Vaucouleurs. (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 228)
- ↑ He was "Constable" to the King of France Charles VI, but retracted the title in 1425 as things heated up.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 214.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 12
- ↑ Murray relates in footnote no. 14, "Charles I., the reigning Duke de Lorraine in 1428, was in very bad health, and, having no son, the succession was a matter of some anxiety. He died in 1431, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Réné of Anjou, who had married his only daughter, Isabella. This Réné was a brother of Queen Mary, wife of Charles VII., and father of our own Queen Margaret, married in 1441 to Henry VI" (p. 12)
- ↑ Dame Marguerite La Touroulde (Murray. p. 272)
- ↑ Louis de Martigny said the Duke "gave her a horse and some money" (Murray p218) and Durand Laxart said he gave her four francs (Murray, p. 227). Four francs was not a small amount of money: a horse cost 12 francs, so 4 francs could buy supplies, clothes, etc. as was probably the case when Joan returned to Vaucouleurs. Durand Lexart said, "The Duke saw her, spoke to her, and gave her four francs,[134] which Jeanne showed to me" (Murray, p. 227)
- ↑ Translation from Murray, footnote no. 13, p. 12 (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf). The source is not from either of the Trials but from a manuscript written by Guillaume Cousinot de Montreuil in 1456 (per fr.wikipedia), and which was first published in 1661. See Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 272. My best translation reads, "In the name of God, you are taking too long to send me; for today the good Dauphin has had a very great loss near Orleans, and will suffer an even greater loss if you do not send me to him soon.”
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 12
- ↑ Louis is most famous for his passion for lawn tennis and for having had built the first indoor courts.
- ↑ The incident is called the "Tour de Nesle affair", named for towers in Paris where the alleged affairs of the wives of Isabella's brothers were alleged to have taken place. Known as the the "She Wolf of England'
- ↑ His name was John but he was not given the throne as John I until so-named later when "John the Good" was named John II.
- ↑ After which she was allowed to become a nun.
- ↑ Making him a "sororal nephew" (via a sister). Charles IV was the last King of the House of Capet, which had started in 987.
- ↑ a sixth died in infancy in 1407
- ↑ The English supported the Roman pope, so the French support for the Avignon antipopes was, among reasons, in opposition to the English. As Charles VI dropped his support for the Avignon antipope, which cleared the way for an ultimate resolution in 1415 with the resignation of Pope Gregory XII and ultimate election of Martin V whom Cauchon personally supported.
- ↑ Cauchon fled Rheims as the French Army, led by Joan of Arc, approached to make way for the coronation of Charles VII, "the Dauphin" of Joan's divine mission. Tight with the English, Cauchon moved to Rouen, where Joan would be tried. The excuse for Cauchon's ecclessiastical juridisdiction over her trial was that she had been captured in Compiėgne, which lay withing the Diocese of Beauvais.
- ↑ Most of this section is from Pierre Cauchon - Wikipedia
- ↑ More elegantly In French, le bâtard d'Orléans. Fighting for the Armagnacs in 1418, he was captured by the Burgundians and released in 1420. He remained loyal to the Dauphin and was one of Joan's most reliable and loyal generals. Charles VII made him Count of Dunois in 1439 after he played an important role in the defeat of the English in the north of France, including Normandy.
- ↑ The Life of Joan of Arc (Contents), by Anatole France (Project Gutenberg), p. i.143.
- ↑ The maid of France; being the story of the life and death of Jeanne d'Arc : Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 (archive.org)
- ↑ Pernoud, Joan of Arc: her story; p. 184
- ↑ de Chartre's Paris residence had been confiscated by the Burgundians (Pernoud, Her Story, p. 178)
- ↑ Pernoud, Her Story, p. 99 What's remarkable about this statement is that it entirely endorses Joan's claims of divine guidance -- just says she lost it through pride. The historian Pernoud asserts that de Chartres "was finally converted to her view later, when it again became apparent that only the use of armed force would be effective" against the English, but she doesn't seem to pursue that line, noting in her summary of de Chartres that after the coronation, "from then on Regnault returned to his former grand design for peace through a rapprochement with Burgundy" (p. 178)
- ↑ Pernoud, Her Story, pp. 99-100
- ↑ Per Dan Snow's "History Hit" podcast interview with Joan Barker, 🎧 Joan of Arc - 🎧 Dan Snow's History Hit - History Hit. accessed 2025-01-19
- ↑ Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (pp. 108-109). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition. Barke's book is on the ambitions of the Duke of Bedford to take over France. Ironically, it has for its cover image a young French girl triumphantly marching through the streets of Orleans. Note that authors have input but not final say on a book cover; whoever made the decision, it just shows how Saint Joan defined the period.
- ↑ Whether the dauphin actually wanted that assistance was debatable. His position in the spring of 1429 was nothing like as calamitous as Jehanne d’Arc’s cheerleaders have claimed. The greater part of southern France was still in his hands; the truces with the duchy and county of Burgundy were holding and offered the prospect of a negotiated peace. Neither of Jehanne’s stated objectives was high on his agenda: the loss of Orléans to the English would be a blow, but not a catastrophe, and a coronation at Reims, though desirable, was not essential. He was, however, temperamentally drawn to those who said they could predict the future. Senior clergymen had already had cause to rebuke him for his reliance on astrology and some years earlier he had received Jehan de Gand, who had prophesied the birth of his heir and the expulsion of the English.30 Barker, Juliet. Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (p. 107). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ See ...on May 3rd and December 12, 1430, two mandates were published “against the captains and soldiers, deserters terrified by the Maid’s enchantments”. These mandates were proclaimed in the name of the infant King of England by his uncle the Duke of Gloucester. Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses (pp. 127-128). Scarborough House. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Translation: "A great blow upon your people that was assembled there [at Orleans] in great number, caused in large part, as I believe, by lack of firm faith, and unlawful doubt that they had of a disciple and limb of the devil, called the Maid, who used false enchantments and sorcery. This blow and defeat not only diminished in large part the number of your people." Original text from Joan in her own words, p 223
- ↑ Douglas Murray, English translator of the Trials (Jeanne D‘arc: The Trials) states in his introduction, " But the letter to Henry VI. is of doubtful authority," (Murray, p. xiv) Regine Pernoud
- ↑ Joan was not given a specific military command, but was considered a "captain" of the French army, a term of reference for commanders in general. Overall, her authority came of what she exercised by ordering the other French "captains" and by her battlefield leadership.
- ↑ Joan testified that the letter should have read "give up to the King" (see Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook, p. 38)
- ↑ The Feast of Saint John the Baptist is June 24.
- ↑ The "royal we" -- it's useful to recall that monarchs and aristocrats claimed authority from God, placing themselves as leader, representative, and authority of their subjects, so the "royal we" marked that authority and responsibility on behalf of all the realm. Bishops might also have used the "royal we" at this time.
- ↑ The English King Henry VI, who was no yet crowned in France but had already assumed the title of King of England and France.
- ↑ A primary instigator of this strategy was the Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de Chartres, who resented Joan and, as head of largely Burgundian region sought reconciliation of the French factions. He more importantly served as Chancellor of France itself, starting 1428, thus was a principal advisor to Charles VII.
- ↑ Even before Joan's capture, in October of 1429 the Chancellor of France and Archbishop of Rheims secretly negotiated directly with the English at St. Denis.
- ↑ The most significant French military victory following Joan's death came in August of 1432 as the Bastard of Orleans lifted the English siege of Lagny (see Jean de Dunois – History by Nicklin, accessed 1/17/25) See also Siège de Lagny-sur-Marne — Wikipédia
- ↑ >add cynical views of her victory at Orleans here << see In our Time episode< for them, ... denies tha "she" did it > instead it was 2,000 troops, go up the South Bank ... Joan is "supposed to have said" they were going the wrong way, and the "English just needed ot be pushed"
- ↑ At that moment, Charles the Dauphin exercised audacious leadership as he asserted his authority and gathered the support of the Avignon faction.
- ↑ Child kings would have to wait, such as Edward II of England.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 245
- ↑ Jump up to: 202.0 202.1 Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 94
- ↑ From the testimony of Jean Luilier at the Trial of Rehabilitation, "On the 27th May, 1429, I remember well that an assault was made on the enemy in the Fort of the Bridge, in which Jeanne was wounded by an arrow; the attack lasted from morning till evening, and in such manner that our men wished to retreat into the town. Then Jeanne appeared, her standard in her hand, and placed it on the edge of the trench; and immediately the English began to quake, and were seized with fear. The army of the King took courage, and once more began to assail the Boulevard; and thus was the Boulevard taken, and the English therein were all put to flight or slain. Classidas and the principal English captains, thinking to retreat into the Tower of the Bridge, fell into the river, and were drowned; and the fort being taken, all the King’s army retired into the city" (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 247)
- ↑ See March to Reims - Wikipedia
- ↑ From the testimony at the Trial of Rehabilitation by the squire Simon Beaucroix (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 268)
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, 265
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 232
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 349
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 274. The Duke had only just been released from capture by the English, having sold all his possessions to pay the ransom, for which he was called the "poorest man in France" (John II, Duke of Alençon - Wikipedia). However poor he was, when the messenger sent to him from Chinon arrived, he was hunting quail. He testified, "When Jeanne arrived at Chinon, I was at Saint Florent. One day, when I was hunting quails, a messenger came to inform me that there had come to the King a young girl, who said she was sent from God to conquer the English and to raise the siege then undertaken by them against Orleans" (Murray, p. 274)
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 274.
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p 278-279
- ↑ of lakke of sadded believe, and of unlevefull doubte that thei hadded of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchauntements and sorcerie.
- ↑ Joan's 1906 children's biographer Andrew Lang does: "They wished to have her proved a witch, and one who dealt with devils, to take away the shame of having been defeated by a girl, and also to disgrace the French King by making the world believe that he had been helped by a sorceress and her evil spirits." (The story of Joan of Arc : Lang, Andrew, Archive.org)
- ↑ Murray, p. 266
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 269
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, p. 297
- ↑ From the testimony of Jean Dunois, The Bastard of Orleans, Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf p. 241
- ↑ Joan of Arc to King Henry VII of England, April 4, 1429. <<confirm date
- ↑ Lk 22:42
- ↑ From Voltaire's "Essay on the General History and on the Customs and Spirit of Nations," 1756; Ch. 70
- ↑ Joan's confessor, Jean Pasquerel, told the Trial of Rehabilitation, "The French had with them a convoy of supplies; but the 284 water was so shallow that the boats could not move up-stream, nor could they land where the English were. Suddenly the waters rose, and the boats were then able to land on the shore where the [French] army was. Jeanne entered the boats, with some of her followers, and thus came to Orleans" (Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf, pp. 284-5).
- ↑ A Burgundian Frenchman called the French with her "worthless mackerels," a sexual insult. Perhaps it's just one insult thrown at another, but since it was in the presence of Joan it demonstrates the English and Burgundian fear of Joan the Maid's presence, which must have disturbed them.
- ↑ In her last letter, she wrote a PS demanding they return her herald Guyenne whom they had detained when he brought an earlier letter to them.
- ↑ The battle took place across the river from Orléans, and freed the city from the English siege. Here for the Siege of Orléans - Wikipedia
- ↑ Joan of Arc : her story : Pernoud, Régine, p. 50
- ↑ Jeanne D‘arc, by T. Douglas Murray_The Trials_The Project Gutenberg eBook.pdf p 40
- ↑ Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances (archive.org); p. 20
- ↑ Mark Twain embellished the importance of this tree, as have others. In actuality, the village celebrated two festivals related to springs near it, Laetare, Jerusalem, during Leny, and May Day. The tree was a common spot for villagers who often gathered by it.
- ↑ The virgin with a banner was supposedly prophesized by the English magician Merlin. That of the armed virgin, however, was recent, coming in 1398 from Marie Robine and included a vision that those who refuse to believe divine visions are idolaters, among which were theologians at the University of Paris -- the same who were involved in the trial of Joan. See Marie Robine - Wikipedia
- ↑ See Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality p. 28: "Whatever the source of Joan's voices and her belief in them, it conferred on her a strength of resolution possessed by few, women or men." Here's an even better one, from the Wikipedia entry on the "Dual Monarchy of England and France," "The Dauphin was crowned as King Charles VII of France at Reims on 17 July 1429, largely through the martial efforts of Joan of Arc, who believed it was her mission to free France from the English and to have the Dauphin Charles crowned at Reims." (emphasis mine). Believed! How about "believed her divinely inspired mission"?
- ↑ Recollecting that Domrémy was not under direct control of the French Dauphin.
- ↑ A reference understood then, and maknig the most sense now, to the mother of the Dauphin, the wife of Charles VI, Isabeu of Bavaria, who stood as regent during her husband's episodes of madness, and who took part in the machinations that led to the Treaty of Troyes, which gave royal succession to the English King Henry V over he own son, Charles the Dauphin.
- ↑ Look it up: a few women across history and time donned armor or weapons and fought like, with and against men. None led an army as did Joan, and none wore full plate armor.
- ↑ Listed in the Rehabiltation Trial as "Jean de Nouvilonpont" (p. 393)
- ↑ By "chamber" she means representative of or place belonging to the King, not a room in his house.
- ↑ While earlier in the War, A Scottish force came to aid France but was destroyed in Battle, this comment seems to have been in response to rumors at the time that the Dauphin was going to marry the Scottish princess. (see The Life of Joan of Arc, by Anatole France (p. i 83)
- ↑ That the Dauphin would "hold the kingdom in trust" is revealing and indicative of her mission: God's will and not just glory to France. What she says here upholds my idea that her mission was to save France to save Catholicism, not just to save France.
- ↑ There seem to have been two stays with la Rouse, but It doesn't really matter except as to the Rouen Court's use of it to try to discredit her. I'm thinking there was only one in July 1438.
- ↑ The Life of Joan of Arc (Contents), by Anatole France (Project Gutenberg)., p. i 71
- ↑ A village just south of Domrémy, on the way towards Neufchâteau.
- ↑ See Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality pg 43
- ↑ Joan of Arc : the legend and the reality : Gies, Frances : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : (archive.org), p. 30
- ↑ from "Grandes Annates de Breiagne" and "Miroir des Femmes Vertueuscs" per Jeanne D'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, footnote, p. xix
- ↑ It has been said that the dauntless and marvelous Le Hire, Étienne de Vignolles, mounted a failed rescue operation, but this is unlikely, as it would have taken a huge military force to rescue Joan from her captivity at Rouen. Le Hire did, however, carry out raids near Rouen in March of 1431, during the Trial, which made the English nervous. See Internet History Sourcebooks: Medieval Sourcebook p. 389
- ↑ Medieval codes of chivalry gave a certain but not unlimited degree of protection to a captured noble. But in Joan's case, the usual solution, ransom, had already taken place. France refused to ransom her, and the British did, so she was theirs to do what they pleased.
- ↑ Murray, p. 241
- ↑ notation from testimony of Sieur de Gaucourt (Murray, p. 242_
- ↑ The title Duke of Orleans was like that of Prince of Wales, indicating the heir to the throne. Louis, Duc d'Orléans was the brother of King Charles VI, father of Charles VII, the Dauphin in the story of Saint Joan. It's a bit complicated, but rule of France was broken up by faction and the insanity of its King who disinherited his son the Dauphin and gave France to the English King Henry V. Though crowned at Paris by Charles VI as heir, Henry, needed to actually control France, which he did not adn could not accomplish before he died. His son was a child who inherited the claim as King of France, but there was no meaning to it once Joan had the Dauphin crowned at Rhiems and when, subsequently, the English were finally defeated later on.
- ↑ See Joan of Arc for more details of Joan's attack and injury.
- ↑ See Joan of Arc p. 49
- ↑ See Joan: Her Story p. 78
- ↑ The tension followed the 1407 assassination of Charles' uncle, the Duke of Orléans (and brother of Charles VI and whose heir was captured by the English in 1415 at Agincourt)
- ↑ Making Henry V of England heir to the French throne.
- ↑ https://archive.org/details/joanofarcherstor00pern/page/74/mode/1up?q=220&view=theaterd p. 74
- ↑ Either lands of or invaded by a Burgundian mercenary named Perrinet Gressard.
- ↑ The Story of Joan Of Arc the Witch--saint, by M. M. Mangasarian
- ↑ Scan of English version (abbreviated from the original French publication) available here: Joan of Arc : Boutet de Monvel, Louis Maurice, 1850-1913 (Archive.org) Here for page images of the original: Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel