Joan of Arc

by Regine Pernoud

Saturday, March 3rd.

  Jean Beaupère took over the interrogation, directing it towards diverse questions such as the encounter between Joan and Catherine de la Rochelle, her relations with Brother Richard; he tried to get her to admit some deeds of witchcraft, such as having caused standards to float round fortresses, etc. He also reverted to the question of her revelations, on which Joan was as firm as ever, and he tried to get from her some prediction touching her own fate.

  BEAUPÈRE: Have you (fore) seen or known by revelation that you will escape?

  JOAN: That has nothing to do with your trial. Would you have me say something against myself?

  BEAUPÈRE: Your voices have told you nothing about it?

  JOAN: It is not to do with your trial. I trust in Our Lord who will do His own pleasure. I know neither the hour nor the day the pleasure of God be done.

  BEAUPÈRE: Have your voices said in general anything about that?

  JOAN: Yes, truly. They have told me that I shall be delivered, but I know neither the day nor the hour; and that I boldly put a cheerful face on it.

  At this point the interrogations were suspended for one week.

  Saturday, March 10th.

  The interrogatory was resumed in the prison and in the presence of a small number of assessors. Jean de La Fontaine undertook the questioning and his questions bore chiefly on her last campaign, which had taken her to Melun, Crépy-en-Valois and Compiègne. He also alluded to the things which Joan was able to get from the King: horses, money; and to the ennobling of Joan’s family.

  LA FONTAINE: Have you an escutcheon and arms?

  JOAN: I never had any, but the King has given arms to my brothers, to wit a shield of azure on which were two fleurs-de-lys in gold and in the middle a sword. I described these arms to a painter because he had asked me what arms I bore. They were given by my King to my brothers, without request from me and without revelation.

  It was in the course of this interrogation that, asked once again about the “sign” given to the King, she began, possibly to throw her judges off the scent, to allude to that sign as to a concrete object, a crown brought by an angel. In the course of the following interrogations she amplified that image as if at random; it is easy to grasp the symbolic bearing.

  LA FONTAINE: What is the sign which you gave to your King when it came to you?

  JOAN: It is good and honourable and right credible and the richest there be in the world. . . . The sign is in my King’s treasury.

  LA FONTAINE: Is it of gold, of silver, of precious stones or a crown?

  JOAN: I shall tell you nothing more. Nobody could describe a thing so rich as the sign.

  Monday, March 12th.

  Jean de La Fontaine again conducted the interrogation. He reverted to the beginnings of her mission, her vow of virginity, her setting out for Vaucouleurs, and he again put to her the question which had been put by Cauchon: would she recite Pater Noster?

  LA FONTAINE: Did not your voices call you “daughter of God”, “daughter of the Church”, “great-hearted daughter”?

  JOAN: Before the raising of the siege of Orleans and since, every day, when they speak to me, they have often called me “Joan the Maid, daughter of God”.

  And, on the subject of angels, she added: “They come many times among Christians but are not seen. And I have many times seen them among Christians.”

  LA FONTAINE: Since you are daughter of God why will you not say Pater Noster?

  JOAN: I will say it willingly, and formerly when I refused to say it, I did so with the intention that the Bishop of Beauvais should hear me in confession.

  Tuesday, March 13th.

  Jean de La Fontaine continued his interrogation:

  LA FONTAINE: How did the angel bring the crown. Did he place it on the King’s head?

  JOAN: The crown was delivered to him by an archbishop, to wit the Archbishop of Rheims, as I recall, in the presence of my King. And the archbishop received it and gave it to my King. I was present and the crown was placed in the treasury of my King. . . .

  LA FONTAINE: The day when you yourself saw that sign, did your King see it too?

  JOAN: Yes, and it was my King himself who had it.

  LA FONTAINE: Of what material was the crown?

  JOAN: It is good to know that it was of fine gold and this crown was so rich and opulent that I could not number or appreciate all the riches which are in it, and this crown signified that the King would hold the kingdom of France.

  LA FONTAINE: Were there precious stones in it?

  JOAN: I have told you all that I know.

  There were more questions on the same theme. To one of the following questions Joan made the answer which probably holds the secret of her whole conduct:

  Question: Why you rather than another?

  JOAN: It pleased God thus to do, by a simple Maid to drive out the King’s enemies.

  Wednesday, March 14th.

  Jean de La Fontaine was still the interrogator; dealing with events of mark in Joan’s life, he questioned her especially on her leap from the tower at Beaurevoir; and again about her voices and what they could foretell for her.

  JOAN: Saint Catherine has told me that I shall receive succour and I know not if it will be by being liberated from prison or rather whether, being brought to judgment, there would be some trouble (disturbance, confusion) by means of which I should be set free. I believe it will be by one or the other, and several times the voices have told me that I should be delivered by great victory. And thereafter my voices say to me: “Take all in good part, do not whine over thy martyrdom; by it thou shalt come at last to the kingdom of Paradise”; and this my voices say to me simply and absolutely, that is to say (meaning) without fail. I call it martyrdom because of the misery (peine) and adversity that I suffer in prison and I know not if I shall suffer greater misery, but I trust in God.

  LA FONTAINE: Since your voices have told you that in the end you would go to Paradise, do you hold yourself assured of being saved and of not being damned in hell?

  JOAN: I firmly believe what my voices have told me, to wit that I shall be saved, as firmly as if I were there already.

  LA FONTAINE: After that revelation, do you believe that you cannot commit mortal sin?

  JOAN: I know nothing about that, but in all things I trust in God.

  LA FONTAINE: That answer is of great weight.

  JOAN: Wherefore I hold it to be a great treasure.

  On that day, as also on the preceding one, the interrogation was resumed in the afternoon. Jean de La Fontaine tried to catch her out in the matter of the assurance she seemed to have of her own salvation.

  LA FONTAINE: Is there any need for you to confess yourself since you have revelation from your voices that you will be saved?

  JOAN: I know not if I have sinned mortally, but if I were in mortal sin I believe that Saints Catherine and Margaret would abandon me at once. I believe that one cannot overdo cleansing one’s conscience.

  The charge which was to assume substance later was here foreshadowed: the matter of her submission to the Church.

  Thursday, March 15th.

  The interrogation began with this question of her submission to the Church:

  Question: If it happens that you have done any thing which is against the faith, will you abide by the determination of our Holy Mother Church in whom you should trust?

  JOAN: Let my answers be seen and examined by clerks (clergy) and let me be told thereafter if there be in them anything against the Christian faith. I shall be well able to say what there is in it, and thereafter I will say what I have found in it by my counsel. If there be anything bad against the Christian faith which God ordains, I would not maintain it and I should be right eager* to come to the contrary opinion.

  Question: The distinction between the Church triumphant and militant and what pertains to the latter and to the former, has been explained to you. I now ask you to submit yourself to the determination of the Church upon what you have done and said o
f good, as of evil.

  JOAN: I will make you no other answer for the present.

  The remainder of this session was devoted chiefly to the wearing of man’s clothes and her apparitions, notably that of St. Michael.

  Saturday, March 17th

  The interrogation for this day appears earlier in this chapter.

  Finally, March 24th and 25th, Joan was again visited in her prison, still by only a restricted number of the assessors, but these included all the delegates from the University of Paris. More detailed answers were demanded of her in the matter of certain questions, notably that of wearing man’s clothes which she still refused to change for female attire. It was on this occasion that she gave the answer which, for her, summed up the whole business: “These clothes do not burden my soul and to wear them is not against the Church.” (C.181–183)

  That concluded the “instruction” of the case, that is the preliminary examinations.

  Jean Beaupère was still alive, being seventy years of age, at the time of Joan’s Rehabilitation. He was interrogated during the royal enquiry (preliminary to the Trial of Rehabilitation) in 1450. His memory was still coloured by resentment: “She was right subtle, with a subtlety pertaining to woman.” (R.251)

  As for the other assessors, it is obvious that they felt much what we feel ourselves when we read Joan’s answers as they have been preserved for us. Martin Ladvenu, a Dominican of the convent of Rouen who was to be at Joan’s side in her last moments, testified: “In my judgment she might be nineteen or twenty years of age; in her bearing she was very simple and in her answers full of discernment and prudence.”

  Others went a good deal further; Jean Riquier, who was not present in person at the trial but reported what he had heard, said, for example: “I heard it said that she answered with so much prudence that if certain of the doctors had been questioned as she was they would hardly have answered so well.”

  Jean Fabri or Lefevre: “They greatly fatigued her by long interrogations which lasted from two to three hours. . . . Sometimes those who questioned her cut into each other’s questions to such an extent that she could hardly answer them. The wisest man in the world would have answered with difficulty. I remember that once, during the trial, while Joan was being examined on her apparitions and while a record of her answers was being read to her, it seemed to me that it had been wrongly recorded and that she had not answered thus. I told Joan to pay attention. She asked the notary who wrote the record to read it to her again and that done she told the notary that she had said the opposite and that he had not written it rightly. And that answer was corrected. Then master Guillaume Manchon told Joan that in future he would pay attention.”

  Pierre Daron: “I heard it said by several that during that trial Joan did wonders in her answers and that she had an admirable memory, for once when she was being questioned in a matter about which she had already been questioned a week before, she answered: ‘I was already asked that on such a day’ or ‘A week ago I was questioned about that and I answered in such-and-such way,’ although Boisguillaume, one of the notaries, told her that she had not answered, some of those present said that Joan was speaking the truth. The answer for that day was read and it was found that Joan was right. She rejoiced greatly at it, saying to this Bois-guillaume that if he made a mistake again, she would pull his ears. . . .” (R.212–213)

  The second phase of the trial, the ordinary hearing, began on Monday, March 26th. On that day and the next, the act of accusation drawn up by the promoter (prosecutor), Jean d’Estivet, was read to the assembled assessors. This act of accusation which is in seventy clauses (C.192–286) goes interminably over the principal points of the foregoing interrogations, without, moreover, taking any account of Joan’s replies. It was interrupted by her at the end of almost every clause with a denial of its contents or with “I refer you to what I said elsewhere.” (Lit: I abide in that by what I said elsewhere). It is worth our while to put some of Joan’s answers back into French, among others Joan’s own prayer which, however, is not given in the minutes of the trial:

  Questioned as to the manner in which she summons her voices, she answers: “I call upon God and Our Lady that they send me counsel and comfort and thereafter they send it to me.” Asked by what exact words she summons them, she replies in this fashion in French: “Most gentle God, in honour of Your Holy Passion I call upon You, if You love me, that You reveal to me how I should answer these Churchmen. I know well, as to the clothes, the commandment whereby I assumed them, but I know not in what manner I should leave them off. For this, please You to teach me.” (C.252)

  On Saturday, March 31st, Joan was again questioned in her prison on the particular point of her submission to the Church.

  Question: Will you confide yourself to the judgment of the Church which is on earth in all that you have said and done both good and evil, and especially in the cases, crimes and misdemeanours of which you are accused and in all touching your trial?

  JOAN: On that which is asked of me, I will abide by the Church militant provided it does not command anything impossible to do, and what I call impossible is that I should revoke the deeds I have done and said and what I have declared concerning the visions and apparitions sent to me by God; I shall not revoke them for anything whatsoever; that which Our Lord has made me do and commanded and will command, I shall not fail to do for any man alive, and in the case of the Church willing me to do otherwise and contrary to the commandment which has been given me by God, I should not do it for anything whatsoever.

  Question: If the Church militant tells you that your revelations are illusions or things diabolical, will you abide by the Church?

  JOAN: In that I will always abide by God whose commandment I have always done, and I know well that that which is contained in the proceedings (she is referring to the answers she has given) comes by the commandment of God, and that which I affirm in those proceedings to have done by God’s commandment, it would have been impossible for me to do the contrary. And in the case of the Church militant commanding me to do the contrary, I should not abide by any man in the world but only by our Sire whose good commandment I have always done.

  Question: Do you not believe that you owe submission to God’s Church on earth, that is to our lord the pope, to the cardinals, archbishops, bishops and other prelates of the Church?

  JOAN: Yes, our Sire being first served.

  Question: Have you commandment from your voices not to submit yourself to the Church militant which is on earth, nor to its judgment?

  JOAN: I shall not answer otherwise than I take into my head, but what I answer is by the commandment of my voices; they do not command me that I obey not the Church, God first served. (C.286–288)

  Meanwhile another act of accusation, more precise than Jean d’Estivet’s woolly and verbose prose, was drawn up to serve as a basis for the rest of the trial. During the course of the Trial of Rehabilitation, some interesting details were given about this proceeding, by the notaries.

  Guillaume Manchon: “It was decided by the councillors and especially by those who had come from Paris, that, as was usual, out of all these articles and responses there should be made a few short articles and that the principal points should be summarized to present the matter briefly in order that the deliberations could be better done and more rapidly. It was for that (reason) that the twelve articles were drawn up, but it was not I who did them and I do not know who composed or extracted them.”

  “How was it done,” asked the promoter of the Trial of Rehabilitation, “that such a multitude of articles and responses could be reduced to twelve articles, especially in a form so remote from Joan’s confessions? It does not seem very likely that such important men would have thus composed these articles.”

  MANCHON: I think that in the principal text of the proceedings done in French, I inserted the truth of the interrogations and articles drawn up by the promoter and the judges, and of Joan’s answers. As for the twelve articles, I refer them
to those who composed them, whom I did not dare to gainsay, any more than my companion.

  Question: When the twelve articles were inserted, did you collate those articles with Joan’s answers to see if they corresponded with those answers?

  MANCHON: I do not remember.

  Now at this point Manchon was shown a folio in his own handwriting, extracted from the dossier which he himself had produced before the court of Rehabilitation and dated April 4, 1431. On this folio Manchon had noted the discrepancies between certain of the articles in question, and Joan’s answers: the fact is that, as in the earlier and longer act of accusation, certain of the articles expressed the very opposite to what Joan had, in fact, answered. For example, the reply given under the head of submission to the Church becomes: “She will not submit herself to the determination of the Church militant, but to God only.”

  Question: Do you believe that these articles were composed in a spirit of truth, for there is a great difference between these articles and Joan’s answers?

  MANCHON: What is in my text of the proceedings is true. As for the articles, I refer them to those who did them, for it was not I who did them.

  Question: Were the decisions based on the whole proceedings (i.e., on the full record) or on these twelve articles?

  MANCHON: I believe that the decisions were not based on the full proceedings, for it had not yet been put in form and was not drafted into the form it has now until after Joan’s death, but the decisions were made on the twelve articles.

  Question: Were these twelve articles read by Joan?

  MANCHON: No.

  What Manchon said was confirmed by the other two notaries, Boisguillaume and Nicolas Taquel, who disclaimed all responsibility when confronted with the twelve articles and attested that they served as a basis for the subsequent judicial decisions. A witness who was particularly well informed, Thomas de Courcelles himself in fact, completed the detailed evidence taken on this point: “Certain articles, to the number of twelve, were edited and extracted from Joan’s admissions and answers. This was done, as far as I can conjecture with some degree of likelihood, by the late master Nicolas Midy. It was on the twelve articles thus extracted that all the deliberations (i.e., decisions) and opinions were based and given, but I do not know if it was decided that they should be corrected or if they were corrected.” (R.256)