The intervention of the English in this scene was constant, as it was behind the scenes throughout the trial. This was attested by Haimond de Macy: “Some time thereafter (i.e., after the above scene of May 13th) I was still in Rouen. Joan was taken to a place before Saint-Ouen where was preached to her a sermon by Master Nicolas Midy. (Here he is confusing the occasions; Midy was to preach the sermon at the Vieux-Marché.) Among other things he said to her, as I heard, ‘Joan, we have such pity for you: you must retract what you have said or we shall hand you over to secular justice.’ But she answered that she had done nothing bad and that she believed in the twelve articles of the faith and in the ten precepts of the Decalogue, saying thereafter that she referred her case to the court of Rome and would believe all that the Holy Church believed. Despite that, she was hard pressed to retract; but she said to them: ‘You take great pains to lead me astray that, and, to avoid the danger she would do all that they wanted. Then the secretary of the King of England who was there, called Laurent Calot, drew from his sleeve a little written cédule which he held out to Joan that she might sign it; and she answered that she could neither read nor write. Despite which this Laurent Calot, secretary, handed Joan the paper and a pen that she might sign, and by way of derision Joan drew a circle. Then Laurent Calot seized Joan’s hand with the pen in it and made Joan make a mark which I no longer remember.”
Laurent Calot was a man well-known in other aspects: secretary to the King of England, he several times signed the official acts for the provisioning of the English armies in France and he was an intimate of the Earl of Warwick, often a guest at his house, as witness the Beauchamp Household Book.
What exactly had Joan abjured?
The record is very brief on the circumstances in which Joan made her submission: “As the sentence was begun to be read, she said that she would hold all that the judges and the Church said or pronounced, saying that in all she would obey our order. She said several times that since the men of the Church said that the apparitions and revelations she said she had had were not such as should be maintained or believed in, she would not maintain them and in all referred herself to Holy Mother Church and to us, judges. Then, in the presence of the above-named and in view of a great multitude of clerks and people she made and produced her revocation and abjuration according to the form of a cédule which was read to her, written in French, which she repeated: and signed this cédule with her own hand under the form which follows.” (C.388–389)
Now the cédule of abjuration which follows in the record is a very long document (forty-seven lines of type in the French version) in which Joan accuses herself in great detail of having ‘feigned lyingly to have had revelations and apparitions from God”, of having blasphemed God and his saints, of having worn “Clothes dissolute, mis-shapen and indecent, against natural decency”, of having “desired cruel effusion of human blood . . . despised God and his sacraments . . . been a schismatic and many ways erred from the faith. . . .” She declares that she “abjures, detests, denies, and entirely renounces and separates herself from” her “crimes and errors”. (C.388–389)
But during the Trial of Rehabilitation the notaries and other witnesses revealed the existence of another cédule of abjuration, differing from the one contained in the official record of the trial.
Nicolas Taquel: “I was present in Rouen when the first preaching was delivered, but I was not on the tribune with the other notaries. I was, however, near enough and in a place where I could hear what was done and said. I remember well that I saw Joan when the cédule of abjuration was read to her. There were in all six lines of coarse handwriting. This letter (sic) of abjuration was in French, beginning with ‘I, Joan, etc.’ ”
Another witness, Guillaume de la Chambre, confirmed this evidence: “I was present at the sermon made by Master Guillaume Erard. I do not remember the abjuration which Joan made, although she had much deferred making it. Master Guillaume Erard, however, decided her to make it and telling her that she should do what she was advised, that afterwards she would be delivered from prison; and it was on this condition and not otherwise that she did it, reading thereafter another little cédule containing six or seven lines on a sheet of paper folded in two. I was so near that I could easily see the lines and how they were disposed.” (R.60–61)
Better than anybody the usher Jean Massieu, charged with reading aloud the form of abjuration, could recall the scene: “In what concerns the abjuration, when she was preached to by Master Guillaume Erard at Saint-Ouen, Erard held in his hand a cédule of abjuration and said to Joan: ‘Thou shalt abjure and sign this cédule.’ Then this cédule was handed to me that I might read it and I read it to Joan; and I well remember that in this cédule it was noted that in the future she would no longer carry arms nor wear man’s clothes, nor shorn hair, and many other things which I no longer remember. And I know well that this cédule contained about eight lines and not more. And I know absolutely that it was not that of which mention is made in the proceedings, for that which I read to her is different from that which was inserted into the proceedings, and it was the former which Joan signed.” (R.62)
As a result of this the judges of the Trial of Rehabilitation called Thomas de Courcelles, who had drawn up in form the record of the Trial of Condemnation, to give explanations of the real nature of the abjuration:
Question: Who composed the cédule which is contained in the proceedings and which begins with “I, Joan, etc.”?
COURCELLES: I do not know. Nor do I know that it was read to Joan or that it was explained to her. A sermon was preached to her at Saint-Ouen by Master Guillaume Erard: I was on the tribune behind the prelates. I do not, however, remember the preacher’s words excepting that he said “the pride of this woman”. Afterwards the bishop began to read the sentence. I do not remember what was said to Joan nor what she answered. However, I remember well that Master Nicolas de Venderès made a cédule which began with, “When the eye of the heart”, but if that be the one which is contained in the proceedings, I know not. I do not know if I saw this cédule in the hands of Master Nicolas before the Maid’s abjuration, or after, but I believe it was before. And I did hear it said that some of those present spoke to the Bishop of Beauvais because he did not apply his sentence and admitted Joan to repentance. But as for the words spoken and who spoke them, I do not remember.” (R.61–63)
However wanting in precision were these explanations given by Courcelles whose memory, at the Trial of Rehabilitation, proved grievously faulty whenever his own actions were in question, what he did say was enough to establish that there had been a substitution of texts. The cédule inserted into the official proceedings was not the one which had actually been read to Joan at Saint-Ouen. The promoter of the Rehabilitation, Simon Chapitault, in his summing-up, declared that the document in the record was an abjuration “artificially fabricated”.
In our own time Father Doncoeur believed that he had found the text of the cédule, which was actually read to Joan and signed by her with a cross, in the text of the abjuration contained in the Orleans MS.; a document of six or seven lines, which corresponds with what Jean Massieu said. This would be quite likely if, as may be presumed, that MS. is a copy of the notes taken during the hearing by Guillaume Manchon. (See Commentary, p. 227.) The question, at all events, remains undecided: not all historians are of that opinion.
The circumstances in which the “abjuration” occurred were recounted by various witnesses whose words evoke Joan’s curious attitude and the misunderstandings which arose between Cauchon and the English who were present.
Guillaume Manchon: “Two sentences had been prepared: one of abjuration and another of condemnation which the bishop had with him, and while the bishop was reading the sentence of condemnation, Master Nicolas Loiseleur was telling Joan that she should do what she had been told and accept woman’s clothes. And as there was then a small interval of time, one of the English who was there told the bishop that he was betraying (them). The b
ishop answered him that he lied. And meanwhile Joan answered that she was ready to obey the Church. They then made her speak an abjuration which was read to her, and I do not know if she spoke it after whoever was reading it, or whether, once it had been read to her, she said that she accepted it. She was laughing.* The executioner was there with a cart in the vicinity, waiting for her to be delivered to him, to be burnt. I did not see the letter of abjuration,” he added, “but it was written after the conclusion of the deliberations and before she came to that place. I do not remember that this letter of abjuration was ever explained to Joan nor that she had been given to understand or read it, excepting at the very moment when she made that abjuration.” (R.60)
Another witness, Guillaume du Desert, an assessor at the trial, declared: “I was present at the sermon preached at Saint Ouen. There I saw and heard the abjuration made by Joan submitting herself to the determination, judgment and mandate of the Church. There was there an English doctor who was present at the sermon, and who was displeased at Joan’s abjuration being accepted. And as she was laughing while uttering certain words of that abjuration, he said to the Bishop of Beauvais, the judge, that he did ill to admit this abjuration and that it was a derision. The bishop, furious, answered that he lied; and that, being judge in a case of (the) faith, he must rather seek her salvation than her death.
That laugh of Joan’s, so unexpected at such a moment, needs an explanation. It may be that we can find it in a detail given above (and provided that the witnesses may not have recalled correctly the precise moment of her laughter), to wit that Joan—we have seen that she could sign her name—was obliged by the King of England’s secretary to sign with a cross. It will be recalled that this cross was the sign agreed upon with those of her own side to warn them not to believe the contents of a letter. It was surely curious that the English should now be making her use it to sign a document whose contents she considered false. This may be the explanation of her laughter which, moreover, must have exasperated the English present who, baffled by Cauchon’s attitude, saw their prey escaping them. There was a complete muddle of misunderstandings.
Jean Fave, an eye-witness of the scene: “After the first preaching . . . according to what I heard said, the leading Englishmen were very angry with the Bishop of Beauvais, the doctors and other assessors at the trial, because she had not been convicted, and condemned and delivered over to execution. I even heard it said that some of the English, in their indignation, raised their swords to strike the bishop and the doctors on their way back from the castle—but they did not strike them—saying that the King had ill spent his money on them. I heard people tell, moreover, that when the Earl of Warwick was complaining to the bishop and the doctors saying that all was going badly for the King because Joan was escaping them, one of them answered him: ‘My lord, have no care, we shall catch her yet.’ ”
Following this event and contrary to her expectation, Joan was to be condemned to imprisonment for life. In the course of the Rehabilitation the judges showed surprise at this, and asked Guillaume Manchon this question:
Question: Who urged the judges to condemn her to perpetual imprisonment, whereas they had promised her that she would not be punished?
MANCHON: I think that happened because of the diversity of powers (the two powers who then shared France between them) and because they were afraid that she might escape.
And in answer to later questioning Manchon added: “On leaving the preaching at Saint-Ouen, after the Maid’s abjuration, for as much as Loiseleur said to her: ‘Joan, it has been well for you this day, if it please God, and you have saved your soul,’ she asked: “Come now, among you men of the Church, take me to your prisons and let me be no longer in the hands of these English.’ Whereupon my lord of Beauvais answered: ‘Take her to where you found her’; wherefore she was taken back to the castle whence she had set out.” (R.231)
Cauchon’s “Take her to where you found her” was Joan’s real sentence of condemnation. For there is a fact which dominates the whole trial, the fact that Joan was detained in a lay prison and guarded by English warders, while being tried for heresy: now she should have been held in an ecclesiastical prison—in the prison cells of the archbishopric where she would have been guarded by women. This is the fundamental contradiction which makes it impossible to see this trial as a normal trial for heresy—although Cauchon insisted that it was so—and which underlines, quite clearly, its political character. Joan was a political prisoner whose enemies contrived to get her dealt with as a heretic in order to destroy the prestige which her personal saintliness and her extraordinary exploits had made for her.
Now Cauchon, as an advocate experienced in dealing with the law, knew that, according to the rules of the Inquisition courts, none but those who, having recanted their heresy, had relapsed, could be condemned to suffer death by burning. And having succeeded in making the wearing of man’s clothes (it is certain, from the evidence given by Jean Massieu, that the wearing of such clothes was expressly mentioned in the cédule) the symbol of Joan’s failure to submit to the Church, he might be fairly sure that she would, without much delay, show herself to have relapsed by retaining her male attire. Events were soon to prove him right.
The importance given to the matter of her male attire for the conclusion of Joan’s trial and condemnation was felt and understood by an observer as impartial as he was well-informed, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II. He summed up the business in his Memoirs, as follows: “It is known that, taken in the war, the Maid was sold to the English for ten thousand gold crowns and conveyed to Rouen. In that place she was diligently examined to discover whether she used sortileges (spells) or diabolical aid or whether she erred in any way in her religion. Nothing worthy to be censured was found in her, excepting the male attire which she wore. And that was not judged deserving of the extreme penalty. Taken back to her prison she was threatened with death if she resumed the wearing of man’s clothes.” (Q.517) And he added that her gaolers brought none but male attire.
Two different versions have been given concerning the male attire which Joan was to resume on the following Monday, May 27th. One by Jean Massieu according to which Joan, on that day, when she woke up, found only a suit of man’s clothes, her gaolers having hidden her woman’s clothes: “That day, after dinner, in the presence of the council of the Church, she put off male attire and assumed female attire, as she was ordered to do. It was then the Thursday or Friday after Pentecost, and the male attire was put into a bag in the same room. And when came the Sunday morning following, which was the day of the Trinity, and she had to rise, as she told it to me, she asked the Englishmen, her guards, ‘Take off my irons and I will get up.’ And then one of the Englishmen took away her woman’s clothes which she had upon her, and they emptied out the bag in which were the man’s clothes, and flung this attire upon her, saying, ‘Get thou up.’ And hid the woman’s clothes in the bag. And, by what she said, she put on the male attire which they had given her, saying, ‘Gentlemen, you know that it is forbidden me, without fail I will not wear it.’ And nevertheless, would they not give her other, so that in this argument they remained until the hour of noon; and finally, for the necessity of the body, was she constrained to go out, and to wear that attire, and after she had returned within would they not give her other, notwithstanding the supplications or requests which she made them.”
The other version is given by several witnesses. Among others is one called Pierre Cusquel, a burgher of Rouen who, apparently, was a master mason in the service of the “master of masonry works of the castle”; for, he says, it was by that officer’s permission that he twice entered Joan’s cell and was able to talk to her. He declared: “People were saying that her condemnation had no other cause excepting that she had resumed man’s clothes; and that she had not worn and was not wearing this male attire excepting in order not to give herself to the soldiers with whom she was. Once, in the prison, I asked her why she was wearing this male
attire and that was what she answered me.” (R.232)
Martin Ladvenu’s evidence is in the same sense: “As for knowing whether anyone approached her secretly at night, I heard it from Joan’s own lips that a great English lord entered her prison and tried to take her by force. That was the cause, she said, of her resuming man’s clothes.”
Again, there is Isambart de la Pierre: “After she had renounced and abjured and resumed man’s clothes, I and several others were present when Joan excused herself for having again put on man’s clothes, saying and affirming publicly that the English had had much wrong and violence done to her in prison when she was dressed in woman’s clothes. And in fact I saw her tearful, her face covered with tears, disfigured and outraged in such sort that I had pity and compassion on her.” (R.268)
THE TRIAL FOR RELAPSE
Sunday, May 27th, Cauchon learned that Joan had resumed male attire. On the following day he went to the prison, accompanied by the vice-Inquisitor and several assessors. The following is from the official record:
“The Monday following, 28 of the month of May, on the day following Holy Trinity, we, judges aforesaid, went to the place of Joan’s prison to see her state and disposition. Were present the lords and Masters Nicolas de Venderès, Thomas de Courcelles, Brother Isambart de la Pierre, Guillaume Haiton, Jacques Camus, Nicolas Bertin, Julien Floquet and John Gray.
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