Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

by Donald Spoto

  My most sweet Lord, in honor of your holy Passion, I beg You, if You love me, to reveal to me how I should answer these churchmen. As for my clothing, I know by whose command I took it, but I know not if I should put it off. Therefore, I pray that it may please You to tell me.

  The indictments then continued:

  She was a vicious commander in war with a lust for blood.

  She wished to employ only men to serve her in the privacy of her room.

  She worked only for her own material gain, for riches and honors.

  She said that God had long ago deserted her.

  An assessor interrupted the reading to ask:

  Questioner: Will you submit to the Church Militant?

  Joan: I will show it all the reverence in my power. But concerning my words and deeds, I refer everything to my God, who has asked me to do them.

  The reading of the articles concluded with a surprisingly weak summary:

  She has refused to reform her ways.

  THE INQUISITORIAL PROMOTER had composed a document of counsel to the judges:

  We charge you so that a certain woman commonly called Jeanne be by you sentenced and declared to be a witch or sorceress, a diviner, a false prophetess, a conjuror of demons, a committed practitioner of magic. She thinks only evil of our Catholic faith, she is schismatic, sacrilegious, idolatrous, apostate, evil-speaking and evil-doing, blasphemous, scandalous, seditious, a destroyer of peace, a warmonger who thirsts for human blood and urges others to spill it. She has abandoned the decency of her sex, she dresses unnaturally like a man-at-arms, she betrays human and divine law and Church discipline, she seduces princes and people alike, she accepts veneration, she has contempt for God….

  And so it went, a chain of absurd lies composed by churchmen for the sole purpose of advancing their own political favor by destroying an innocent. By a bitter irony, all this occurred during Holy Week.

  Interrogation in the Prison: Holy Saturday, March 31

  Asked if she would submit her judgment to the Church’s, Joan replied:

  Joan: I cannot revoke anything that has come to me from my visions and revelations, nor will I cease to do everything my Lord commands me to do. And if you tell me that my revelations are illusions or diabolical things or superstitious, I will continue to place everything in the hands of my God, whose commands I have always obeyed. Everything I have done was by God’s command, and in no way could I ever have done the opposite. And if the Church Militant orders me to do the contrary, I would not submit to anyone in the world except Our Lord.

  Questioner: Do you not believe that you are subject to our Holy Father the Pope, the cardinals, the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates of the Church?

  Joan: I am the servant of all—but Our Lord’s first.

  A Matter of Honor

  (April–May 1431)

  The most solemn day of the Christian calendar is Easter Sunday, which in 1431 occurred on April 1. As on the feast of Christmas, Joan was not allowed to participate in the Eucharist. On April 2 Joan’s replies to the seventy articles were condensed, as Cauchon instructed, into a far more persuasive dozen indictments. The judges were instructed to set down their opinions in writing no later than April 10, but only a few of them replied; most, it seemed, withdrew out of disgust and disagreement. Nevertheless, on April 13 twelve articles of indictment were sent for consideration to the University of Paris, for a judgment of heresy had to have outside confirmation of guilt.

  Joan, meanwhile, languished in her cell, growing ever more thin and pale because of the rotten diet and the pain of moving about. Her family had visited Rouen, but she was not allowed to see them. There was no word from Charles or any of his courtiers. No priest or prelate from France came to Normandy to speak on behalf of her and her achievements. She was utterly alone but for the consolation of her voices; told that they were of the devil, she too may have had momentary doubts in the small hours of the night. But if such doubts came to her, they were soon overcome.

  On April 16 Joan was given a carp to eat; soon after, she began to be violently ill. Informed of her worsening condition the next morning, Bedford was fearful that she would die and thus not be subjected to the logical term of a trial by heresy. He sent to Joan his wife’s physician, Jean Tiphaine, who recalled:

  Jean d’Estivet led me to her, and I went in to find a few other people in her cell with her, [the physician] Guillaume de la Chambre among them. I took her pulse, asked what she felt and where she had pain. She said that the bishop of Beauvais had sent her a carp to eat and she thought this caused her illness. With that, d’Estivet became furious, called her a whore, and shouted, “You slut, you ate something to make yourself sick!” She replied that this was completely untrue, and they exchanged quite bitter words. She had been vomiting violently for quite some time.*

  Guillaume de la Chambre added:

  Warwick said that Joan was very ill, and on no account did the king wish her to die a natural death—she was to die only after a trial, and then by burning—and so he sent me to her with some other doctors. We examined her right side, determined that she had a fever, and decided to bleed her. This was reported to Warwick, who told us, “Be careful, for she’s a cunning girl and could kill herself.” Nevertheless, the bleeding was done, and she felt better. But after exchanging angry words with d’Estivet, who called her a whore and a tramp, Joan became very angry and fell ill again.

  Weak but recovering slowly, she was stirred from a restless daze on the morning of April 18, when Cauchon and seven assessors glided into her cell. If she was unwilling to accept the Church’s counsel, admonished the bishop darkly, she would be in great physical danger; this was an unsubtle threat of torture.

  Joan: In light of the illness I am suffering, it seems to me that I am already in great danger of death. If that is coming, I ask you to hear my confession, give me [the Eucharist] and bury me in consecrated ground.

  Questioner: If you wish the benefits of good Christian people, you must do what all good Catholics do—submit to Holy Church.

  Joan: I am not able to speak with you any more today. Questioner: If you are afraid of death on account of your illness, you ought to reform your life: you cannot die with the sacraments unless you submit.

  Joan: Whatever happens to me, I will not say anything different from what I have said. I am a good Christian and I will die one.

  Questioner: Wouldn’t you like a fine and noble procession of people to come in and pray for you?

  Joan: I will be content if good people pray to God for me.

  The University of Paris scholars, however, were not kneeling on her behalf. The majority agreed with Cauchon’s conclusions of guilt as expressed in the twelve articles, but some dissented and others insisted the matter be put before the pope. Simultaneously, the priests of Rouen cathedral wrote to Cauchon, informing him of their anxiety about both the legality of the trial and the fact that Joan was reported to have been deliberately confused by the reading of documents to her in Latin. There was, in other words, no unanimous decision about Joan. She was charged with insubordination by refusing to put off men’s garb, and this was turned into an indictment of disobedience to the Church. This was certainly a feeble foundation on which to justify her condemnation and consequent execution by civil authority.

  A Public Admonition: Wednesday, May 2

  Dragged into the great hall because of her weakness, Joan was brought on May 2 before no less than sixty-three judges and assessors. A clever young theologian named Jean de Châtillon was instructed by Cauchon to read a lengthy summary of the twelve charges and then to ask her if she was willing to correct herself and submit to the Church.

  Joan: Read what I have said before, and then I will answer you. I put my entire trust in God alone. I love Him with all my heart.

  Questioner: Will you submit to the Church Militant—the authority of the Church on Earth?

  Joan: I believe in the Church on Earth. As for my words and deeds, I place them all before
my God, who has asked them of me.

  Questioner: Have you no judge on earth? Is not the pope your judge?

  Joan: I have one good Master—Our Lord, in whom, and in no other, I place all my trust.

  Questioner: If you do not believe in the Church, you would be a heretic and pronounced guilty by other judges.

  Joan: Even if I saw the fire being prepared, I would say only what I have already said, and nothing else.

  Questioner: Will you submit to the authority of our Holy Father, the Pope?

  Joan: Take me to him, and I will reply to him.

  Her words caused an uneasy mutter among the judges. Most emphatically, Joan did not want merely a written account of her words sent to the pope, for she knew she would be misrepresented; instead, she wanted to appear personally in Rome for her case. “Take me to him, and I will reply to him,” by which she commended herself directly to the pope, was an ordinary request, invariably granted to a suspected heretic. But Cauchon could not risk papal dismissal of the charges against her. When Manchon asked if he should note her request in the record, the bishop replied that was not necessary. “Aha!” cried Joan, indicating Cauchon. “You’re very careful to record things against me, but you don’t want to set down anything that might do me good.”*

  Later that day Cauchon learned that Jean de la Fontaine, charged with making the trial summaries, had gone privately to Joan along with Isambart de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenu; they all advised her not merely to request papal intervention but to demand it with her hand on the Bible. This made Cauchon furious and loud with threats. La Fontaine left Rouen and had no further dealings with the trial; Isambart and Martin were taken under the protection of Jean Le Maître. After this Warwick and Cauchon allowed no one access to Joan except for the usher, Jean Massieu.

  There followed the usual charges concerning male clothing, which would be the issue on which her fate was determined; questions about her revelations; queries about her faith in the Church; and charges about her affirmation of the Creed. By this time Joan was utterly exhausted, wounded and beaten down by a year of imprisonment and ever worse treatment, by threats, malnourishment, insomnia, appalling loneliness and the belligerence of men she had been raised to respect. As a result she no longer had any stamina to spar with her judges, and she seems to have known that her cause was more futile with every hour. In the middle of this long day, her answer to each question eventually became a simple repetition—over and over, spoken wearily but in the most touchingly resolute tone:

  Joan: I look only to my God.

  The Threat of Torture: Wednesday, May 9

  Cauchon was growing ever more desperate to trap Joan into an admission of heresy; he also lost the confidence of more than a dozen clerics, who left the proceedings and never returned; they knew that threats against them uttered now would simply highlight Cauchon’s apparent failure to close the case.

  The bishop’s next tactic took some of his colleagues by surprise. Joan was shuttled down to the castle’s great dungeon, where nine judges lined a circular wall. In the midst of the damp, fetid chamber were a master executioner—in reality, a master torturer—and the common instruments by which prisoners might be subjected to unspeakable agony. After the usual admonitions and exhortations, she said:

  Joan: If you tore my limbs and threatened me so far as death, I would never say anything other than what I have already.

  And if I did so, I would later claim that you drew it out of me by force.

  The man charged with torturing remembered, “I just left the room without doing anything.”

  Joan continued:

  Joan: I asked my voices if I ought to submit to the Church because many churchmen were urging me to do so. The voices promised me that the Lord would help me and that I should look to Him for everything. I also asked if I would be burned, and I was again told to wait on the Lord, and

  He would help me.

  Joan was hauled back to her cell while the judges deliberated for three days the prudence of applying torture to obtain either her submission to them or an outright confession of guilt. On the afternoon of May 12 Cauchon summoned them and a few more to his home, where they took a vote: ten were against torture, three in favor of it. Accepting the wisdom that the trial would be sullied if it were known to have included torture, Cauchon abandoned the idea.

  The Ruse of Jean de Luxembourg: Sunday, May 13

  On the evening of Sunday, May 13, Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, hosted a grand banquet for one hundred ten people at the castle. The guest list included Pierre Cauchon; Jean de Mailly, bishop of Noyon; Jean de Luxembourg, Joan’s first captor; and the Earl of Stafford.

  During the feast, Warwick—on behalf of King Henry, the Duke of Bedford and himself—informed Cauchon that Joan’s trial was lasting far too long. The process was not only expensive, said Warwick, it also gave an impression of incompetence and untidiness. The English wanted Joan publicly disgraced and dramatically put to death, and soon: in this matter, Warwick complained, Cauchon had promised much but had delivered only expense sheets. The bishop’s response was not noted, although he departed the festivities early that evening and, we may presume, swung into action.

  After dinner Warwick led some guests to see his famous prisoner. Aimond de Macy, the Burgundian knight who had once tried to molest Joan at Beaurevoir (and got slapped for his effort), was also present; years later he described the scene and the sadistic taunting of Joan by Luxembourg:

  Jean de Luxembourg wanted to see Joan, and so we went to her cell in the company of Warwick and Stafford. Once there, [Luxembourg] said to her, “Joan, I have come to ransom you, as long as you promise never to bear arms against us again.” She replied, “In God’s name—you’re mocking me! I know very well that you have neither the will nor the ability to do this.” They argued over that for a few minutes, and then she said, “I know the English want me killed, because they think that once I’m dead they will have the kingdom of France. But even if there were a hundred thousand more goddons* than there are now, they will never have France.” Stafford was so furious at Joan that he drew his dagger to strike her, but Warwick intervened.

  Cauchon Announces the Paris Verdict: Saturday, May 19

  By Saturday the bishop of Beauvais was in high spirits. He had his reply from the faculty at Paris, and it was, as Cauchon must have expected, precisely what he wanted. The learned university men had read the dozen articles of indictment, and although not one of them had ever met, seen or heard Joan, they were eager to have done with her. Forty-two of the forty-seven clerics and doctors agreed, on the basis of Cauchon’s report, that Joan was a heretic and ought to be handed over to the civil authorities for punishment unless she retracted everything she had ever claimed and admitted to fakery and fraudulence.

  This was no surprise since the faculty at Paris had long taken the side of the English king and the Burgundians. Cauchon summoned the Rouen judges to his chapel on Saturday and had the university’s conclusions read aloud. Following that, there was unanimous agreement that the opinion of Paris be proclaimed to Joan and that she be given an admonition and a final warning before judgment was pronounced.

  The University Censure Is Read to Joan: Wednesday, May 23

  On May 23 a young cleric named Pierre Maurice, fresh from his theological studies, read the report to Joan in a room of the castle near her cell. The response from Paris, straining to find guilt where there was none, might have been hilarious were it not so self-evidently pathetic:

  Her visions were malicious fabrications and her revelations were from evil spirits;

  Her belief in the voices of her angels and saints betokened an error in faith;

  Her words revealed her to be superstitious, presumptuous, and proud;

  Her clothing imitated the traditions of idolaters;

  Her letters to which she added a cross, to indicate that instructions ought not to be followed, were blasphemous;

  Her departure from home was a form of disobedience
to her parents, which was scandalous;

  Her leap from the tower at Beaurevoir was suicidal, and her belief that God had forgiven her was presumptuous and showed that she did not comprehend the doctrine of free will;

  Her belief that she had not committed grievous sin and that she would be brought to eternal life was rash and mendacious;

  Her contention that her saints favored France was blasphemy against them and a sin against the commandment to love one’s neighbor, the English;

  Her belief that her visions were of God, like her vow of virginity, showed that she was idolatrous and took illegal oaths;

  Her refusal to submit her words and deeds to the Church, and insisting that she would be judged by God alone, demonstrated that she had no understanding of the authority of the Church.

  The University of Paris concluded, with high-toned meaninglessness, that Joan had separated herself from the true faith, that she was thus an apostate, a liar and a sorceress as well as a heretic; hence she must abjure—frankly admit—her errors and retract her claims. Failing that, she must be appropriately punished by secular authorities.

  At once, at Cauchon’s insistence and in the presence of some two dozen assessors, the young cleric addressed Joan in what was termed the formal charitable admonition or warning. “Joan, my very dear friend,” he began, “it is now time, at the end of your trial, to think carefully about what has been said…for punishments shall be inflicted on you if you do not amend your words and actions and submit to the Church…. If you fail in this, your soul will be damned to eternal agony and your body will be cruelly destroyed.” And so he continued, repeating in detail the injunctions and the threats.

  There was silence for a moment, and then Joan spoke; her verbatim reply has been preserved in the original French:

  Joan: Quant à mes fais et mes diz que j’ay diz eu procès, je m’y raporte et les veul soustenir: As for my actions and deeds, what I said at the trial I now repeat, and I stand by it.