MAID, MYTH AND HISTORY
TIMOTHY WILSON-SMITH
First published in 2006
This edition first published in 2008
The History Press
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This ebook edition first published in 2011
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Prologue The Limits of History
PART ONE: The Maid in Life and Death
One A Prophetess to the Rescue
Two What Need of the Maid?
Three Victory at Orléans and Reims
Four Defeats and Capture
Five Coming to Trial
Six The Preparatory Trial
Seven The Ordinary Trial
Eight The Maid’s Death
PART TWO: The Maid Vindicated
Nine The King on Trial
Ten National Salvation
Eleven The Alliance of 1435
Twelve The End of English France
Thirteen Voices in Defence
Fourteen The Case Reopened
Fifteen Witnesses to the Life
Sixteen Witnesses to the Trial
Seventeen Verdict and Rehabilitation
PART THREE: The Cult of the Maid
Eighteen History, Legend and Myth
Nineteen Early Accounts, Partial Histories
Twenty Reinventing the Maid
Twenty-one Reviving Joan
Twenty-two Holy Patriot
Twenty-three The Cult of St Joan
Twenty-four Vive la France! Vive Jeanne d’Arc!
Twenty-five St Joan: a Modern Heroine?
Epilogue Saint Joan in Orléans
Genealogical Tables
Notes
Bibliography
Preface
In 1428 a young girl, almost a woman, in a remote part of eastern France, believes that she is called by God, His angels and saints to revive the cause of the true King of France. She convinces the king and his theologians that she should be given a chance to prove her worth. She gives hope to dispirited soldiers, leads them to relieve a key city and recapture several fortified towns, then takes the king across enemy country to be crowned. She tries to take his capital city, fails and is sent away to campaign in an area of the country that is strategically unimportant. Without authorisation she rushes to defend a city her master had promised to give up, is captured and imprisoned. Wounded trying to jump from a castle, she is sold to the highest bidder, who is determined that she must die after a trial that will be technically independent of secular authority. On trial she shows a degree of composure that amazes some of her learned judges, but then she falters, admits she was deceived, abjures her abjuration, is condemned to death and is burnt as a sorceress and heretic – yet her last act is to call on the name of Jesus.
Joan of Arc, the girl-woman of this story, was so unusual a person that she has been the subject of many biographies, the protagonist of many plays and films, the theme of many statues and paintings. Of those who took part in what is called the Hundred Years War she has proved to be by far the most fascinating participant. Joan comes into history for a brief moment, was the centre of attention for a few months, and then disappears. She had a remarkable effect on those who fought with her before she was taken into captivity and ultimately killed, but the manner of her death, as a sorceress and heretic, must have left those who believed in her disillusioned and confirmed the suspicions of the doubters. She had been a comet in the sky, exciting to observe, quick to evaporate.
In the fifteenth century the Church knew what it considered to be a saint. There was a long tradition of writing hagiography and yet nobody wrote about Joan in a way that conformed to the stereotypes. There was a time when priests had told the story of holy men and sometimes of holy women in predictable ways. Signs alerted a pious mother to the imminent birth of a remarkable child. In childhood a boy was self-sacrificing and wise, he learnt to read early and preferred reading lives of the saints to tales of romance, he looked for an austere order to join, he prayed for long hours, fasted often, was outstandingly submissive until raised to the role as abbot for which his gifts suited him. A fearless critic of powerful men, his eloquent preaching converted the weak and captivated the strong, he encouraged knights to go crusading, kings to rule justly, rich merchants to share their wealth, theologians to abandon their comfortable lives in a cathedral close, to meditate on his sermons in a secluded cell. Such a man was Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux. An alternative scenario was that of the repentant sinner. Francesco Bernardone found the world attractive and was attractive to the world, a charmer whom it was easy to spoil. His renunciation was correspondingly drastic. He wanted not just to be poor but to have nothing; instead of the beautiful clothes his father had given him he wanted to be naked and to find beauty only in the natural world. He welcomed repulsive lepers and at the end of his life was the first man said to experience the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ, on his hands and feet and at his side. Nobody who wrote about St Bernard or St Francis had any difficulty in accepting that the men were saints. In each case their lives were marvellous in a remarkable and convincing way; at some stage such a saint performed miracles that demonstrated his sanctity to the sceptics – and so they did. Within a few years of their edifying deaths each had a feast day in the Church’s calendar. None doubted their status.
Joan of Arc fits into neither category, and not just because she failed to perform any miracles. She showed some ability to predict events and to know what had happened without having had any obvious means to know it, but there were few such instances. Most of the evidence of her religious character comes from trials whose verdicts were contradictory – one in 1431 that led to her conviction, others in 1452–6 that led to that conviction being declared unsafe. It took almost five hundred years after an English soldier had declared ‘we have burnt a saint’ for the Catholic Church to conclude that she was indeed a saint.
This book is not merely an account of a life that was cut short in 1431. Its focus is also on Joan’s history, which in 1431 had just begun. That history ranges over many centuries and involves the work of writers, artists and cinéastes as well as of cautious scholars, Church or canon lawyers, theologians and the simply devout. It is a history that has involved passionate controversy, that has been disfigured by distortion and prejudice, but that has also been illuminated by honest attempts to understand a young woman, still a teenager, who came from an unimportant area of Europe to transform the military and political situation of a great country. The manner of her imprisonment, trial and execution dealt a blow to the high reputation of the inquisitions as an instrument of justice; it gave the French additional reasons to quarrel among themselves and to unite in their opposition to the English. He
r rehabilitation produced new views on the relationship between the private revelations of individual Christians and the public revelation of Christ’s Church. Her claims for her voices still fascinate students of human psychology, but then her martial skills also distinguish her from all other women of her times. Most of those who wrote about her in the fifteenth century knew her only for a brief period or not at all, but her words at her hostile trial and the memory of her preserved by her friends give her an immediacy found in few figures from the distant past. With every year, as more and more research is under-taken, she becomes easier to know now than when she was alive; and it is this quality in her that justifies the writing of a book that sets out to explore the ways in which she matters as a person, as a cultural, a national and a spiritual phenomenon. The last time an English author made such an attempt was more than twenty years ago. Marina Warner, a formidably erudite feminist, categorises the various ways in which Joan has been understood and for those attracted to conceptual analysis her book must remain essential reading. This book has a different aim: to tell a saga that has taken almost six hundred years to unfold and is still unfolding. It is the latest in a series of attempts by an English Francophile to comprehend Anglo-French relations. It is also an attempt by a Catholic writer to come to terms with the grim fact that a political trial masqueraded as a religious one and with the encouraging fact that Joan’s unjust trial and condemnation soon forced Catholic theologians to rethink the value of private religious experience. Even in the early twentieth century those who thought she might be a saint were worried by her independence of mind: she was not one of them, for she was ill educated and she was not a nun. Above all, this book aims to explain how an extraordinary woman with flaws may be a saint or a heroine, yet accessible to all.
Acknowledgements
Research for this book was facilitated by the use of libraries at Eton College and above all by the resources of Cambridge University Library. That research has involved reading texts in English, French and Latin, but not alas in German. Anyone hoping for an adequate literary discussion of the styles of Schiller and Brecht must look elsewhere, as too must anyone in search of a subtle analysis of the relevance of Joan of Arc to Franco-German tensions over Alsace-Lorraine after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
Like all English writers on French history, I have pursued an inconsistent policy in the forms I have given to French names. Names of prominent people, such as kings, dukes and counts, are usually anglicised; it would be pedantic to say ‘Bourgogne’ instead of Burgundy, but in an age when Reims is familiar as a centre of the manufacture of champagne rather than as home to a certain jackdaw, I have spelt the city without an ‘h’. In a household where Franglais is common, I have kept the acute accent in Orléans, but not in Domremy (as in the latter the word was originally spelt without one). In some cases it seems natural to write ‘Jean’, in others ‘John’, and my protagonist is not Jehanne, nor Jeanne, but Joan – I am sure somebody will disagree with me.
It is a pleasure to recall the genesis of a book. Thanks to my late parents a family holiday in 1957 ended with a meal in the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, the square where Joan was burnt to death; and I found and still have a picture book, Dans les pas de Jeanne d’Arc, by the late Régine Pernoud, later doyenne of Johannic studies. Forty years on I began to revisit Rouen in my imagination. A generous grant by the Authors’ Foundation, through the good offices of the Society of Authors, has helped me to trace some of Joan’s footsteps as Régine Pernoud recommended. I thank Ben Glazebrook and Christopher Foley of Lane Fine Art for their helpfulness respectively at the beginning and the end of this project. One or two key pieces of information I owe to the tireless Virginia Frohlick. In technical matters concerning Joan’s various ‘trials’ I have relied on articles by Emeritus Professor Andy Kelly of the University of California, and little of this book could have been written without the labours of many other distinguished scholars. Among these people I must single out people at the Centre Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans both for help in the centre and for help received by e-mail. My special contribution has been my references to the ideas of certain Catholic philosophers and theologians, especially when their works have not been translated into English. For technical expertise in the art of computing I have relied on Nick Kulkarni of Home & Business Computing and I owe a continuing debt to the perceptiveness and encouragement of Laura Longrigg, my agent, and to the incisive comments of Jaqueline Mitchell, my editor at Sutton Publishing, and Anne Bennett. I thank Bow Watkinson, too, who has drawn the maps. Navigating in the unfamiliar world of picture research has been much facilitated by Jane Entrican at Sutton and several friendly voices at various picture libraries. All mistakes, naturally, are my own.
Looking through my late mother-in-law’s possessions after her death, I discovered pages of a liturgy of Joan of Arc that must date from the early 1920s. To my late mother-in-law, Odette Starrett, and my wife Pam a mere Englishman owes insights into France and Anglo-French relations he would not otherwise have. I dedicate this book to them both.
Timothy Wilson-Smith
Chronology
BEFORE 1429: FRANCE AND ENGLAND
496 Clovis, King of the Franks, baptised by St Remigius
800 Charlemagne, King of the Franks, crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo II
1066 William, Duke of Normandy, becomes King of England
1154 Henry II, Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy and (by his wife) Duke of Aquitaine, becomes King of England
1200–4 Philip II Augustus, King of France, conquers Angevin and Norman lands
1258 Louis IX (St Louis) becomes suzerain of Henry III as Duke of Guyenne
1309 In the reign of Philip IV, Pope Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon
1328 Failure of direct line royal line: Philip, Count of Valois, chosen as king; he becomes King Philip VI (1328–50)
1327–77 Reign of Edward III, son of Isabella of France, in England
1337 Edward III claims throne of France
1346 English victory at Crécy
1347 The English capture Calais
1350–64 Reign of John II, King of France
1356 English victory at Poitiers
1361 Treaty of Brétigny: France surrenders sovereignty of Aquitaine to England
1369 Charles V (1364–80) reclaims Aquitaine
1377–99 Richard II, King of England, marries Isabella (1396), eldest daughter of Charles VI, King of France (1380–1422)
1407 Louis, Duke of Orléans murdered by men loyal to John, Duke of Burgundy
1413 Joan of Arc born at Domremy; death of Henry IV, King of England
1415 Henry V wins battle of Agincourt and captures Charles, Duke of Orléans
1417–19 Henry V conquers Normandy
1420 Treaty of Troyes: the Dauphin Charles disinherited in favour of Henry V (soon married to Charles’s sister Catherine) and of Henry’s heirs
1422 Deaths of Henry V and Charles VI: Henry VI, as King of England, and Henry II, as King of France, succeeds his father and grandfather
1428 Joan of Arc’s first journey to Vaucouleurs; the Earl of Salisbury in command at Orléans
1429–31: THE PUBLIC CAREER OF JOAN OF ARC
1429 Joan returns to Vaucouleurs
6 February: Joan visits Nancy and meets Charles II of Lorraine
12 February: battle of Rouvray (‘Battle of the Herrings’)
23 February: Joan leaves for Chinon
4–5 March: Joan at Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois
6 March: Joan arrives at Chinon
c. 9 March: Joan meets Charles VII
21 March: Joan in Poitiers
29 April: Joan enters Orléans
4 May: Bastard of Orléans returns to Orléans; fall of St-Loup
6 May: the French capture Les Augustins
7 May: the French capture Les Tourelles
8 May: the English fall back on Meung
11–12 June: the French capture Jargeau
15
June: Joan at Meung-sur-Loire
16–17 June: the French capture Beaugency
18 June: battle of Patay
30 June: Joan travels towards Reims
Early July: Joan near Auxerre
5–11 July: Joan near Troyes
17 July: coronation of Charles VII at Reims
8 September: Joan leads attack on Paris
10–13 September: Joan at St-Denis
October and early November: Joan at St-Pierre-le-Moûtier
24 November: Joan leads attack on La Charité-sur-Loire
29 December: Joan and her family are ennobled
1430 23 May: Joan is captured at Compiègne
Late May–July: Joan held prisoner at Beaulieu
Mid-July–mid-November: Joan at Beaurevoir
1431 3 January: Joan transferred to the custody of Bishop Cauchon
9 January: beginning of the first trial
21 February: first public session of the trial
10–17 March: closed sessions of the trial
18 April: Joan admonished to recant
19 May: reading of the condemnation of the University of Paris
30 May: Joan executed
AFTER 1431: THE CAUSE OF JOAN OF ARC
1435 Treaty of Arras between Charles VII and Philip, Duke of Burgundy
1436 Paris surrenders to the French
1440 Release of Charles, Duke of Orléans, from prison in England
1449 French invasion of Normandy; capture of Rouen
1450 Charles VII authorises investigation into trial of Joan of Arc
1452 Pope Nicholas V authorises Joan of Arc’s retrial process; Cardinal d’Estouteville and the Inquisitor Jean Bréhal preside
1453 English finally driven out of Guyenne
1455 Pope Calixtus III authorises Joan’s mother, Isabelle, to appeal; 7 November: opening session of the retrial held at Notre-Dame, Paris
1456 7 July: public announcement of the judgment of the court: the original verdict is nullified
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