Joan of Arc

by Timothy Wilson-Smith

  On Saturday 17 March they asked further questions about the appearance of St Michael and she told them something about him, but nothing about any other angels she had seen. She believed, she said, what St Michael did or said, as firmly as she believed that Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. Did she wish to submit all her acts or sayings, either good or evil, to the decision of Our Mother the Church? She said she loved the Church and would support it with all her might for the Christian faith; and she was not a person to be forbidden to go to church or hear Mass. As for the good works she performed, and her coming, she must commit herself to the King of Heaven who sent her to Charles, son of Charles King of France, who would be king of all France, even though she could not predict when this would happen. As for the Church’s decision, ‘I commit myself to Our Lord, Who sent me, to Our Lady, and to all the Blessed Saints of Paradise.’ She emphasised her point by asking, ‘Why do you make difficulties when it is all one?’ They told her that the Church Militant cannot err. Would she then submit to it? Cauchon noted that she would not give any further answers.

  The inquisitors went back to the question of her dress – she said she wanted a long dress when she died – and of her grandmother, who saw the fairies, but was not a witch or a sorceress. As to her dress, she understood that it implied her military calling. And her saints’ attitude to the English? ‘They love those whom God loves, and hate whom He hates.’ But her male costume still riled the court: did Our Lord approve? What armour had she offered in the church of St-Denis and why did she want her armour to be revered? Why were there five crosses on the sword she found at Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois? Why were angels painted on her standard?

  That afternoon it was natural for them to ask if the angels on her standard were St Michael and St Gabriel. The standard, she said, was just meant to honour Our Lord, who was painted on it holding the world. They asked if this standard gave her the power to win all the battles in which she fought; and what was the purpose of the sign she put on her letters, and the names Jhesus Maria? Devotion to the names of Jesus and Mary was a new devotion; Joan said that the clergy who wrote her letters put those words on the letters.

  The court went on to graver matters, asking what would happen if she were to lose her virginity, would her voices stop coming to her? Had her king been right to have the Duke of Burgundy killed? Would she tell the pope more than she had told the court? Was she not bound to tell him everything? She then demanded to be brought to him. This time the court changed the subject. Her questioners wondered if she was superstitious about the power of her rings and presumptuous about claiming to be intimate with St Catherine: did she know anything about fairies? Apparently not.

  Why was it her standard, they asked, rather than the standards of other captains that was carried into the Reims Cathedral at the consecration? ‘It had been present in the perils; that was reason enough for it to be honoured,’ she replied.

  On Passion Sunday, 18 March, Joan’s statements were presented to the assessors and on the following Thursday they were condensed into a small number of articles. On Saturday 24 March the interrogations were read in Joan’s presence. She told them that her surname was d’Arc or Romée and that in her part of the country girls bore their mother’s surname. She also asked that the questions and answers should be read consecutively to her, and she admitted as true whatever she did not then contradict. But she added these words to the article touching her taking woman’s dress: ‘Give me a woman’s dress to go to my mother’s house, and I will take it.’ She would do this, she claimed, to escape from prison, and once outside she would find out what she should do. Finally, after the contents of the register had been read to her, ‘the said Joan’ confessed that she believed she had spoken well according to what had been written in the register and read to her, and she did not contradict any other saying from the register.

  On Palm Sunday, 25 March, Joan asked permission to go to Mass in the male costume she was wearing and to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist on Easter Day. Would she give up male dress if she were granted permission? She answered that had not had any advice on the subject and could not yet wear women’s clothes. The inquisitors pressed her to ask her saints if she could wear female dress, to which she replied she might be allowed to hear Mass as she was, but she could not change her costume. Neither side was capable of dialogue. The court would not give way, nor would she; indeed, she said that wearing men’s clothes ‘was not against the Church’. The court made a note of the conversation.

  The interrogations had revealed the challenge that Joan’s assertions made to the conventional wisdom of her interrogators. Did she believe that she had magical powers? Did she claim to be impeccable, that is sinless? Could she justify her unnatural style of dressing? Could she justify her claim to hear the voices of angels and saints? Would she accept the Church’s authority? If the respective answers to these questions were yes, yes, no, no and no, then she was a witch and a heretic. The interrogators had a further concern: her confidence that Charles VII was God’s elected, the man chosen to be the king of France. Her mission was a political one antithetical to their own politics. In the eyes of her English gaolers she was a prisoner of war already guilty of treason. In the eyes of her French judges, she was liable to the punishment of a heretic and a witch. What her trial had to prove was that her treason derived from her heresy and witchcraft.

  This preliminary trial was only a preamble, a foretaste of what was to come. It was the decision of the subsequent ‘ordinary’ trial that would determine Joan’s fate.

  SEVEN

  The Ordinary Trial

  On Monday 26 March, the day after Palm Sunday, Joan’s ‘ordinary’ trial opened. The court decided to draw up articles. If Joan refused to answer them, she would be said to have admitted them. Accordingly, on the following day the articles drawn up by the Prosecutor (or Promoter) were read out and Joan was questioned in French. Her battle for the right to silence had won a slight victory, for the Abbot of Fécamp asserted she should swear to tell the truth ‘in all things concerning the trial’ and would have problems only if she thought some matters the court considered were matters on which she would not give a full reply. Further, the Prior of Longueville thought she should not be compelled to answer yes or no.

  Joan was willing to take an oath to tell the truth about anything relevant to the trial but refused an offer of advice, since she had no intention of not taking God’s advice. Then, that day and the next, the charges were read out to her in French. She was suspected of being

  a witch, enchantress, false prophet, a caller-up of evil spirits, superstitious . . . given to magic arts, thinking evil in our Catholic faith, schismatic . . . sacrilegious, idolatrous, apostate of the faith, accursed and working evil, blasphemous . . . scandalous, seditious, perturbing and obstructing the peace, inciting to war, cruelly thirsting for human blood, encouraging it to be shed, having utterly and shamelessly abandoned the modesty befitting her sex, and indecently put on the ill-fitting dress and state of men-at-arms; and for that and other things abominable to God and man, contrary to laws both divine and natural, and to ecclesiastical discipline, misleading princes and people; having . . . permitted and allowed herself to be adored and venerated, giving her hands to be kissed; heretical or at the least vehemently suspected of heresy.1

  There followed a list of seventy articles of accusation, against which Joan’s replies in the preparatory trial were carefully noted. The process of reading and recording took the court till the end of Holy Week. On Easter Eve she gave answers to some questions she had asked for time to think about. By Easter Monday the charges had been reduced to twelve key points, which the judges read over and reflected on during the next two days. By Easter Thursday, 5 April 1431, the final version was ready for detailed analysis by all the local experts.

  Joan was to be investigated under twelve headings: her claim to ‘see’ Sts Michael, Catherine and Margaret; the sign ‘the prince’ had received; her conviction t
hat she was visited by St Michael and the saints; her claim to knowledge through them of future events, such as an impending French success; her use of male clothes; her letters in the name of Jhesus Maria; her approach to ‘a certain squire’, in other words Robert de Baudricourt; her leap from the tower against the instruction of her saints; their promise to lead her to Paradise; her conviction that the saints speak to her in French, not in English, as they are not on the English side; her conviction that the voices come from God; and, finally, her conviction that what she had done had been done in God’s name.

  Sixteen doctors and six licentiates or bachelors in theology stated that they believed her revelations did not come from God, as there were lies, improbabilities and misleading fictions in what she maintained. To this they each added their individual comments. A few, such as Guesdon, made excuses and left, but most, with no more than a nod to papal or conciliar authority, agreed to condemn Joan unconditionally. On 18 April Joan was exhorted ‘charitably’; on 2 May publicly admonished. ‘We first tried to lead her back [to the truth] by means of many notable doctors of theology whom we sent to her on many different days . . . but the cunning of the devil prevailed and they have not yet been of any effect.’ To this Joan replied: ‘I trust in my judge. He is the King of Heaven and of earth.’

  The judges explained to her that they represented the Church Militant here on earth, ‘incapable of error or false judgement’, yet she persisted in her own obstinate trust in her private line to God. What struck them as abominable was her assurance that she had private relations with angels and saints, that she did not have to wear conventional feminine clothes, that she had been given a special role in French politics by God – in short, it was her belief in a unique destiny that appalled them. ‘I have a good master, Our Lord, to whom I refer everything, and to none other.’ She was ambiguous about submitting to the judgment of a council, but when asked if she would submit to them, she said, ‘Take me to him, and I will reply to him.’ In conclusion, she was keenly urged anew to submit to the Church under pain of being abandoned by it; she replied with seeming arrogance: ‘You will not do as you say against me without evil overtaking you, in body and soul.’

  On Wednesday 9 May she was brought into the great tower of the castle of Rouen before her judges. Threatened with torture, she said, ‘if you were to tear me limb from limb and separate my soul from my body, I would not tell you anything more: and if I did say anything, I should afterwards declare that you had compelled me to say it by force.’ Then she said that on last Holy Cross Day she had been comforted by St Gabriel. She said she asked her voices whether she should submit to the Church, since the clergy were pressing her hard to submit, her voices told her that if she desired Our Lord to aid her she must wait on Him in all her doings . . . She asked her voices if she would be burnt and was told to wait on God, who would help her. Seeing the hardness of her heart and her manner of answering, the judges, ‘fearing that the torments of torture would not do her much good’, decided to postpone their application till they received more complete advice on the question. Loiselleur said he thought it good for the health of her soul to put her to the torture, but he deferred to other people’s opinions.

  On Saturday 19 May the University of Paris addressed its official response to the ‘King of France and England’, who ‘with God’s grace began on a fine course of action for our holy faith, that is the legal proceedings against this woman known as the Maid, against her scandals, errors and crimes, which are evident throughout the kingdom.’ Beaupère, de Touraine and Midi had enlightened the university on the affair and in its turn the university asked their gracious Lord to end the affair as soon as possible. Master Jean Lefèvre and Brothers Martin Ladvenu and Ysambard de La Pierre hoped Joan would be charitably admonished and on 23 May her faults were publicly expounded to her in French by Pierre Maurice. The trial was over.

  Joan had been unwilling to listen. All she said in her defence was ‘As for my words and deeds, which I declared in the trial, I refer to them and will maintain them.’ If she were condemned, she added, and ‘she saw the fire and the faggots lit and the executioner ready to kindle the fire, and she herself were in it, she would say nothing else and would maintain till death what she said in the trial.’ But on 24 May, after the public sermon, the proceedings took an unexpected turn. Quite suddenly, in her own style she recanted: ‘Let all I have said and done be sent to Rome to our Holy Father the Pope to whom after God I refer myself. As for my words and deeds, they were done at God’s command.’ If there were any fault it was hers and no other person’s. She referred herself ‘to God and our Holy Father the Pope’. This, she was told, was to no avail, as they could not seek the pope ‘at such a distance’, and anyway a bishop in his own diocese was a competent judge. Then she recanted in French and the document was then translated into Latin; it was said that she had renounced her apparitions, had broken God’s law by dressing like a man and having her hair cropped like a man’s, by bearing arms, by wishing to shed blood, by calling up evil spirits.

  And I vow, swear and promise to you, to my lord St Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to Our Holy Father the Pope of Rome, His vicar and his successors, to you, my lords, to the lord Bishop of Beauvais and the religious Brother Jean Lemaître, vicar of the lord Inquisitor of the faith, my judges, that I will never let myself be persuaded or for any other reason return to the said errors, from which it has pleased God to free me; but I will always live in the unity of Our Holy Mother Church and the obedience of our Holy Father the Pope of Rome. This I say, affirm and swear by God almighty and the Holy Gospels. In sign of which I have signed this schedule with my mark.

  Signed ‘Jehanne +’

  For this statement she was sentenced to ‘perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of sorrow and water of affliction’, so as to weep for her failings and ‘never from this time on commit anything to make others weep’.

  On the afternoon of 24 May Joan put on woman’s dress and she was visited in prison by Jean Le Maistre, Nicolas Midi, Nicolas Loiselleur, Thomas de Courcelles, and Brother Ysambard de La Pierre, who said how mercifully she had been treated. She said she would willingly wear women’s clothes and would let her hair be shaved off. Her resolutions did not last, for on 28 May she went back to male costume – ‘a short mantle, a hood, a doublet and other garments used by men’ – which she claimed she preferred to women’s clothes. ‘She was told she had promised and sworn not to wear man’s dress again, and replied that she never meant to take such an oath.’ The reason, she added, was that promises to her had not been kept; she was not allowed to go to Mass and she was still in chains and she was not put in a prison with a woman companion. ‘We her judges had heard from certain people that she had not yet cut herself off from her illusions and pretended revelations.’ Her voices had told her to answer boldly. The preacher, she said, had falsely accused her of many things she had not done. She said too that what she had declared and recanted on Thursday was done because she was afraid of the fire. She believed her voices to be those of St Catherine and St Margaret and that they came from God. If her judges wished it, she would wear women’s clothes. To nothing else would she agree.

  Accordingly, on 29 May in the archiepiscopal chapel of Rouen, Cauchon sentenced her as a lapsed heretic. ‘We exhorted her to believe the advice of the clergy and the distinguished people who instructed and taught her things relevant to her salvation, and especially that of the two venerable Preaching brothers who were then standing near her’ – he was referring to Martin Ladvenu and Ysambard de La Pierre – and ‘we denounce you as a rotten member, which, so that you shall not infect the other members of Christ, must be cast out of the unity of the Church, cut off from her body, and given over to the secular power: we cast you off, separate and abandon you.’ He prayed that the secular power would be merciful to her if there were any signs of repentance in her. Her death sentence, however, he knew was now inevitable. The sentence was witnessed by the three notaries, Boisguillaume, Manchon
and Taquel.

  EIGHT

  The Maid’s Death

  On 30 May 1431, in the market square of Rouen, Joan was burnt to death. She died quickly. There are many affecting descriptions of her last moments, but all date from the 1450s; not a single one was written down in 1431. Her judges had not worried about the manner of her death. What concerned them was an urge to justify themselves to the world beyond Rouen. On Thursday 7 June 1431, they announced that they had received sworn information on certain words, before many trustworthy persons, spoken by the late Joan while still in prison and before she was brought to judgement.

  First, the ‘venerable and circumspect’ Master Nicolas de Venderès, licentiate in canon law, Archdeacon of Eu and canon of the church of Rouen, aged fifty-two or thereabouts:

  declared on oath that on Wednesday the last day of May, on the Eve of Corpus Christi last, the said Joan, being still in the prison where she was detained in the castle of Rouen, said that since the voices who came to her had promised her she should be freed from prison, and she saw the contrary, she realised and knew that she had been and was deceived by them.

  Brother Martin Ladvenu, Dominican priest, aged about thirty-three,

  said and declared on oath that this Joan on the morning of the day on which sentence was passed against her . . . admitted before she was brought to judgement, in front of Masters Pierre Maurice, Nicolas Loiselleur, and the Dominican brother Toutmouillé, that she knew and recognised she had been deceived by the voices and apparitions which came to her; for these voices promised her, Joan, that she should be saved and set free from prison, and she clearly realised the opposite had happened.