Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle): Difference between revisions

For the Rouen court, Joan was not your average witch. While her visions and prophecies confounded and, at times, amused, them, they had to face the problem of their effects: this girl had routed the English and shaken the certainty their cause, to which the court was firmly attached. Her interrogators spent much time challenging and arguing with her about her encounters with the Angels and Saints. She answered everything plainly, giving them both everything they needed to condemn her yet nothing to deny, which is why the lead interrogator, Cauchon, needed Joan's own words of denial, which he fabricated after her death.<ref>More on the "Final Examination" later. Briefly, a week after Joan's death, he published off-the-record testimonies of a half dozen Trial judges stating that the morning of her death Joan denied her Voices. </ref>   

For a believer, what an an incredible opportunity to learn about the Saints! If we listen to her, Joan gives us a unique view into the experiences of an actual mystic.   

The English-backed trial court, of course, was entirely antagonistic to those experiences, and reoriented her testimony and their questions constantly towards the accusations of witchcraft, such as the legend of a "Fairy Tree" at her hometown, Domrémy, and of mandrakes, a flowering taproot plant which sorcerers were supposed to have used for spells,<ref>Mandrake roots have sedative and potentially hallucinogenic properties and often resemble the shape of a human, thus their association with witches and magic. Niccolò Machiavelli's play, ''La Mandragola'', featured a mandrake used to trick a man into willingly allowing another man to sleep with his wife. The plot is summarized by Voltaire in [https://archive.org/details/completetalesofv0000volt/page/56/ Letters of Amabed] (p. 56) which mention: "The comedy which I saw day before yesterday, in the dwelling of the <mark>Pope</mark>, is entitled Za Mandragora;—the hero of the piece is an adroit young man who wishes to sleep with the wife of his neighbor; he hires with money a monk—a Fa tutto or a Fa molto—to seduce his mistress and to make the husband fall into an absurd trap; all through the play there is derision of the religion which Europe professes, of which Roume is the centre, and of which the papal seat is the throne. Such pleasures will perhaps appear to thee as indecent, my dear and pious Shastasid;—Delight of the Eyes was scandalized; but the comedy is so pretty that the pleasure overcame the scandal."</ref> and which were commonly kept by peasants as charms. Their investigation into Joan's hometown found that mandrakes were used there, which would be affirmed by the village priest who in April 1429, after Joan had already departed, preached against them.<ref>Murray, p. 42. See footnote no. 1 for the sermon against them.</ref>   

The interrogators deliberately used the term "object"<ref>>> get from original transcript Latin/French</ref> to denigrate Joan's Visions, as the Church holds that such visions are of non-corporeal spirits and not of physical bodies or matter, or "objects", as the Rouen court carefully worded it. Church doctrine then and now also holds that the human soul separates from the body at death, whereupon it awaits reunification with its glorified body at the Final Judgment and Resurrection, so any visitation by a Saint would be non-corporeal, as well.<ref>The [https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/262/ Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 997] states, "In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body."  See also [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/1corinthians/15?42 1 Corinthians 15:42-44]. For the Final Judgment see [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/5?28 John 5: 28-29]: "Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voices and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation."</ref> In this light we can see the purpose of the questions about the particulars of Joan's visitors, their hair, their smells, the sounds and language of their voices and if she touched them. It's not exactly counting angels on a pinhead, but it's a trivial distinction they were making, as they well knew Saint Thomas's teachings that both Angels and the Saints may represent themselves to the living in the image or likeness of a body, albeit not materially (which would be an "object"). From Thomas' ''SummaTheologiae:''<ref>[https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1051.htm Summa Theologiae, Question 51, Article 2, Reply to Objection 2]</ref>

Secular historians don't care about all that, so they simply adopt the implicti arguments in the Rouen court's questions to discredit Joan's Visions, forgetting or ignoring their nuance and borderline integrity. It becomes just more evidence that Joan fed the judges with imagined details to throw them off. It's unclear to me what these historians would have her to have said instead of relating her experiences truthfully, because if she was making it up, it merely got herself into more trouble. And, again, it ignores the record.     

The Rouen clerics knew from Saint Thomas that a spirit may be "of the saints or of the damned" and that there are both "good and wicked angels."<ref>[https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5069.htm Summa Theologiae, Question 69, Article 3, Reply to Objection 6]</ref> Yet, following the procedures of an ecclesiastical trial, on April 5, the examiners submitted to "the Doctors", i.e. the clerics and theologians at the University of Paris, the "Twelve Articles of Accusations" which summarized, without formal judgment or sentence, the court's findings up to then. Article I went straight at the "bodily" Visions:<ref name=":3">Murray, p. 366</ref>

<blockquote>A woman doth say and affirm that when she was of the age of thirteen years or thereabouts, she did, with her '''bodily''' eyes, see Saint Michael come to comfort her, and from time to time also Saint Gabriel ; that both the one and the other appeared to her in '''bodily''' form. Sometimes also she hath seen a great multitude of Angels ; since then. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret have shewn themselves to her in bodily form ; every day she sees these two Saints and hears their voices ; she hath often kissed and embraced them, and sometimes she hath '''touched them''', '''in a physical and corporeal manner'''. She hath seen the heads of these Angels and these Saints, but of the rest of their persons and of their dress she will say nothing. <ref>The Article continues with a false claim that implied the Joan's Saints were actually the product of fairies: "The said Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret have also formerly spoken to her near a spring which flows at the foot of a great tree, called in the neighbourhood 'The Fairies' Tree.' This spring and this tree nevertheless have been, it is said, frequented by fairies; persons ill of fever have repaired there in great numbers to recover their health. This spring and this tree are nevertheless in a profane place. There and elsewhere she hath often venerated these two <mark>Saints</mark>, and hath done them obeisance.</ref>

</blockquote>Whereas the formal Accusations left it open for interpretation as to what Joan meant and whether or not she was lying, her first sentence, issued in public on May 24, went right at it, stating in the introduction,<ref>Murray, p. 129</ref><blockquote>the perfidious Sower of Errors works by his machinations and deceits to infest the Flock of Christ</blockquote>The public spectacle, the frenzy, and placed upon a platform in a cemetery, Joan recanted.<ref>Murray, p. 128</ref><blockquote>Inasmuch as the Clergy decide that the apparitions and revelations which I have had are not to be maintained or believed, I will not believe nor maintain them; in all I refer me to you and to our Holy Mother Church! </blockquote>There has been much debate over this scene, but what it came down to was that Joan signed a different document from what was read to her, which these words, as recorded in the Trial transcript may or may not be what she said, but what she signed. Nevertheless, she did recant, and she did give in to the moment. The Bishop then read her sentence, which likely was prepared in advance, which included sentenced her, as a reptetant heretic to "perpetual imprisonment."<ref>Murray, p. 133</ref> Among the heresies the Bishop declared her guilty of, was,<ref>Murray, p. 132-133</ref>