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

The standard modern histories go with Joan's testimony and experiences about her Voices without affirming, or, often, denying, their reality. Joan resoundingly affirmed them:<ref>Murray, p. 357</ref><blockquote>As firmly as I believe Our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered death to redeem us from the pains of hell, so firmly do I believe that it was Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret whom Our Saviour sent to comfort and to counsel me.</blockquote>

She was asked,<ref>Murray, p. 41</ref><blockquote>Have your Voices forbidden you to speak the truth?</blockquote>After Joan replies,

The interrogators deliberately used the term "object"<ref>>> get from original transcript Latin/French</ref> to denigrate Joan's Visions, as of course Church doctrine affirms visions of spirit -- but not of physical bodies, or "objects" as the Rouen court carefully worded it. Church doctrine then and now holds that angels are non-corporeal and that the human soul separates from the body at death whereupon it awaits reunification with its glorified body at the Final Judgment and Resurrection.<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. It's not exactly counting angels on a pinhead, but it's a trivial, if not foolish, distinction they were trying to make, as they well knew Saint Thomas's teachings that both Angels and the Saints may represent themselves to the living in ''image or likeness'' of a body, albeit not materially (an "object"). From Thomas' ''SummaTheologiae:''<ref>[https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1051.htm Summa Theologiae, Question 51, Article 2, Reply to Objection 2]</ref><blockquote>The body assumed is united to the angel not as its form, nor merely as its mover, but as its mover represented by the assumed movable body. For as in the Sacred Scripture the properties of intelligible things are set forth by the likenesses of things sensible, in the same way by Divine power sensible bodies are so fashioned by angels as fittingly to represent the intelligible properties of an angel. And this is what we mean by an angel assuming a body."</blockquote>and,<ref>[https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5069.htm Summa Theologiae, Question 69, Article 3, Reply to Objection 3]  

</ref> <blockquote>Nevertheless, according to the disposition of Divine providence separated souls sometimes come forth from their abode and appear to men, as Augustine, in the book quoted above, relates of the martyr Felix who appeared visibly to the people of Nola when they were besieged by the barbarians.</blockquote>Secular historians don't care about all that, so they simply use the Trial transcript to discredit Joan's Visions, forgetting or ignoring the nuance and lack of integrity in the questions to Joan about them. It becomes for them, just more evidence that Joan fed the judges with imagined details to throw them off, or... It's unclear to me what these historians would have her to have said instead of relating her experiences truthfully. 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> However, rather than accusing Joan of lying, they left it open for interpretation as to what Joan meant. In the formal "Twelve Articles of Accusations," Article I,<ref name=":3">Murray, p. 366</ref><ref name=":3" />    <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 <mark>Saints</mark> 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 <mark>Saints</mark>, 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>Ultimately, the ecclesiastical court at Rouen condemned Joan for reneging on her vow to wear women's clothes,<ref>The men's clothing was the excuse to charge her with "relapse," or going against her own formal rejection (abjuration) of her own heresies. As she was charged with the relapse, she reaffirmed her Voices, which was also a relapse of her abjuration. </ref> which was a setup, but also for invoking her Saints for having told her to put the men's clothes back on. Aside from hints that it was fairies that Joan actually saw or thought she saw, they never directly accused her of invoking evil spirits or of making it up altogether. Had they accused her of outright witchcraft, which they never did, only hinting at it, such as in Article XI's,<ref>Murray, p. 370</ref><blockquote>She doth add that, if it were an evil spirit who had come to her under the appearance and mask of Saint Michael she would quite well have known how to distinguish that it was not Saint Michael</blockquote>Ultimately, it seems that the Trial judges thought she made it all up. Several of the clerics at the Rouen trial testified twenty years later at the Trial of Rehabilitation, including one of Joan's chief interrogators, Jean Beaupère, who maintained that Joan's voices were "from natural causes and human intent... [not] supernatural."<ref>Murray, p. 176</ref> Another, lesser player from the Rouen court, Augustinian Bishop Jean Lefevre,<ref>or Jean Favri</ref> whom the biographer Pernoud calls, "a dubious character,"<ref>Pernoud, Retrial, p. 176, fn 4</ref> told the examiners essentially the same, that her Voices were not real:<ref>Murray, p. 210, from May 9, 1452</ref>