Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)

Saint Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

REJOICE IN SAINT JOAN OF ARC

Item opusculum super facto Puelle et credulitate ei praestauda
("Concerning the fact of the Maid and the faith due to her")

a book by Michael L. Bromley

Portion of the frieze "The Life of Joan of Arc" at the Panthéon, Paris.

Saint Joan of Arc called herself "Joan the Maid," or, as did her followers, simply, "the Maid," in French, "La Pucelle." She signed her name, Jehanne, which renders as Jeanne in modern French and Joan in English. In official documents she was called "Joan, commonly called the Maid." Her antagonists called her "whom they call the maid" and, from the King of England, "the woman who called herself the Maid."

God, she tells us, called her, "Joan the Maid, daughter of God."

Preface

Saint Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc entrance to Orléans through the Burgundy Gate, April 29, 1429
Honorifics:	Jeanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maid, Joan the Virgin) la Pucelle d'Orléans (Maid of Orleans, Virgin of Orleans) la Pucelle de Lorraine (Maid of Lorraine, Virgin of Lorraine)
Born:	January 6, 1412, Domrémy, Duchy of Bar, Kingdom of France
Died:	May 30, 1431, Rouen, English-held Normandy
Beatified:	April 18, 1909, by Pope Pius X
Canonized:	May 16, 1920, by Pope Benedict XV
Feast Day:	May 30
Patronage:	France, soldiers, especially women soldiers, prisoners, virgins, those in need of courage, those ridiculed for their piety, faith or youth, victims of sexual assault, peasants, the unjustly accused.
Signature:

This book presents a Catholic view of Saint Joan of Arc that is consistent with the vetted historical record. It reviews the facts of the life and accomplishments of Saint Joan, as well as their historical context. It offers commentary and criticism of historical and academic views of her, including as regards the secularization and ideological contortions of her life and legacy.

The analysis here starts with faith not doubt, thus Joan's experiences and visions (which I will call her "Voices") are assumed real and of divine origin. As opposed to skeptical treatments of Joan that begin from doubt, these pages take her at her word. This method, when applied prudently, enables important historical, typological, and scriptural connections to Joan's life and acts that otherwise go unconsidered or inexplicable. The approach is faithful yet cautious. And though Catholic in perspective, I sincerely invite the non-Catholic, faithful or not, to consider this point of view.

This discussion of Saint Joan is analysis not narrative. The narrative is presented, but the approach is thematic not chronological. To review a straight chronology of her life, please see the Joan of Arc Timeline or find a good narrative treatment of her from the Joan of Arc bibliography.

As with any valid historical analysis, this one weighs the evidence, adopts a perspective, and tests it against the historical and historiographic record. The extensive record of Saint Joan allows for cherry-picking and varied interpretation of witness and chronicler motives, so this work seeks to evaluate the historical record across broader connections and to use textual evidence with consistency. While some conclusions may be speculative, they will always be grounded in the record and drawing from it, especially as regards some of Joan's prophetic visions that are open for interpretation. Just because an interpretation is arguable does not make it erroneous. The rule does not apply to Joan of Arc alone: historians engage in this type of interpretation all the time. It is the essence of the craft.

As my arguments are contingent upon larger historical context before and after the life of Saint Joan, I encourage the reader to explore the history more largely in the sources. This work employs extensive footnotes that are not just for citation, but are to explain, contextualize, and embrace our mutual curiosity, especially for tracking original sources and their transmissions into English, as there can be significant interpretation, or error, exercised in translation.

Finally, my argument is two-fold: first, that Saint Joan of Arc was divinely inspired; and second, that her divine mission was not merely to save France, but to preserve a Catholic France.

Saint Joan of Arc was canonized by the Catholic Church on May 16, 1920.

Copyright © Michael L. Bromley, 2024-2026. All rights reserved. All content provided on this website, including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material is for informational purposes only. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

For my wife Terry, in praise of God.

Introductory Notes

Saint Joan of Arc

• I will generally refer to Saint Joan of Arc as "Saint Joan," "Joan,” and "the Maid."
• Primary sources may refer to her as Jeanne (French), Jehanne (Middle French), Johanne (Latin), "the Maid," or La Pucelle (French for "The Maid.")

Related pages

• Joan of Arc Timeline
• Joan of Arc bibliography
• Kings of France and England
• Popes and antipopes
• Saint Joan of Arc glossary for names, places & terms, as well as a flow chart of the lineage of French Kings (which can otherwise be confusing)
• Saint Joan of Arc quotations
• The Life of Joan of Arc by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (with Joan of Arc series from National Gallery of Art)
• List of all Saint Joan of Arc category pages

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Notes on sources and quotations

• The historical record of Saint Joan of Arc is uniquely extensive, which is one reason for the fascination with her.
• The primary source record consists of:
  • "Trial of Condemnation" (TOC): her trial for heresy, after which Saint Joan was turned over to the English authorities for burning at the stake.
    • a transcript was meticulously recorded of the trial, taken in French, then translated into Latin.
    • there exists fragments of the trial notes in Middle French.
    • several of the complete official Latin transcripts survive.
    • thereby, the Trial record is a Latin translation of notes taken in French, which we have in English translated either directly from the Latin or from French translations of the Latin.
• "Trial of Rehabilitation" (TOR): consists of interviews with witnesses of the life and events of Saint Joan
  • this record, too, was recorded in French, then translated into Latin for official copies.
• "Chronicles" or Chroniques: either contemporaneous, journalistic notes on events or histories recorded from eye witnesses or primary source records of events, such as letters, official declarations, etc., usually within one or two generations of the events
  • Chronicles are invaluable but must be used with care, as they often represent a certain perspective, say, of the person or official who commissioned them, or adopt legends as fact.
• There are also available for historians account books, tax roles, and other official documents, which this study is not using directly.

Trial of Condemnation

• In citations, I will refer to it as “TOC”.
  • all dates of the TOC are in the year 1431.
• The English-backed French ecclesiastical trial of Joan of Arc at the English-held city of Rouen that lasted from February to May, 1431 and ended with her burning at the stake as a heretic.
• I will often refer to the Trial of Condemnation as "Rouen" or "the Rouen Trial."
• I will variously refer to the judges of the Trial as Judges, Interrogators, Examiners, and Promoters
• there were anywhere from 40-60 who were ecclesiastical and theological experts consisting of priests and bishops from English and Burgundian held lands, particularly at Paris and from the University of Paris
• the Trial became known as the "Trial of Condemnation" only well after it took place and in order to distinguish it from its nullification proceedings in the 1450s.

Trial of Rehabilitation

• Also called the "Nullification Trial," as it "nullified" the Trial of Condemnation
• In citations, I will refer to it as “TOR”.
  • dates range from 1450 to 1456
  • depositions were taken in Rouen, Paris, Orléans and Domrémy
• The "Trial or Rehabilitation" is commonly used to refer to the entirety of a series of investigations, interviews, and a formal retrial that all took place from 1450 to 1456.
  • The Rehabilitation Trial started after the French retook the English administrative capital in France, Rouen.
  • On February 15, 1450, the French King Charles VII authorized the cleric Guillaume Bouillé to open an inquiry into the circumstances of the Condemnation Trial.
    • Bouillé examined the documents found at Rouen and conducted the first series of interviews that collectively make up the most important historical record of the Rehabilitation Trial.
    • In 1451, Charles VII shut down the inquiry.
  • In 1452, at the urging of the papal legate to France, Guillaume d'Estouteville, Charles VII authorized re-opening of the Rehabilitation inquires, appointing the Inquisitor of France, Jean Bréhal.
    • in May of 1452, Bréhal interviewed witnesses at Rouen
  • Primarily at the insistence of Joan's mother, Isabel, Pope Callixtus III authorized a formal appeal of the Condemnation Trial with Joan's family as the appellants (and not the Church or King of France)
  • The formal Trial opened at Notre Dame in Paris in November 7, 1455, and Bréhal conducted interviews in Paris, Rouen Domrémy, and Orléans.
  • On July 7, 1456, Bréhal's court declared Joan innocent of charges and annulled her sentence of condemnation.
• Only a few "fragments" of the Trial of Joan of Arc survive from the original French transcript, but we have the full record of court documents, filings, and interviews as orginally compiled in Latin.

Use of Trial records in this work

• Jules Quicherat's 1840s work in five volumes, Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, dite la Pucelle Vol. 1 / par Jules Quicherat... | Gallica
  • Quicherat is considered the gold standard for the primary source historical record.
  • Quicherat presents documents in their original language, mostly in Latin.
  • Gallica is the digital repository for the French National Library. For some reason, I can't find Quicherat's Volume IV on it (here for Volumes 1-3 and 5)
• Pierre Champion translated it into French: Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc. I : Texte latin / texte [latin], trad. et notes [par] Pierre Champion | Gallica and provides excellent commentary view extensive footnotes in Volume 2.
• For English translations from the Trials, I am primarily using the 1902 work of T. Douglas Murray, Jeanne d'Arc: Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France (link to Archive.org), which covers both Trials
  • I have posted the entire, unedited plain text version of the book on this site here: Jeanne d'Arc, maid of Orleans, deliverer of France. (It will be a long-term project to fix OCR mistakes.)
  • Murray's work is incomplete but useful as it is in the public domain and is available on Archive.org and, more importantly, it covers both Trials of Condemnation and Rehabilitation
    • to have both available in a single work greatly assists for developing context, especially in Joan's testimony in the Trial of Condemnation, as we can see in the same place the recollections of her compatriots in their Rehabilitation testimony.
    • Murray skips or condenses certain passages in the Trial of Rehabilitation and depositions in the Trial of Rehabilitation that he considered redundant
  • Murray converted the mostly third-person, or "indirect discourse" where it occurs in the Trial of Condemnation transcript into dialogue, or "direct discourse," a process called "discursive recontextualisation."
  • the dialogue form makes for easier reading than the original, mostly third person transcript which relates describes conversations in the third person. While historians may not like Murray's text for that editing, he makes few errors or substantial changes, and leaves us with a far more readable text.
  • Prominent Joan of Arc historian Régine Pernoud also converts what "is reasonable to assume was actually spoken"
  • Where Murray's recontextualization of the Trial of Condemnation are inadequate or the original context is important, I will use the English translation of the full Trial of Condemnation record by W.P. Barrett, version from 1931.
• The Trial Of Jeanner D'Arc (a poor rendering but useful in that it is reproduced on Archive.org in book form.
  • Barrett issued two editions, 1931 and 1932, with subsequent changes in the introduction and including translations from works by the 19th century French historian of Joan of Arc, Pierre Champion;
  • Fordham University's online Medieval Sourcebook has reproduced the 1932 edition in html.
• I try to check both Murray's extrapolations and his and Barrett's translations against the original texts, so I am confident of their accuracy as employed here, or will note when they are not, or I will offer alternative translations of my own.
• The largest problem with Murray is not the extrapolation of dialog but selective edits which were employed to reduce redundancy and to be able to fit both Trials into a single edition.
  • I have deleted spaces between punctuation marks from Murray's text.
  • I have not otherwise modernized spelling or usage in quotations.
  • In direct quotations from Murray, I have not included French accents, which he drops.

Notes on usage, names and spelling

• Indented texts are direct quotations, so quotation marks are only used for nested (inner) quotations.
• Emphasis added to quotations is mine and not from the sources.
• In presenting the flow of events and dialogue, I may travel back and forth between the historical past and literary present tenses.

• I am using the French spelling for proper nouns, except as found in quoted sources, such as Murray's which uses the English "Rheims" over the French Reims.
• Where a name includes a de I will generally but not always use the English "of the," and where it is a d' I will use the original French (saying Duke or Duc d'Orléans is far cooler than "Duke of Orleans").
• I'm tempted to use the French Bourguignons and duc de Bourgogne instead of the anglicized Burgundy, but the French nasal consonant "gn" is simply unworkable for the English tongue.

Notes on archaic word use

• "Gentle" king or knight is translated from the French gentil, which means "honorable" or "noble" not "delicate," and from which we get "gentleman," in Middle French gentil-homme or gentilhomme Where another translator may use "gentle" I might prefer "noble."

• "Fair Lord" is translated from the French juste, which means "just" not "good looking."

Important terminology

• Armagnac/s
  • named for the Count d'Armagnac who sided with the Dauphin Charles after the French split into factions
  • sources and historians may also refer to the Dauphin Charles and his supporters as "Valois," for the ruling House of Valois dynasty. (See Kings of France and England for chart of royal lineage.)
• Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, 1407-1435
  • refers to the factional split of the Kingdom of France between the Houses of Orlėans and Burgundy, which became outright warfare, especially in Paris, in 1410-1412, 1413-1414, 1418 and from 1420 to 1435 when the Burgundians were allied with the English.
• Burgundian/s
  • The House of Burgundy was a large, central-western Duchy of France that was assumed by the King of France, John II in 1363, who then gave it (ceded) to his younger son, Philip, who expanded the Duchy through marriage and his son, John, who expanded its territories and treated the Duchy, in part a French fief, as an autonomous state. The "Burgundians" were his subjects, followers, and allies.

• Charles VII, King of France
  • The direct heir to the French throne that was contested by the English King Henry.
  • Also referred to as “the Dauphin Charles,” or “the Dauphin,” until he sacramentally crowned at Reims following the entry of Joan of Arc.
  • Charles' enemies referred to him as the "King of Bourges," for the regional capital of the loyalist region that Charles controlled. He kept a principle residence at Chinon.

• Henry V, King of England
  • English king who claimed the French throne based upon his linage through
  • Henry V invaded France in 1415 and engineered the Treaty of Troyes with the French King Charles VI that established Henry as Regent of France and heir to the throne,.
  • Henry V died shortly before Charles VI so he never assumed the French throne; his young son became Henry VI of England and assumed the throne of France at the death of Charles VI in 1422; he was crowned at Paris as Henry II of France in 1431.

• England/ English
  • Following old English royal claims on Normandy, Gascony, and the kingdom of France itself, Henry V of England invaded France in 1415 and assumed title as heir to France at the Treaty of Troyes in 1420.
  • Henry died in 1422 and "English France" was ruled by his brother, the Duke of Bedford who was regent for the young Henry VI.

• France / French
  • “France” and “the French” refer to the people and land ruled by or loyal to Charles VI.
    • as opposed to “England” and “the English” who ruled areas of northern France.
    • formal documents under English-ruled areas referred to the King of France as Henry VI.
  • The the “Kingdom of France” as ruled by Charles VI had been reduced mostly to central France below the Loire Valley.·
    • The English directly controlled Normandy, but ruled the rest of northern France through their alliance with the Duke of Burgundy who controlled Paris and northwestern France.
• House of Plantagenet
  • I won't much use the term, but it is helpful to understand the context of the Hundred Years War in that the English invaders and claimants upon the French throne, including Henry V, were from the the House of Plantagenet (named for a gold-colored flowering plant called genista), which has its origins in the County of (Compte d') Anjou in central France, and which is the burial location of the first Plantagenet English King, the Anglo-Norman, Henry II, and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was previously Queen of France. The Plantagenet rule ended with Henry Tudor's defeat of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets, using French troops, as the French wanted to remove English ties and potential claims to the Duchy of Burgundy, which at the time was in the hands of Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of the last two Plantagenet kings Edward IV and Richard III. There were three "branches" of Plantagenets, with the House of Lancaster of the most concern to us, consisting of Henries IV, V, and VI. We can see in all this the origins of French and English modern statehood coming out of the Hundred Years War and the French victory in it, due, of course, to Saint Joan of Arc.

• House of Valois
  • Line of French Kings that started with Philp VI in 1328 following the death Charles IV who had no male heir.
    • The closest male her to Charles IV was Philip of Valois, who was crowned King Philip VI
    • The closest male heir to Charles IV was his sister’s son, the English King Henry III
    • The two French contestants during the time of Joan of Arc, Charles VII and Philip, Duke of Burgundy were both of the House of Valois.
• Hundred Years War
  • A tradition is to make the "Hundred Years" possessive, so that, like the "Thirty Year's War" it is the war that had one hundred years, "Hundred Years' War."
  • Here, however, I will use the attributive, or adjective, compound noun, "Hundred Years" to describe the "War," thus "Hundred Years War" without the possessive. Academic articles use both forms, although Wikipedia, which considers itself -- but is not -- definitive, uses the possessive form, "Hundred Year's War." It's just ugly, so I'm sticking with the more elegant and grammatically correct "Hundred Years War."

Important Events & Dates of the life of St. Joan of Arc

Before reading on, please familiarize yourself with these important events in the life of Saint Joan of Arc. Go to the Saint Joan fo Arc timeline for fuller details.

1412: Joan of Arc is born in Domrémy, France, probably in January, and traditionally on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.

1420: French king Charles VI disinherits his son, the Dauphin (prince) Charles and makes Henry V of England regent of France and heir to the throne. Charles and his Armagnac loyalists maintain his claim as heir and set up a government in exile in central France.

1422: Henry V of England dies that August, and shortly after Charles VI of France dies, too. The Dauphin Charles claims the title as Charles VII. The English claim the French throne for their new king, Henry VI, the infant son of Henry V.

1425: Joan begins to experience visions of the Archangel Michael and Saints Catherine and Margaret. Over time, her Voices instruct her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination.

November 1428: The English and Burgundians lay a siege upon Orléans. Joan's voices increase their urgency for her to "save France" and now by relieving the siege of Orléans.

February 22, 1429: Having finally convinced the local commander at Vaucouleurs to send her to see the King at Chinon. Joan and a party of escorts arrive on March 4.

March 11, 1429: Joan is taken to Poitiers for examination by clerics and scholars.

May 7, 1429: Joan leads the French army to lift the siege of Orléans, marking a turning point in the Hundred Years' War.

July 17, 1429: Led there by Joan, Charles VII is sacramentally coronated at Reims as King of France, fulfilling Joan's primary mission.

May 23, 1430: Joan is captured by the Burgundians and later that year ransomed to the English.

Feb-May, 1431: Joan is tried for heresy by an English-backed French ecclesiastical court at Rouen.

May 29, 1431: Joan is condemned for heresy.

May 30, 1431: Joan is handed over to the English who burn her at the stake. She was 19 years old.

April 13, 1436: Paris is retaken by the French.

November 9, 1437: French King Charles VII enters Paris.

1449: The English administrative capital in Normandy, Rouen, where Joan was tried and burned, is retaken by the French.

1450: At the insistence of Joan's mother, Isabelle Romée, King Charles VII authorizes an initial investigation into the Rouen Trial. Several witnesses from the 1431 Trial are questioned at Rouen.

1452: The Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Bréhal, assumes the investigation and commences numerous interviews with Joan's contemporaries.

1455: The Trial of Rehabilitation officially commences at Notre Dame under the authorization of Pope Callixtus III.

July 7, 1456: The Retrial court annuls the 1431 condemnation of Joan for heresy.

May 16, 1920: Joan is canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.

---

May 30: Feast Day of Saint Joan of Arc.

The historical problem of Joan of Arc

Saint Joan's most prominent modern biographer, medieval scholar Régine Pernoud (1909-1998), counsels that in the story of Joan of Arc,

Among the events which [the historian] expounds are some for which no rational explanation is forthcoming, and the conscientious historian stops short at that point.

It's a large concession, that, that certain events from the life of Saint Joan have "no rational explanation." But, apparently, this "conscientious historian" -- who is a sincere and important historian -- must contain herself to "the facts" and stick to sorting them out for description, while avoiding explanation, much less inference from those facts. Sadly, it's historiographically unenlightening and theologically timid -- which is the point: to deny God's role in the story of [holy title removed] Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc leaving Vaucouleurs for Chinon to see the King (by Adrien Harmand, 1876, Wikicomons

What's not to believe? Around the year 1426, an illiterate peasant girl from a sidelined village in Lorraine experiences visions and voices from several of God's Angels and Saints, who over time come to tell her to "go to France" to save it. At the age of sixteen, she seeks out a regional captain to send her to France but receives only ridicule and rebuke. As her Voices raise their urgency after an English siege is raised upon the city of Orléans, now seventeen, she finally convinces that captain to equip and send her across enemy lands to meet the King. The journey takes eleven days over several hundred miles, including to pass through enemy lands at night. At her destination, the King doesn't want to see her, but she talks her way into his castle and convinces him in private of her mission. He sends her to be examined by top theologians who find her to be forthright and orthodox, and who recommend the King trust her to show a "sign" at Orléans by defeating the English. Displaying military genius and boldness, she wondrously saves the city -- the sign. After a series of subsequent and equally astonishing victories, she leads the King through enemy territory to his sacramental crowning at the traditional site of coronations, which the King had a few years before with a large army been unable to reach. Throughout, she says and does remarkable and amazing things, convincing those who follow her that she is truly sent by God -- and her enemies that she is a witch. After her capture a year later following abandonment of her by her own country, she is subjected to a lengthy ecclesiastical show trial and then handed over to the English who burn her.

Got it.

Nobody disputes what happened. What historians cannot fathom is how and why.

The historian Pernoud concedes that because Joan's motives, actions, and outcomes are so improbable, to attribute them to anything other than divine guidance makes no sense. Yet, for Pernoud, the serious historian must shy from the supernatural, since divine inspiration is, for the historian of human affairs, irrational and thus inherently ahistorical, thus merely an article of faith, and so to be ignored. Pernoud thereby dismisses Joan's inspirations altogether, falling back upon,

The believer can no doubt be satisfied with Joan’s explanation; the unbeliever cannot.

Similarly, feminist literary critic turned Joan of Arc biographer Mary Gordon skirts the problem with,

We must make an attempt to place her historically, geographically, sociologically. Doing so may help us understand why what happened was not impossible, but does not explain the extremely unlikely fact that it happened at all. The life of Joan is such a flagrant beating of the odds that no facts sufficiently explain the course of it.

Using the sociological perspective of "historicism," Gordon buries the inexplicable within Joan's time, place, and culture, marking it with the unsupported claim that it was "not impossible." Gordon spends a lot of time on Joan's Voices, arguing, as usual, that whatever they were they were real to her. But the problem remains, as Gordon and Pernoud concede. If Joan's Voices were not real, how to explain their effects?

While modern historians may discard supernatural causes, they must yet grapple with the improbability of Joan, starting with the entire improbability of a seventeen year old girl leading the French army -- which, as Mark Twain points out in his marvelous historical fiction on Joan, marks her as the youngest conqueror in history. Apocryphally quoting the Hungarian liberator, Lajos Kossuth, Twain introduces her with:

Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen.

Twain's point would seem easily refutable, as Joan did not hold the "supreme command" of the French army. Symbolically, though, it's not only irrefutable, it is revealing: she was only seventeen; her country and its military leadership put its faith in her; and under her martial and spiritual guidance France defeated the English at Orléans and a series of battles that led to the ceremonial crowning of the King and the remaking of France. Twain's hyperbole is not far off.

Fifteenth century Pope Pius II, put it simply,

A woman became a leader in war.

Historians like Pernoud and Gordon step around the problem by taking her effects at face value while leaving them unexplained, as if the grapes had no vine. Gordon writes,

How is such achievement explicable? Joan reached a level both of physical prowess and of courage that was enormously against all odds. Can this kind of achievement properly be called miraculous? Or is it just an event that is very unlikely? What is the relationship between what we are able to comfortably call genius and what we are unwilling to call miraculous?

Others deny the miraculous by minimizing Joan's role, i.e. lessening her effects. Or they use both. So we hear that it was schizophrenia or moldy bread, which at least recognize that Joan heard her voices. Those who question the reality of the Voices must fall back on psychological and sociological conjecture, or invent or infer explanations for which there is no evidence. For example, one historian argues that the subjects of Joan's Visions were those Saints with whom she most closely identified and was most familiar:

One gets the picture of a lively Christianity informing the mind of the young Joan through legends. well-known across Europe ... That she was visited instead [of the Virgin Mary] by Michael, Catherine and Margaret attest to the potency of their legends in Lorraine, to their particular usefulness to a young patriot in time of national distress, and their appropriateness for an independent-minded woman.

Not that there weren't any churches in France called "Notre Dame," but, sure, the Church in Domrémy held and still holds a statue of Saint Margaret. Saint Catherine was the patron of a nearby church. Saint Michael was venerated in Lorraine and was considered the defender of France. Given that reasoning, one may suppose that some other "local" Saint, say, Saint Drogo of Flanders, and the patron Saint of shepherds -- wouldn't that make more sense? -- might have equally conveyed God's message to a thirteen year old peasant in an isolated French fief in Lorraine. Of course God would send the Angels and Saints that Joan already knew and trusted.

To paraphrase Saint Joan, Do you think God has not wherewithal to select Saints familiar to a young girl from Lorraine?

Trees that bear fruit

Pope Pius II, a contemporary of Joan of Arc, dedicated a chapter to her in his autobiography, Commentaries. In his official capacity, Pius had to walk carefully between the English and French, though he had a troublesome relationship with the French. To avoid sides, but also revealing of his own views, in his tract on Joan, Pius employs the Medieval chronicler's hedge of "some say... others claim," whereby attributions to the miraculous in her story were "said" by others. One wonders, though, as to which side he listened most, as he calls her a pig farmer, not a shepherd, as did most other such commentaries. Nevertheless, after the heart of modern historians, the proto-humanist Renaissance Pope plays it in the middle with,

Whether this was a work of God or an invention of men I cannot surely affirm.

Yet, Pius concludes that what Joan accomplished was,

A deed worthy of committing to memory, though in posterity it will remain more of wonder than of belief.

It's rather modern of Pius to leave the story of Joan of Arc to fancy and not fact. But what he means is that her story is so unbelievable that posterity will only view her feats mythologically rather than historically, the ideological wall upon which our secular historians depend. At least Pius affirms it happened at all. What he shies from is how and why.

The modern "unbeliever" historian has two outs here: the first is, like Pernoud and Gordon, to ignore the nature of Joan's Voices while admitting their effects; the second is to deny their effects, thus denying her Voices. That first batch run from what cannot be explained and leave it as part of Joan's inner experience (or something). The others diminish or deny Joan's agency altogether, which leads to speculation in order to redefine what is plainly historical, especially her two salient accomplishments, the relief of Orléans and the sacramental crowning of Charles VII at Reims. To deny her role in those events is to deny those outcomes, as, indisputably, without her they didn't happen the way they did. When, instead, we give agency to Joan and her Voices, we see how she not only caused those outcomes, but how her effects cascade across time, such as in, oh, say, the creation of the modern French state. Applying that agency makes her Voices essential to the history.

The clerical and scholastic "Doctors" who in March of 1429 at Poitiers were tasked by the French King with examining Joan to decide whether or not to trust her hadn't the benefit of the historical view. They had to judge her character without witness to her effects. Moreover, to save France is one thing, but to do it on behalf of God is something altogether different. Historian Deborah Fraioli argues that the situation of France in 1429 was, from the historical point of view, not so dire as the French themselves believed at the time. (I hold that the military and diplomatic situation was dire indeed.) However, Fraioli observes, from a theological point of view, "the situation takes on a different hue." As such, the Doctors asked to investigate Joan on behalf of the French King needed to consider if God wanted France saved at all, and if it was even correct to petition him for it. The core problem was that recourse to the Divine must not precede man's own attempts at resolution. All they had before them was Joan's own assertion that God had sent her to save it.

In this context, the theologians at Poitiers faced an imposing decision: is she with God? Secular historians discount the question and attribute the decision of the Doctors to send her to Orléans either to political expediency or cowardice, that is, to a fabulous act of passing the buck and letting the King deal with the consequences. Fraioli, however, argues that the theological problem was salient, calling it a "theological imperative" that they acted upon, and not politics. Easy to say, but the required standard well exceeded evidence before them of a rather unusual girl, her claims of Divine guidance, some crazy stories about her arrival to France, and talk of legends pointing to her.

A core Church tenant for maintaining orthodoxy is drawn from the the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew 7:15-20, verses labeled in most Bibles, "False Prophets," whereby Jesus warns:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.

and Matthew 12:33, in which Jesus declares to the Pharisees,

Either declare the tree good and its fruit is good, or declare the tree rotten and its fruit is rotten, for a tree is known by its fruit.

In Joan, the Doctors at Poitiers could not know if the tree would bear fruit or not. Just as they considered Matthew 12:33, they could have just as easily heeded Matthew 21:19, in which Jesus,

Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went over to it, but found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again.” And immediately the fig tree withered.

[File:Français 979 btv1b9059082b 83 folio-81 cropped.jpg|thumb|Top portion of the so-called "Poitiers Conclusions," discovered amidst miscellaneous documents by the French historian Jean Buchon. The top entry reads, C’est l’opinion des docteurs que le roi a demandée touchant le fait de la Pucelle envoyée de par Dieu ("This is the opinion of the doctors which the king has asked concerning the matter of the Maid sent on behalf of God").]] A fifteenth century document known as the Poitiers Conclusions provides an historically crucial account of the examinations of Joan at Poitiers, and, importantly, the rationale for the Doctors' decision to endorse her. While not produced at Poitiers at the time, document summarizes the examinations along the lines of other 15th century chronicles, only with details that isolate for us the motives for the recommendation to the King to send Joan with an army to Orléans, including,

But, following Holy Scripture, he ought to test her in two ways: that is, by human prudence, in inquiring into her life, her manners, and her intentions, as says Saint Paul the Apostle: Probate spiritus, si ex Deo sunt; and by devout prayer, to seek a sign of some divine work or hope, by which one may judge whether she has come by the will of God.

Quite beautiful, though the scribe got the Scriptural source wrong, as it's not from the Epistles of Paul but from 1 John 4:1, which reads in full,

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Nevertheless, the point is clear, if she's real, God will reveal it. The moment, the fear, the prophesies, the prayer, and the girl's manners, sanctity, and resolve, these all contributed to the recommendation to test her and allow her to show the sign at Orléans. All that came down to the only firm discernment that the Doctors could trust, a sign from God. The Conclusions continues,

Likewise God commanded Ahaz to ask for a sign, when he promised him victory, saying: Pete signum a Domino; and similarly did Gideon, who asked for a sign, and many others, etc.

In Ahaz and Gideon we have the one condemned for refusing to ask God for a sign and the other rewarded for it. The important fifteenth century source Chronique de la Pucelle records that at Poitiers Joan was asked to show that sign. Mirroring Jesus quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 to Satan,

You shall not put the LORD, your God, to the test, as you did at Massah.

the chronicler tells us Joan's reply:

she answered plainly that she did not want to tempt God.

We can with reason connect this exchange to the references to Ahaz and Gideon in the Conclusions. As to Ahaz, from Isaiah 7:10-12,

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz: Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God; let it be deep as Sheol, or high as the sky! But Ahaz answered, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!”

The clerics knew that here Ahaz committed treason to the Lord by counting on his own cleverness in deferring to the might of his enemies, the Assyrians (now the English), over trusting God. Gideon, on the other hand, wanted to make sure of God's purpose and asked God for a sign -- twice -- before acting. He didn't know what would follow, only that God would "save Israel" against the Midianites through him. Similarly, Joan said she would save France at Orleans, but it was rather unclear, other than, as she would say later, "at the end of a lance," exactly how. All the Doctors had from her was, according to the Chronique de la Pucelle,

that the sign which God had ordained for her was to raise the siege before Orléans and to lead the king to be crowned at Reims; that they should come there, and they would see it.

Having declared the scriptural rationale, and after extensive queries and observations in order to "test the spirits," per 1 John 4, the Doctors found nothing evil or ungodly in her. They left it up to the Holy Spirit to reveal the presence of God in her, an astonishing act of faith given the very real possibility of a complete disaster at Orléans should she be ungodly or a fraud. From the Conclusions:

The king, having considered the inquiries made of the said Maid, insofar as is possible for him, and finding no evil in her, and considering her reply, which is to show a divine sign before Orléans; given her constancy and perseverance in her purpose, and her continual requests to go to Orléans in order there to show the sign of divine aid; must not to prevent her from going to Orléans with his men-at-arms, but must have her conducted honorably, trusting in God.

In the closing lines of the Conclusions, we have another fascinating Biblical reference, this time from Acts, which explains their leap of faith in the Maid,

For to doubt her or set her aside without any appearance of evil would be to resist the Holy Spirit, and to render oneself unworthy of the aid of God, as Gamaliel said in a council of the Jews concerning the Apostles.

In Acts 2, the great Pharisee theologian Gamaliel warned the Sanhedrin against oppressing the Apostles, for:

But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.

Two years later, the English-backed ecclesiastical court at Rouen applied the same test when trying Joan for heresy, this time explicitly invoking Matthew 7:16,

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Both sides saw in Orléans proof she was not acting on earthly powers, the latter seeing her as a witch, the former as of God. We might contextualize it historically, as the historians do, but leaving it to they thought it was so, explains nothing, as both sides were acting not on self-justification, but on explanation for what they could not otherwise explain.

Sufficiency of Joan

What we have is a uniquely improbable historical actor whose self-described supernatural motivations cannot be simply discarded with, Well, she believed it, that's all that matters. Remove the divine origin of her Voices and she did not and was not able to do what she did. All other explanations are insufficient. If Joan's visions as she described them were real, then we do have sufficient historical causation, even for crucial moments of uncertainty or disobedience to her Voices, to which skeptical historians point as evidence of inconsistency in her story: one, a near-fatal sixty-foot jump from a tower to escape imprisonment, and the other, her flustered, confused, and corrupted recantation of her Voices during a humiliating public exhibition before the executioner, called her "Abjuration."

Joan was hardly the first to fall from a castle tower while trying to escape and survive. (Most did not.) She likely was not the only defendant tricked into signing an admission that was switched on her afterwards with self-incriminations she did not make. And she was far from the first unjustly accused of witchcraft. Still, these occasions of disobedience to her Voices present several problems for our skeptical historians who infer from them moments of clarity free of the Voices, seeing her actions as contrary to them, or, in their view, revealing an inconsistency that supposedly contradicts all her other testimony.

Of the "leap of Beaurevoir," her jump from the tower, Joan explained to the Rouen court that she did it to avoid being turned over to the English, but also because she feared for the people of Compiègne whom she was defending when she was captured. Both motives are natural, human and driven by fear, although leaping from a sixty-foot tower is no act of cowardice. She did jump in defiance of her Voices:

When I knew that the English were come to take me, I was very angry; nevertheless, my Voices forbade me many times to leap, In the end, for fear of the English, I leaped, and commended myself to God and Our Lady.

We note here that Joan's Voices "forbade [her] many times" -- it was an ongoing temptation. (Lessons learned here.) Similarly, after recanting her abjuration, she described the reprimand of her Voices,

They said to me: "God had sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life!"

Doing so made her a "relapsed heretic," providing cause for her final excommunication, upon which she was turned over to the English to be burned. Rather than contradicting her story of the Voices, Joan's disobediences to them rather affirm not some inner dialogue or conscience but a very real external presence to which she was held accountable. These acts of disobedience clarify the problem of choice. The view that Joan was acting on delusions or some psychological disorder necessarily assumes that her choices were either created or constrained by that condition, as delusion confines reality to its inner constructions. In that view, Joan's Visions created the set of choices available to her, thus denying her the agency of full cognizance. Yet, from the beginning of her testimony at her Condemnation Trial, Joan characterized her relationship to her Voices as a matter of will.

On the second day of the Trial, as she introduced her Voice(s), she told the court that in response to the instruction to "Go into France!" she said,

And I replied that I was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting.

The uncanny parallel to Luke 1:29 and 1:34 aside, like Mary's, Joan's fiat was not of submission but choice:

May it be done to me according to your word.

Throughout the Trial, when pushed on wearing men's clothes, she affirmed that it was of her own volition,

With that [decision] I charge no one.

Or, regarding her decision whom to tell about her Visions,

It was not my Voices who compelled me to keep them secret

including not to tell her parents:

If God commanded, it was right to obey. If God commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and mothers, and had I been a king's daughter, I should have gone.

Joan did not robotically assume her mission, nor did she engage it thoughtlessly. Hers was a choice freely willed. Her volition affirms her Voices as historical agents, for she engaged and followed them as a matter of choice, not compulsion.

Additionally, her testimony reveals a relationship with her Voices that she developed through prayer, something psychological inquiry can neither discover nor understand. Secular histories of Saint Joan observe her prayer, but they never inquire as to their effects or consequence. (The Rouen court, by contrast, was deeply interested in her prayers.) At best they will present the testimony of Joan's military compatriot, Jean Dunois, who recalled a poignant moment in which Joan admitted to the King of France how through prayer she faced the disbelief and doubt she encountered:

Then said the King: "Jeanne, will it please you to say, in presence of the persons who are listening to us, what has been asked you?" "Yes, Sire," she answered. And then she said this, or something approaching it: "When I am vexed that faith is not readily placed in what I wish to say in God's Name, I retire alone, and pray to God. I complain to Him that those whom I address do not believe me more readily; and, my prayer ended, I hear a Voice which says to me: 'Daughter of God! go on! go on! go on! I will be thy Help: go on!' And when I hear this Voice, I have great joy. I would I could always hear it thus." And, in repeating to us this language of her Voice, she was — strange to say! — in a marvellous rapture, raising her eyes to Heaven.

As a petition, prayer is the search for God, but it is not, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, a passive or thoughtless encounter:

Prayer cannot be reduced to the spontaneous outpouring of interior impulse: in order to pray, one must have the will to pray.

Prayer is willful, and deliberate, and, at the level of a Saint like Joan of Arc, a conversation with God and his intercessors.

Joan and her Voices participated in a common journey and cannot be isolated from one another. If we deny her Voices, we deny her ability to obey or disobey them, which not only denies her agency but defies her own statements of willful choice. Even if we accept that any such agency was confined to options presented by a delusion -- try that, crazy one! -- we are left with the Voices as the cause of her effects. Either way, we cannot ignore them.

Christian Hope

Had Joan really made up stories about her Voices just to please the court, as has been claimed, or, another theory goes, from an inadvertent contradiction in her story that the Voices served to explain, would she recant her abjuration knowing she would burn for it? As with the early Church disciples, holding to their faith was a sentence of death. When calling out herself in her recantation, Joan submitted herself to her Voices:

If I said that God had not sent me, I should damn myself, for it is true that God has sent me; my Voices have said to me since Thursday: "Thou hast done a great evil in declaring that what thou hast done was wrong." All I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.

The notary scribbled in the margin of the register his agreement with Saints Catherine and Margaret,

Responsio mortifera

People do not die for what they know is a lie. Instead, she was lucid, calm, and firm. The next question:

Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?

Yes, I believe it, and that they come from God.

The English didn't need an excuse to put her to death, but the French ecclesiastical court did, and Joan here gave them that excuse. Her persecutors knew they had condemned her on the technicality of a recanted abjuration and thereby had failed to prove she was a witch. Consequently, her lead accuser, the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, resorted to an off-the-record set of fictional interviews of priests who saw her the morning of her execution during which she was said to have admitted it was all a lie. The irony is that with Cauchon's fabrications skeptical historians turn credulous, and, harvesting the bad fruit, use those false testimonies to support their views that her Voices were not real even to her.

Another tack for the skeptical historian is to skip around Joan's motives and go after those of others. For example, medievalist Juliet Barker sees Joan's career as entirely political in terms of the ambitions of rival political actors around her. As such, Barker credits the pro-French faction, the Armagnacs, for using her to push their war against the English-allied Burgundians, even so as to credit the Armagnacs for having engineered not just Joan's introduction to the French King, but her famous act of having identified him hidden amidst his courtiers -- they tipped her off! Of course there is no evidence for such trickery, but it serves handily to deny Joan's divine guidance. Another claim is that Charles was obsessed with prophesy, so he naturally fell to the latest seer.

These historical revisions treat both Charles and Joan as passive actors. Hardly. Charles hesitated to embrace Joan upon her arrival, after which he deliberated, spoke with everyone he could, and sent Joan for an inquiry by his finest clerical and scholastic minds, the Doctors at Poitiers. Or, these historians argue that the investigation at Poitiers was just for show, and that the good Doctors merely looked her over, shrugged their shoulders, and said, not our problem.

Instead, the Doctors at Poitiers studied her for several weeks and concluded firmly that the King must not deny God, and so must send her to Orléans with an army,

en sperant en Dieu [trusting in God]

My translation "trusting" is adapted from the theological sense of the literal "en sperant" -- "hoping," for, misunderstanding the meaning of "Christian hope," these historians see the Poitiers recommendation as expedience, ambivalence, deflection, or, at best, wishful thinking. Hardly. Per the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Accordingly, the Doctors based their recommendation not on some intangible confidence or desire, but through the conviction of,

hope [trust] in God.

Nothing there about self-advancement or a deluded belief in some cross-dressing prophet. As Bishop Jean Gerson, one of the most significant of the Poitiers advisors, observed, allowing a girl to lead an army isn't a trial balloon. In his apologia for Joan, known as De mirabili victoria, written shortly after her victory at Orléans, he observed that to give an army to a woman isn't just crazy, it's dangerous:

The king's council and the men-at-arms were led to believe the word of this Maid and to obey her in such a way that, under her command and with one heart, they exposed themselves with her to the dangers of war, trampling under foot all fear of dishonor. What a shame, indeed, if, fighting under the leadership of a woman, they had been defeated by enemies so audacious! What derision on the part of all those who would have heard of such an event!

The historians reply that Gerson's treatise was after-the-fact rationalization, or, as does Barker, the Dauphin's military situation was not as dire as Joan's "cheerleaders" have claimed, so, by implication, she wasn't the essential actor in the moment and there was no risk in sending her. The theory is ever insufficient to explain the outcome. Barker and those who minimize the necessity of Joan's intervention are arguing against the historical record and, worse, against the stated views of the actors. As we have seen, the Dauphin's ecclesiastical advisers at Poitiers made it very clear as to why he should not delay placing his faith in the girl:

The king, attending to his own necessity and that of his kingdom

Pius II noted that before Orléans Charles was preparing to escape from the English onslaught to Spain. Another 15th century source, the Bishop of Lisieux Thomas Basin, affirms that story, describing the despair in Charles' court:

Sometimes, indeed, he was so cast down and humbled by the power of his enemies, both those within the kingdom and the English, the old foes of France, that at certain moments he was on the point of gathering a few precious objects with a sum of money, leaving the borders of the realm and departing for Spain; or else, while retaining part of the kingdom, to cede another portion to the enemy, since he did not at all trust that he could withstand their strength and engines of war.

Perhaps those sources exaggerate the situation, but Joan's Voices also expressed that urgency, which she passed on to all whom she spoke to before and upon her arrival to France. With her victory at Orléans, the situation flipped. Just ask the English and their Burgundian allies who knew full well what this girl had done and why. The rage of the Rouen ecclesiastical Court and its English backers that condemned her is in inverse proportion to Joan's faith in her Visions and the reality her people of France understood them to be. At her burning, a placard was set before her detailing her crimes, including that she was a "blasphemer of God... invoker of devils," and a "mitre" was placed on her head imprinted with,

heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolater

Even a secular historian cannot miss the typology here of the crucifixion of Christ with the fury of his executioners -- as well as the repentant witness of the Roman centurion, who as Jesus "breathed his last" declared, "Truly this man was the Son of God." The Dominican priest Ysambard de La Pierre, an assessor in the Trial and witness to Joan's burning, testified,

Immediately after the execution, the executioner came to me and to my companion, Brother Martin Ladvenu, stricken and moved with a marvellous repentance and terrible contrition, quite desperate and fearing never to obtain pardon and indulgence from God for what he had done to this holy woman. And the executioner said and affirmed that, notwithstanding the oil, the sulphur, and the charcoal which he had applied to the entrails and heart of the said Jeanne, in no way had he been able to burn them up, nor reduce to cinders either the entrails or the heart, at which he was much astonished, as a most evident miracle.

In subsequent testimony, La Pierre added,

In the afternoon of the same day, the executioner came to the Convent of the Dominicans, saying to them and to Brother Martin Ladvenu, that he feared he was damned because he had burnt a saint.

The executioner was shaken up, even sharing his story with the clerk of the town Bailly, or sheriff, whose office was entirely bound to the English. As reported by the priest Jean Massieu, Joan's escort to and from her prison cell, and who delivered her that morning to her execution,

I heard it said by Jean Fleury, clerk and writer to the sheriff, that the executioner had reported to him that once the body was burned by the fire and reduced to ashes, her heart remained intact and full of blood, and he told him to gather up the ashes and all that remained of her and to throw them into the Seine, which he did.

Even if legendary, the stories uphold the import of the moment. All our skeptics can do is to question the motives of the witneses, saying that La Pierre and Massieu were covering up their own shameful involvement in the Condemnation Trial. However, as a literal story, the details are hard to ignore: "her heart remained intact," "the oil, the sulphur and the charcoal." Memory works this way, not imagination. Allegorically, the testimony affirms Joan's innocence, which in turn affirms her effects, which, by my logic, affirms her Visions. And, why not, even her intact heart? -- which could defy even David Hume's skepticism, as, even it if survived the burning, which is not impossible, the executioner applied oil, sulphur and charcoal to it and it still wouldn't burn.

Secular histories of Joan are akin to accounts of Christ that doubt or deny his divinity, such as that of the first century historian Josephus who wrote that Jesus "performed surprising deeds" and died on a crucifix. Then there's Thomas Jefferson's cut-and-paste job on the New Testament that extracted the angels, prophesies, miracles, and the Resurrection, leaving a rather contextually absent set of preaching. It gets messy and, frankly, serves to deny Christ rather than understand him. Worse, relegating the historicity of Christ without the miraculous requires attributing his witness in the Gospels to post hoc contrivances, which we see all too often in the historiography of Saint Joan, whereby the miraculous elements of her story are dismissed as self-serving to somebody or hagiographic. Yet, the plain events remain thereby inexplicable.

Madman, Saint, or Liar

Upon her entry to France, opinions of the Maid flew about. Pius II noted that among her examiners at Poitiers:

Some thought the Maiden to be captured of mind, some that she was deluded by a demon, others that she was filled by the Holy Spirit.

Pernoud denies that Joan was insane, but neither that was she divinely guided. Applying CS Lewis' formulation of Christ, since Joan was neither a madman nor of God, all we have left is that she was a liar -- and thus of the devil, something Pernoud, a deep admirer of Joan, never broaches. Lewis prefaces his argument about Christ's divinity by noting,

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say.

The logic applied to Joan goes the same way: treating her merely as an historical character debases what she was and did and why. So it is that Pernoud concludes that when "confronted by Joan" all we can do is to "admire" her, as the common people have since the 15th century, for "in admiring [they] have understood her":

They canonised Joan and made her their heroine, while Church and State were taking five hundred years to reach the same conclusion.

Sadly, that's as close as Pernoud will come to an historical, lower-case "saint" Joan -- that she was "canonized" in the hearts of her countrymen. Pernoud and others incorrectly claim that the "Church and State" didn't understand her until her canonization of 1920, forgetting that Joan's Rehabilitation Trial and its declaration of her innocence was, in Pernoud's own words, "in the name of the Holy See." The historian ought to know that very few of the laity were canonized before the 20th century, a short list that doesn't even include the great 16th century champion of the Catholic conscience, Thomas More, who wasn't canonized until 1935. Saint Thomas' canonization underwent a similar dynamic to that of Joan in that part of the delay was due to English objections or a desire on the part of the Vatican not to ruffle Anglican sensitivities. For both, the tradition of beatification through local cult (Cultus Confirmatus) also caused the delay, in Joan's case with 18th century rise of anti-clericalism and anti-monarchism and with the intervention of the French Revolution, which sought to erase memory of Joan of Arc as a Catholic.

Free of having to address whether Joan's spiritual events were real or not, the secular historiography leads to sentimentalized and historically insufficient views of Joan's contemporaries and her legacy. So we get these dull statements, such as from the end of one Pernoud's books,

It remains true that, for us, Joan is above all the saint of reconciliation—the one whom, whatever be our personal convictions, we admire and love because, over-riding all partisan points of view, each one of us can find in himself a reason to love her.

That's no better than this, from the collective wisdom of contributors to the "Joan of Arc" entry at Wikipedia, casting Saint Joan to the eye of the beholder:

Joan's image has been used by the entire spectrum of French politics, and she is an important reference in political dialogue about French identity and unity.

But what is equally bewildering is that these historians usually ignore the most thorough, considered, and balanced investigation into Joan, that conducted by the Vatican itself. On consideration of a person for beatification and canonization, the Church investigates the case, and thoroughly, assigning advocates for and against the candidate. There were serious charges against Joan, including to have waged war on a Holy Day, disobedience to her Voices, vanity, questions about her purity, and her "unsaintly" reluctance to be burned to death. The Church fully pursued those objections, and on May 16, 1920, canonized Saint Joan of Arc.

Physician, cure yourself

A curious problem the story of Saint Joan presents to secular historians concerns the extensive historical record which they use to argue against her sanctity. That record consists primarily of the transcripts of Joan's two "trials," the Trial of Condemnation at Rouen under the English-backed French eccleiastical court, and the Trial of Rehabilitation conducted two decades after her death under the authority of the French government, Church and, ultimately, the Vatican. Regarding the first, doubting historians seek inconsistencies in Joan's testimony and attribute to her claims about her Voices either deceit or emotional frailty under the duress of the trial, such as the claim that she made up stories about Saints Catherine and Margaret, about whom, the theory holds, she invented during the Trial in order to indulge the court. These historians pick and choose what they want to believe from Joan's testimony or from that of the Trial court. As to the subsequent Rehabilitation Trial that annulled Joan's condemnation at Rouen, they dismiss it as a propaganda exercise to reverse engineer Charles VII's legitimacy through witness exaggerations and lies about her saintliness and accomplishments.

There also exists a rather large body of additional contemporaneous documents, including letters, some that Joan herself dictated, official expense receipts, and "chronicles" and histories, which are ongoing observations about past and current events that cover Joan's affairs in real or near time, as well as official reports on her, such as a summary endorsement of her in the Poitiers Conclusions. Finally there are literary and theological works written shortly after Orléans, and then over the next decades, though within the lives of those who witnessed her. The Vatican canonization trial's "Devil's Advocate," whose job it was to argue against her, made great use of the entire record and its various points of view.

In other words, Joan's extensive historical record, which speaks plainly and loudly to her motives and effects -- her Voices -- can and is used against her. Of course it is. Over-familiarity detracts from belief. As Jesus told his relatives and friends in Nazareth,

Surely you will quote me this proverb, "Physician, cure yourself," and say, "Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum." And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place."

Even without that extensive record, Joan's accomplishments yet stand. Yet, rather than building a hagiographic re-creation of her life that is passed on orally through the centuries and written down much later, as we have it for many of the early Saints, we have an enormous record of contemporaneous details to inform us of her life. There is no argument as to the proximity of the record to the events, which is historiographical gold. While it is a legitimate exercise to analyze and interpret that record, we can with certainty say that if Joan of Arc did not claim divine guidance, yet accomplished what she did, she would be universally hailed an historical hero who, for example, as a young village girl inexplicably knew how to wield a lance, charge a fortification, or talk her way into the French court, personally meet the King and lead his defeated army to victory. It is her claims of divine guidance that make it all so doubtful to these historians, despite the fact that her acts themselves are, to borrow from the historian Mary Gordon, "impossible."

My concern here is that a historical treatment of Joan that frees itself of accommodating her spiritual events, or that attempts to demystify them, leads to significant misreading of the facts. We cannot comprehend the motives and choices of Joan herself, much less those of her followers and detractors without it. We cannot sufficiently understand Joan of Arc herself, her faults and struggles, included, except as a Saint. And when we do, her story -- the historical record -- comes to make perfect sense.

More largely, by recognizing the hand of God in her story, we can look for larger purposes than the saving of France, which is as far as a secular historian can go with Saint Joan. She saved France, yes, but why?

Paris for a pair of pants

A quick word before we go any further on this business of Saint Joan as a cross-dresser and gender-bender, or whatever they want to call her. Her reason for wearing men's apparel is stupidly obvious. Let's just say that Joan was entirely unconfused by it. Asked at the Trial of Condemnation,

Would you like to have a woman's dress?

Her reply was simple, witty, and brilliant:

Give me one, and I will take it and begone; otherwise, no. I am content with what I have, since it pleases God that I wear it.

The Chronique de la Pucelle relates that at Poitiers,

Among other things, they asked her why she did not take the dress of a woman; and she answered them:

Before moving on, we should note that by "Among other things," we see that her clothes were not of the utmost importance to the Doctors' discernment of the Maid. Her reply as noted by the chronicler is clearly not entirely of her own words, but we can trust the essence of it. She says,

I well believe that it seems strange to you, and not without cause; but since I must arm myself and serve the noble Dauphin in arms, it is necessary that I take the clothing suited and necessary for this; and also, when I am among men, being in men’s clothing, they will not have carnal concupiscence for me; and it seems to me that in this state I shall better preserve my virginity, in thought and in deed.

And later, when confined in a men's prison, her men's pants similarly offered a minimal protection against her male guards. Crucial to this self-protection were her leggings, which we know from the Trial of Condemnation register was,

doublet [padded jacket] with hose joined together and fastened to the said doublet by twenty points,

Additionally, as a warrior she had to ride a horse like a man. And, to clarify, she was not put to death for wearing men's clothes. (Read on.) It's not complicated, but it's an obsession with certain idealogues who have influenced popular culture to the extent that a serious historian writing in 2004 about Joan's religious learning characterizes her as, first, a woman who put on men's clothes, and then, second, a woman who saved France:

Joan of Arc's self-transformation from an illiterate peasant girl to "the Maid of Orleans" has long captured the popular imagination. Joan attributed her dramatic change to God who had urged her to don male clothing and save the kingdom of France.

Aside from the absurd idea that Joan "self-transformed" from an "illiterate peasant girl" to, literally, "the Virgin of Orleans" -- no hand of God there, of course, just an act of "self-transformation, or, as it is called these days, "self-identification," the historian may wish to reconsider that God "urged" her to wear pants (or to save France), as Joan said no such thing: God commanded her to.

From the transcript of her Trial of Condemnation,

Asked if God ordered her to wear a man's dress, she answered that the dress is a small, nay, the least thing. Nor did she put on man's dress by the advice of any man whatsoever; she did not put it on, nor did she do aught, but by the command of God and the angels.

Asked whether it seemed to her that this command to assume male attire was lawful, she answered:

"Everything I have done is at God's command; and if He had ordered me to assume a different habit, I should have done it, because it would have been His command."

But the historian can't assume God's "command" and so characterizes the supposed cross-dressing as an "urge," which would implicate the same motive for saving France, just following an "urge." The historian ignores Joan's clear, direct, and resolute denial of the relevancy of her wearing pants:

the dress is a small, nay, the least thing.

Even admitting of Joan's dismissal of the matter, modern historians obsess over it, best expressed in an unfortunate 1990s essay that sees Joan as a "threat" to "masculine authority." Our academic culture has rendered Joan's salvation of France as if, to borrow a phrase, a pantalon is worth Paris. Instead, as Saint Joan said, the matter of her pants is "the least thing."

Let us move on.

Jeanne, Daughter of God

[Saint] or not, Joan of Arc makes no sense unless we recognize her Catholicity. She was fundamentally, authentically, and thoroughly Catholic. Asked at the Trial of Condemnation what her Voices call her, Joan replied,

when they speak to me, they call me often, "Jeanne the Maid, Daughter of God."

When threatened with condemnation, and thus burning, she answered,

I am a good Christian. I have been baptized; I shall die a good Christian.

Given most biographies and depictions of "Joan of Arc," it's rather hard to appreciate her Catholicism -- it is simply ignored or framed as anachronistic. When the latter, it is "contextualized" amidst a backwards, superstitious, medieval Catholic world, perhaps recognizing that Joan was more devout than others. Doing so, historians misread the evidence. For example, the Rehabilitation Trial transcript of the testimony of one of Joan's escorts to Chinon, Jean de Metz, reads,

And he believes that she was sent by God, since she never used oaths, she readily attended Mass, and when she did swear [to a truth] she made the sign of the Cross.

Where one historian sees in Metz' testimony evidence that Joan's companions uncritically assumed the reality of her Voices based on her "personal attributes and actions," Metz instead gives us here great insight into the religious mores of the day, starting with the norm against swearing, which follows Jesus's prohibition against it in Matthew 5:34. To recognize Joan's avoidance of bland or blasphemous oaths, Metz himself had to have been a well-formed Christian -- and there was nothing atypical about him so far as we know. But in suggesting over-credulity in Joan's "personal attributes," our historian misses Metz' entire point. He's not saying that because she didn't swear and because she went to Church she was sent by God. Instead, he's affirming her honesty, that when she did swear, such as to claim she was sent by God, she meant it -- and, kind a cool to think upon it, she made a sign of the Cross when she said so, at least around him.

The historical snobbery ever leaks in, as if others less devout than Joan weren't actually believers, just followers of tradition or superstition. Worst of all are the modern histories that place Joan amidst a "syncretic" mysticism, a mix of "medieval Catholicism," "folk religion," and paganism, and so attribute her experiences to it. By contrast, John Mooney's 1897 biography of Joan, written during the push for her beatification, refreshingly embraces her Catholicism. The 1919 edition, issued just after the Great War in which the rallying cry to Joan helped save France, includes an Introduction by Catholic author Blanche Mary Kelly that gets it right:

Without the Catholic Faith, she is inexplicable. More than on her sword, she relied on the Mass; more than bread, the sacraments were her sustenance.

Going through the literature, I constantly run into dismissals or end runs around Catholicism, such as not using "Saint" before a name and treatment of evidence as "Christian hagiography." The bias is easy to miss, but it's everywhere. For example, the historian Pernoud discredits Christian belief in her description one of Joan's tormentors at Rouen, the Dominican Jean d'Estivet, who was the lead prosecutor against Joan, and whose death was considered retribution for his treatment of her. One of the Trial notaries, Guillaume Colles, known as "Boisgullaume," recollected,

This d'Estivet was Promoter, and in this matter was much affected towards the English, whom he desired to please. He was a bad man, and often during the Process spoke ill of the notaries and of those who, as he saw, wished to act justly; and he often cruelly insulted Jeanne, calling her foul names. I think that, in the end of his days, he was punished by God; for he died miserably. He was found dead in a drain outside the gates of Rouen.

Pernoud characterizes Boisguillaume's story of d'Estivet's death as an example of,

a favorite topos for the end of the wicked in Christian hagiography. In Estivet's case, however, this unattractive accident seems actually to have happened — on October 20, 1438, in fact; it was long interpreted by the populace as divine retribution for Estivet's conduct during Joan's trial.

For Pernoud, it's not just "Christian hagiography," it's a "favorite topos," which means "formula," by which the historian means made up. To her credit, Pernoud recognizes that d'Estivet's ignominious death actually happened, but she seems disappointed at the concurrence of belief and fact, leaving it as an "unattractive accident." Divine retribution or not, it's the same in that, in what is called "permissive will," what God does not will he allows. What matters is what we make of it. D'Estivet died well before the Rehabilitation trial, and a decade before the French recovery of Rouen, so Pernoud misses not only the fear of God in Boisguillaume's story, like that of the repentant executioner, but recognition of Joan's righteousness in the eyes of the people of the city where she was condemned by their Church and burned by an enemy occupier.

And d'Estivet was not alone. For Boisguillaume, something was up. He further cataloged the sudden deaths of other of Joan's persecutors. Of d'Estivet's deceitful collaborator Nicolas Loyseleur,

It is said that Loyseleur died suddenly at Bale; and I have heard that, when he saw Jeanne condemned to death, he was seized with compunction and climbed into the cart, earnestly desiring her pardon; at which many of the English were indignant; and that, had it not been for the Earl of Warwick, Loyseleur would have been killed; he said the Earl enjoined him to leave Rouen as soon as he possibly could, if he wished to save his life.

And of Nicolas Midi and Pierre Cauchon,

I have heard it maintained that all who were guilty of her death came to a shameful end. Maître Nicolas Midi died of leprosy a few days later; and the Bishop died suddenly while he was being shaved.

If we dismiss these accounts as Catholic "topos" we miss the historical moment. What should be obvious, and was obvious to Boisguillaume and the people of Rouen, is that d'Estivet was a type of Judas who died miserably in hate. Seen that way, it likewise opens us to better understand the types of the repentant Saint Peter in those of Joan's persecutors who testified to her righteousness in the Trial of Rehabilitation, testimony which historians have dismissed as accommodation to political change after the French recovery of Rouen. The cynical view doesn't listen to the testimony of various witnesses who described immediate repentance in Rouen upon Joan's death. Applying the Catholic perspective helps us here with the notion of metanoia, Greek for "changing one's mind," as in repentance and conversion, which, as Boisguillaume saw it, out of hate d'Estivet and others failed to embrace and were punished for. The turn in opinion at Rouen similarly affirms the injustice of it all and, more importantly, accounts for the weakening support for the English following Joan's death.

Not that all of Joan's persecutors died ignobly, or that her French allies all died happy deaths. Some of her companions died in poverty, war, disease, and in the case of the captain Gilles de Rais, hanging for rape and murder of children. The difference is that the deaths of Joan's allies were not considered divinely willed. In the Catholic view, as expressed by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and to which a priest like Boisguillaume would adhere, God's retribution is earned in sin, and its consequences serve to help others avoid a similar fate. The unapologetic Rouen clerics served as the counter example. Three days into the Trial, February 24, Joan warned the Bishop Cauchon,

You say you are my judge. Take care what you are doing; for in truth I am sent by God, and you place yourself in great danger.

Exactly two weeks later, March 14, she was asked why she had said this. In her reply, she quoted herself from February 24, but in slightly different wording and with an additional explanation, both of which may have been more accurate than the original transcription:

I said to my Lord of Beauvais, "You say that you are my Judge; I do not know if you are, but take heed not to judge wrongly because you would put yourself in great danger; and I warn you of it, so that, if Our Lord should punish you for it, I shall have done my duty in telling you."

Similarly, on May 2, after the Archdeacon Jean Chatillon lectured Joan on the "perils of body and soul" for not submitting to the court, then directly threatened her with burning, she replied,

You will not do what you say against me without evil overtaking you, body and soul.

It may appear that Joan was calling for God's retribution upon her enemies. But not this girl, not this Saint. Her warnings were not accusations; it was a healthy fear of God. Her interrogator of March 14, Jean de la Fontaine persisted on her admonition to Cauchon:

But what is this peril or danger?

Her answer abruptly drops the discussion about Cauchon and presents instead a statement of her own fate, thus connecting to what she had said just before, that it was her "duty in telling" Cauchon to look out for his soul. Where she is consoled by her Voices, Cauchon must be wary of opposing them:

Saint Catherine has told me that I shall have help; I do not know if this will be to be delivered from prison, or if, whilst I am being tried, some disturbance may happen, by which I shall be delivered. The help will come to me, I think, in one way or the other. Besides this, my Voices have told me that I shall be delivered by a great victory; and they add: "Be resigned; have no care for thy martyrdom; thou wilt come in the end to the Kingdom of Paradise." They have told me this simply, absolutely, and without fail. What is meant by my martyrdom is the pain and adversity that I suffer in prison; I do not know if I shall have still greater suffering to bear; for that I refer me to God.

Note that her coming salvation was announced to and not assumed by her. Also, that "some disturbance may happen" was not a prediction, as she prefaced it with, "I do not know if..." One could look at that comment cynically and say it was a threat, but I see it as trust in God. Her Voices did not tell her what would happen, though it seems that they are preparing her, indeed, for her ultimate martyrdom, of which she had not yet grasped. Joan saw her imprisonment as a "white" or "dry" martyrdom, an ongoing suffering in witness to one's faith. It's painful to hear her on March 14 still hold out for liberation from the prison -- while her voices were preparing her for her death on the pyre two and a half months later.

De la Fontaine kept pushing,

Since your Voices told you that you would come in the end to the Kingdom of Paradise, have you felt assured of being saved and of not being damned in Hell?

Joan simply would not subscribe her own judgment to her Voices:

I believe firmly what my Voices have told me, that I shall be saved; I believe it as firmly as if I were already there.

Such deference to her Voices, especially when she states, as she does throughout the Trial, "I refer me to God," is seen by historians as an escape from questions she doesn't want to answer or an assertion of her own spiritual authority over that of the Trial court. Rather than Catholic submission to God, secular biographers treat it as if she were "taking the Fifth," It's not: it's Christian humility. The point isn't to evade questions -- she is appealing to God's authority which comes to her through her Voices.

Joan said she would talk about what concerns the trial itself, by which she meant external events, excepting her discussions with the French King and, of course, her Voices. To the Trial court, its jurisdiction consisted of what was a "matter of faith," by which it meant anything conceivably related to the Church. Accordingly, the court demanded that Joan swear an oath without qualification. Upon her first appearance at the Trial, the matter was argued out between Joan and Bishop Cauchon, who was forced to accept Joan's condition not to speak to everything she knew from her Voices. From the transcript,

And the said Jeanne, on her knees, her two hands resting on the Missal, did swear to speak truth on that which should be asked her and which she knew in the matter of the Faith, keeping silence under the condition above stated, that is to say, neither to tell nor to reveal to any one the revelations made to her.

When a question would encroach upon that condition, she would say, "Pass" or "I refer me to God" or, as on February 24, when she felt the questioner had gone too far, saying, "my oath does not touch on that." The court would generally move on to another topic. Not that it didn't bother them. Internally, the judges debated the problem of Joan's diversions. As they prepared on March 27, amidst Easter Week, to move from the preliminary, or inquisitorial, phase to the "ordinary trial," i.e., the Promotor, d'Estivet, was asked to prepare a summary of the evidence against Joan, "extracted from the register... under the form of propositions. He prepared what are known now as the "Seventy Articles," and he implored the judges to require Joan to respond to each:

And I beseech and request you that Jeanne shall be made to affirm and swear that she will answer the said articles, each one severally, according as she believes or does not believe. And in the event of her refusal to swear, or declining or postponing it unduly, after you shall have enjoined her and she shall have been so summoned by you, she shall be accounted deficient and contumacious in her presence; and if her obstinacy requires it, she shall be declared excommunicated for manifest offense.

D'Estivet had learned over the prior month what he was up against, and wanted this procedural fallback in case Joan didn't cooperate as he wished. Most of the judges agreed that Joan be required to reply to each charge. One, Jean Miget, objected:

For those things to which she does not know how to answer, it seems to be exacting too much to wish her to reply by "I believe" or "I do not believe."

It was confusing to them, for Joan bounced between her own will and that of her Voices, and would shut down lines of inquiry because her Voices hadn't authorized her response, or she would attribute to them claims that should she have made of her own authority would be damning. Also, she'd defer an answer to another time, at which exact date she would speak about it plainly. You can see why she drove them crazy. They quickly learned they were up against more than a crafty, smart, sassy girl, as the moderns characterize her. One of the Rouen judges complained about it twenty-one years later in the Rehabilitation Trial:

When she spoke of the kingdom and the war, I thought she was moved by the Holy Spirit; but when she spoke of herself she feigned many things.

The Trial examiners operated on the assumption that she was a simple, deluded peasant girl -- a double strike there, but especially for that key word, "girl." Thinking her ignorant and uneducated in learning and Scripture, but growing wary of her adept responses, they bounced between the condescending and combative. Their goal was to extract from her plain admissions, and when that didn't work, corner her with theological traps. For example, on April 18, the Cauchon pressed her on the authenticity of her Voices, this time, should another person have "revelations from God" through the Saints and the Archangel as had she,

Would you believe him?

It's a tricky line of questioning, for it puts Joan into the seat of judgment of others. If she affirms it, then she's just another mystic or fraud. Denying it she puts herself above Church authority. Easy enough for a Saint to reply,

There is no Christian in this world who could come to me and say he had had a revelation but that I should know if he were speaking truly or not; I should know it by Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

Amazing, as she cuts it in half and gives it to her Saints. The Bishop, though, jumps on Joan for placement of her own revelations over others, thinking he's got her:

You imagine then that God can reveal nothing to any one which is unknown to you?

This second trap, too, she evades with,

I know well that He can; but for me, I should not believe in this case any man or woman if I had not some sign.

Her call for a "sign" turned up later as evidence against her in the Seventy Articles, here from number LXII:

men and women pretending to have revelations from God and His angels will flock in from all sides and sow lies and errors, as has often occurred since this woman arose and began to scandalize the Christian people and propagate her inventions.

Scripture goes both ways on the matter of "signs," from 1 John 4:1, "test the spirits to see whether they belong to God," to Matthew 12:39's "An evil and unfaithful* generation seeks a sign," to John 20:25 and Saint Thomas, "Unless I see the mark of the nail... I will not believe." However, by "some sign" Joan meant a sign from her Voices, not a rainbow or withered tree. Cauchon then went all in:

Do you believe that the Holy Scriptures have been revealed by God?

You know it well. And it is good to know it is so.

The Rouen court just couldn't pin anything on an her, which is why she was condemned not under proof of heresy but on a ruse and a technicality. They were going to turn her over to the English for burning no matter what. That was their obligation to the English and to their own preconception of the Trial's purpose and expected outcome. But they had to get there through regular Church order, which Joan's Catholicism, be it learned, inspired, or innate (or all three), made very, very hard for Cauchon to engineer.

The Church Militant

On March 13, the court pressed her on the "sign you gave the King," a matter of repeated interrogation and later formal accusation. Joan blandly expressed her exasperation with a classic retort,

Will you be satisfied that I should perjure myself?

A more productive direction for the court that had Cauchon rather pleased regarded Joan's refusal to submit to Church authority as demanded. Two days later, March 15, the transcript opens with,

First of all, Jeanne was charitably exhorted, warned, and required, if she had done anything which might be against our Faith, that she should refer it to the decision of Holy Mother Church.

It was another "gotchya" ploy, as should she admit that the Rouen court was the equivalent of the Holy Mother Church, she thereby submitted to its authority, whereas if she denied it, she was declaring disobedience to the Mother Church. As ever, Joan deflected it magnificently:

Let my answers be seen and examined by the Clergy: then let them tell me if there be anything against the Christian Faith. I shall know surely by my counsel what it is, and will say afterwards what shall be judged and decided. And, moreover, if there be anything wrong against the Christian Faith which Our Lord commanded, I should not wish to maintain it, and should be very sorry to be in opposition.

Most historians think that Joan was caught up here, which they attribute to her ignorance of Church doctrine. The interrogator that day, de La Fontaine, thought as much, and used the opportunity to lecture her on what the historian Pernoud characterizes as "abstract categories" that Joan supposedly knew nothing of:

Then we explained to her about the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant, and the difference between them.

Of course she knew these concepts, including that of the "Church Suffering" -- souls in Purgatory. It's all basic, uncomplicated Catholic thought. Which is why two days later, March 17, Joan not only put the issue to bed, she set one of the primary causes for the later nullification of the Condemnation trial, that the Rouen court had ignored her appeal to the head of the Church Militant, the Pope. More importantly, earlier that day, Joan distilled the problem of distinguishing between the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant down to a simple, theologically perfect statement. Pressed on the matter of obedience to the Church, i.e., the Rouen court,

Will you refer yourself to the decision of the Church?

she settled the matter with:

I refer myself to God who sent me, to the Blessed Lady, and to all the Saints in Paradise. And it seems to me that God and the Church are one in the same, one should make no difficulties about it. Why do you want to complicate things?

Her statement's sublime irrefutability qualifies it for inclusion in the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the concept of the Church as "One Body." From Paragraph 795,

Christ and his Church thus together make up the "whole Christ" (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity: ... A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."

The interrogator, de la Fontaine, ignored her logic and lectured her on the doctrine, which the notaries recorded in full, as opposed to the brief reference to it on March 15, which means they were probably instructed to write it out:

Then she was told that there is the Church Triumphant, where God is with the saints and the souls who are already saved; and also the Church Militant, that is Our Holy Father the Pope, vicar of God on earth, the Cardinals, the prelates of the Church, and the clergy and all the good Christians and Catholics: and this Church in good assembly cannot err and is governed by the Holy Spirit.

Two weeks later, March 31, Holy Saturday, a day usually reserved for fasting and prayer, the court questioned Joan in the prison. It is likely they were hoping for her submission to Church authority in exchange for celebration of Easter, as they had similarly offered to her on Palm Sunday, the week before, should she exchange her men's clothes for a dress. In the brief session on Holy Saturday, she issued another inspired reply, less noted than "Why do you want to complicate things?" but equally marvelous. Again harping on obedience to the Church Militant, she was asked,

Will you refer yourself to the judgment of the Church on earth for all you have said or done, be it good or bad? Especially will you refer to the Church in the cases, crimes, and offences which are imputed to you and everything which touches on this Trial?

She answered as always, with impeccable logic and reference to God,

On all that I am asked I will refer to the Church Militant, provided they do not command anything impossible. And I hold as a thing impossible to declare that my actions and my words and all that I have answered on the subject of my visions and revelations I have not done and said by the order of God: this, I will not declare for anything in the world. And that which God hath made me do, hath commanded or shall command, I will not fail to do for any man alive. It would be impossible for me to revoke it. And in case the Church should wish me to do anything contrary to the command which has been given me of God, I will not consent to it, whatever it may be.

The court insisted,

If the Church Militant tells you that your revelations are illusions, or diabolical things, will you defer to the Church?

Joan replied,

I will defer to God, Whose Commandment I always do. I know well that that which is contained in my Case has come to me by the Commandment of God; what I affirm in the Case is, that I have acted by the order of God: it is impossible for me to say otherwise. In case the Church should prescribe the contrary, I should not refer to any one in the world, but to God alone, Whose Commandment I always follow.

Then we get to the heart of it. Continuing, she was asked,

Do you not then believe you are subject to the Church of God which is on earth, that is to say to our Lord the Pope, to the Cardinals, the Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church?

It was another trap question the answer to which was contained in the question. Joan both agreed to it and turned it upside down:

Yes, I believe myself to be subject to them; but God must be served first.

Time to change the subject. The next question was,

At the Castle of Beaurevoir, at Arras or elsewhere, had you any files?

If any were found upon me, I have nothing to say.

So ended the interrogation that day. The Catechism of the Catholic Church didn't miss it, though, and has placed her words alongside those of Job (!):

"Behold, God is great, and we know him not." Therefore, we must "serve God first."

But that's not all.

May God keep me there

It is confounding to think that Saint Joan's most important and enduring theological statement was used as evidence against her in the Trial. Tediously read out to her on March 27, and requiring a reply to each, the Seventy Articles marked Promoter d'Estivet's best shots at Joan, twisting, contorting and even inventing words and evidence.

Article XXXIX starts out,

Although the just man falleth seven times in a day, nevertheless the said Jeanne utters and publishes that she has never committed, or at least never has to her knowledge committed, acts of mortal sin, notwithstanding that she has in reality performed all the acts (and others worse still) customary to fighting men; as it is declared in the preceding and following articles.

The accusation was drawn from Joan's testimony of March 1 in response to the question posed to her about her vision of Saint Michael the Archangel,

Has he a balance?

It was a tricky question because it carries deep literal and figurative implications. Joan, again, didn't miss a beat, responding to both aspects, which is quite something for an illiterate, uneducated peasant girl. To the literal, she said she didn't see one, and to the symbolic, she affirmed the weightlessness of her soul. She replied,

I know nothing about it. It was a great joy to see him; it seemed to me, when I saw him, that I was not in mortal sin. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret were pleased from time to time to receive my confession, each in turn. If I am in mortal sin, it is without my knowing it.

Then the follow up, another trick:

When you confessed, did you think you were in mortal sin?

It's a completely unfair question, that Joan nevertheless answered with perfectly devout Catholic hope:

I do not know if I am in mortal sin, and I do not believe I have done its works; and, if it please God, I will never so be; nor, please God, have I ever done or ever will do deeds which charge my soul.

At stake was the later insertion by d'Estivet into the Articles that she claimed she had never committed or knowingly committed a mortal sin. Joan was far smarter than that. What she had said on March 1, and which d'Estivet used as a declarative statement, was in the conditional, "if it please God," which is theologically sound, and, in fact, a prayer and not a claim. Joan responded to Article XXXIX the same way she did to many of the Seventy Articles:

I have answered this. I abide by my earlier answers.

Then d'Estivet throws in as additional proof of her supposed claim never to have committed mortal sin her astounding reply from February that had amazed those who witnessed it, including some of her haters. Article XXXIX continues,

On Saturday, February 24th, asked if she knows if she is in God’s grace, she answered: “If I am not, may God put me there, and if I am, may God so keep me." She said she would be the saddest creature in the world if she were not in God’s grace, and added that if she were in a state of sin, she did not think the voice would come to her, and wished every one could hear it as well as she did.

The purpose of the Seventy Articles was to collate the record, force Joan's responses to them, then draft a formal case to submit to the University of Paris for approval, then convict her on them. That this beautiful statement of the Christian condition was thought a useful charge against her enlightens us as to the blinders Joan's accusers wore. The question as to her state of Grace was a trap that Joan upended upon her interrogators, so its inclusion in the Seventy Articles shows how, bound to the bias of confirmation, they just didn't get it. Even the skeptical biographer Anatole France labeled the original question from February 24 "extremely insidious" and her response astonishing, correctly noting, "And yet no improvement ensued in their disposition towards her."

The question was thrown at her amidst inquiries into her Voices, marking a sudden change in the query,

Do you know if you are in the grace of God?

One of the judges Jean Lefevre, objected to this question. He testified at the Trial of Rehabilitation,

I, who was present, said it was not a suitable question for such a girl. Then the Bishop of Beauvais said to me, "It will be better for you if you keep silent."

He needn't have worried, for Joan's answer was epic:

If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me.

The moment remained alive in the memories of witnesses to the Trial of Rehabilitation more than twenty years later, including Boisguillaume, who recalled,

At this reply the questioners were astonished, and broke up the sitting; nor was she further interrogated on that occasion.

Even more "astonishing" than Joan's reply is the context in which she set it. Here, in full:

If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it. I think I was about thirteen when it came to me for the first time.

From d'Estivet's perspective, Joan's question as to why would the Voice come to her were she in a state of sin was proof to him that she was possessed. But again, Joan was on to something there, as her Voices justified her actions so long as she obeyed them.

In the Seventy Articles, meanwhile, d'Estivet moved on to accusations of crimes in war, in this case, Joan's assent to the execution of a man by citizens of Lagny and a variety of other errors, each of which conveniently checks off one of the Ten Commandments, such as that,

she had attacked Paris on a Feast Day, and that she had had the lord Bishop of Senhs’s horse, and that she had thrown herself from the tower at Beaurevoir, and that she wore man’s dress...

D'Estivet's accusation that Joan claimed never to have committed mortal sin made it into Article XI of the final summary of findings against her, the so-called "Twelve Articles," into which d'Estivet's Seventy Articles were consolidated and which, with approval of them by the University of Paris, were read out to her on May 24. Joan's reply about her state of Grace, though, was dropped, either because the Rouen judges realized, or, perhaps, some genius at the University pointed out that it made her look good. It did become a legendary part of Church history, marking an important theological point worthy of inclusion in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 2005, on Grace:

A pleasing illustration of this attitude [recognizing that grace is at work in us] is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God's grace, she replied: 'If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there."

A good Catholic

A few days into the Trial, Joan told Cauchon,

All the clergy of Rouen and Paris cannot condemn me if it be not law.

That [Saint] Joan of Arc was persecuted by her own Church seems to confuse everyone but Catholics. When we look past her Catholicism, we read too much into her; when we see her as Catholic, it comes together more simply, including, as to this question, when considering the lives of other Saints similarly rejected by their own. In general, though, Joan most clearly expresses her Catholicism through her faith in God's path for her, her yearning for the Eucharist, and in her refusal to concede the primacy of her Voices.

The Trial court ever insisted she submit to the Church Militant, carrying the business into April to "exhort her charitably, admonish her gently." As such, the Bishop "gently" admonished her with:

Here the venerable Doctors who were assisting Us did exhort her with the most lively instance and did strive to obtain from her that she would submit herself and her acts to the Church Militant. They cited to her a number of authorities taken from Holy Scripture ... shewed to Jeanne these truths in French, and said to her at the end, that if she would not submit to the Church and obey it, the Church must abandon her as an Infidel [sarrazine].

This is perhaps the first time she was threatened with burning, although everyone, Joan included, well knew the consequence of a condemnation for heresy -- as that was the point of the entire operation -- to burn her. Joan responded in the beautiful simplicity of an adopted child of Christ:

I am a good Christian. I have been baptized; I shall die a good Christian.

Cauchon, nevertheless, seized on that, dangling before her as leverage, the Sacrament of the Eucharist:

As you ask that the Church should administer the Eucharist to you, why will you not submit to the Church? It would be administered to you at once.

Of this submission I will say no more than I have said: I love God, I serve Him; I am a good Christian; I wish to help and maintain the Church with all my power.

Cauchon then returns to the matter of her of being in mortal sin:

Do you not wish that a good and notable procession might be ordained to restore you to a good estate if you are not therein?

Joan replied with what I hereby nominate for inclusion in the next version of the Catechism:

I desire that the Church and the Catholics should pray for me.

Tactically, she navigates here safely between the court's authority and her defiance of it. Theologically, it is called the "Communion of Saints," which transcends the squabbling over obedience. It's stunning how consistent, simple, and Catholic she remained throughout.

When reading the transcript in light of personality and not faith, Joan seems at times sarcastic or combative. For example, Pernoud writes that Joan "grew increasingly restive and more stubborn in her refusal to swear oaths." Indeed, Joan was annoyed by the oaths. But, as we have discussed, her annoyance was over matters of substance not pettiness. When on February 24 she warned Cauchon to be wary for his soul, it followed his three admonitions that there be "no restrictions to her oath" to which Joan explained her reasons for the refusal:

Give me leave to speak. By my faith! you may well ask me such things as I will not tell you. Perhaps on many of the things you may ask me I shall not tell you truly, especially on those that touch on my revelations; for you may constrain me to say things that I have sworn not to say; then I should be perjured, which you ought not to wish. [Addressing the Bishop:] I tell you, take good heed of what you say, you, who are my Judge, you take a great responsibility in thus charging me. I should say that it is enough to have sworn twice.

Cauchon stuck to the matter of an absolute oath:

Will you swear, simply and absolutely?

To this Joan sets her limits:

Of my coming into France I will speak the truth willingly; but I will not say all: the space of eight days would not suffice.

Then, Cauchon argues,

You render yourself liable to suspicion in not being willing to swear to speak the truth absolutely.

by which he means, If you don't answer my question you're admitting guilt.

Speak to me no more of it. Pass on.

We again require you to swear, precisely and absolutely.

To which a Saint replied,

I will say willingly what I know, and yet not all. I am come in God's name; I have nothing to do here; let me be sent back to God, whence I came.

So we see here not obstinance or attitude. Instead, Joan was setting the limits between herself, the court, and God.

Another consistent line of attack was to accuse her of pride, including of having a painting made of herself, letting women kiss her rings, owning multiple horses and wearing expensive and even provocative clothing. But it was theological pride that they most wanted to prove, here from March 13:

Is it for any merit of yours that God sent you this Angel?

The question hits hard upon Catholic theology, just as did the question about her state of Grace. The notion of "merit" has been considered deeply by Church thinkers, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas who wrote,

God seeks from our goods not profit, but glory, i.e. the manifestation of His goodness; even as He seeks it also in His own works. Now nothing accrues to Him, but only to ourselves, by our worship of Him. Hence we merit from God, not that by our works anything accrues to Him, but inasmuch as we work for His glory.

To the question of any merit of hers by which the Angel came to her, Joan hit the Aquinas formulation perfectly:

He came for a great purpose: I was in hopes that the King would believe the sign, and that they would cease to argue with me, and would aid the good people of Orleans. The Angel came for the merits of the King and of the good Duke d'Orléans.

The questioner, either Cauchon or the Deputy Inquisitor, Jean Le Maîstre, understood her response, so doubled down on the accusation:

Why to you rather than to another?

It has pleased God so to do by a simple maiden, in order to drive back the enemies of the King.

The core problem her Voices posed was their effects, which the court had to argue against, as her effects were manifest to the French side and condemning of the Anglo-Burgundians. The day before, March 12, she was asked,

Has not the Angel, then, failed you with regard to the good things of this life, in that you have been taken prisoner?

The entire English case against her lay upon this idea, that her capture was God's retribution. Politically, leadership on both sides of the conflict were relieved at Joan's capture: the English, obviously, but the French court for justification of its abandonment of her, which, of course, led to her capture. For Joan, she hoped for rescue from her situation, but, held now by the English, literally in chains, she could only submit to the situation. Again, she answered the question in perfectly valid theological terms:

I think, as it has pleased Our Lord, that it is for my well-being that I was taken prisoner.

Time to move on.

Has your Angel never failed you in the good things of grace?

How can he fail me, when he comforts me every day? My comfort comes from Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

Another paragraph from the Catechism reflects on Joan's disposition here:

The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace.

On March 14, she was again questioned on her leap from the castle Beaurevoir the year before. Now, her interrogator, de la Fontaine, dropped a new accusation, that, on coming back to consciousness after her fall, she cursed God and her Saints:

When speech returned to you, did you not blaspheme and curse God and His Saints? This is proved by allegation.

Joan discarded the threat with,

I refer me to God and not to any other, and to a good confession.

So the questioning moved back to her Voices. Do they "delay to answer" her? to which she gives explicit testament to the power and process of intercession:

Sometimes Saint Catherine answers me, but I fail to understand because of the great disturbance in the prison and the noise made by my guards. When I make a request to Saint Catherine, both my Saints make request to Our Lord; then, by order of Our Lord, they give answer to me.

Now a question about their arrival to her and with the suggestion that she was just confusing them for noises in the prison:

When your Saints come to you, have they a light with them? Did you not see the light on a certain occasion when you heard the Voices in the Castle, without knowing if the Voice were in your room?

Joan then marvelously reflects on her Voices, expressing great Christian piety:

There is never a day that my Saints do not come to the Castle [the prison]; and they never come without light. And as to this Voice of which you speak, I do not remember if on that occasion I saw the light or even Saint Catherine. I asked three things of my Voices [upon the leap from the castle]: 1. My deliverance; 2. That God would come to the help of the French, and protect the towns under their control; 3. The salvation of my soul.

Joan's simplicity, in the sense of wholeness, not ignorance, has been preserved in the Catechism of the Catholic Church four times, each for her simple, pure Catholic faith. We have reviewed so far three of them. For the last, it comes form her final words, dying with "the one word 'Jesus'" on her lips. As recorded in Catechism Paragraph number 435, on the morning of Wednesday, May 30, 1431, as she burned, Joan repeated,

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...

Crazy, witch or Saint?

Joan's biographers like to present her with a letter she composed to the King of England, the child-king Henry VI, the day she learned she would be given an army to march on Orléans. And for good reason. It's a marvelous, crazy letter, almost arrogant at first glance. A second look, though, and the letter yields instead Joan's simplicity and directness. Indeed, she is hardly arrogant, just blunt:

Jhesus † Maria

King of England; and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself Regent of the Kingdom of France; you, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; John, Lord Talbot; and you, Thomas, Lord Scales, who call yourselves Lieutenants to the said Duke of Bedford: give satisfaction to the King of Heaven: give up to the King, who is sent hither by God, the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns in France which you have taken and broken into. She is come here by the order of God to reclaim the Blood Royal. She is quite ready to make peace, if you are willing to give her satisfaction, by giving and paying back to France what you have taken.

It's a useful letter for the biographer, but left unexplained or attributed to anything but her Voices, as these historians agnostically leave it, it makes no sense.

At the conclusion of the Examinations at Poitiers in late March of 1429, the King, who had brought her there, sent messengers to Joan to announce his endorsement. After several weeks of inquiry and visits, she thought the king's agents were there to ask more questions. The royal squire, Gobert Thibaut, recalled,

Then Maître Pierre de Versailles told Jeanne that he had been sent to her from the King. She replied: "I well believe that you have been sent to question me," adding, "I know neither A nor B." Then she was asked by them for what she had come.

She pronounced her purpose, which she had been telling everyone since her arrival to France:

I am come from the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans and to conduct the King to Rheims for his crowning and anointing.

Realizing it was a rhetorical question and that she had been given the approval,

And then she asked if they had paper and ink, saying to Maître Jean Erault: "Write what I say to you. You, Suffolk, Classidas, and La Poule, I summon you by order of the King of Heaven to go back to England."

And there we go. What a moment! And one that had stuck firmly in Thibaut's memory, especially that cadence, that challenge, that shocking boldness.

Joan's Letter to the English is astonishing. And prophetic.

Prophecy fulfilled

By the time she sent the Letter, the English had likely already heard of rumors flying around about a "maiden" who had arrived to save France. But the Letter was their first direct introduction to the person. However it was received, it had to be in the back of English leaders' minds when its author approached Orléans, and indelibly upon the front of their minds after she routed them. The letter concludes with a note to the English governor, Bedford, which, if he had seen it, likewise would have bewildered him before the battle, and, which, as he wrote later, hurt badly thereafter. After threatening an English defeat at Orléans and Paris and across "the whole of France," she ends the letter with,

And answer, if you wish to make peace in the City of Orleans; if this be not done, you may be shortly reminded of it, to your very great hurt. Written this Tuesday in Holy Week.

It wasn't mere psychological warfare as some historians contend: Joan was prophesizing.

Two years later, on March 1, 1431, during her trial for heresy by a French ecclesiastical court operating under English authority, the Letter was read out to her as incriminating evidence of witchcraft. It still stung:

Do you know this letter?

The Letter had been shown or read to her at some point in the prison at Rouen, and on the second day of the Trial, February 22, unprompted, she herself mentioned it, and stated three corrections to the text. A week later, March 1, she replied to the question if she knew of the Letter in precisely the same terms:

Yes, excepting three words. In place of "give up to the Maid," it should be "give up to the King." The words "Chieftain of war" and "body for body"’ were not in the letter I sent. None of the Lords ever dictated these letters to me; it was I myself alone who dictated them before sending them. Nevertheless, I always shewed them to some of my party.

Whatever the discrepancies from the text and Joan's memory of it, the English remembered it well. How could they not remember this confounding and, to us marvelous, letter?

Then it got worse. Without further prompting or context, Joan turned her testimony to the future. As recorded in the verbatim Trial transcript, she abruptly switched from her discussion of the Letter to:

Next, she says that before seven years, the English will give up a greater stake than they laid before the people of Orléans, and they will lose everything in France. She also says the English will suffer a greater loss than they have ever had in France, and this will come through a great victory God will grant to the French.

The Bishop, who was questioning her that day, asked, perhaps in sarcasm, perhaps in curiosity, possibly in concern, as he had heard of another of Joan's predictions from one of her English captors:

How do you know this?

I know it well by revelation, which has been made to me, and that this will happen within seven years; and I am sore vexed that it is deferred so long. I know it by revelation, as clearly as I know that you are before me at this moment.

When will this happen?

I know neither the day nor the hour.

In what year will it happen?

You will not have any more. Nevertheless, I heartily wish it might be before Saint John’s Day.

The English squire and captain of Joan's guards, John Gray, had told Cauchon about a prediction she had made about the relief of Compiègne the season before, in late October or early November of 1430. With that in mind, the Bishop replied,

Did you not say that this would happen before Martinmas, in winter?

Joan corrected it,

I said that before Martinmas many things would be seen, and that the English might perhaps be overthrown.

What did you say to John Gris, your keeper, on the subject of the Feast of Saint Martin?

I have told you.

A year earlier, March 22 of 1429, in the "Letter to the English," Joan had warned Bedford,

for King Charles will gain [the realm of France], the true heir: for God, the King of Heaven, so wills it, and it is revealed to him by the Maid, and he will enter Paris with a good company.

Joan's prediction of "before seven years" came on March 1, 1431. She repeated it on March 28 in response to Seventy Articles accusation number XXI, which was also about the Letter to the English:

If the English had believed my letters, they would only have been wise ; and before seven years are gone they will perceive it well enough

Six and a half years later, November 12, 1437, the French King Charles VII entered the gates of Paris. It's beyond improbable that, having failed to take Paris herself, imprisoned and helpless at Rouen, she was not speaking of Paris, especially given that she likened the shock of the coming event to that of Orléans.

Retaking of Paris, April 13, 1436 by Berthélemy (Louvre, wikicommons)

Paris was ultimately delivered to the French through the 1435 Treaty of Arras that ended the English alliance with the Burgundian faction, with recognition by the Duke of Burgundy of Charles VII as King of France. It still took the French commanders Arthur de Richemont, whom Joan herself had welcomed to the French cause, and the Bastard of Orléans, Jean de Dunois, one of the most fervent believers in Joan's divine calling, to fully expel the English from the city in April of 1436 -- two months before Saint John the Baptist's Feast Day. The English would never recover.

Skeptics will point out that the English presence in France continued for another fifteen years, which is true, but Paris was the endgame, the brink of the cascade of the rest. After Paris, the war wound down through attrition and pressure, especially in Normandy, with the French triumph primarily the result of a military reorganization under de Richemont that was enabled by Joan and modelled upon her example of a disciplined, national army with common cause.

Joan seems to have prophesized three events here: the French recovery of Paris, the English loss of "everything in France," and a "great victory." Note first that the first event was the only to come "before seven years," as the others are grammatically distinct from that first prediction. Next, losing "everything" would obviously follow and not precede a "great victory," which indicates a battle and not an evacuation or surrender, as happened at Paris. The greatest French battlefield victory came in 1453 at Castillon, where the English suffered their largest numeric defeat in the Hundred Years War. That battle, as well as the final clearing of Normandy, was made possible by the French taking of Paris, the abandoned "stake" that Joan had predicted-- which, of course, was made possible by Orléans, to which Joan compared it.

Was it a lucky guess, a threat, or a prophecy? That is, was she crazy, witch or prophet?

Had the French entry to Paris occurred well before or after the prophecy's seven years, we'd have to look for another event, or recognize that she was wrong or just made it up. Near to but within the prophetic expiration, six years is, indeed, "Before seven years." She was not wrong on the timing nor the significance of the event.

Battle of Cadzand, from the Chroniques de Froissant, c. late 1400s (WikiCommons)

We might also note that the year of Charles VII's entry into Paris is exactly one hundred years after the understood start of the 116 year-long "Hundred Years' War." It is generally held that the Hundred Years War began with Philip VI's "forfeiture" (declared taking) of English fiefs in France in May of 1337, and with English King Edward III's response to it through military and diplomatic mobilization against France. The war's first land engagement came on November 9, 1337 in an English raid on the northern Flemish port of Sluys, which was a fief of the County of Flanders, a French vassalage. The English regrouped and attacked the nearby island Cadzand, pillaging the locals, and inducing the Flemish counter-attack a couple days later. If that battle, the war's first, happened on November 12, it would have taken place one hundred years to the day before Charles VII's triumphant entry to Paris.

Or, for sticklers of prophecy who wish to hold Joan to just "before" seven years, we can point to the May 1438 collapse of an English attempt to negotiate a permanent status in Normandy, which would have secured for them the important English seat at Rouen, and upended every outcome as we know it. To coordinate the negotiations, the English moved their prize prisoner, the Duke of Orléans, to London to arrange his participation in the talks, which failed to materialize. Subsequent English attempts through 1440 also failed, largely due to Joan's military comrades, de Richemont and Étienne de Vignolles, known as La Hire, who continued scorched earth military campaigns which de Richemont calculated would sabotage any agreements. Theirs aligned with Joan's position that the English could only be removed from all of France by force. Had a settlement been reached at this point, not only would the English have kept a large hold on northern France, it would have, for the French, dangerously normalized English-Burgundian relations. Joan's work would have remained incomplete.

To assist with the negotiations in 1440, the English brought the Duke of Orleans to Calais, where he was finally released, twenty-five years after his capture at the 1415 Battle of Agincourt. Thus was fulfilled another of Joan's prophesies: upon her arrival to the French court in 1429, she had pronounced the liberation of the Duke as among her divine missions, along with relief of the city of Orléans, the crowning of Charles VII at Reims, and the retaking of Paris. During 1431 Trial at Rouen, Joan was asked,

Did Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret tell you absolutely and without condition that you would take [capture] enough English to get the Duke d'Orléans, who is in England, or that otherwise you would cross the sea to seek him?

In her response, Joan provides a rather interesting glimpse of what may have happened had she not been betrayed by her own, and abandoned to the English:

Yes, and I said so to my King: and he allowed me to treat with the English lords who were then prisoners. If I had continued three years without hindrance, I should have delivered him. To do this, it needed less time than three years and more than one. But I do not remember about it.

Is she just crazy -- or what could have happened had she been allowed to act "without hindrance"? Had she been allowed to attack immediately after the July 17, 1431 coronation, she very likely would have taken Paris -- or, more likely, received its submission, as had the French from a series of towns and cities just before and after Reims. We hear from the Burgundian chronicler Wavrin exactly how precarious was the moment for the Anglo-Burgundians. Referring to late July or early August of 1429, a week or two after the crowning of Charles VII, the chronicler reports:

In those days, as the said [French] king was staying at Senlis, there came to him to make obedience certain good towns and fortresses, that is to say Creil, Beauvais, Pont-Saint-Maxence, Thoissy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Rémy, La Neufville-sur-Heez; and on the other side Mogay, Cätilly, with several others, which all made him obedience and swore fidelity. And there also came to reconcile themselves with him the lords of Montmorency and of Mouy. And in truth, if he had then gone with all his power before Saint-Quentin, Corbie, Amiens, Abbeville, and the other towns or fortresses on the river Somme, most of the inhabitants of them were ready to receive him, and desired nothing else but to make him obedience;

And then the French stopped.

Even before the July 17, 1429 Coronation of Charles VII at Reims, and with Joan at the height of her fame, the French ministers had already commenced work to undermine her. The French Chancellor, Regnault de Chartres, who as Archbishop of Reims had himself crowned Charles with Joan front and center, sought reconciliation with the Burgundian faction -- not its submission. Along with the Grand Chamberlain of France, Georges de La Trémoille, de Chartres tried to work around all this trouble Joan had caused, which was stirred up as more towns submitted themselves to the French, including Compiègne, a deep cut to the Duke of Burgundy and another great offense upon him that he cried out for compensation at the bargaining table. While Charles enjoyed his new prestige as properly coronated sovereign, he and his ministers fell for the Burgundian delay tactics that suckered them in with suggestions that Paris could be had peacefully in exchange for Burgundian towns that had already submitted to the French, particularly Compiègne. The Burgundian delay strategy worked out as planned as the French leadership discarded its precious momentum, isolating Joan and her small army that couldn't possibly take Paris alone. Joan insisted upon it anyway, finally, in early September, forcing Charles to bring forward a larger force and allow the assault.

Historians point out that Paris was heavily fortified and its walls were among the strongest in Europe, so the assault was hopeless. Perhaps, but Joan's madness wasn't merely to bash down walls -- she did -- but better was to scare the other side into yielding them when she placed her banner upon the ramparts. Her method, or, from the English perspective, magic, required the urgency and inertia of Orléans, which Charles and his ministers had squandered by the time of the assault, a month after Joan had threatened to go after the prize herself. By then, she could only play out the diluted and delayed program left to her, and which Charles cut short after the first day of fighting.

The skeptical view is that Joan's failure at Paris revealed her unsustainable hubris, or that she was just a crazed nineteen year old who had somehow managed to drag a nation into a delusion that expired at the walls of Paris. Not so fast. Had the French followed her advice and marched there directly after Reims, Paris may well have been taken with but a knock on the gate. The Burgundian chronicler Wavrin agrees, here describing the situation in late August, when the momentum was yet with the French,

After King Charles had stayed within Senlis for several days, he departed from there and went with his army to lodge at Saint-Denis, which he found entirely scattered (or desolate), like something abandoned, for the greater part of the powerful bourgeois and residents of that town had fled and withdrawn to Paris and other places; and his men lodged themselves at Aubervilliers, Montmartre, and other villages in that area, quite near to the city of Paris.

Even so, Charles returned to Compiègne to sign a truce with the Burgundians. Perhaps from over confidence, but more likely in hopes of an easy surrender of Paris, he agreed to cease attacks upon Burgundian lands though not Paris and environs where Joan and the army awaited the green light. Joan again despaired of the delays, which lasted until September 8, when the assault order was finally given -- abandoned by Charles the next day.

Had Joan been allowed to act "without hindrance," three years would certainly have been long enough to capture enough English lords to ransom the Duke of Orleans, as Joan stated at the Rouen trial, much less retake Paris and remove the English from Rouen. Instead, as the ministers talked and talked, Bedford and Philip the Good had time to regroup, reinforce, and, most importantly, tighten their political control over the Paris, halting any notions of submission to Charles.

Capture of Joan (by Adolf Dillens, 1847, Wikicommons)

Following the French retreat, no one would or could have contemplated a French return there, much less within "seven years." Clearly to all, Joan was a false or fallen prophet. Upon her capture on May 23, 1430, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, issued a public acclamation of the victory, announcing,

Very dear and well-beloved, knowing that you desire to have news of us, we signify to you that this day, the 23rd May, towards six o’clock in the afternoon, the adversaries of our Lord the King and of us, who were assembled together in great power, and entrenched in the town of Compiègne, before which we and the men of our army were quartered, have made a sally from the said town in force on the quarters of our advanced guard nearest to them, in the which sally was she whom they call the Maid, with many of their principal captains .... and by the pleasure of our blessed Creator, it had so happened and such grace had been granted to us, that the said Maid had been taken ... The which capture, as we certainly hold, will be great news everywhere; and by it will be recognized the error and foolish belief of all those who have shewn themselves well disposed and favourable to the doings of the said woman. And this thing we write for our news, hoping that in it you will have joy, comfort, and consolation, and will render thanks and praise to our Creator, Who seeth and knoweth all things, and Who by His blessed pleasure will conduct the rest of our enterprizes to the good of our said Lord the King and his kingdom, and to the relief and comfort of his good and loyal subjects.

We see here the vast importance of her capture to the English and Burgundians: if she is not of divine intervention, they reasoned, then her successes were not legitimate, including, by reference to Charles VII, the coronation Joan had engineered of him Royal legitimacy relied on faith in God's plan, so Joan's capture justified the English cause. The practical implications were great: with Joan held to be a witch and burned, the English were cleansed of the curse.

One of the clerics who saw Joan the day she was "delivered up to be burned," Jean Toutmouille, recalled,

For, before her death, the English proposed to lay siege to Louviers; soon, however, they changed their purpose, saying they would not besiege the said town until the Maid had been examined. What followed was evident proof of this; for, immediately after she was burnt, they went to besiege Louviers, considering that during her life they could have neither glory nor success in deeds of war.

In the early stages of Henry V's invasion and rampage across Normandy, in a particularly violent siege and occupation, the English had taken the loyal French town of Louviers, killing and ransoming townspeople. Following Joan's entry in 1429, the French warrior La Hire retook the town, a great offense to the English leadership, and which added to their resentment and hatred for Joan. It remained in French hands through her trial and may well have been the source of English impatience with the Trial's slow progress, as the English leadership grew testy over procedures required of an ecclesiastical form. Shortly after Joan's May 30, 1431 execution, the English authorized expenditures and purchases, amassing an unusually large army of 12,000 for the action. The operation commenced in late July, and Louviers fell to the English on October 25. It was a huge deal for them, and not just because of the town's strategic location south of Rouen and along the south bank of the Seine -- opening the route to Paris where Henry VI would be crowned French King Henry II.

La Pucelle v.2

In France, meanwhile, Joan's role as the state emissary of God was replaced by the French with a mystic, variously reported as "Guillaume de Mende," the "Shepherd of Gévaudan," or the "Little Shepherd." Unlike Joan, the Shepherd was actually a shepherd. Unlike Joan, he demonstrated an outward sign, having the stigmata on his hands, feet and chest. And, unlike Joan, he was not, or not likewise, divinely inspired. The Chancellor de Chartres promoted Guillaume, a most cynical move, as he wanted the Little Shepherd to replace memory of Joan, whose insistence upon armed and not diplomatic solutions de Chartres and La Trémoille not only opposed but actively subverted.

Historians point to the various prophetic figures who appeared around the time of Joan as conferring upon her through concurrence similar false prophesy. One such figure, Catherine de la Rochelle, Joan dismissed as a fraud, having asked her Voices about her,

I spoke of it, either to Saint Catherine or to Saint Margaret, who told me that the mission of this Catherine was mere folly and nothing else.

Joan advised Charles VII not to pay any attention to her. She told the Rouen court,

I told Catherine [de la Rochelle] that she should return to her husband, look after her home, and bring up her children.

Catherine had joined up with a Franciscan Friar, frère Richard, or Brother Richard, a messianic preacher who had earlier, in Paris and across Champagne, which includes Troyes and Reims, and much like Girolamo Savonarola, condemned vice and preached repentance, and divine retribution. As the French army approached Reims and threatened Paris, the Anglo-Burgundians found in him a useful scapegoat. In early August of 1429 as hysteria rose with the expected approach to the city of Joan and the French army, the Parisian chronicler, the Bourgeois de Paris, wrote,

the Cordelier [Franciscan] who preached at Les Innocents, who drew together so much people at his sermon, as has been said before, truly rode with them [the French]; and as soon as those of Paris were certain that he rode thus and that by his language he made the cities that had made the oaths to the Regent of France or to his deputies thus turn, they cursed him by God and His saints; and what is worse, the games, such as backgammon-tables, bowls, dice, in short, all other games that he had forbidden, they recommenced in despite of him, and even a pewter meriau on which was stamped the name Jesus, which he had made them take, that they left, and they all took the cross of Saint Andrew.

The record is ambiguous as to Brother Richard's presence and effects during the Reims campaign, but that the Bourgeois blamed him for the "turn" of the cities that had submitted to the French is likely an effect seeking a cause. Brother Richard had been expelled from Paris in April of 1429, before even Orléans, so subsequent Anglo-Burgundian messaging about him was condemnatory. It's almost like they saw him as a John the Baptist figure warning that "the one who is coming." Joan didn't see it that way, and it's unclear how much Brother Richard was around during the French march from Bourges to Reims, though she did testify to having encountered him at Troyes, along the way. One source says he delivered her letter to the people of there. Another source says that the French survived the siege of Troyes on beans that had been planted at his admonition the year before. More importantly, the Anglo-Burgundians recognized the dual threat of a messianic preacher in Richard and the bearer of doom in Joan. As such, the Bourgeois of Paris was sure to condemn them both in the same breath.

The Duke of Bedford did the same, writing to Charles VII on August 7, about the same time as the Journal entry,

you help yourself with superstitious and deluded persons, such as a disordered and defamed woman, being in man’s clothing and in dissolute governance, and also with a mendicant friar, apostate and seditious, as we are informed; both of them, according to Holy Scripture, abominable to God

The letter that is worth reading in full,

We, John of Lancaster, Regent and Governor of France, and Duke of Bedford, make known to you, Charles of Valois, who wished to call yourself Dauphin of Viennois, and now, without cause, you call yourself king; because unreasonably you have newly undertaken against the crown and lordship of that most high and excellent prince, and most renowned my sovereign lord Henry, by the grace of God true, natural, and rightful king of the kingdoms of France and England, by making the simple people understand that you come to give peace and security, which is not, nor can be, by the means you have taken and take, you who cause the ignorant people to be seduced and deceived, and you help yourself with superstitious and deluded persons, such as a disordered and defamed woman, being in man’s clothing and in dissolute governance, and also with a mendicant friar, apostate and seditious, as we are informed; both of them, according to Holy Scripture, abominable to God; who, by force and power of arms, have occupied, in the land of Champagne and elsewhere, certain cities, towns, and castles belonging to my said lord the king, and the subjects remaining in them constrained and induced to disloyalty and perjury, in making them break and violate the final peace of the kingdoms of France and England, solemnly sworn by the kings of France and England who then lived, and by the great lords, peers, prelates, barons, and the three estates of this kingdom.

The Duke's letter is unique. Medieval rulers spoke through intermediaries, not directly like this. On top of that, by timing and tone it's clear he was freaking out. Joan declared on August 5 that she was heading to Paris despite an informal truce between the Burgundians and the French court, so the Duke's August 7 letter lines up with her pronouncement. Most significantly, while denouncing Charles as illegitimate, Bedford accuses him of using a "disordered and defamed woman," a nice way of calling her a witch, which he had already pronounced her as after Orléans.

The Rouen Trial court, with its clerics from Paris, quizzed Joan extensively about her relationship with Brother Richard, insinuating a diabolical connection. Joan recounts only that he was upset at her dismissal of Catherine de la Rochelle, and that when he first approached Joan at Troyes he made a sign of the Cross and threw holy water upon her:

I said to him: "Approach boldly, I shall not fly away!"

"God frequently appeared to her in person, dressed in a long white robe..." Piéronne la Bretonne from 1894 book by G. Dubouchet (wikicommons)

Let's just say she wasn't impressed by him. Back in France later in 1429, Brother Richard had worn out his welcome and was relegated to silence in Poitiers, the French bishops telling him to keep it down. Around this time, another mystic, Pierronne, appeared in Brittany, traveling from town to town speaking of saving France and that God, appearing to her in a white robe and a purple tunic, had sent her to affirm Joan's mission. She attracted followers, one of whom was arrested with her in March, 1430, prior to Joan's capture. They were sent to trial by University of Paris clerics. Pierronne remained defiant about her prophesies and support for Joan, refused to recant, and was burned at the stake on September 3, 1430.

Upon Joan's execution, Charles VII's court turned to the Shepherd of Gévaudan. In June of 1431, amidst the English campaign for Louviers, the young man was ridden to battle near Beauvais, whereupon the English destroyed the French contingent, which included La Hire, who escaped. The Shepherd was delivered by the English to the ecclesiastical court in Paris, which without much inquiry found him guilty of heresy, including the charge to have had the wounds of the Savior imprinted upon him by the Devil. The stories vary, including that he was forthrightly burned or that he was paraded in the streets of Paris like a Roman slave at the coronation of Henry VI as King of France in December of 1431. Whatever we learn about the Shepherd, at a minimum his failure at battle, even if, as historians have claimed about Joan, in the role of cheerleader, merely affirms her singular accomplishments.

While skeptical historians use these mystics to impugn the divinity of Joan's mission, we should have no surprise at their appearance upon her entry to France. She inspired, inflamed, and, launched a deeply spiritual moment for France, and the others served to rally the French people around her, both before and after her death. Nevertheless, they became useful examples for the English and Burgundians -- and modern historians -- to call out Joan as just another crazy, false prophet.

In December of 1431, with Louviers taken and the path to Paris clear, Henry VI was coronated at Paris in an elaborate ceremony as Henry II, King of France. It was not just an English assertion of the Treaty of Troyes, in which Charles VI yielded the French throne to the English upon his death, it was the English declaration of victory over the Maid and all she represented. Along with the capture of La Hire earlier in May, 1431, the demise of Joan was looking fruitful for the English. British historian Barker notes,

The execution of the Pucelle seems to have changed the fortunes of the English, for [Joan's fellow warrior] Xaintrailles was not the only feared Armagnac captain to lose his liberty this summer. In the very week that Jehanne was burned, "the worst, cruellest, most pitiless" of them all, La Hire, was captured and committed to the castle of Dourdon, close to La-Charité-sur-Loire. A few weeks later, on 2 July, the sire de Barbazan, whom La Hire had rescued from his long incarceration at Château Gaillard the previous year, was killed in a battle against Burgundian forces at Bulgnéville, twenty miles south-west of the Pucelle’s home village of Domrémy. René d’Anjou, Charles VII’s brother-in-law and confidant, was taken prisoner in the same battle, temporarily ending his struggle to assert himself as duke of Bar by right of his wife.

The French, too, yielded to the theory that Joan's capture and execution had marked a change of fortune. The French government now relied upon episodic cat-and-mouse play focused on consolidation not advance, and unprofitable diplomacy, hoping to weaken the English while luring the Burgundians to their side. By the time of Joan's death and for the year after, it yielded no results. Meanwhile, Joan's prophesy unfolded.

In August of 1432, the Bastard of Orléans, Jean Dunois, won a tremendous victory at Lagny, lifting an English siege. A palace coup at Charles VII's court the next year led to a change in ministers from the hesitant and compromised de Chartres ally, La Trémoille, to Joan's comrade Arthur de Richemont, who was committed to her military solution. France was not resurgent as it was following Joan's entrance, but it was on the rise according to her methods.

We can see the enduring importance of Joan's legacy in a bizarre episode that followed the French successes at Paris. Around 1436 a French woman named Claude showed up at the northeastern town of Metz claiming to be Joan. She convinced Joan's younger brother, Petit-Jean, and her older brother, Pierre, and a couple local lords who equipped her with a horse and armor. Whatever her purpose, money was one of her effects. Petit-Jean tried to cash in by introducing her to the King, and wherever Claude went over the next few years, she was lavished with dinners and gifts. The ruse fell apart in 1440 in Paris, perhaps after she was introduced to Charles, who, it was said, asked her the secret Joan had told him back in 1429 to prove she was sent by God. The suspended disbelief in the fake Joan speaks to Joan's continued relevancy, especially as the French army retook Paris.

Isabelle Rommée pleading before the Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Bréhal to restore her daughter's name and reputation, with Pope Calixtus III looking on (Manuscrit de Diane de Poitier, wikicommons)

Petit-Jean came off looking foolish, so he returned to Domrémy, where he joined his mother to work for his real sister's rehabilitation. In that, and other ways, Claude instigated the Rehabilitation Trial itself. As odd as it seems that her brothers may have been fooled by the fake Joan, it shows that belief in her outlived her demise at Rouen. Well beyond Orléans, which held annual celebrations of the Maid, Joan's repute endured. For example, of the twenty-five or so known letters that Joan wrote, eleven survive, indicating deliberate, careful preservation.

Lingering in Charles' and the French conscience was the role of the Maid in it all: Was she really savior of King and France? And what was she?

In 1440 or 1442, when the English yet held the regional capital at Rouen, a Norman priest Martin Le Franc composed, for the time, a rather provocative work, The Champion of the Ladies. The poet poses an Accuser and a Champion in a debate on the merits of Biblical, mythological, and historical women, from Eve and the Holy Mother to Le Franc's contemporaries, poet "Cristine" (Christine de Pisan) and "Jenne la Pucelle." It's a fascinating work, but for our purposes especially fascinating is Le Franc's Burgundian perspective and that he dedicated the work to the Duke of Burgundy. Le Franc's Accuser gets in all the digs against Joan that any good Duke of Burgundy would know well -- including the reaction of "the Actor," who arbitrates the debate, marking the Burgundian view, who tells the Champion,

You have preached too much! Think of another one to boast. You couldn't have come up anyone worse to accomplish what you want. It's enough to drive you mad or make you pull your hair out!

Clearly the Burgundian side had had enough of this "La Pucelle" business, which means it was yet current. Still, Le Franc speaks to the moment and frames the debate that either Joan "had not a divine spirit" and "never did God send her," or, to the opposite, she came "to humble and destroy English pride" and that "God's touch upon her we feel."

As Joan's mother pushed restoration of her daughter's name, and as Joan's program to expel the English militarily proceeded through the 1440s, including the French seizure of Rouen in 1449, the French people, especially those reunited into France, needed clarification of just what was the nature of this girl, La Pucelle, who had started it all. From witness to witness, especially as the examinations went on over six years, a national discernment is revealed in the testimonies that the Maid was far more than some an extraordinary young woman.

The first testimonies in early 1450 at Rouen from several of the participants at the Condemnation Trial focused on events over her final days and the severe injustice done her, which, along with access to the Trial transcript, startled the French examiners looking into the events of 1431. Subsequent inquiries two years later under a formal ecclesiastical inquiry allowed for broader characterizations of Joan and her events, including from several priests who testified that her performance in the Rouen Trial could only be explained as "inspired." Though delayed a couple years, as the investigation expanded from Rouen to Paris, Orléans and Domrémy, more voices and more memories added to the national discernment of who and what, exactly, was The Maid.

In 1456, the Grand Inquisitor of France, Jean Bréhal, issued a report on the 1431 Trial in light of witness testimony and extensive investigations into the Trial itself. In his Summary of the findings, Bréhal goes straight at the core accusations from Rouen that Joan was a witch. The witnesses to what became known as the "Trial of Nullification," or, as I am calling it, "Trial of Rehabilitation," guided Bréhal's conclusions, but it was the Rouen Trial itself that exculpated Joan. In his Summary, Bréhal asks of the Condemnation Trial,

Can she be considered a false fabricator of revelations and apparitions, a pernicious seducer, a presumptuous, lightly believing, superstitious, invoking demons, a fortune teller, a blasphemer against God and the saints, as is stated in the sentence?

Bréhal's investigation gave proof for nullification of the Rouen judgment upon Joan, which could only come with papal authorization for the examination, as was given by Pope Calixtus III. The French people, though, went beyond negation of the charges that she was a witch and began to consider if what they had witnessed was not only one sent by God, but a Saint. At the official Nullification hearings at Paris, the Bastard of Orléans, Jean Dunois, now Count Dunois went straight to that conclusion. Having fought beside her, and having carried out her mission afterwards, Dunois opened his deposition with,

I think that Jeanne was sent by God, and that her behaviour in war was a fact divine rather than human.

Bertrand de Poulengey, one of the knights who accompanied Joan from her homeland across contested lands to see the King at Chinon, posed the possibility out loud:

I felt myself inspired by her words, for I saw she was indeed a messenger of God; never did I see in her any evil, but always she was as good as if she had been a saint.

Not your average witch

Battle of Orleans by August Gustav Lasinsky (Wikicommons)

After the Battle of Orléans in 1429, Joan was no longer a mere curiosity. She was now either a prophet or a witch. For the French, the victory at Orléans signaled God's command through Joan; for the English, only a possessed fiend could have so easily expelled England's finest. However, detraction is easier to sustain than faith, so the English and Burgundian leadership held to their hatred of Joan just as the leaders of France soon lost their confidence in her -- if they ever really held it. For de Chartres, the Maid served France well by putting the Anglo-Burgundian alliance at risk, but most inconvenient was all this insistence on taking Paris. Joan directly opposed his plans. As she testified at Rouen when questioned about the mystic, Catherine de la Rochelle, who, like de Chartres, wanted to negotiate "peace":

She told me she wished to visit the Duke of Burgundy in order to make peace. I told her it seemed to me that peace would be found only at the end of the lance.

The French court held to its claim on Paris but negotiated away any ability to enforce it. De Chartres was either resigned to or happy to leave Paris as a de facto Burgundian property, holding to the hope that the Burgundians would switch sides and bring Paris along with them. For his scheme to work, de Chartres needed to keep Joan out of Paris. The first step towards a settlement was an informal agreement to halt military operations for fifteen days. We know of it from Joan herself, who wrote to the people of Reims on August 5, 1429, from "the road to Paris" -- should anyone forget her destination. She wrote

My dear and good friends, the good and loyal French of the city of Reims,

Jeanne the Maid makes her news known to you, and prays and requests of you to make no doubt in the just cause that she leads for the blood royal; and I promise and assure you that I will not abandon you so long as I live; and it is true that the king has made truces with the Duke of Burgundy of a duration of fifteen days, so that he must peacefully render the city of Paris to him at the end of fifteen days.

Meanwhile, do not be surprised if I do not enter there so soon, although as for the truces which are thus made I am not at all content, and I do not know if I will uphold them; but if I do keep them, it will be only to protect the honor of the king, since they [the treaties] will in no way dishonor the blood royal: I will hold and maintain together the army of the king so as to be ready at the end of the said fifteen days, if they do not make peace.

For this, my very dear and perfect friends, I beg you not to trouble yourselves about it so long as I shall live; but I ask that you keep good watch and guard well the good city of the king, and let me know if there are any traitors who wish to harm you, and, as soon as I can, I will remove them; ; and let me know your news.

To God I commend you, who will be your guardian.

Written this Friday, fifth day of August, beside a lodging in the field, on the road to Paris.

It takes little imagination to recognize that Joan's letter rather displeased de Chartres. He had endorsed her at Poitiers, but only to show a sign at Orléans, not to run France. Her subsequent victories certainly helped the French cause, as did the coronation of his King -- indeed, Joan alone enabled de Chartres himself to formally receive his office as Archbishop of Reims, for which he was appointed in 1414 but only took at Reims itself the day before the coronation. It is generally understood that de Chartres resented Joan as lacking the sophistication of proper governance. But it was more than that. He was severely angered by her march upon Paris. Upon her capture the next year in May of 1430, he said the quiet part out loud, announcing publicly:

[The Archbishop] issue[d] notice of the capture of Jeanne the Maid by Compiègne, and how she would not heed counsel, and instead did everything according to her own will.

De Chartres is most clever here to blame Joan for her own demise by not obeying orders, as her capture in battle -- defending the besieged town Joan had won for the French in 1429 but that de Chartres negotiated away two months later -- rather conveniently affirmed and gave opportunity for his conciliatory policies. As with Joan's original letter to the people of Reims, de Chartres' pronouncement on Joan's capture has disappeared, so what we have of it is a summary from the early 1600s by a Reims city clerk, Jean Rogier, whose notations were not sorted chronologically. Misreading the context of notes, historians from Quicherat to Pernoud have conflated two distinct events: the announcement Joan's capture in May of 1430 with another about the arrival of the Shepherd of Gévaudan a year later. Though evidentiarily insupportable as a single document, it does very well express the Archbishop's attitude towards Joan. Taken together, the segment, which is surrounded by paragraphs regarding events of 1435 and 1440, reads as,

[The Archbishop] elsewhere issues notice of the capture of Jeanne the Maid by Compiègne, and how she would not heed counsel, and instead did everything according to her own will; that there had come to the king a young shepherd, a keeper of sheep from the mountains of Gévaudan, in the bishopric of Mende, who said neither more nor less than had Jeanne the Maid, and that was commanded by God to go with the king’s people, and that without fail the English and Burgundians would be defeated; and, when he was told that the English had killed Jeanne the Maid, he replied that so much the more he would resent them for it, and that God suffered that Jeanne the Maid be taken because she had given herself to pride, and for the rich garments she had taken to wearing, and that she had not done what God commanded, but had done her own will.

The reason we can know these statements are chronologically distinct is that at the time of Joan's capture the Shepherd had not yet presented himself to the French. The earliest mention of him comes upon his capture in June of 1431 at what the French called the "Affair of Beauvais," a disastrous battle in June of 1431, just after Joan's death, which yielded a prized captive, Joan's fellow warrior, Poton de Xaintrailles. The Burgundian chronicler, Bourgeois de Paris, is the first on the existing record to mention the Shepherd. From an entry of early August regarding the Burgundian victory, the Bourgeois wrote:

And among the others there was a wicked boy named Guillaume le Berger, who made the people idolize him, and he rode sideways on a horse, and at times showed his hands and his feet and his side, and they were stained with blood like Saint Francis.

The French threw the hapless Little Shepherd into the field to counter the Anglo-Burgundian capture, trial, and execution of Joan, all of which spoke clearly to anyone who thought that God had either abandoned her or was never with her. From another Burgundian point of view, from the chronicler Jean Le Fèvre, we find:

You have indeed heard how some people, of light understanding and fickle belief, threw themselves into believing that the deeds of the Maid were miraculous and permitted by God, and many were greatly inclined to believe this.

Now, it happened after the death of Jeanne the Maid that some, also of foolish belief, put forward a foolish and innocent shepherd, who, as Jeanne the Maid had said, claimed that he had divine revelation so that he might put himself into arms to aid this noble king of France.

This folly was tested at the cost, dishonor, and loss of the kingdom.

And it happened that several notable lords and captains, trusting themselves in this shepherd, took the field. And when the English learned of it, they made a great assembly to resist them; and the French pushed their exploits so far that they came quite near the city of Beauvais.

The Burgundian chronicler here equates faith in the Shepherd with any in Joan, "also of foolish belief." Perhaps they did put faith in the Shepherd, for his stigmata, his demeanor, or, more likely, public enthusiasm for him. And, perhaps, they gave him an opportunity to show a sign at Beauvais, as had been given Joan at Orléans. I find it all suspect. The Archbishop's announcement was carefully constructed to place condemnation of Joan in the mouth of the Shepherd:

that God suffered that Jeanne the Maid be taken because she had given herself to pride, and for the rich garments she had taken to wearing, and that she had not done what God commanded, but had done her own will.

These are not the words of a shepherd. De Chartres used his voice to speak what he could not directly say to a people who still believed in Joan. What stands out to me is that the Chancellor, even a year after Joan's capture had to recognize that she was sent by God -- only now, he says, she lost that agency through pride.

Back in August of 1429, Joan made good on her threat to attack Paris despite a truce, which means that despite the intrigues of the ministers she yet exercised enough authority over the King to push through the attack. However, when Joan was hit in the thigh by a crossbow bolt outside the walls of Paris on the first day of the assault, the King took advantage of her forced retreat and ordered a halt to the entire operation. After the abandoned campaign on Paris, Charles disbanded the Royal army and de Chartres and La Trémoille had their way with a formal truce in early October. Joan nevertheless remained active militarily later that year, and, though isolated to limited campaigns in the Loire Valley, she was still a threat to de Chartres and his diplomacy.

Joan, by then, and isolated by the King, had become a fallen prophet -- not a witch, but in no way a saint, as she had disobeyed God. Note here echoes from the Garden of Gethsemane that an Archbishop and not a shepherd boy would know to say:

she had not done what God commanded, but had done her own will.

From the Coronation onward, de Chartres needed to switch Joan from saint to crazy, from savior to rebel, and, worse, to a fallen prophet who had disobeyed God. It sounded better coming from an inspired shepherd than from the Chancellor of France, but it's all the same, whether from the mouth of the boy or the bishop. Even so, de Chartres did not speak for the people of France. Upon her capture, Jacques Gélu, Archbishop of Embrun, better matched the national mood by issuing prayers for Joan's release that were repeated across France, prayers that included,

that the Maid kept in the prisons of the enemies may be freed without evil, and that she may complete entirely the work that You have entrusted to her.

Yet it was de Chartres and La Trémoille who controlled French policy, and despite regular Burgundian duplicity, they carried forward with trust in the ultimate loyalty to France of the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke, though, detested Charles more than he loved France, and he was more interested in his massively profitable Low Country holdings than in fulfilling his duties of vassalage to France. The situation was in every respect useful for the Duke, and today it pains to look upon the moment with any sympathy for the French ministers, as there's no way Burgundy was going to yield his advantage as the war's arbiter unless forced to through arms, as Joan well knew.

With only minor battles and outright defeats leading up to and following Joan's capture, her legitimacy further faded -- as did de Chartres' need to put up with her. Historians have attributed Charles VII's treatment of Joan after his coronation to cynicism and opportunism. Certainly, though Charles was subject to the machine as much as he was its head. He ended up playing both sides, letting Joan go forth against the enemy while withholding the resources she needed to prosecute the program. Joan's capture, which was a direct consequence of the French transition from Joan's aggression to the Chancellor's diplomacy, became the excuse to abandon her program altogether.

For their part, the English and Burgundians knew full well what this girl had done, and the danger she posed, even from prison. Although Joan was no longer a military threat, the coronation of Charles VII was a deep wound that could be healed only by delegitimizing its author, the Maid. The Burgundian clerics centered mostly at Paris faced the same problem, and so were most happy to serve as the instrument of recovery for the English. By ingratiating themselves to the English with the needed ecclesiastic stamp of heresy upon Joan, the clerics at the University aimed to elevate themselves and the French Assembly to the level of the English Parliament. French historian Régine Pernoud correctly emphasizes these political machinations as one of the motives for Joan's ecclesiastical trial at Rouen.

Joan of Arc conjures demons in "Henry VI" by Shakespeare (wikicommons)

One may wonder that it is possible to maintain at once personal ambition and sincere belief, especially when the two affirm one another. Thus did de Chartres justify undermining Joan; thus did the Burgundian clergy justify her prosecution and its irregularities; thus did the English desperately need her denunciation and death.

And thus did the English Duke of Bedford blame his troubles in France on Joan. After the English disaster at Orleans, Bedford wrote to his King, here in the original Middle English,

And alle thing there prospered for you, til the tyme of the siege of Orleans taken in hand, God knoweth by what advis. At the whiche tyme, after the adventure fallen to the persone of my cousin of Salysbury, whom God assoille, there felle, by the hand of God, as it seemeth, a greet strook upon your peuple that was assembled there in grete nombre, caused in grete partie, as y trowe, of lakke of sadde beleve, and of unlevefulle doubte that thei hadde of a disciple and lyme of the Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchauntements and sorcerie. The which strooke and discomfiture nought oonly lessed in grete partie the nombre of youre people, there, but as well withdrowe the courage of the remenant in merveillous wyse, and couraiged youre adverse partie and ennemys to assemble hem forthwith in grete nombre.

My translation reads,

And all things prospered there for you until the time of the siege of Orleans was undertaken, God knows by what council. At that time, after the fate fell upon my cousin of Salisbury, whom may God pardon, there fell, by the hand of God, it seemed, a great blow upon your people who were assembled there [at Orleans] in great number, caused in large part, as I believe, by their lack of firm faith, and ungodly fear that they had of a disciple and limb of the Fiend, called the Maid, who used false enchantments and sorcery. This blow and defeat not only diminished in large part the number of your people, but also took away the courage of the remainders in an incredible way, and encouraged your adversaries and enemies to quickly assemble in great numbers.

Historians have suggested that Bedford was merely casting blame upon "the Pucelle" to excuse his own poor performance in France. The excuse was needed as Joan was ascendent in 1429, but after her capture and execution, and the coronation of Henry VI as King of France in December of 1431, it speaks loudly that three years later Bedford's letter was repeated into the Royal records. Things hadn't gone as planned. Bedford had still not recovered from Joan's effects. The witch was dead, the English King was crowned King of France, the French were willing to negotiate: but Joan's comrades hadn't given up, and were pushing her war against the English. Bedford needed help.

In 1434, he lobbied for more investment in the war in France:

Articles submitted to the King by John Duke of Bedford, with the answers thereto, 14th and 15th June: —In these articles the Duke first adverts to a written statement he had before given to the King in defence of his conduct in the government of France; he then recapitulates the services which he had rendered at the commencement of the wars in that kingdom after the death of King Henry the Fifth up to the time of the siege of Orleans and the death of the Earl of Salisbury; and ascribes his subsequent want of success to a "lack of sad belief and of unlawful doubt that the people had of a disciple and limb of the fiend called ‘the Pucelle’- that used false enchantments and sorcery": he reminds the King that he had himself come to England to explain the state of affairs in France, and used his utmost endeavours, but without success, to procure the means to carry on the war; he expresses his deep regret that that country should be lost after the great expenditure of blood and treasure which had occurred; he advises that the revenues of the duchy of Lancaster, which had been vested in Cardinal Beaufort and others for the purpose of fulfilling the will of the late King, should be wholly employed in the defence of France;

He wasn't rationalizing that he had lost to a witch -- this he admits. He was asking for more money to make up for it. Bedford fully believed that Joan, whom his government executed two years before, was, indeed, a "fiend" who had usurped the ambitions of Henry V, his brother, upon France.

Back at Rouen in 1431, Bedford's lieutenant, Richard Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, who had been a close friend of the Duke's brother, Henry V, was in charge of Joan's imprisonment and, ultimately, her trial and execution. Warwick and Bedford understood the situation well, and sorely needed to reverse the impact of Joan upon the war. To do that, they had to prove she was a witch. It helped, though, that they believed it, as only a witch could have done what she did to their project in France, which they believed had been ordained by God.

As her prison warden, it was Warwick's job to make sure Joan lived long enough to be condemned and put to death in a public show. One time he had to physically protect Joan from another Englishman after she insulted the English to his face. As related by a knight who was there,

The Count de Ligny desired to see Jeanne, and came to visit her, in company of the Earls of Warwick and Stafford, the present Chancellor of England, then Bishop of Thérouanne, the brother of the Count de Ligny, and myself. He said to her:

"Jeanne, I have come to ransom you, if you will promise never again to bear arms against us."

She answered: "In God's Name, you mock me, for I know well that you have neither the will nor the power;" this she repeated often, because the Count persisted in his statement. "I know well," she ended by saying, "that the English will do me to death, thinking after my death to gain the kingdom of France; but if they were a hundred thousand more godons than they are at present, they would not have the kingdom."

Indignant at these words, the Earl of Stafford half drew his dagger to kill her, but the Earl of Warwick withheld him.

As the Trial began, Warwick ordered his guards not to assault her, and when she fell dangerously ill he demanded that the doctors to do whatever they could to sustain her, telling them,

as the King would not for anything in the world, that she should die a natural death; she had cost too dear for that; he had bought her dear, and he did not wish her to die except by justice and the fire.

Another trouble Warwick faced were the French priests who infuriated him for in any way helping Joan during the Trial. He forbade even the Deputy Inquisitor, Jean Le Maîstre, from visiting her in the prison, since he had allowed a priest and two friars to give Joan advice there. Even Bishop Cauchon, whom Warwick trusted, if impatiently, was the object of Warwick's wrath for what he thought was undue delay in condemning her. After, when during a hearing, the friar La Pierre nudged her to make some answer, Warwick exploded,

Why didst thou touch that wicked person this morning, making so many signs? Mort Bleu! villain! if I see thee again taking trouble to deliver her and to advise her for her good, I will have thee thrown into the Seine.

For the English, Joan had inexplicably altered God's plans for a House of Lancaster of France, making her, to them, nothing less than a witch. Warwick's job was to make sure she was walked to the scaffold.

A soul in peril

On Wednesday, May 23, 1431, a week before her burning, the Rouen Trial court read to Joan the so-called "Twelve Articles" that had been approved by the University of Paris and which served as her indictment that would be rendered for judgment. The court called them, "certain points,"

We, in the presence of the aforesaid Joan, make set forth certain points, in which, according to the deliberation of the Faculty of theology and decrees of the University of Paris, the said Joan had erred and failed; and [we cause declared] to her the faults, crimes, and errors be contained in individual points, according to the same deliberation, admonishing her and causing her to be admonished to withdraw from the aforementioned faults and errors.

Read out in public by a "celebrated Doctor in Theology," an ambitious priest who was bound to the English, Pierre Maurice, he also lectured her on the "peril" she was subjecting upon her soul. Maurice, a valedictorian at the University of Paris, was a bit of a hot shot who liked to show off by speaking conversationally in Latin and reading Virgil and, ironically, Vegetius, who wrote about siegecraft, Joan's specialty. He shows himself convinced, here and elsewhere, that through logic and a gifted tongue he could correct Joan of her errors:

Do not allow yourself to be separated from Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath created you to be a sharer in His glory; do not choose the way of eternal damnation with the enemies of God, who daily set their wits to work to find means to trouble mankind, transforming themselves often, to this end, into the likeness of Our Lord, of Angels and of Saints, as is seen but too often in the lives of the Fathers and in the Scriptures. Therefore, if such things have appeared to you, do not believe them. The belief which you may have had in such illusions, put it away from you. Believe rather in the words and opinions of the University of Paris and other Doctors, who, knowing the law of God and Holy Scripture, decide that no faith should be placed in such apparitions, nor should faith be placed in any extraordinary apparitions, in any novelty which is not supported by Holy Scripture, by a sign, or by a miracle.

Maurice, we learn later, had a theory, similar to that of Joan's interrogator, Jean Beaupère, who tried to associate her Voices with fasting, that the Voices were mistaken for or sparked in her imagination by the ringing of church bells. Haughty, arrogant, and cocky as was "the venerable and discreet" Maurice, we must not fail to appreciate his and the court's self-conception and sworn duty as arbiters of heresy and shepherds of souls. We too easily read the admonitions to her as pro forma or ritualistic. Misguided as were many, and corrupt as were some, the judges took their priestly roles seriously.

Under the Doctrine of ex opere operato, a Sacrament is valid not through, as Saint Thomas Aquinas put it, "the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God." The Sacramental actions of an erroneous, or even sinfully situated, priest are valid. For the most part, the priests and bishops involved in the Trial were sincere, though severely compromised by their political and professional collusions with the English. A few, however, such as Cauchon, d'Estivet, Midi, and Loyseleur, acted on outright malicious intent, which led them to violations of "form," which, regarding a Sacrament, would invalidate it. In 1455, the examiners authorized by Pope Callixtus III reversed Joan's condemnation and excommunication as having been adjudged through ill intent and fraudulent actions, though no sanction was applied to the bad actors, who were represented by their heirs who put up no objections. As for the individual priests, having taken oaths of obedience to their superiors, we must not confuse complicity with obedience. I won't dismiss the sincerity of Maurice, though he walked the same path as Cauchon and was also well compensated for his services by the English. I find no reason that he did not believe in his cause, or that he did not mean it with such appeals to Joan with which he concluded his rather condescending lecture,

May Our Saviour Jesus Christ preserve you from all these evils!

Joan didn't bite. She affirmed all she had testified:

What I have always said in the Trial, and held, I wish still to say and maintain. If I were condemned, if I saw the fire lighted, the faggots prepared, and the executioner ready to kindle the fire, and if I myself were in the fire, I would not say otherwise, and would maintain to the death all I have said.

That was it: the Trial was then declared complete, In ipsa Causa concludiinus. Joan knew it, too. A public sentencing was set for the next day, Thursday, May 24.

Medieval heresy trials were designed to halt the spread of heresy, which was more effectively accomplished through humiliating confessions by the heretic than a burned, unrepentant corpse. The goal was that the accused accepted the charges in exchange for avoiding the fire. The disavowal, called an "abjuration," was a typical step in heresy cases. Abjuration ceremonies were aimed at the public through self-renunciation by the heresy's promoter. The key to it, then, was its public nature. Another important aspect to the abjuration was its form as a contract that if violated would result in absolute condemnation.

In a well orchestrated public humiliation of Joan, Cauchon got what he wanted, if fraudulently: her signature on an abjuration document. Two problems arose. First, the lengthy confession that Cauchon published was not the short document she had signed in public, which came in a frenzied, chaotic scene of Cauchon reading her sentence, another Bishop yelling at her to sign it or burn, and several priests telling her this or that, while the public howled. Second, and more importantly, it came at the cost of sparing her life, which would not do for the English who were already furious at Cauchon for the delays in dispatching her. Manchon described their anger:

When we reached the Court, the English, who were there to the number of about fifty, assaulted us, calling us traitors, and saying that we had mismanaged the Trial. We escaped their hands with great difficulty and fear. I believe they were angry that, at the first preaching and sentence, she had not been burnt.

The solution arrived when, back in the English men's prison, though now in a dress, Joan's male guards, or one of the wardens, threatened, attempted, or worse, to molest her. They dumped her men's garments on the floor before her, which she put on to protect herself -- her purpose for wearing them all along, which violated her abjuration. With Joan presented back in men's clothes, Cauchon exclaimed to Warwick,

She is caught this time!

By his ambitions Cauchon was compromised to the English, but he was also convinced that Joan was a sorcerer, so it was all justified, despite any evidence to the contrary. Even if plain, Cauchon's ideological blinders prevented him from recognizing anything exculpatory. Throughout the Trial his frustration grew with her every plain answer and deft retort to the best theological traps the University of Paris' finest minds could throw at her. Her defiant performance was entirely unexpected and frustrated her persecutors, who never imagined how long the Trial would go. Massieu recalled,

I remember that incomplete questions were often put to Jeanne, and many and difficult interrogations were made together; then, before she could answer one, another would put a question; so that she was displeased, saying, "Speak one after the other." I marvelled that she could so answer the subtle and captious questions put to her; no man of letters could have replied better.

One of the judges from the Rouen trial, Jean Lefevre, yet remorseless at the time of the Rehabilitation Trial, was now convinced that Joan was, at least at times, "inspired," which he meant in the sense of the Latin spiritus for "breath of God. While denying that her Voices were real, Lefevre admitted,

for the space of three weeks I believed her to be inspired.

Another, the Dominican brother Ysambard de La Pierre, who had some sympathy for Joan though not entirely, and who voted to condemn her with the rest of the judges, said,

When she spoke of the kingdom and the war, I thought she was moved by the Holy Spirit;

then qualified it with,

but when she spoke of herself she feigned many things: nevertheless, I think she should not have been condemned as a heretic.

A dove flies from Joan's mouth at the moment of her death (Panthéon)

For the Burgundian priest testifying now under French and Armagnac control, Joan was yet guilty of something. It's an instructive testimony, that of La Pierre, coming amidst a politically-charged reassessment of a politically-charged trial he had participated in twenty-four years before on behalf of the enemy. So his hedge that "when she spoke of herself" is interesting. His mixed statement shows either that he was putting her in as good a light as possible -- as regarded the King of France, who was then under a reassessment as much as was Joan, as justifying Joan meant justification for the King -- or that he truly believed God had spoken through her at least at times. La Pierre was under oath, and we must take his testimony as such, that for Joan to have responded to certain questions they way she did, she had to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The Trial record in no way proves that Joan was a liar, witch, false prophet, or, crazy. She was lucid, consistent, and amazingly steadfast. Joan was only nineteen when they submitted her to tedious examinations, brutal treatment, threats of torture, public humiliations, and, of course, the fire. Contrition at her burning was for many of the witnesses to it, not for Joan. As her Voices had promised, she was delivered from the prison, and in a martyrdom that inspired her people to complete her mission.

In the end, Bedford got his witch. To read the epithet placed upon a placard by the stake on which she was burned is to understand her effects upon the English cause, and why her burning was so needed:

Joan, who calls herself the Maid, liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, blasphemer of God; presumptuous, misbeliever in the faith of Jesus-Christ, boaster, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic.

Uninformed by faith, the condemnation seems mere hyperbolic political statement. Theologically, and according to the beliefs and intent of its authors, these are rather serious accusations that would land her by Dante's definition into at least the Eighth Circle of Hell for "sowing discord." Henry V of England considered his invasion of France and claim upon the crown divinely guided, proof of which was his victory at Agincourt in 1415. Five years later he entered Paris alongside the French King Charles VI, who had ceded the domain to Henry as his heir, to choruses of Te Deum laudamus and Benedictus qui venit, meant to signify God's imprint upon his inheritance (not unusual but no less intentional). Joan put it all to the test.

Soon after her death, the English went on the offensive, thinking the path to the throne of France now cleared of the Maid's black magic. The run would not last long. Joan's old lieutenants remained faithful to her methods and her purpose, and through a series of small but stinging bites upon the English supply lines to Paris, and in raiding towns and fortresses across Normandy, they weakened the English hold, leading to the Burgundian betrayal at the 1435 Congress of Arras, and the fall of Paris the next year.

Saving France

The order of Joan's Voices to "go to France" is understood in that Joan's hometown of Domrémy, though loyal to "France," i.e., to the Dauphin Charles, lay not within royal French lands but in the quasi-autonomous Duchy of Bar in eastern "France." The Duchy was not absorbed into France until 1766. Originating as a principality in the early Holy Roman Empire, in 1301 French King Philip IV forced the Count of Bar to accede the western part of the county, renamed, Barrois mouvant, for, literally, "moving" to France (in fealty), with the eastern portions remaining vassalages of the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1354, French King John II elevated the Barrois mouvant to a duchy when he married his daughter to the Count, and now Duke, of Bar.

Unlike most ducal fiefs, the Barrois mouvant was not fully self-governed, as the French crown exercised authority to tax within parts of it, especially during times of stress and war. In the typical feudal arrangement, the power to collect non-ecclesiastical taxes belonged solely to the local lord, though the taxes were to support a militia that was pledged to defend the higher lord. Feudal states also retained judicial independence, especially regarding military powers and actions. Feudal princes were most protective of these "rights." Indeed, otherwise loyal French lords would later go to war against Charles VII and his son, Louis XI, in order to protect their traditional autonomies. The indirect sovereignty exercised by French monarchs over Bar mouvant certainly played into the strong loyalty to France where Joan grew up, though that loyalty was not uniform across the French portion of the Duchy.

Joan was born in 1412 under the lordship of Edward III, Duke of Bar, who inherited the Duchy the year before. After the 1407 assassination of Louis of Orléans, he had allied himself with the Louis' murderer, the Duke of Burgundy. Edward, though, and unlike many on the Burgundian side, fought at Agincourt, where he was killed. His brother, Louis I, who inherited the title, was also a bishop and a cardinal who was deeply involved in French and Church politics. Louis, though, rode out the turmoil of the 1420s in Verdun, a "imperial bishopric" of the Holy Roman Emperor, a fitting position for him as hybrid bishop and prince. He remained Duc of Bar, but yielded control of Bar to his nephew, René of Anjou, a Valois descendant and brother-in-law of Charles VII. René was loyal to the Armagnac cause, but with a Burgundian father-in-law and most of the lands around the French portion of the Duchy essentially controlled by the Duke of Burgundy, he had to play both sides carefully. After Charles VII's 1429 crowning at Reims, though, René took up arms against the Burgundians, only to end up captured in 1430 and held for a year.

Joan grew up amidst these complicated politics. From her father's farmland in that portion of the Bar Mouvant that remained loyal to the Dauphin Charles, came the command of her Voices to go "to France." For Joan and for France, the "France" would take on an ideological, not merely geographic or political, meaning.

So what is "France"?

History commonly looks upon the Hundred Years War as a conflict between the English and the French. Indeed, the French called their enemy the English, and the English called their enemy the French. In more than a small way, though, the rulers were all French, which is why the English King Edward III (1327-1377) could claim the French throne. Historians correctly recognize that the Hundred Years War sparked a stronger English national identify and contributed to the ultimate shift from French to English as the ruling language. That linguistic turn, although started in Parliament under Edward III, strengthened only after English setbacks in France in the 1370-1380s, during the second of the three major phases of the Hundred Years War, further speeding with the 1399 coup that removed Richard II and his French wife by the English-speaking Lancastrians. But the national and official ruling language of England, English, only fully evolved after the final English defeat in France that turned into the proto-nationalistic War of Roses back home. So, had the English, whose ruling house yet spoke French at home when the war broke out under Edward III, won and claimed France for England, would France have become English, or England French? If the latter, I wonder that this book would be written in French.

Henry II of England's continental holdings in 1154 (in various shades of red), forming part of the "Angevin Empire" (Wikipedia)

England had become French with the William the Conqueror's invasion of 1066, but the common people of England remained English, though with Norman-French rulers who considered themselves French. France itself doesn't become "France," literally, until the French King Philip II ("Philip Augustus," ruled 1180-1223) started using the title Rex Franciae (King of the French) instead of Rex Francorum (King of the Franks). But Philip did not initially rule what we know today as modern France, for Henry II of England, in what is known as the Angevin Empire, controlled most of the western half of France, which he obtained through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the former wife of Philip's father, the French King Louis VII. However, through his continental holdings, Henry was a vassal of Louis, which Henry desperately wanted to unwind. His machinations to remove those feudal threads ended poorly for him, but were great for his third son, Richard the Lionheart, who aligned himself with Philip II, now King of France, who together forced Edward to recognize Richard as his heir. Philip's support for Richard was in exchange for fealty through Richard's lands in France. It all worked out great, with the pair of Kings fighting together in the Third Crusade. But when Richard was captured on his return from the Holy Lands, Philip turned on him and supported the younger brother John, the usurper. As ruler of Normandy and Anjou, John pledged himself through those lands to Philip. When Richard returned, he reconquered Normandy, which, after Richard's death, Philip re-reconquered from John, who went broke in his subsequent failed wars against Philip, famously causing much discontent at home, and leading to what Americans today know as the Magna Carta, though they are generally unaware of its cause in John's travails in France. At the tremendous French victory at the 1214 Battle of Bouvines, Philip secured his control of almost all of modern territorial France, leaving only Aquitaine in the southwest in English hands.

Through fiefs and alliances, Philip II's France was yet intertwined with the Anglo-Normans, through which Edward III, who invaded France in 1346, made his claims upon the French throne after a succession crisis in France arose at the death of Philip's descendant, Charles IV, whose closest heir was his nephew Edward, King of England. Rejected by the French nobles as his line wound through his mother, Edward invaded France, taking the northern city of Caen and then thoroughly humiliating the French at Crécy, largely because the French fought the same war as at Bouvines with heavy armor, while the English brought in the next thing, the longbow, which could be fired in rapid succession (unlike the French crossbows) and could pierce armor from distance. Ten years and a plague later, Edward's son, the "Black Prince," rampaged across the former English lands in southwestern France and into the Loire region, where he routed the French at Poitiers in 1356.

France after the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny which ceded to the English their holdings in France without vassalage. The Bordeaux region was especially important for English revenues. (map from wikipedia)

With the French king John II held captive after Poitiers, Edward consolidated his position by renouncing his claims on the throne of France in exchange for release of "suzerainty," or feudal obligations, of all English-held lands in France, which would have made them wholly and independently English. The deal was negotiated with John II in captivity, but the French Lords had not yet ratified the agreement, the Treaty of Brétigny, when John died. The new king, Charles V, abandoned the treaty and renewed the contest. With his brilliant commander, Bertrand du Guesclin, Charles reconquered most of France, leaving only Gascony in the southwest and Calais in the northeast in English hands. In response, Edward III then renounced his renouncement of his claim of the French throne.

Fast forward to 1380, Charles VI, "the Mad," renowned today as the crazy king who thought he was made of glass, inherited a mostly coherent France. However, weakened by bouts of insanity, the various actors pushed and pulled him, leading to the internal French Armagnac-Burgundian split, over which the English King Henry V took advantage and crippled the French army at Agincourt in 1415. Henry split northern France with the French Duke of Burgundy and orchestrated himself as regent of France and heir to Charles VI. With the French prince, the Dauphin Charles, holding only central France, and surrounded by English Gascony to the southwest, Normandy to the north, and the Burgundian lands to the east and northeast, France was the English Henry's for the taking.

Such was the situation that the English nearly resolved to English favor but for arrival of a "fiend" that bedeviled Henry V's project for France in the form of a seventeen year old girl from little Domrémy in the region of Lorraine, who in 1429 showed up to "save France." Until that time, there was no pure distinction between England and France, and, indeed, it all may well have become a single country but for Saint Joan of Arc. The creation of modern France, in that light, was her doing.

History weaves complex, indeed.

Map of English possessions in France, 1180-1429 (Wikipedia). In 1180, the Norman House of Plantagenet ruled England and western France in what was called the "Angevin Empire" that was created by Henry II's marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, consisting of England and western France from Spain to the northern coast. However, by 1204 Philip II of France had conquered most of northern France, sealing it at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214; the 1280 map depicts the extent of his kingdom under his successors, which was held until the invasion of France by Edward III of England and his son, the Black Prince, who secured Aquitaine at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Edward had planned to crown himself King of France at Reims, but his invasion of northern France failed, so the English maintained only their holds in the southwest and at Calais along the English Channel, secured by the 1360 Treaty of Brétigny. By 1375, French King Charles V had recovered most of the ceded territory (not shown in these maps). In 1415, Henry V of England invaded northern France and aligned England with the French House of Burgundy, thus holding most of northern France by 1429, the year Joan of Arc appeared to the Court of the Dauphin Charles, who had been disinherited from the crown in the 1420 Treaty of Troyes (and that handed succession of the French crown to Henry V of England). The 1429 map shows locations of Domrémy and Reims to the east of Paris, surrounded by English-Burgundian lands.

A mess only a Saint could fix

Silver coin (groat, worth 4 pence) of Henry V that reads around his image, ✠ HENRIC DI GRA REX ANG Z FRANC, Latin abbreviations for "Henry, by the grace of God, King of England and France." The coin is dated between 1413 and 1422 (wikicommons)

As did his Norman predecessors, after Henry V ascended the English throne in 1413 as King of England, he employed the title, Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, however, and very much like his great-grandfather, Edward III, he didn't just label himself Rex Franciae, he demanded its recognition. That rejected by the French, he fell back upon Edward's Treaty of Brétigny, which would restore English possessions in exchange for renunciation of the claim on French throne. That rejected, in 1415 he invaded France.

Disunited amidst their own internal conflict, the French failed to address Henry's demands cohesively. The official counteroffer to Henry was, essentially, Here, have another princess, upon which Henry doubled down on his original tender, asking for an impossible dowry of two million crowns. Ironically, in 1411, while Paris was under revolt, the Armagnacs had invited English military assistance in exchange for ratifying the Treaty of Brétigny. As the immediate crisis subsided, the Armagnacs pulled back the request, and the English forces sent by Henry IV, who was glad to avoid commitments in France, returned home. The next year the Burgundians, now themselves in need of help, made the same offer to the English. French infighting begged English intervention.

Henry V's predecessor, Henry IV, a usurper who had problems of his own back home in England, died in 1413 without settling anything regarding France. His son was coronated without controversy, and immediately restarted the Hundred Years War. At Agincourt in 1415, Henry destroyed French forces that consisted mostly of loyalists to the House of Orléans, while its French rival, the House of Burgundy, mostly sat it out, possibly by agreement with the English. Animosity continued between the French factions, further weakening the French king Charles VI, who had long suffered attacks of severe mental illness which periodically left his rule up for grabs, grabs mostly by two of his three uncles and his wife, but with downstream competition seizing all available advantage.

Born in 1368, Charles VI assumed the throne at age eleven. During his minority, France was ruled by a regency council made up of his father's brothers, but dominated by the youngest, and most ambitious of them, Philip II "the Bold," Duke of Burgundy. At twenty, in 1389, Charles VI fully assumed rule from his uncles, whom he forced out by reinstalling his father's old and loyal advisors. While his mental illness was already evident, in 1392 it flared spectacularly as he deliriously attacked his own guard, killing a knight, then chasing after his own brother, Louis, Duke of Orléans. His uncle the Duke of Burgundy stepped in again and took command of the kingship, though Charles's queen, Isabella of Bavaria (called "Isabeau"), managed to establish a new regency council under her control. Between his mental bouts, Charles exercised rule in competency, but he largely let his wife represent him to the council while the Royal court tiptoed around him, keeping him amused and distracted. Henceforth, Isabeau and the the King's younger brother, Louis II, Duke of Orléans, angled for power over Charles' uncles, especially against Philp the Bold.

The "Madness of Charles VI" (wikipedia). While on a military expedition near Le Mans in 1392, Charles VI was startled by the ringing of a lance accidentally dropped against a helmet and exclaimed, "Forward against the traitors!" and attacked his own escort.

When in control, the Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy loosely managed state affairs in conciliation, although when one was traveling the other would pull some stunt back at the court. However, when Philip the Bold died in 1404, the Duke of Orléans removed the new Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, from both the council and the Royal treasury, a bold play. Naturally, John responded three years later by murdering Louis, an act that he not only admitted but acclaimed, justifying it by removal of the excessive taxes Louis had imposed upon Paris, and as a general appeal to Parisian autonomy.

Louis of Orléans had ambitions on titles for himself, especially that of king of Hungary, plans that were defeated by the Holy Roman Emperor's son Sigismund. Wrapped up in these schemes were papal politics, as to marry the Hungarian princess Louis needed Sigismund's prior betrothal to her annulled. The Avignon Pope Clement VII seems to have floated the idea, but the Hungarian lords wouldn't have it, and in 1385 Sigismund married her and became King of Hungary. Louis' external ambitions further alienated him from the clerics at the University of Paris, which henceforth generally allied with the Burgundians and later expelled those who did not. Such is the life of the little brother of a king, only Louis' life was further complicated by a reputation for debauchery and rumors of an affair with his brother's wife, the Queen of France.

The year after the 1407 assassination, a University of Paris theologian, Jean Petit, gave a speech with Charles VI present, justifying the murder of the King's brother as legitimate tyrannicide. Despite being banned from Paris after the assassination, John the Fearless had brought an army into Paris and forced the Royal court to listen to the tirade. Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson, was appalled by Petit's speech, and issued a formal objection.As violence broke out, Charles VI attempted to assert control by appointing an army of 500 soldiers to escort rival factions with orders to defend whichever side was attacked first. Didn't work, for a few years later, in 1413, John the Fearless prompted a street takeover of Paris, called the Cabochien Revolt, during which Gerson's house was ransacked and the cleric nearly killed, certainly under orders of the Duke of Burgundy, who resented Gerson's condemnation of Petit's "verities," or propositions. Gerson fled to the vaults of Notre Dame where he remained hidden for two months. He attributed his escape to the protection of Saint Joseph, whose devotion he henceforth promoted.

The Paris rebellion lasted four months, and was put down harshly by the new Duke of Orleans, Charles, who led an army that took over the city. John the Fearless fled with his Cabochien supporters. Thus intensified the Armagnac–Burgundian civil war. Meanwhile, Charles VI's surviving uncle, John, Duke of Berry, who was the sole ballast that kept the calm, died in 1416, the year after the Battle of Agincourt, the English victory that fully split the French factions -- and in which Charles, Duke of Orleans, was captured. The English refused to ransom him. On May 29, 1418, over discontent with Armagnac rule which challenged their own authority, the "Merchants of Paris," one of the ruling bodies of Paris, and who had themselves the century before, in 1306, been targeted for imposing high rents on the people, opened the gates of Paris to an English and Burgundian army. The Armagnacs were rounded up and murdered, including the Duke of Armagnac, Bernard VII, the primary target. The Dauphin, or Prince, Charles was forced to flee that July after John the Fearless paraded into Paris with Queen Isabeau, marking their alliance. The Dauphin moved his court to Bourges, where he ran a government in exile.

While not yet officially siding with the English, the Burgundians welcomed their assistance against the Armagnacs, and otherwise accommodated their presence in northern France when convenient. However, after he had secured Paris and called himself Protector of the King of France, in the face of the growing English invasion, John the Fearless, specialist in playing off both sides, approached the Dauphin Charles to sign a reconciliation treaty. In July of 1419, the Treaty of Pouilly-le-Fort was sworn to great joy and celebrations in Paris. However, the Dauphin's side knew that John was also cutting deals with the English, so the following September of 1419, the Dauphin demanded another meeting, which was arranged to take place on a bridge -- indicating just how tense the situation had become. Likely planned in advance, the Dauphin's escorts axed to death the Duke of Burgundy-- we may note here that in 1407 Louis of Orléans was taken out with an axe.

The Conclusion of the Treaty of Troyes..From this 1788 depiction, Henry V receives Catherine of Valois, sister of the Dauphin, Charles, who was disinherited by the Treaty The artist places the Queen of France, Isabel of Bavaria, as the arbitrar of the Treaty, with her husband Charles VI "The Mad" sulking, or disinterested, to the side.

The Burgundians now under Philip III "the Good," openly aligned with the English and negotiated, along with King Charles VI, ostensibly, but with Queen Isabeau in actuality, the 1420 Treaty of Troyes. The Treaty yielded succession to the English king as heir of France, thus cutting off the Dauphin Charles. Significantly, the new Pope, Martin V, did not endorse the Treaty, remaining neutral. Among those who negotiated the treaty was the cleric Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who would later persecute Joan at her Condemnation Trial in Rouen. The Burgundian clergy, now in control of the University of Paris, was all in with Anglo-Burgundian rule. With the Duke of Orleans in captivity in England, the Dauphin cut off from the Royal Court, and the agreement ratified by the Estates-General at Paris, Henry V triumphantly arrived to Paris to sign the Treaty.

Amidst the negotiations at Troyes, the Burgundian side had revived rumors of Louis of Orléans' affair with his brother's wife, the queen Isabeau, now asserting that the Dauphin Charles was the Duke's son and not the King's, thus not the legitimate heir to the throne that was being handed over to the English. Since Charles was born in 1403, the timeline fits the possibility, although there seems not to have been any such rumors about the other children born before the Duke's death, including Catherine, born in 1401, and who would become Henry V's Queen of England, and in 1407 another son ill-born and soon dying just before Louis was murdered. Stories about the Dauphin's legitimacy took on relevancy with Treaty of Troyes, though the charge was not part of the Treaty, which otherwise condemned Charles for complicity in the murder of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Lots of theories about this one, then and now, including that when Saint Joan first met the Dauphin she privately assured him that he was the legitimate heir. It is unclear what Queen Isabeau had to say about it all, although whatever the situation with her son, she fully committed her King -- and her daughter -- to the English.

There's all kinds of messiness here, what with Charles VI bouncing between delusions and paranoias, his Bavarian wife running the Court, and rumored to have had an affair with his brother who was murdered by his uncle, whose son, in turn, was murdered by his son, the heir of France, whom his cousin claimed was actually the son of his brother and so not a legitimate heir. In 1422, the Armagnac poet Jean Chartier put it more plainly:

Thus it is to be feared that for our sins the rod of divine punishment is upon us, and that the darkness of our lives and corrupted ways blinds in us the judgment of reason, and that our selfish desires chill public affection; and thus we remain in ignorance of our fate, and to our enemies, through cowardice and failed courage, we grant them victory over us more than their prowess deserves.

Though weakened, the Armagnac loyalists nevertheless and rather defiantly supported the Dauphin and rallied around his court-in-exile at Bourges in central France where, on the death of his father, he assumed for himself and his supporters the throne of France as Charles VII. Importantly here for our story, Charles claimed the title without a sacramental coronation at Reims, as it was controlled by the Anglo-Burgundians. Meanwhile, while campaigning in Normandy in August of 1422, and planning to advance upon the Armagnacs in central France, Henry V took sick and died -- just before the death of Charles VI two months later. According to the Treaty of Troyes, Henry's infant son, Henry VI of England, now took on the title King of France.

The war escalated from there, with each side taking minor victories as the English secured their hold on northern France and, in 1423 and 1424, inflicting two overwhelming defeats of the French and their anti-English Scottish partners. At the prompting of the English, the Burgundians subsequently waged slash and burn tactics on areas of French loyalty, including upon the village of Domrémy, which was subjected to occasional raids and ransoms, a standard practice by both sides as well as by rogue warlords. By 1428, Charles' government was going broke and nowhere, the Duke of Orléans was a captive in England, and the French were demoralized and cowered by English armies. In October of that year, after taking other cities along the Loire River, the English moved upon Orléans, the key to the Dauphin's line of defense, and, more importantly, the remaining symbol of Charles VII's claims on the House of Valois.

Meanwhile, at Domrémy a thirteen year old girl, called by her family Little Joan, began to experience divine voices and visions. The Voices instructed her to lead a good Christian life and, later on, to "go to France" to save save the country and crown its King. In late 1428, her Voices became urgent, telling her that "it was necessary... to come into France" and to relieve the city of Orléans from the English siege. In February 1429, she again expressed that urgency to a local French commander. Several times before he had rudely dismissed her requests to send her to the King. This time he was convinced when she told him,

In the name of God, you are taking too long to send me; for today the noble Dauphin has had a very great loss near Orleans, and will suffer an even greater loss if you do not send me to him soon.

A family affair: Armagnacs v Burgundians

France during the mission of Jeanne d'Arc 1429-1430. French Royal lands are in orange-red and English held territory in yellow-green. The un-colored areas are independent duchies that gave their allegiance to one or the other. he Holy Roman Empire is to the east.

English claims on the throne of France during the 14th and 15th centuries, over which the Hundred Years War was fought, have as bookends notorious affairs that led to succession crises in France. Just before his death, scandal erupted in French King Philip IV's court. His daughter, Isabella of France, who was English King Edward II's wife and thus Queen of England, accused the wives of Philip's three sons, her brothers' wives that is, of adultery. One of those, Margaret of Burgundy, was married to Louis I of Navarre, who on Philip IV's death in 1314 became King Louis X of France. Margaret was by then in jail for adultery, and so inherited the title of Queen of France from prison.

In a further complication (we'll be careful with the "Joans" for a bit here), Louis X had been unable to divorce Margaret, as Pope Clement V had died that April and the Holy See remained empty for two years over disputes between the French and Italian Cardinals. In April of 1315, the imprisoned Queen Margaret either got around to dying of a bad cold from poor conditions in the prison, or was helped to not breathe any more -- cause of death disputed. Five days after Margaret's death, Louis was crowned at Reims with his new Queen who duly got pregnant. But Louis died during her fourth month, apparently after drinking too much chilled wine, or perhaps wine laced with poison, after a vigorous game of tennis, called then, jeu de paume. As there was no assurance the baby would be a boy, much less survive infancy, on his deathbed Louis declared as legitimate heir his one child from Margaret, a two-year old girl named Joan.

The French nobility wouldn't have it, especially since Joan's parentage was in question, and invoked Salic Law that barred women and their distinct lines from inheriting the throne. As such, upon her father's death, Joan inherited the line of Navarre but not that of France. The second wife's child was, after all, a boy, but he died after four days, leaving Louis' brother Philip "the Tall" to the throne. The brother ruled as Philip V from 1316 to 1322, only his wife, Joan II, Countess of Burgundy, who had also been accused by Isabella but who was cleared of the charges, issued no male heirs. So on his death the throne passed to the third brother, who became Charles IV. Upon his ascension, his wife, Blanche, was, like Margaret, in prison and inherited the throne from behind bars. Charles managed a quick annulment and married a new queen, Marie, who, after already losing two newborns, died after a carriage accident triggered her third child's premature birth. Alas, it was a boy, and he died a few hours later. Charles' third wife, another Joan, this one of Évreux, produced for him three girls, only one of whom survived childhood. So upon the death of Charles IV in 1328, there was no male heir, ending the House of Capet that had ruled the Franks and the French since 987.

_{The regions of France as defined by the major river basins (Wikipedia)}

100 Years War France 1429 before Saint Joan's arrival. (Wikipedia)

From these events arose the opportunity for Edward III of England, whose mother was the very "She-Wolf of England," Isabella of France, who had launched the series of miseries that followed her charges of adultery against her brothers' wives. With her lover, Roger Mortimer, Isabella usurped her husband, Edward II, and in 1327 placed her son on the English throne, making him, as the nephew of Charles IV through his mother, both King of England and the most direct heir of France. The French nobility again asserted Salic Law, and gave the throne to Charles' paternal cousin, Philip of Valois, who as Philip VI (1328-1350) started the dynasty of the House of Valois, to which Charles VII of the time of Joan of Arc belonged. Twelve years and many disputes later, the English King Edward III proclaimed himself King of France. Then, on July 12, 1346, he landed a fleet of almost 1,000 ships at Normandy in order to redeem the claim.

At the other and parallel end of the Hundred Years War, at the entry of Saint Joan of Arc in 1429 we have Charles VII, who was last heir standing of five older brothers, and whose legitimacy was questioned through rumors of an affair of his mother Isabeau of Bavaria with the Duke of Orléans -- the brother of his father, the French King Charles VI. Isabeau orchestrated the disinheritance of her son Charles, which, to close the bookends, gave France to the English King Henry V, the great-grandson of Edward III.

As we have seen, the disinheritance of Charles was justified in the Treaty of Troyes over his complicity in the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy -- which defies cries for reparation for the Burgundian assassination of Charles' uncle, Louis I Duke of Orléans, twelve years before. To hand France over to the English King, even if his great-great-grandmother was a French royal, and even if he had married a French princess, needed a higher justification. We find it in two places. First, Henry V had conquered much of northern France, and seemed most likely to take the rest, so if he did so without marrying into the French line there would have ended the House of Valois: self-preservation. Next, the entire scenario was fully in the interest of the Burgundian faction of France, for whom the disinheritance of the Dauphin was most convenient, as it opened many paths for Burgundian power and profit: self-interest.

It's a complicated mess that defies easy narration. But it gets really complicated when we consider that the successor to the murdered Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, was married to the Charles VII's older sister, Michelle. Moreover, an elder brother, Louis, had in 1409 had married (another) Margaret of Burgundy, the daughter of the murderer, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Meanwhile, the next in line as heir, John, had been married off to a "Low Countries" (Holland) countess, which was never intended to be a principal alliance for France as he wasn't expected to become king. But when Louis died, John was up next, which threw the alliances into a jumble. Alas, John died two years later, in 1417, two years into Henry V's invasion, leaving the future Charles VII as Dauphin. With the marriage of Charles's sister Catherine to Henry V, the English claims on the French inheritance were clear -- and clearly contested. All this thanks to the machinations of Isabella of France, deservedly called the She-Wolf of England, from a hundred years before.

Both the Armagnac and Burgundian factions were of the same House of Valois. Both sets of Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy were descendants of Philip VI, the first Valois king. In reference to the "Armagnac-Burgundian civil war," we get the term "Armagnac" from Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac (1360-1418), who was a constable for Charles VI, and who took sides with the House of Orléans upon the 1407 Burgundian murder of the Duke of Orléans. Bernard was married to the daughter of Charles VI's uncle, the Duke of Berry, and in 1410 Bernard married his own daughter to the new Count of Orléans, Charles. Bernard's loyalty to the House of Orléans was such that the faction that the Dauphin Charles later inherited was known as the "Armagnacs." An equally important an ally to the Dauphin Charles was the Duke of Bourbon, Jean I, a descendent of Charles V, placing him, as well, in the Valois line. Jean also married one of John of Berry's daughters, making him brother-in-law of Bernard VII, the Count of Armagnac.

The Burgundian side had similar origins, but was no less complicated, as the founder of the Valois House of Burgundy, Philip II, assumed the title of Burgundy from the last Capetian Duke of Burgundy, Philip of Rouvres, or Philip I, who died in 1361, at 15, childless. Ironically, the most direct inheritance for the duchy went through the sometime English ally and insidious political troublemaker, the son of Joan II (daughter of Margaret of Burgundy, one of the accused adulteresses), Charles II "the Bad" of Navarre, an ambitious, tricky character who had, among feats, murdered a Constable of France, tried to dethrone the French King John II, conspired with Edward III of England, and was a large cause of a peasant rebellion, the 1358 La Jacquerie, that broke out after Poitiers and John II's capture. When Philip of Rouvres died, Charles of Navarre claimed the Duchy of Burgundy, but the Burgundian nobility wouldn't have it, although they didn't want to support the Valois claim, either, as it would encroach upon their traditional autonomy. Nevertheless, King John II asserted control of the inheritance and named his son Duke of of Burgundy, now Philip II, as successor to Philip of Rouvres. Philip, who had earned the nickname "the Bold" for bravery at Poitiers, re-created the Duchy of Burgundy by expanding his holdings into Flanders and the Lowlands. Like many young political entities, the Burgundians of Philip and his successors aggressively expanded, with the goal to to create an independent power to rival England, France and the Holy Roman Empire.

While hardly news to your average European History -- graduate -- student, for the casual reader of history, it's complicated stuff. What's important in it all is how the marriages created alliances and plausible cross- and counter-claims to inheritances and titles useful for aggressive leaders, like the English kings Edward III and Henry V, or for defensive purposes, as with Charles VI of France. What becomes even more interesting to the story of Joan of Arc is how the next tiers of power attach themselves to events for advantage and ambition. As the Armagnac and Burgundians jostled for power, mid-level players made their choices, or had their choices made for them.

A prime actor in and beneficiary of those entanglements was the Burgundian Bishop Pierre Cauchon. Allied with the Duke of Burgundy, where went the Duke, so went the Bishop -- until Cauchon smelled greater opportunity by turning entirely to the English side. His resume includes having participated in negotiations between the French King Charles VI and the Vatican in 1407 in an attempt to end the schism between a French-supported papal claimant (the Avignon antipope) and the Pope at Rome. In 1420, after holding various positions of Dean at the University of Paris, Chaplain of the Duke of Burgundy, Archdeacon of Chartres, he was appointed Bishop of Beauvais, the position under which he would exercise jurisdiction over Joan's Condemnation Trial. That same year, Cauchon helped negotiate the Treaty of Troyes, which granted to English King Henry V his inheritance and regency over the French throne. From there, Cauchon's career took off as a primary Burgundian liaison to the English. In 1423 he became a counselor to the child king Henry VI, and escorted the boy to France in 1430, where he acted as Henry's personal counsellor at Rouen, the English administrative center in France. Cauchon held a place of honor at Henry's December, 1431 coronation at Paris King of France.

Paris, England

From the Bedford Hours, the building of Noah's Ark. Sure looks to me like someobody has come across the English Channel to save mankind... (British Musueum, BL Bedford Hours MS Additional 18850 f 15v, wikicommons)

Into the late 1420s, at the French Court of Charles VII, the Dauphin, things went from bad to worse. There were occasional and important field victories, including a relief of the English siege of Montargis in 1427, the first good news for the French in a while. However, around the time of the victory came the rise in the French court of La Trémoille, who ousted the Constable of France, Arthur de Richemont. We'll get into the complicated stories of both, but for now we want to see that their relationship blew apart in late 1427, further weakening Charles.

The Armagnacs were now divided between themselves, even to the point of open conflict between loyalists on either side of La Trémoille and de Richemont. As a result, field commanders were isolated and operating without any cohesive policy or coordination, which led to fire extinguishing and not campaigning. French captains Jean Dunois and La Hire, the heroes of Montargis, resisted the English, but as at Montargis, their victories were opportunistic.

On the English side, after Henry V's 1422 death, his brother, John, Duke of Bedford took over as regent in France for the infant King Henry VI. John enmeshed himself into France, patronizing the arts, especially manuscripts, starting a University at Caen, and most importantly marrying Anne of Burgundy, sister of the Duke of Burgundy. The English administrative center in France, though, was at Rouen, in Normandy, not at the French capital of Paris, where the political instruments of France resided, including the all-important Parlement, the University of Paris, and the Royal Treasury, all of which operated under the English rule as established in the Treaty of Troyes but which remained under Burgundian control over Paris.

Year	Battle / Event	Outcome / Notes
1420	Treaty of Troyes signed	Henry V named heir to French throne; Anglo-Burgundian alliance set; Dauphin Charles disinherited
1420	Capture of Melun	English victory; strategic town near Paris taken from Armagnacs
1421	Battle of Baugé	French victory; English commander Thomas of Clarence killed
1423	Battle of Cravant	English victory; rout of French forces
1424	Battle of Verneuil	English victory; heavy French and Scottish losses
1425	Skirmishes in Maine and Anjou	Mixed results; reorganization of French forces under de Richemont
1425	Le Mans	English victory; opens path to central France
1427	Battle of Montargis	French victory; Dunois and La Hire surprise attack ends English siege
1428	Loire campaign	English victories: English secure ports and crossings of the Loire
1428	Siege of Orléans (Oct)	Strategic siege; sets stage for Joan of Arc’s intervention
1429	Battle of the Herrings (Feb 12)	English victory; supply convoy reaches Orléans despite French ambush (Joan of Arc predicted the French defeat)

Paris, then, was both hub and friction of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. The Burgundians depended on holding Paris to make themselves useful to the English, and the English depended on the Burgundians for that hold of Paris. Nevertheless, Paris was alien to English rule, even to Henry V whose presence there was limited. The city of Paris ever presented trouble to rulers, or wannabe rulers, of France. Paris seemed to wander from this movement to that, from this power base to the other. Paris was both a microcosm of France and its petri dish. Ever bound to factions, the swaying of enthusiasm was inherent to a city up of enthusiasms, presenting itself for trial and error. Whatever it was, to rule France required ruling Paris, and neither the Burgundians nor the English could fully master it, for Paris was of the Royaume of France, and thereby not Burgundian, and only English if they could hold the claim.

Joan of Arc predicted the French would take Paris, but after her death in 1431 there was no thought of her triumphs and prophesies, including this one she gave to English and Burgundian lords from her cell in Rouen, warning them,

I know well that the English will do me to death, thinking after my death to gain the kingdom of France; but if they were a hundred thousand more godons than they are at present, they would not have the kingdom.

The Anglo-Burgundian arrangement came to a head in 1431 after the execution of Joan that June, as the English invested heavily to clear the path to the capital in order to crown the boy-king Henry VI as King of France in Paris. This they did, but the victory was pyrrhic. It's hard not to see Providence in these things. Henry VI's coronation at Paris was unimpressive and lacked public enthusiasm. And in 1433, the French Constable Arthur de Richemont turned tables on La Trémoille and expelled him from the French court, thus ending French appeasement of the Burgundians, which ultimately forced them to choose sides. Even without recognizing the hand of God, we must see that the causal lineup from Orléans to Reims, and Paris to Rouen and back to Paris runs directly through the impacts of Joan of Arc.

Shortly after Orléans, and over the objections of her fellow captains, including Jean Dunois, Joan welcomed Arthur de Richemont to the fight against the English. Over time, de Richemont maneuvered himself back into power, and, having expelled La Trémoille from the court, pressed the fight against the English, forcing and not, as La Trémoille had tried, luring the Burgundians to the table. In 1435, Paris was recovered by France, along with it the University of Paris, whose clerics had so hated Joan of Arc for having interfered with their English gravy train. And so too began the decline of the Burgundian project, which, like the English-hold on small parts of France, was eventually worn down, succumbing entirely to a more cohesive and national France that arose around its renewed center of Paris.

Back in 1429, had the English managed to push south of Orléans, they would have won the war. Defending Orléans was Jean Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans, who arrived to defend the city in October of 1428. He huddled the people inside the walls, abandoning buildings and churches outside the city boundaries. Into 1429, desperation set in, especially following the French humiliation at the Battle of the Herrings on February 12, the outcome of which Joan had prophesized. At the urging of the terrified citizens of Orléans, the Bastard proposed to yield the city to the Duke of Burgundy in exchange for its neutrality, thus sparing the people from English retribution. The Duke of Bedford wouldn't allow it, so Burgundy was forced turn down the offer.

Later that month, the Bastard received news of a mysterious "maid" who was said would rescue the city of Orléans. He was curious. He had received some reinforcements, but the situation was dire. He recalled the moment:

I was at Orleans, then besieged by the English, when the report spread that a young girl, commonly called the Maid, had just passed through Gien, going to the noble Dauphin, with the avowed intention of raising the siege of Orleans and conducting the Dauphin to Rheims for his anointing.

So he sent emissaries to the King's court to see what was going on.

Jeanne

Joan was born in January of 1412, perhaps on the 6th day, the Feast of the Epiphany. There's good reason for that association, historical or not, as "epiphany" means "manifestation." as in "showing up, coming into view." From a private letter written the month after Orléans, explaining all that had happened:

She was born in a little village called Domrémy, in the district of Bassigny, within and along the borders of the kingdom of France, along the Meuse River, near Lorraine. It is known that she comes from honest and simple parents. It was on the night of the Epiphanies, when people customarily commemorate the acts of Christ with great joy, that she enters into the light of this mortal life, and, marvelously. All the common folk of the village were moved with inestimable joy, and, unaware of the girl's birth, ran here and there seeking something new that had occurred. The hearts of some embraced new joy. What more can be said? Roosters, like heralds of new joy, broke out unheard melodies and ruffing their wings seemed to foretell for two hours the coming of this event.

So maybe the cocks didn't crow at Joan's arrival. Historians will scoff, but we learn much about the moment -- that the legend was believed as fact in Chinon in June of 1429 tells us of the great marveling at Joan's accomplishments at Orléans that May, so marvelous that portents at her birth must have occurred, to which memory easily attached itself.

Little Jeanne

Joan testified as to her name, explaining,

In my own country they call me Jeannette; since I came into France I have been called Jeanne. Of my surname I know nothing.

Jeanne, or in Middle French, Jehanne, is feminine for Jean (John), which means "God favors," and which is echoed in the name, Pucelle de Dieu ("Maid of God"), given her in 1429 by the poet Christine de Pisan, who also called her, marvelously, la Pucellette ("the little Maiden"). That name would interestingly correspond with what Joan's family called her, Jeannette, or Petit-Jean, after her uncle Jean. When she says that "since [she] came into France" she was called "Jeanne," we see how she moved from the familiar Jeanette to the more formal Jeanne.

Her "Voices" -- God's messengers -- called her simply, "Daughter of God":

Before the raising of the Siege of Orleans and every day since, when they speak to me, they call me often, "Jeanne the Maid, Daughter of God."

It was not until a century after her martyrdom that she was called La Pucelle d'Orléans ("The Maid of Orleans"), in reference to her miraculous intervention at the city, a moniker that first appeared in the 1630 biography, "Histoire de la Pucelle d'Orléans.:.

Original manuscript in Latin with name of Joan's father written in Latin as Jacobus Darc. Later, Joan corrected the Register to say his name was "Dart" (MS 1119 Folio 40r

While we know her as Joan of Arc, or in French, Jeanne d'Arc, neither she nor her family used the surname, d'Arc ("of Arc"), which was a later invention based on her father's surname, Darc. The use of the contraction d'Arc is from a later, orthographic innovation of the apostrophe introduced in French in the sixteenth century by the printer Geoffroy Tory in order to represent an elision, or the slurring of two words such as can't or in French, l'heure. For example, the last name of Joan's comrade Jean d'Aulon, or "of Aulon," would have been spelled in his time Daulon. The nineteenth century French historians who rediscovered Joan after the French Revolution applied d'Arc backwards into the original records, which causes the confusion. Nevertheless, there exist in the records several varieties of Joan's father's family name, from Darc, Dars, Dai, Day, Darx to Dart. The strongest possibility is that Joan's father's family had originated in the village Arc-en-Barrois, which would have made for the surname "Arc" or "Darc" for "from Arc."

I like to think that Darc, later, d'Arc, is the coolest sounding of the batch, so that's what stuck. Or, better, the name Arc is derived from the French for "arrow," which would be fitting for Joan's presence and effect upon her time: Arc comes of the Hebrew word we translate in Genesis 9:12 as "rainbow," as explained by Biblical scholars:

The Hebrew word קֶשֶׁת (qeshet) normally refers to a warrior’s bow. Some understand this to mean that God the warrior hangs up his battle bow at the end of the flood, indicating he is now at peace with humankind, but others question the legitimacy of this proposal.

That typology brings us back to the legend of her birth on the Epiphany, but also, with Joan's mission fulfilled after her death, we can think that she earned the sobriquet "Arc," for "arrow" or "rainbow," to mark her resultant victory for France. It's a logical use for "rainbow," as the atmospheric event typically follows a storm. God marks the Noahic covenant by putting down the weapon he had used to cleanse the world of sin. Joan was certainly the instrument through which France was saved. With God, "all things are possible." Sometimes coincidences matter.

Joan testified that girls in her village did not use their paternal surname and instead used that of the mother, and that her own mother's surname was Rommée. But we also find Isabelle as de Vouthon, de Vouthon Romée, or Romée de Vouthon. There's not a lot to Vouthon except to note that it was the name of a village within the French portion of the Duchy of Bar and was loyal to Charles VII. "Romée" is more interesting. Now, nobody in her day would have greeted her with, "Bonjour, Madame Romée." It's a sobriquet, or byname (nickname), used to indicate a quality as well as for specificity as opposed to another Isabelle. Thus it is possible that her name as "Isabelle Romée" was entered in a 1429 register at the pilgrimage destination of Le Puy, which would indicate a public or formal usage of that name by Isabelle herself in order to distinguish herself from other Isabelles. If so, she affirmed it, and so did Joan at the Trial, so we should take note. Also, in the name Rommée, or Romée, we find an interesting connection in that it derives from "Rome," indicating a pilgrimage to Rome, likely, by an ancestor, which would entitle Isabelle to use it at Puy. We might also relate it to Joan's request in the Trial of Condemnation, as did Saint Paul in appealing to Caesar, for an audience before the Pope in Rome.

Such connections may or may not mean anything, but we ought to acknowledge them.

Portrait of Jeanne

Of her physical appearance we know little, though we can infer that she was feminine yet robust, reserved yet pleasant. The most concrete description we have is from a letter of June 21, 1429 from a courtesan at Chinon who described her:

The Maid possesses a fitting, elegant grace, carries herself with vigor and boldness, speaks little and exhibits remarkable prudence in her words and speech. Her voice is feminine and slender, she eats sparingly and takes wine even more sparingly. She greatly cherishes knights and nobles; she dislikes crowds and the conversation of many people; she overflows with abundant tears; she bears a cheerful countenance; she is of such endurance of labor, and so strong in bearing and wearing arms, that for six days and nights she can remain continuously and completely armed.

Her squire and comrade Jean d'Aulon said she carried herself as,

a good Christian... of very good life and modest conversation in all and every one of her acts

and described her physically as,

a young girl, beautiful and well-formed

D'Aulon couched that description with the caveat that though he was himself "strong, young, and in his full vigor," he had no "carnal desire" for her, a line repeated by other men who were in close quarters with her. However, one of her Burgundian captors at Beaurevoir did act on his lust and "several times" tried to grab her breasts. She "repelled him with all her might," he said. While we cannot infer from these testimonies that she was especially attractive, we can say she was not unattractive. We can know, as affirmed by the ladies at Chinon and Beaurevoir, that Joan was a mature, normal female, though, as we will see, remarkably agile and strong.

A 16th century account of her arrival to Vaucouleurs calls her tall and pretty:

Soon after the siege of the English had been set before the city of Orléans, and during that siege, there came before Sir Robert de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs in Lorraine, he being then in the king’s service, a young maid of the village of the said Vaucouleurs, named Jehanne, eighteen years of age, who was tall and very beautiful, and who had all her life been a shepherdess guarding the sheep in the fields.

Baudricourt dismissed her as crazy, but he didn't dismiss her as unattractive. The Chronique de la Pucelle has Baudricourt offering her up to the boys, who, of course, were dissuaded not by anything unpleasant in her, but for her holiness:

Sir Robert considered these things to be a mockery and a joke, imagining that it was a dream or a fantasy; and he thought she might be good for his men to amuse themselves in sin; and there were some who were willing to try; but as soon as they saw her, they cooled off and felt no more desire.

Agricultural labours - Livre des profits ruraux (late 15th C), f.305 - BL Add MS 19720 (British Library)

A couple things to note here. First, Baudricourt, who lived until 1454, had a few stories to tell over the years, and these two accounts could clearly have come from him, stories he likely shared with people who were also there. We can't just discount them because they seem legendary -- there's no less proof for that than for their authenticity. More importantly, Baudricourt didn't dismiss Joan because she was a mystic, he dismissed her because she looked nothing like one: she was a young, ordinary, if pretty and robust, peasant girl -- not a mysterious figure showing signs or a stigmata, or a frail ascetic with acolytes in tow. Joan arrived before him as another peasant girl wearing a ragged red wool dress and not as a prophet in a sackcloth of goat's hair.

As for that red dress, "poor and worn," it stuck in the memories of witnesses. The reason for the recollection of the dress was in contrast to her taking men's clothing to go to war; that is, she went from simple peasant girl to warrior. Why the memory that it was red? Perhaps for specificity, and perhaps to indicate it was of typical peasant wool clothe dyed in "madder," an ancient red plant dye. Or it just stuck in their minds. We do get from the story of the dress that she was plain, not a girl who would save France. Another witness from Domrémy, one of Joan's godfathers, Jean Morel, recalled that he met her at Chalons (sur-Marne) as she headed to Reims in July of 1429, which was amidst the tremendous fame she occupied after Orléans. He testified in 1455 that she "gave him a red garment which she herself was wearing." It's an odd memory, but one the witness wanted to get on the record. We can't make much sense of it other than it was special to him, though for us it serves as an interesting bookend to the ratty red dress she gave up at Vaucouleurs, now sharing something of her glory with her godfather, if only in a new piece of red clothing she acquired after she left home.

Probably the most complete description of her appearance upon her arrival to France comes from a contemporaneous account written by the "Greffier de la Rochelle," a city clerk in the coastal town, who wrote:

On the twenty-third day of the said month of February, there came before the King our lord, who was then at Chinon, a Maiden of the age of sixteen or seventeen years, born in Vaucouleurs in the duchy of Lorraine, whose name was Jeanne and who was dressed in men's attire: that is to say, she wore a black doublet, stitched hose, a short robe of coarse dark-gray cloth, her hair round and black, and a black hat on her head; and in her company were four squires who accompanied her.

Jean de Metz, the squire who brought her to Chinon from Vaucouleurs tells us simply,

Then I gave her the dress and equipment of one of my men.

His fellow squire and escort of Joan, Bertrand de Poulengey, said,

Then Jean de Metz and I, aided by many others of Vaucouleurs, so wrought that she put off her woman's dress, which was of a red colour; we procured for her a tunic and man's dress — spurs, leggings, sword, and such-like — and a horse.

Modern reconstructed depiction of Joan of Arc’s male soldiers attire, illustrating the pourpoint, joined hose laced with points, shortened hood, or capuchon, and round haircut, as described in the Trial of Condemnation records. (By ChatGPT)

The Condemnation court tells us even more about her soldier's attire of course, though as to her physical features we get little more than the "round" cut of her hair. The concern at Rouen was proof of heresy, not to describe her looks. Nevertheless, the Seventy Articles gives us a solid account of how she dressed upon leaving Vaucouleurs, though as a composite of later additions, and not as completely cloaked and armed as claimed here:

XII. In order to better and more openly undertake her purpose, the said Jeanne asked of said captain [Baudricourt] to have made for her a man's attire with appropriate arms. This captain, with great revulsion, finally acceded to her request and had them made. After these garments and arms were fashioned, arranged, and completed, Jeanne, having rejected and abandoned all female attire, with her hair cut round like a boy's, put on a shirt, breeches, doublet, with hose joined together and fastened to the said doublet by twenty points, high-laced shoes, a short robe [surcoat] down to the knees, or so, a close-cut hood [capuchon], greaves, or tight leggings, long spurs, a sword, dagger, body armor [cuirass], lance and other arms in fashion of a man-at-arms, affirming that in this she was fulfilling the command of God, as had been revealed to her, and that she did these things on behalf of God

Joan of Arc in the "protocol of the parliament of Paris" in the journal entry dated May 10, 1429 by Clément de Fauquembergue (French National Archives, Wikicommons). The clerk had never seen her and so did not depict her "round" haircut or soldier's attire. Notably, the banner reads IHS, which is close but not her Jhesus † Maria.

No authentic images of her exist, though Joan mentioned that one painting was made of her at Arras. In response to a question from the Rouen court that was asserting her vanity, she replied without any concern for flattery,

I saw at Arras a painting in the hands of a Scot: it was like me. I was represented fully armed, presenting a letter to my King, one knee on the ground. I have never seen, nor had made, any other image or painting in my likeness.

The only surviving contemporaneous drawing of her comes from a Parisian clerk who, after the shock of Orléans, penned a drawing of her in the Parlement register, though he had not seen her. The clerk imagined a shapely girl with long braids, holding a banner and a sword. It's rather accurate in those two latter elements, though not of a girl in a dress and braids.

Whatever Joan's appearance, it was her character and force of will that stuck in people's minds, not her looks. For her, her job was to do God's will, not to impress the boys.

Jeanne La Pucelle, the Virgin

Joan called herself Pucelle, for "maid," or "maiden," to emphasize her virginity. In common usage today, the masculine puceau directly means a man who has not had sex. However, the feminine pucelle then and now means either "young girl" or "virgin," but not necessarily both, although the association may be made.

Pope Benedict XVI plainly affirms Joan's use of "Pucelle" for "virgin":

She was called by all and by herself “La pucelle” (“the Maid”), that is, virgin.

To the modern, especially academic, audience, the matter of Joan's virginity is understood as a male obsession or instrument of the patriarchy, or whatever they say about these things. One theory holds that Joan called herself "the virgin" in order to fend off the soldiers around her, while another claims she just wanted to "emphasize her unique identity." Scholars have beaten up the historical record to prove or disprove her virginity, though largely acknowledging it intact as she claimed and as observed by the women who inspected her.

Reading modern notions of sexuality into the medieval record misreads the meaning of Joan's virginity and the reactions to it by others around her. While the English soldiery called her a whore, as did several of her captors at the Trial of Condemnation at Rouen, including the lead prosecutor at the Trial, it was with the same vehemence by which her companions recognized her as pure. In ignoring the Catholic view, historians fail to understand that those around her were chastened by her example and presence, including her male compatriots who slept by her on the campaign, or who saw her breasts as she was dressed for her a wound. Our skeptical historians ridicule those testimonies, such as that from a knight who accompanied her on the dangerous journey from her home region to the Dauphin's court at Chinon,

On the way, Bertrand and I slept every night by her — Jeanne being at my side, fully dressed. She inspired me with such respect that for nothing in the world would I have dared to molest her; also, never did I feel towards her — I say it on oath — any carnal desire.

I'm not sure that these historians understand chastity beyond the notion, which they would ridicule, of consecration to God through virginity, i.e. placing God above all else, especially the reproductive act, a microcosm of creation itself. Chastity also engenders devotion in those around the chaste example, especially if that person is physically attractive. Catechism Paragraph no. 2521 reads,

Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden. It is ordered to chastity to whose sensitivity it bears witness. It guides how one looks at others and behaves toward them in conformity with the dignity of persons and their solidarity.

For those men to look upon Joan's breasts, or at her generally, without "feelings," comes of her modesty, which served as a salutary protection against lust by imparting self-examination and conscience.

To Joan's ecclesiastic backers and accusers, the matter of her virginity presented a deadly serious theological question: if she was truly an ambassador from God then she had to be a virgin; if she was not, as the English-backed court tried to prove and insinuate against, she was a witch, since a virgin, it was understood, was incorrupt of Satan's reach. As the 19th century French historian Jules Michelet's explained,

The archbishop of Embrun [Jacques Gélu], who had been consulted, pronounced similarly; supporting his opinion by showing how God had frequently revealed to virgins, for instance, to the sibyls, what he concealed from men; how the demon could not make a covenant with a virgin and recommending it to be ascertained whether Jehanne were a virgin.

The French and, later, the English-supported Burgundians, submitted her to the physical test conducted by ladies who affirmed her purity. The French clerics examined Joan's theological purity, questions to which she answered consistently, simply, and strenuously, and concluded, "The maid is of God." They found nothing impure in her, which was important for fulfillment of the legend that Joan herself invoked, such as she told her uncle, Durand Lexart, and which had become current as she made her way to meet the prince of France, the Dauphin:

Have you not heard that prophesy made that France would be lost by the means of a woman, and would be restored through a virgin from the borderlands of Lorraine?

At the Condemnation Trial under the English at Rouen, Joan was pressed several times on her virginity, despite that it had been affirmed by ladies of the Burgundian court. Her accusers wouldn't let it go, as they wanted to prove she was a witch. First, the setup,

When you promised Our Saviour to preserve your virginity, was it to Him that you spoke?

It would quite suffice that I give my promise to those who were sent by Him—that is to say, to Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

Then, from having caught on to a story about a supposed marriage when she was younger, they pressed her,

Who induced you to have cited a man of the town of Toul on the question of marriage?

I did not have him cited; it was he, on the contrary, who had me cited; and then I swore before the Judge to speak the truth. And besides, I had promised nothing to this man. From the first time I heard my Voices, I dedicated my virginity for so long as it should please God; and I was then about thirteen years of age. My Voices told me I should win my case in this town of Toul.

From "Jeanne D'Arc" by Boutet de Monvel depicting Joan in her cell threatened by the English guards.

The was case argued by Joan herself before the magistrate at Toul, and the marriage claim was dismissed. She was neither bequeathed to nor married the man, and so there was no compromise of Joan for the court at Rouen to exploit. They tired, though, as it's an odd part of her story, but one that importantly informs much about her. First, either her father, or some guy, or both, tried to marry her to him. A young girl like Joan would normally have had no say in the matter: instructed by her voices, she stood it down. Secondly, it's among or even the very first direct event upon which her voices guided her, and she believed and obeyed. Well convinced of her larger mission to "go to France," Joan wouldn't let this claim upon her get in her way. One wonders, even, why it happened, if not to disrupt her trajectory.

Getting nowhere with that topic, which had the dual purpose of accusing her of disobedience to her parents and that she was not a virgin, her persecutors at the Trial of Condemnation moved on, focusing on her use of men's clothing. But they couldn't let the matter of her virginity go. Five days later, the questions returned to,

Was it never revealed to you that if you lost your virginity, you would lose your happiness, and that your Voices would come to you no more?”

That has never been revealed to me

If you were married, do you think your Voices would come?

I do not know; I wait on Our Lord.

This line of questioning becomes rather sinister when Joan is later on tricked, compelled, rather, into wearing women's clothes in prison, which turned her into a target of molestation, or possibly rape, by her English guards. She knew the men's clothing that she insisted on wearing kept her safe from the possibility, so the Rouen Court was playing into that situation, whereby, were she raped they could say she no longer had valid visions. But she refused to answer that question ("I wait upon Our Lord") and, thankfully, while attacked at one point by the guards, it seems she was not actually violated. The clothes did become the very point upon which she was executed.

As for Joan's own view of her virginity, it was what and who she was, and she promised the Saints that she would stay chaste. Whatever the historians' argument that pucelle means maid or virgin or both, we can see from Joan's perspective that her virginity was essential to her mission both as sign of purity and, more importantly, selfless dedication to the Lord.

Saint Paul explains it in 1 Corinthians 7:34:

An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit.

Jeanne La Pucelle, the Handmaid

All this social and historical emphasis upon her virginity is overplayed and, as with the Judges at Rouen, misses the entire point.

"Maid" or "handmaid," as it could also be translated, makes a clear reference to the greatest "handmaid" of them all, Our Lady, the Holy Mother of God. Joan was devoted to Mary, and had inscribed her name atop her battle standard along with that of the Lord: "Jhesus † Maria."

For Pope Benedict, it was Joan's consecration to virginity that matters, not her virginity per se:

We know from Joan’s own words that her religious life developed as a mystical experience from the time when she was 13. Through the “voice” of St Michael the Archangel, Joan felt called by the Lord to intensify her Christian life and also to commit herself in the first person to the liberation of her people. Her immediate response, her “yes”, was her vow of virginity, with a new commitment to sacramental life and to prayer: daily participation in Mass, frequent Confession and Communion and long periods of silent prayer before the Crucified One or the image of Our Lady.

It's her "yes" that matters, not her virginity per se, despite modern obsessions with it. Indeed, Joan, like anyone in her day, would have made that connection of the word pucelle to the words of Mary herself:

Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

They would have known the passage from the Latin Vulgate with the term, ancilla, which is a female servant or slave and not necessarily a virgin:

dixit autem Maria ecce ancilla Domini

The Vulgate New Testament was translated from Greek, so we can go to the original Greek word in Luke 1:38, δούλη (doulē), which means "slave woman" or "female servant," both of which become in English, the traditional "handmaiden," the meaning of which is directly "female servant."

In her home parish, Joan would have heard the Gospel in Latin, but if her priest ever preached the passage in a homily -- a certainty -- Joan would have heard not just the direct translation into French,

Marie dit: Je suis la servante du Seigneur

but also the reference to Mary as,

la Pucelle Maria

as "Virgin Mary" as was used commonly at the time. So "pucelle" and "servant" are distinct but equally accurate references to Mary. Yet, if we think of pucelle solely as a virgin, we are missing the larger significance in the context of Luke 1:38, of Mary's fiat,

May it be done to me according to your word.

La Pucelle is a virgin -- and Joan was -- but more importantly it meant for her that she was God's loyal servant who followed the instructions of the Archangel. For Mary it was the Archangel Gabriel; for Joan it was the Archangel Michael. For both, it was the Word of God.

Jeanne, Catholic

As her confessor said, Joan was,

so poor and simple a Christian

Three Masses marked a good day for Joan. She was seen constantly in prayer, and asked for Confession whenever possible. Several witnesses at the Trial of Rehabilitation recollected seeing Joan weep while in prayer or before the Eucharist. The priest Pierre Compaing testified,

I have seen Jeanne, at the Elevation of the Host, weeping many tears

The priest Jean Massieu recalled that during her trial at Rouen, Joan dropped to the floor at the doors of a chapel when told that a consecrated Host was within:

Once, when I was conducting her before the Judges, she asked me, if there were not, on her way thither, any Chapel or Church in which was the Body of Christ. I replied, that there was a certain Chapel in the Castle. She then begged me to lead her by this Chapel, that she might do reverence to God and pray, which I willingly did, permitting her to kneel and pray before the Chapel; this she did with great devotion. The Bishop of Beauvais was much displeased at this, and forbade me in future to permit her to pray there.

and,

And, besides, as I was leading Jeanne many times from her prison to the Court, and passed before the Chapel of the Castle, at Jeanne’s request, I suffered her to make her devotions in passing; and I was often reproved by the said Benedicite, the Promoter, who said to me “Traitor! what makes thee so bold as to permit this Excommunicate to approach without permission? I will have thee put in a tower where you shall see neither sun nor moon for a month, if you do so again.

From "Jeanne D'Arc" by Boutet de Monvel depicting Joan falling to the ground upon learning that the Lord was present behind a chapel door. The Bishop of Beauvais looks upon her angrily.

Cauchon was deeply angered at her prayer before the chapel, as it was recognition of her Catholic devotion, which it was his job to deny in order to put her to death for heresy. To convict her of heresy he could not allow for her presentation as a true and faithful Catholic, which is why her worship on learning that the Lord was present in the chapel, so angered him.

Historians say Joan was merely conforming to norms of her day. It's an interesting point that, for, even if just a social expectation, Joan's Catholic devotion well-surpassed those expectations. Not only did witnesses affirm her distinct piety, like a mustard seed flowering into a tree, she brought them into it themselves. From soldiers and fellow officers, to the people of France, she affirmed the faith for many, including, most famously, one of her captains, La Hire, who became known for prayer before battle, upon which Joan had insisted.

The cleric Séguin de Séguin recalled,

When she heard any one taking in vain the Name of God, she was very angry; she held such blasphemies in horror: and Jeanne told La Hire, who used many oaths and swore by God, that he must swear no more, and that, when he wanted to swear by God, he should swear by his staff. And afterwards, indeed, when he was with her, La Hire never swore but by his staff.

For her Trial of Condemnation at Rouen, the court did its homework. They sent investigators to her hometown, who came back with stories from her village of charms and fairies, from which they inferred that Joan, too, believed in them. (Modern jurisprudence calls this "speculative" as opposed to "circumstantial" evidence.) Nothing they found stuck, and they were never able to pierce the consistent Catholic logic of her replies to their examinations. The worst they could find was from her own testimony, such as that she had kissed the feet of Saints, who, by Church dogma, were understood not to have bodies.

The accusations against Joan were designed to twist her faith around the superstitions that abounded in her hometown and in her age. We find, instead, she was remarkably unattached to folklore. Where the court accused her of holding a mandrake charm to her breast, she didn't care about mandrakes. Where the court accused her of conjuring a baby back to life, she said she merely prayed for the child along with others. Where the court asked her about a "married priest and a lost cup you were to have pointed out," she shrugged it off, saying she knew nothing of it. The world around her projected its hopes and fears upon her, but she proceeded unaffected by it.

This is a girl whose mother taught her to recite in Latin the Our Father, Ave Maria, and Credo prayers. Her religious upbringing was entirely orthodox. Her devoutness to it irrepressible. Her military standard read, "Jhesus Maria," and her final words were "Jesus" repeated as the flames consumed her and while staring at a cross she asked be held before her.

Joan was simply and thoroughly Catholic.

Did she make it all up?

Saint Joan formulated her Voices as a matter of faith. Three times she directly confessed her belief in her Voices according to her faith in God. On February 24, only a couple days into the trial she stated,

But as firmly as I believe in the Christian Faith and that God hath redeemed us from the pains of Hell, that Voice hath come to me from God and by His Command.

Asked about Saint Michael and his size and dress, on March 17 she affirmed,

I believe the deeds and words of Saint Michael, who appeared to me, as firmly as I believe that Our Saviour Jesus Christ suffered Death and Passion for us.

And on March 28 in response to a reading of her February 24 statement of faith, she re-stated,

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.

Joan's challenge to her judges was plain: these visions are as real to me as your own belief in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Her statement of faith is not syllogistic, as in if this then that; instead, she affirms certitude through an analogy to a claim that everyone in the room agreed upon: Christ died for our sins. That her visions were real does not necessarily follow, but as an attestation it yields great authenticity. She may also have been deliberately challenging her principal accuser, the Bishop Cauchon, as one of her statements of faith followed her admonition to him that in unjustly trying her he had placed himself "in great danger" before the Lord. Her accusers, of course, heard only heresy. Joan's steadfast, straightforward assertions complicated it for them.

For Catholics, private revelation does not define Church dogma -- though it can guide it. Neither does Canonization affirm the Saint's revelation, but it does, by inference, not deny it, treating it as part of the life of a holy person. That is, Catholics may fully trust Saint Joan's visions, though we don't have to obey them. However, we cannot deny her visions as unholy. The standard modern histories, though, either ignore them as irrelevant, affirm them merely as part of her inner experience but not as objectively real, or deny them, even to her.

Skeptical historians who don't outright call her a liar may seek explanations for her Voices, such as she did have spiritual experiences but they aren't explicable, as if, "The Voice comes to me from God" was complicated. One such theory holds that Joan named her Saints to oblige her interrogators, as, pressing her on her Voices, and in building a courtroom logic that baited it, she felt compelled to give them something concrete, since her own inner experiences were incomprehensible to others. It's a deceivingly useful hypothesis for a non-believer, as it accomplishes the needs of the skeptic: first, it provides the logic that her Saints were not objectively real, though perhaps were so to her; second, it explains why -- on the surface -- none of the Trial of Rehabilitation witnesses mentioned Saints Michael, Margaret and Catherine (they did); and third, why Joan didn't "name" them until pressed by the Rouen examiners on February 27 following three sessions in which she spoke only of a Voice or Voices.

On the first day of the Trial, February 21, Bishop Cauchon insisted on a blanket oath from Joan. She swore only to that excluding revelations from her Voices. In her first recorded words of the Trial, and in a direct quotation in the transcript, Joan explained,

I know not upon what you wish to question me: perhaps you may ask me of things which I ought not to tell you.

Cauchon rephrased the demand, again in a direct quotation in the transcript,

Swear to speak truth on the things which shall be asked you concerning the Faith, and of which you know.

Joan won that first battle by affirming to speak the truth though withholding certain of her revelations. From the register:

Again did We several times warn and require her to be willing, on whatsoever should touch on the Faith, to swear to speak truly. And the said Jeanne, on her knees, her two hands resting on the Missal, did swear to speak truth on that which should be asked her and which she knew in the matter of the Faith, keeping silence under the condition above stated, that is to say, neither to tell nor to reveal to any one the revelations made to her.

The next day, though, February 22, now questioned by Jean Beaupère, whose contempt for Joan rivaled that of Cauchon, she was asked about receiving Communion outside of Easter. She answered instead about her Voices. The question was,

Have you received the Sacrament of the Eucharist at any other Feast but Easter?

Joan understood that Beaupère was hinting at some kind of irregularity with the Sacrament, so she "passed" on that question. Then without prompting, she went into her Voices, which she discussed at some detail, mostly using the singular, "Voice," but speaking of "Voices," as well:

Pass that by. I was [going on] thirteen when I had a Voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time that I heard this Voice, I was very much frightened; it was mid-day, in the summer, in my father's garden. I had fasted the day before. I heard this Voice to my right, towards the Church; rarely do I hear it without its being accompanied also by a light. This light comes from the same side as the Voice. Generally it is a great light. Since I came into France I have often heard this Voice.

The third session was Saturday, February 24. After the usual opening debate with Cauchon about the nature of her oath, the interrogation was handed over to Beaupère who immediately asked,

How long is it since you have had food and drink?

He well knew what, or what little, and when or if she was fed. The question was to associate fasting with hallucinations, as he believed her Voices were "from natural causes and human intent." The idea was hardly novel. One of the doctors at Poitiers, and Joan's theological champion after Orleans, Jean Gerson, had written extensively about discretio spirituum, or "spiritual discernment," which was of great concern to the Church at the time. Gerson described a woman who had driven herself crazy with excessive fasting. We can see the general attitude exercised by Cauchon and Beaupère in another, 1424 warning from Gerson:

What if someone of the female sex were reckoned to walk in the great and marvelous things above herself to add daily vision upon vision; to report lesions of the brain through epilepsy or purification, or some kind of melancholy as a miracle. Every teaching of women, especially that expressed in solemn word or writing, is to be held suspect, unless it has been diligently examined, and much more than the teaching of men. Why? The reason is clear; because not only ordinary but also divine law forbids such things. Why? Because women are too easily seduced.

Fasting, carnal experiences, these were the tools Beaupère was using to condemn Joan as a heretic and witch.

Having started off with fasting, Beaupère tested Joan on the physicality of the Voice: did it awaken her by touching her arm? (no) was it in her room? (no, "but in the Castle"). In response, Joan declared that, as quoted above, "that Voice hath come to me from God and by His Command." Beaupère dug in on that, asking her to clarify what she meant by "from God." It was a typical prosecutorial reframing of a witness' statement, as he already knew the answer that she had been carefully walking around:

The Voice that you say appears to you, does it come directly from an Angel, or directly from God; or does it come from one of the Saints?

Consistent with the oath she made that she would withhold details about her revelations, she replied,

The Voice comes to me from God; and I do not tell you all I know about it: I have far greater fear of doing wrong in saying to you things that would displease it, than I have of answering you. As to this question, I beg you to grant me delay.

Opening the next session, the fourth now, Tuesday, February 27, and straight out of a modern courtroom drama, Beaupère asked her how she's been since he saw her the last Saturday. She replied,

You can see for yourself how I am. I am as well as can be.

Back to the prosecutorial tactic of framing the witness:

Do you fast every day this Lent?

Never missing a beat, Joan responded,

Is that in the Case?

Getting that in, she went with the question, and affirmed she was fasting for Lent. Beaupère then asked if she had heard her Voices since the last session three days before. Joan replied "Yes, truly, many times," after which Beaupère pressed her on what the Voices had said to her. Clearly dissatisfied with her response to the same question of the 24th, he asks again:

This Voice that speaks to you, is it that of an Angel, or of a Saint, or from God direct?

Let's pause here.

Unlike the question and answer flow from the session of Saturday, the 24th, the question here was not conversational. It did not progress from the logic of the exchange. Beaupère knew the basic trial strategy never to ask a question you don't already know the answer to. He went back to it because, when first asked, she didn't give the desired response. Both times he used nearly identical language. The question was delivered purposefully, with planning, and based on foreknowledge of the answer. And Joan knew he knew it, twice telling him to refer to Poitiers for what she had said there about the Saints.

The Trial court was very well prepared, having gathered as much information about her as possible, including to conduct inquiries across France and, it seems with certainty, access to the "Register" of the Poitiers Examinations, for which direct inquiries in Joan's homeland were made as well. The Poitiers Examinations were held under the authority of the French Chancellor, de Chartres, who came to resent Joan for pressing the war on the Burgundians after Charles VII's coronation at Reims. De Chartres was in constant negotiation with the Burgundians, and he celebrated Joan's capture. Aside from Joan's clear knowledge of Cauchon's access to the Poitiers Register, both occasion and motive point strongly to some type of collusion between them. De Chartres and the Grand Chamberlain, La Trémoille, were not just conciliatory, they were overly gratuitous to the Burgundians, who would have been most interested in taking -- demanding even -- a look at the Poitiers Register, perhaps as a point of negotiation. Or, perhaps, de Chartres simply offered it up. If he did share it, it would fit in with Charles VII's silence on Joan's capture. Nevertheless, had the Register damaging information about Joan, Cauchon would have used it. What it had, though, was invaluable background information, especially as to Joan's Voices.

Joan, of course, didn't know all that the Rouen Court knew, but she knew a lot of it, and she frequently anticipates their questions. She knew they knew what she said after her capture. She knew they knew the Poitiers Register, which is why she refers them to it in order to deflect questions already answered in it. She knew they investigated her past and spoke with people in France and Lorraine. Additionally, Joan knew that she was not only the object of English and Burgundian hatred, but also of their deep fascination. They all wanted to see her. Joan was well used to constant questioning, and she had long made decisions about what and what not to say to people. Inspired (indeed), or not, the prudence in her responses in the Trial is stunning.

As to the theory that Joan gave the names of the Saints in response to the repetition of this question, well, no. Joan knew both times that the question was coming, and the questioner already knew the answer, which is why the question was posed so deliberately and twice. But there's more here that a skeptic wouldn't notice. On the first day of interrogations, February 21, Joan told the court that she couldn't speak then as to the nature of her Voices, but,

Before eight days are gone, I shall know if I may reveal them to you.

Eight days? That would place her revelation of February 27 that the Voices were of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret -- on the seventh day later. That's one day before eight, and three days after the first time Beaupère asked her to identify the nature of her Voices. Skeptics will say that Joan made these types of deferrals regularly. Sure she did, but she also consistently adhered to them. It's far beyond random, and far beyond what you or I could come up with in the same circumstance. Even if we do attribute the delay to a tactic by Joan, it still shows that she didn't just make up the Saints seven days later.

Another exchange demonstrates the Court's prior knowledge of the names of her Voices. On March 12, when Joan clarified that her Voices called her "Daughter of God," it was in response to,

Did not your Voices call you "Daughter of God, daughter of the Church, great-hearted daughter"?

The question immediately followed another deferral of "within eight days" regarding any "letters" (orders) she had received from the Saints or the Archangel, so there was nothing she said that provoked it. It was another planned question based on prior intelligence. And it was of concern enough to the Court to warrant inclusion in Article XI of d'Estivet's Seventy Articles. The point was to demonstrate that her pretensions and errors, as Cauchon put it in her Sentence, "cause the faithful in Christ to stray" But where did they hear about those names given to Joan by her Voices? It was not from her, for she clarified that they called her only "Daughter of God." Wherever it came from, likely Poitiers, it shows that Joan had already shared with others the "nature" of her Voices.

While Joan's visions and prophecies confounded and, at times, entertained, the Rouen court simply could not ignore the problem of their effects: this girl had routed the English and shaken the certainty of their cause, to which the court was firmly attached and in defense of which they attacked her obsessively in the Trial and with every ecclesiastic mind they could find. Certain of those obsessions occupied their attentions, especially her encounters with Angels and Saints, which was the crux of the entire matter. She answered or refused to answer every question plainly, neither affirming nor denying the underlying charges against her, which is why after her death Cauchon fabricated the words he needed from her but had not gotten, that she had made it all up. It's also why Beaupère 's pet theory of "natural" causes of her Voices wasn't sufficient to condemn her. She was killed under the accusation that the Voices were demonic.

All along, Joan affirmed and variously described her Voices and their origins. For a believer, what an an opportunity to learn about the experiences of a Saint! If we listen to her, Joan gives us a unique view into the experiences of an actual prophet.

Spiritual or material?

The entire Condemnation case against Joan rose or fell upon the validity, meaning, and source of her Voices. Consequently we get to hear a lot about them. Where Beaupère thought Joan was making it up, and Cauchon considered them diabolic, both went after their their physical form to discredit them and her. To the latter, as Saint Thomas put it, a spirit may be "of the saints or of the damned" and that there are both "good and wicked angels."

On March 1, now over a week into what was expected to be a quick and easy affair, after Joan revealed her prophesy of "before seven years" and how Saints Catherine and Margaret had assured her about the safety of the people of Compiègne, whom she was defending when captured, Cauchon moved the conversation back to the Saints and the Archangel, now introducing to the Trial the first mention of another Angel, Saint Gabriel:

Was Saint Gabriel with Saint Michael when he came to you?

I do not remember.

Since last Tuesday, have you had any converse with Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?

Yes, but I do not know at what time.

What day?

Yesterday and to-day; there is never a day that I do not hear them.

Do you always see them in the same dress?

The push on their clothing fits in to the attempt to characterize her visions as demonic, as garments might suggest a carnal and not spiritual experience:

I see them always under the same form, and their heads are richly crowned. I do not speak of the rest of their clothing: I know nothing of their dresses.

The crowns caused no objection, which description of their entire "form" would. Cauchon, though, is tricky. The transcript reads directly,

Asked how she knows that the thing appearing to her is male or female...

His use of the term "thing" is deliberate, as the Church held that a true vision would be of a non-corporeal spirit and not of physical bodies, or "things," as he carefully worded it. The question about their sex was to get Joan to admit to seeing a full body, opening her up to the accusation of having had carnal and thus demonic visions. Church doctrine, then and now, 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 was thought to be non-corporeal, as well as that from an Angel. In this light we can see the purpose of the questions about the particulars of Joan's visitors, their age, 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 ambiguous 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 Summa Theologiae:

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.

and,

Nevertheless, according to the disposition of Divine providence separated souls sometimes come forth from their abode and appear to men, as Augustine... relates of the martyr Felix who appeared visibly to the people of Nola when they were besieged by the barbarians.

Secular historians don't care about all that, so they assume the implicit arguments in the Rouen court's questions to discredit Joan's Voices, forgetting or ignoring the nuance and theological integrity in her descriptions. It becomes for these skeptics just more evidence that Joan fed the judges with imagined details to placate them or throw them off, or that she named and described the Saints to order translate her mystical experiences into concrete, human terms. It's unclear to me what these historians would have her say instead, because if she was making it up, it merely got herself into more trouble, to death, in fact. Regardless, these readings ignore the record. Joan was most aware that the court objected to her descriptions and used them against her. To the question if the "objects" were male or female, she replied,

I know well enough. I recognize them by their voices, as they revealed themselves to me; I know nothing but by the revelation and order of God.

Cauchon caught the distinction, as Joan did not buy into the premise that she could see their whole bodies and by that know their sex. He continued,

What part of their heads do you see?

The face.

These saints who shew themselves to you, have they any hair?

It is well to know they have.

Is there anything between their crowns and their hair?

No.

Is their hair long and hanging down?

I know nothing about it. I do not know if they have arms or other members. They speak very well and in very good language; I hear them very well.

How do they speak if they have no members?

I refer me to God. The voice is beautiful, sweet, and low; it speaks in the French tongue.

Does not Saint Margaret speak English?

Why should she speak English, when she is not on the English side?

Usually, we can only infer the reactions of Joan's interrogators, so the transcript often slides from her mic-drops into the next question. In this case, Cauchon moved on to a clearly planned question about the Saint's jewelry, and, by the way, Joan, what about yours? He asked, "Have you any rings yourself?" Joan looked directly at Cauchon, as explicitly noted in the transcript, and says,

You have one of mine; give it back to me. The Burgundians have another of them. I pray you, if you have my ring, shew it to me.

Cauchon deferred to the one the Burgundians took, asking who gave it to her:

My father or my mother. I think the Names "Jhesus Maria" are engraved on it. I do not know who had them written there; there is not, I should say, any stone in the ring; it was given to me at Domremy. It was mv brother who gave me the other — the one you have. I charge you to give it to the Church. I never cured any one with any of my rings.

The court constantly reoriented her testimony and their questions towards accusations of witchcraft, such as this regarding her rings, which Joan's demand to see the ring preempted, as Cauchon was aiming to show her use of the the rings for magic. (She just wanted her ring back!) She was right, as Cauchon then went back to the legend of a "Fairy Tree" at her hometown and of mandrakes, a flowering taproot plant which sorcerers were supposed to have used for spells, and which were commonly kept by peasants as charms. The investigation into Joan's village discovered that mandrakes were used there, and there was enough concern about them, in general, that the apocalyptic Brother Richard had preached against them in 1429. The questions about the mandrake were preceded by an argument between Joan and Cauchon over what she could and could not say, including, as charged by Cauchon,

Have your Voices said that before three months you will be delivered from prison?

That is not in your Case. Nevertheless I do not know when I shall be delivered. But those who wish to send me out of the world may well go before me.

Cauchon really wanted to get this one in, as he clearly had heard it from Joan, either from a conversation or perhaps even a Confession which we know his spies listened in on:

Has not your counsel told you that you will be delivered from your actual prison?

Speak to me in three months, and I will answer. Moreover, ask of those present, upon oath, if this touches on the Trial.

Hilariously, or amazingly, Cauchon does as she demanded and took a vote, which, surprise, he won, and pushed her on it, asking if her Voices had "forbidden [her] to speak the truth?" Ever sensing the motive driving the question, Joan replied,

There are a number of things that do not touch on the Case. I know well that my King will regain the Kingdom of France. I know it as well as I know that you are before me, seated in judgment. I should die if this revelation did not comfort me every day.

Turning away from that loaded one, Cauchon went back to the mandrakes, this time delivered as a textbook leading question:

What have you done with your mandrake?

Joan had no counsel, so no one was there to point out that the question assumed she owned one. But no matter for Joan, who shot it down:

I never have had one. But I have heard that there is one near our home, though I have never seen it. I have heard it is a dangerous and evil thing to keep. I do not know for what it is [used].

That didn't turn out as expected, but no matter, for the mixing of questions about the Voices and the mandrake was a deliberate connection to the assumed diabolic in both. Dropping the mandrake, Cauchon moved back to the Saints:

In what likeness did Saint Michael appear to you?

Joan's response here again indicates foreknowledge of the question, for she answers with a specific detail not implied in the question:

I did not see a crown: I know nothing of his dress.

Cauchon couldn't help himself here, with another of what Anatole France calls his "petty and insidious questions":

Was he naked?

Do you think God has not wherewithal to clothe him?

Had he hair?

Why should it have been cut off? I have not seen Saint Michael since I left the Castle of Crotoy. I do not see him often. I do not know if he has hair.

Has he a balance?

I know nothing about it. It was a great joy to see him; it seemed to me, when I saw him, that I was not in mortal sin. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret were pleased from time to time to receive my confession, each in turn. If I am in mortal sin, it is without my knowing it.

Always deferring to another topic when the prior line of questioning went nowhere, and seizing on any point Joan made that could be twisted or used against her, the judges in the gallery must have sneered in glee at this one. Cauchon didn't lose the opportunity, asking,

When you confessed, did you think you were in mortal sin?

He was up against a Saint. Joan replied,

I do not know if I am in mortal sin, and I do not believe I have done its works; and, if it please God, I will never so be; nor, please God, have I ever done or ever will do deeds which burdens my soul.

Giving up, the Cauchon turned to another topic, which he would come to much obsess over, about the "sign" she said she had given the French King. On this day, March 1, she left him with an intriguing suggestion about "another, much richer" crown than the one Charles had received at the coronation ceremony at Reims. The next session, Saturday, March 3, the Bishop again led the interrogations. He started right off with her visions, noting that she had previously testified that Saint Michael "had wings" but had said nothing about the forms of Saints Catherine and Margaret:

because she had said, in previous Enquiries, that Saint Michael had wings, but had said nothing of the body and members of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. We asked her what she wished to say thereon.

The Trial register has no prior mention of the wings of St. Michael, but Joan neither denied or objected to it. She responded,

I have told you what I know; I will answer you nothing more. I saw Saint Michael and these two Saints so well that I know they are Saints of Paradise.

Did you see anything else of them but the face?

I have told you what I know; but to tell you all I know, I would rather that you made me cut my throat. All that I know touching the Trial I will tell you willingly.

Do you think that Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel have human heads?

Joan hadn't mentioned Saint Gabriel except to say she "didn't know" to the question if the Angel had appeared to her with Saint Michael. But she went with it:

I saw them with my eyes; and I believe it was they as firmly as I believe there is a God.

Do you think that God made them in the form and fashion that you saw?

Yes.

Do you think that God did from the first create them in this form and fashion?

You will have no more at present than what I have answered.

Let's note first that if Joan was feeding imagined details to indulge or mislead the court, she missed great opportunities for it here. But that's not what was going on. The point of all this focus on the clothing and bodies of the Saints was to prove heresy by her testimony to have physically interacted with angels, who were understood to be non-corporeal, whereas the demonic were corporal. Cauchon drilled down on it. As we see in the follow up question on "the body and members" of the Saints, he thought he had her on this one, as did d'Estivet, the prosecutor, who included it in the Seventy Articles:

Article XLII. Jeanne hath said and published that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret and Saint Michael have bodies — that is to say, head, eyes, face, hair, etc.; that she hath touched them with her hands; that she hath kissed them and embraced them.

Of all the excuses to excommunicate and burn her, none could justify it without condemnation of her Voices, which were the essence of the case against her. Winning battles, crowning a King, signs and prophesies, wearing men's clothing, proved nothing against her but for the Voices. The court had two ways to approach the problem: either as imagined or evil. Cauchon and d'Estivet went with the diabolic. Again, from the Seventy Articles:

Article XLIX. On the foundation of this fancy alone Jeanne hath venerated spirits of this kind, kissing the ground on the which she said they had walked, bending the knee before them, embracing them, kissing them, paying all sorts of adoration to them, giving them thanks with clasped hands, taking the greatest familiarities with them; when she did not know if they were good or evil spirits, and when, by reason oi all the circumstances revealed above, these spirits should have been rather considered by her as evil. This worship, this veneration, is idolatry: it is a compact with demons.

On April 5, the examiners submitted to the clerics and theologians at the University of Paris a draft of the Twelve Articles, which summarized, without formal judgment or sentence, and without d'Estivet's condemnatory language, the court's findings. The Doctors reviewed and returned the formal set on May 14. Article I went straight at "bodily" visions:

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.

Article XI reads:

The same woman doth say and confess that to the Voices and the Spirits now under consideration, whom she calls Michael, Gabriel, Catherine and Margaret, she doth often do reverence, uncovering, bending the knee, kissing the earth on which they walk, vowing to them her virginity, at times kissing and embracing Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret; she hath touched them with her own hands, corporeally and physically;

It all came down to the Voices.

Over time, as the French retook Paris and dissolved the marriage of the University of Paris with England, and as the French isolated the English to the edges of their shrunken southern and northern holds in Gascony and Normandy, the Rouen Trial judges had time to reflect on the meaning of Jehanne la Pucelle. The improbability of it all had to consume them, or at a minimum leave them in a state of cognitive dissonance, such as we have seen from the scribe Thomas Courcelles who at the Rehabilitation trial lied about having voted to torture her at Rouen. So it was for several of the clerics from the Rouen trial who testified twenty years later at the Trial of Rehabilitation. The reassessment of Joan embraced and celebrated not just her feats but their Divine guidance.

Not so some, including Beaupère, who commenced his testimony about what had happened at Rouen with the subject of the Voices:

With regard to the apparitions mentioned in the Trial of the said Jeanne, I held, and still hold, the opinion that they rose more from natural causes and human intent than from anything supernatural; but I would refer principally to the Process.

We'll get to Beaupère's next, bitter, words later, but what's interesting here is that of all the justifications for her condemnation, for him it was the Voices. Another, lesser player from the Rouen court, Jean Lefevre, whom the biographer Pernoud calls, "a dubious character," told the examiners essentially the same, that her Voices were not real:

Jeanne answered with great prudence the questions put to her, with the exception of the subject of her revelations from God.

Joan's execution was predetermined. Charles the VII had abandoned her, and the English would kill her no matter what went on in the Trial. It was, however, in fulfillment of what the Voices had told Joan all along. Back on that Thursday, March 1, 1431, amidst Cauchon's lengthy queries and questions about the Voices, asking if she was to be "delivered" from prison, Joan declared,

Speak to me in three months, and I will answer.

March 1, 1431. That would be precisely 90 days, three months, that is, before her actual release from prison into martyrdom on May 30, 1431.

What's in a Voice?

Jeanne d'Arc and the Archangel Michael by Eugène Thirion (1876) (wiki commons)

The difference between Joan's testimony about the Archangel and the Saints at the Trial of Condemnation and the absence of mention of them in contemporaneous documents from France at the time of her appearance at Chinon or from witnesses at the later Trial of Rehabilitation supposedly discounts the veracity of her testimony at Rouen. For example, the Poitiers Conclusions mention only that she had instructions "from God," and in the 1450s Trial of Rehabilitation the Saints go largely unmentioned outside of testimony about the Trial itself or regarding her martyrdom.

Textual evidence from the Rouen Trial itself points to the contrary.

On the second day of the Trial, February 22, 1431, Joan introduced her "Voice" in the singular, describing when she first heard it with, "I had a Voice from God." Her testimony that day continued to describe her journey to Chinon and that after a Mass along the way she heard "Voices," now using the plural,

On the way, I passed through Auxerre, where I heard Mass in the principal Church. Thenceforward I often heard my Voices.

The transcript makes clear that she was speaking of plural "Voices" as opposed to the "Voice" she had already spoken about:

and from that time she frequently heard her voices, including the one already mentioned.

The original Latin, et tunc frequenter habebat voces suas, more literally gives us, "then she frequently was having her voices," indicating an ongoing event and not that the Voices started after the Mass at Auxerre. She said it was "seven years" since "they" appeared to her, so Auxerre marked a greater frequency of their accompaniment of her not their first appearance -- which would explain why her earlier declarations state that she was "sent by God" as opposed to having been sent or counselled by the Saints and the Archangel, although, for Joan, they were all one in the same, be it a Voice, Voices, or "sent from God." It seems, though, that by the singular noun "Voice" she refers to the Archangel, and in the plural noun "Voices" to the Saints Catherine and Margaret, or to all three. On March 15, Joan clarified that distinction when questioned about how she could know the Voices were good and not evil:

Saint Michael assured me of it before the Voices came to me.

It was on that Tuesday, February 27, as discussed, that Joan revealed the names of the Saints Catherine and Margaret. She was asked,

This Voice that speaks to you, is it that of an Angel, or of a male or female Saint, or from God direct?

And, as noted, the question reveals foreknowledge of the answer, for the use of both Sancti and Sanctae, male and female, was deliberate, as the masculine Sancti, employed along with the feminine Sanctae, is not operating as a collective noun. Were the question generic, only Sancti would be used. The use of gender in the nouns, which English does not employ, shows that the interrogator Beaupère was leading her on here to name the particular Saints, which he knew were female. She gave it to him:

It is the Voice of Saint Catherine and of Saint Margaret. Their faces are adorned with beautiful crowns, very rich and precious. To tell you this I have leave from Our Lord. If you doubt this, send to Poitiers, where I was examined before.

The modern historian may be bewildered by Joan's sudden introduction of Saints Catherine and Margaret; the court was not. Well briefed by their spies and investigations in France -- and with access to the Poitiers Register, as trial transcript makes clear, they already knew about Joan's Saints and wanted her to affirm them for the record. The follow up question displays no incredulity as to their identity:

How do you know if these were the two Saints? How do you distinguish one from the other?

Joan confirms "it is they," and then explains,

By the greeting they give me. It is now seven years since they took me under their guidance. I know who these saints are because they told me their names.

Beaupère presses her as to how she tells the two Saints apart, how old they are, and how they are dressed, until Joan put a pause on the topic:

I will tell you no more just now; I have not permission to reveal it. If you do not believe me, go to Poitiers. There are some revelations which come to the King of France, and not to you, who are questioning me.

Then a series of questions on Saints Catherine and Margaret, which to each Joan replies, "I have not leave to say":

Are they of the same age?

Do they speak at the same time, or one after the other?

Which of them appeared to you first?

Then she affirms for us that Beaupère already knew the answers to these questions:

I did not distinguish them at first. I knew well enough once, but I have forgotten. If I had leave, I would tell you willingly: it is written in the Register at Poitiers.

Joan frequently referred back to the Poitiers' Register. This day she even begged the court to get a copy, telling Beaupère,

I wish you could get a copy of this book at Poitiers, if it please God.

Her statement here is declaratory, not imperative: just go look at the book! That is, it is a statement of fact: it's in the book! Not only does the Trial transcript reveal Rouen court had access to the Register, it adopts the condemnation of Joan issued by the Register's caretaker, Regnault de Chartres, that Joan had,

given herself in pride, and for the rich garments she had taken to wearing

Following this angle, Cauchon's court was eager to show that Joan had profited from her fame, such as questions about who paid for her horses and armor, and,

Had you any other riches from your King besides these horses? .... Had you no treasure?

Several of d'Estivet's Seventy Articles include the charge of pride, vanity and display. Again, it's smoke, not fire, but the language that de Chartres put out publicly was certainly picked up by the Burgundian Trial court, and, just as likely in private conversation between them. Adding those accusations to suggestions of demonic visions, we see clearly the logic of the prosecution that she was demonic or demonically possessed as evidenced by her pride, her bodily visions, and her focus on crowns and jewels of her angelic visitors.

Taken with the near certainty that Cauchon had access to the Register at Poitiers, or to someone who was there or who was still in possession of it, then we know, as Joan affirmed, that Cauchon and his team already knew about Saints Catherine and Margaret. Thus the court knew that for Joan "Voice" meant Saint Michael and the "Voices" were Saints Catherine and Margaret, and the she referenced them individually or collectively as "from God." The examiners themselves mix up the references, asking Joan, for example,

What sign do you give that you have this revelation from God, and that it is Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret that talk with you?

and on March 15,

Have you had permission from God or your Voices ...?

When Joan opened her testimony on February 21, speaking of,

revelations which have come to me from God

she plainly meant her Voices, which is for her, one in the same as "from God" himself. There is no inconsistency between her admission of the names of the Saints at Rouen and the absence of references to them elsewhere. In a discussion in the Trial on March 12 about events when she was young, the examiner, de La Fontaine, asked if she had spoken of them to a priest:

As to your visions, did you speak of them to your Curé or to any other Churchman?

She had told the Court that on her arrival to Vaucouleurs and Chinon, she did not speak of the origin of the Voices to anyone except Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs and to the Dauphin at Chinon. However, we know from the Rehabilitation testimony that she spoke to others at Vaucouleurs about being sent by God, so her response is clearly as to the nature of her Voices, and not to her Voices generally:

No; only to Robert de Baudricourt and to my King. It was not my Voices who compelled me to keep them secret; but I feared to reveal them, in dread that the Burgundians might put some hindrance in the way of my journey; and, in particular, I was afraid that my father would hinder it.

It's an interesting note, "in dread" of Burgundian "hindrance" should they all know about the Saints, as it shows that Joan knew the distinct advantages of speaking only about being "sent by God" and not complicating things with other details. It explains why Rehabilitation Trial memories of her departure to and arrival in France recall her stating that she was sent by God without mention of the Saints. Testimony consistently mentions that she spoke of a "Voice" coming from the "King of Heaven," such as the Squire Bertrand de Poulengey who recollected her having said to Baudricourt,

"But who is this Lord of whom you speak?" asked Robert of her. "The King of Heaven," she replied.

As the Rouen court understood, and as was consistent with Church teachings that a Divine visitor is of God in whatever form, speaking of God, a Voice, or the Saints specifically, is a distinction without a difference. Frankly, it makes sense that in France she didn't discuss the Saints, as she had work to do, and didn't have time, oh, like she did while stuck in a prison at Rouen, to debate the theology of supernatural apparitions. It would also make sense, though, that she did discuss the Archangel and the Saints at the Poitiers Examinations, which took place after she spoke with the King and in which she had to fully justify herself.

Next, Joan's testimony at Rouen about Saints Catherine and Margaret is extensive and detailed, and not just regarding questions about their physical appearance. She relates exchanges with them going back to her early Voices at Domrémy, and on through her military campaigns and capture at Compiègne and subsequent imprisonments. She relates in perfect detail the events, mentioning them specifically and not as an aside or courtroom divergence, as historians suggest. In history, the absence of evidence is not proof something didn't happen; so we go with what we have, in this case, her plain testimony that she had spoken of the Archangel and the Saints at to the Captain, the King, and, most assuredly, at Poitiers.

From her testimony at Rouen, we learn much about her relationship with the Saints, and not just their interactions of guiding, consoling, and redirecting her. After being threatened with torture, Joan turned to them:

I asked counsel of my Voices if I ought to submit to the Church, because the Clergy were pressing me hard to submit, and they said to me: "If thou willest that God should come to thy help, wait on Him for all thy doings." I know that Our Lord hath always been the Master of all my doings, and that the Devil hath never had power over them. I asked of my Voices if I should be burned, and my Voices answered me: "Wait on Our Lord, He will help thee."

Joan knew full well the consequences of condemnation for heresy, so the stake was on her mind, likely throughout the ordeal, starting with her capture (which is why she jumped from the tower). She knew full well what it meant to recant her Abjuration, upon which she declared that the Saints had admonished her at God's order. She was asked,

Do you believe that your Voices are Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret?

For Joan, the clearing of the mind came not from the scaffold, but from denying her own Voices. Knowing it was her martyrdom, she declared,

Yes, I believe it, and that they come from God.

Naming the Saints

Historian Karen Sullivan holds that as the Rouen court shaped Joan's testimony she "begins to experience her voices as these saints," marking the "potential of an interrogation to create the very truth that it is purporting to represent." While misreading both the Rouen court's motives and Joan's own testimony about her Voices and what they allowed her to say, Sullivan does correctly point to Joan's difficulties expressing her spiritual experiences to others. For example, to emphasize the reality of her Voices, Joan told the court,

I saw them with my bodily eyes as well as I see you; when they went from me, I wept. I should have liked to be taken away with them.

Joan described not just her sensory perceptions of them ("with my bodily eyes"), but the physicality of the Saints and Angels themselves, usually just their faces, but also a full physical presence. Taken literally, it seems rather unbelievable, so historians fall back upon the theory that it was real to her, but not objectively real, or that she was speaking metaphorically of herself as the Sign or Angel that she said the King and others saw. Obviously Joan's sense of spiritual externality wasn't shared by those around her, much less by our historian friends. Sullivan, though, goes further, to the point of denying the reality of Joan's Voices even to her, saying that Joan made them up to satisfy the questions posed to her. The argument boils down to saying that Joan was a victim of gaslighting by the court.

The title of Sullivan's essay, "'I do not name to you the Voice of Saint Michael'," is drawn from Joan's statement on February 27 after she first revealed the identity of her "Voice," saying:

It is the Voice of Saint Catherine and of Saint Margaret.

The questioner, Beaupère, then quizzed her on how she could tell them apart and which appeared first, to which Joan tells him to "send to Poitiers, where I was examined before." Beaupère insisted, "How do you distinguish them?" and following up her reply with, "Are they of the same age?", "Do they speak at the same time, or one after the other?" then "Which of them appeared to you first?" He's quite good at this, Beaupère, but Joan ever reworked his traps. She replied,

I did not distinguish them at first. I knew well enough once, but I have forgotten. If I had leave, I would tell you willingly: it is written in the Register at Poitiers. I have also received comfort from Saint Michael.

Beaupère, who, as we have seen, already knew about all the Saints, went right along with Joan, asking,

Is it a long time since you first heard the voice of Saint Michael?

A first problem with Sullivan's theory is that she misreads the testimonial flow. Sullivan claims that Joan replies "ambiguously," then "utters the name of St. Michael" as the first to appear to her, as if improvising. It's simply not the case, which we see in Barrett's direct translation of the transcript:

Asked if the saints spoke at the same time, or one after another, she answered: "I have not leave to tell you; nevertheless I have always had counsel from both."

Asked which one appeared first, she answered: "I did not recognize them immediately; I knew well enough once, but I have forgotten; if I had leave I would gladly tell you. It is written down in the register at Poitiers." She added that she had received comfort from St. Michael.

Asked which of the apparitions came to her first, she answered that St. Michael came first.

Asked whether it was a long time ago that she first heard the voice of St. Michael, she answered: "I do not speak of St. Michael's voice, but of his great comfort."

Sullivan renders it,

I do not name to you the Voice of Saint Michael, but I speak of a great comfort.

Murray has,

I did not say anything to you about the voice of Saint Michael; I say I have had great comfort from him.

Murray is close, but they all three get the Latin wrong, though for different purposes. Here from the original transcript:

Ego non nomino vobis vocem de sancto Michaele; sed loquor de magna confortatione.

Let's work that literally, then contextually. Literally, it reads, as Sullivan basically has it:

I do not name for you the voice of Saint Michael; but I speak of a great comfort.

Sullivan assumes that Joan meant that she was not "naming," as in identifying, Saint Michael, and was instead making him up allegorically to express the "comfort" she received from her Vision. Sullivan writes,

It is not clear from her response whether St. Michael appeared to her first or, indeed, given that she claims only to have had comfort from him, whether he ever appeared to her.

To read it that way, Sullivan uses a comma and the coordinating conjunction "but," whereas in Latin Quicherat and in English Murray use a semicolon, the purpose of which is to juxtapose and not combine ideas. As such, sed, as Murray has it, operates as a semicolon, or, as Quicherat has it, as "instead" set apart by the semicolon. In the Latin text, sed clearly means "instead" and not the more direct contrast that "but" would indicate.

Textual flow aside, Sullivan also misreads the Latin ego nom nomino, which can be either "I do not name" or "I am not naming," The Latin doesn't distinguish between the two, though in English the present continuous in the statement is clear, rendering nomino as "mentioning" or, as I have chosen to use it, "talking about." Joan's statement best reads as,

I'm not talking about Saint Michael's voice; instead I'm speaking about a great comfort.

We get there because, as we see from the fuller context, that she had already and plainly "named" Saint Michael just beforehand. Thus she wasn't denying or diminishing or using his name allegorically. She was repeating and emphasizing her prior statement. Furthermore, the court itself understood her statement as strictly addressing the voice of Saint Michael and the "comfort" as an additional thought. The prosecutor d'Estivet included the exchange in Article X of the Seventy Articles, making no mistake about her declaration of the presence of Saint Michael:

Item [point], on Tuesday, the 27th of that month, she said that it was then about seven years since Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret first began to guide her. — Asked whether Saint Michael first appeared to her, she answered that he did, from whom she had received comfort; “I am not talking about the voice of Saint Michael, but I speak of his great comfort.”

And also in Article XLVIII, going after it again,

Did Saint Michael say to you: "I am Saint Michael"?

When the Promotor repeats accusations, he really means it, as he thinks he's on to something and wants to hit on it hard. And like our historian, he entirely misunderstands Joan.

Saint Teresa of Ávila can help us here. From her autobiography, written for her confessors,

This vision, though imaginary, I never saw with my bodily eyes, nor, indeed, any other, but only with the eyes of the soul. Those who understand these things better than I do, say that the intellectual vision is more perfect than this; and this, the imaginary vision, much more perfect than those visions which are seen by the bodily eyes. The latter kind of visions, they say, is the lowest; and it is by these that the devil can most delude us. I did not know it then; for I wished, when this grace had been granted me, that it had been so in such a way that I could see it with my bodily eyes, in order that my confessor might not say to me that I indulged in fancies.

Saint Teresa is speaking from years of contemplation and spiritual guidance. Joan had neither. But she did have, as Saint Teresa describes, the consolation of God in her Voices:

He who shall have had the true vision, coming from God, detects the false visions at once; for, though they begin with a certain sweetness and joy, the soul rejects them of itself; and the joy which Satan ministers must be, I think, very different - it shows no traces of pure and holy love; Satan very quickly betrays himself.

Joan similarly understood her Voices as from God from the "comfort" they brought her, a word she repeats often. We recall that she was frightened by her first Vision, but also that she was "consoled" by it. Of her first visits from Saint Michael, the court asked,

If the devil were to put himself in the form or likeness of an angel, how would you know if it were a good or an evil angel?

I should know quite well if it were Saint Michael or a counterfeit. The first time I was in great doubt if it were Saint Michael; and I was much afraid. I had seen him many times before I knew it was Saint Michael.

Why did you recognize him sooner that time, when you say you believed it was he, than the first time he appeared to you?

Joan answers in practically the same terms as Saint Teresa:

The first time I was a young child, and I was much afraid; afterwards, he had taught me so well, and it was so clear to me, that I believed firmly it was he.

Needless to say, Saint Joan was not a contemplative religious. She had neither awareness of nor need for definitions of higher or lower visions, of bodily versus intellectual visions. She gave the Trial court what she had -- and what she was allowed by her Voices to say. Consequently, historians like Sullivan entirely misread what Joan told Beaupère on February 24 in response to his question if the Voice had "a face and eyes?":

You shall not know yet. There is a saying among children, that "Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth."

Skeptics see it as an admission that Joan felt at liberty to lie. She said nothing of the kind. She affirmed, simply, that she would -- as she argued at the beginning of each session regarding her oath -- withhold certain truths, and rather than lie she would withhold a response ("You shall not know yet"). What she did tell the court was not shaped by what she thought they wanted to hear: she told them what she was allowed to say, as a marvelous exchange on February 27 demonstrates. When Beaupère asks,

When you saw this Voice coming to you, was there a light?

Joan now felt at liberty to describe it:

There was plenty of light everywhere, as was seemly.

But then, as noted in the transcript, she addressed Baupère personally, saying,

Not all of it comes to you.

Of course Joan was frustrated by the distrust and doubts of her interrogators, but nothing in her responses indicates they were shaped by the questioning itself. She obeyed her Voices, not the expectations of her accusers. On March 31, Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, she affirmed yet again:

I answer nothing from my own head; what I answer is by command of my Voices

There's one more problem with Sullivan's theory that Joan made up the Saints and the Archangel at the behest of, or to satisfy, the interrogation. If Sullivan is right to take the Latin literally, Ego non nomino vobis vocem de sancto Michaele, and Joan meant literally "I do not name for you the voice of Saint Michael," Sullivan gets it wrong even more. When we think of "naming" someone, we usually associate it with "identifying" a person, a way of distinguishing one from others -- and such is my reading of Ego non nomino vobis vocem in the context of Joan's statement about the consolation she felt at Saint Michael's apparition. However, taking the allegorical sense, "naming" marks the prophetic role such as that of Adam as priest who mediates between God's creation and man by "naming" the animals. Whereas, on the flip side, "naming" also relates to mankind's idolatry in building of the Tower of Babel,

and so make a name for ourselves

In this sense, if, when Joan says she will "not name" Saint Michael, she is not claiming him as of her own imagination. She is, rather, expressing that Saint Michael came to her, not she to him.

Jeanne and the Saints

Joan and her Voices, outside the Basilica of Saint Joan of Arc, Domrémy-la-Pucelle (Wikipedia FR). Click here and here for larger views of this beautiful monument.

Saint Catherine

Joan's virginity importantly signaled her connection to Saint Catherine, the virgin martyr. As did Joan, Saint Catherine precociously presented herself to a king, in Catherine's case, the Roman Emperor Maxentius, and boldly declared God's message. As did the sitting French ruler, the Dauphin, to Joan, Maxentius ordered an inquiry into Catherine by the emperor's finest theologians and philosophers. When these smartest men in the room were confounded by Catherine's theological arguments, the emperor had her imprisoned and tortured. Joan was also submitted to another but entirely antagonistic inquiry at the British-controlled French ecclesiastical Court at Rouen that condemned her but which she confounded with marvelous simplicity and irrefutable logic.

"The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Catherine of Siena" by Ambrogio Bergognone. (wikipedia). Catherine of Sienna set important precedent for Saint Joan's affirmation of the papacy at Rome.

Next for Saint Catherine, Maxentius demanded that Catherine marry him and put her to death when she refused. The parallel for Joan continues, as she was put to death after refusing a conciliatory but compromising offer from the court at Rouen, which is when she agreed to put on women's clothing, and is condemned for subsequently abandoning them for men's trousers.

If you look up Saint Catherine you will see claims that she never existed, or that the stories about her are medieval fabrications. From the Catholic perspective that's not how God works. God loves types and bookends, and Saint Joan is clearly a type of Saint Catherine: when the Dauphin ordered the Church inquiry, no one was thinking, "My, that's just what happened to Saint Catherine!" And no such thoughts arose when the court at Rouen tried to force her into admission of heresy by showing her torture machines and then tricking her into signing a document to renounce her visions and to go back to wearing women's clothes -- at which point her guards threatened to rape her. Therein is the very typology of Saint Catherine.

Saint Catherine chose Joan, not the other way around, as Joan could not have known in advance of her fulfillment as a type of Saint Catherine.

Saint Margaret

Joan was also visited by Saint Margaret, another virgin and maiden martyr who was killed after refusing to marry a Roman governor and to renounce her faith. Historians claim that Joan related herself to Saint Margaret over an incident in which Joan was accused by a man from her region of having broken a vow of marriage. Joan successfully argued that there was no such betrothal, and the accusation was dismissed. The typological connection holds here, although I don't see it as significant as in her maintenance of faith despite the betrayals she suffered from the court of Charles VII and at Rouen.

Saint Margaret's typology for Joan follows more closely Margaret's vows of virginity, her refusal to renounce her faith in a public trial, and enduring imprisonment and torture. (Oh, and Saint Margaret spent her youth as a shepherd.) Additionally, Saint Margaret was burned, and that unsuccessful, thrown into a vat of boiling water, escaping both unharmed, so her martyrdom came at beheading. Joan was burned, of course, but her heart would not, as testified by the English guard who oversaw her execution. Legend holds that while imprisoned, Saint Margaret was devoured by Satan in the form of a dragon, from which she was expelled due to the Cross she held. Here, again, is an important connection to Joan on the stake, as she asked that a cross be held before her and she repeated "Jesus" until she expired.

As with the accusation of engagement, Joan's visions started well before all these events, so she was not mimicking Saints Catherine and Margaret, and nor could she have anticipated those connections when she started out. Instead, she was, at their guidance, fulfilling their types.

Saint Michael the Archangel

La vision et l'inspiration from Jeanne D'Arc by Louis Maurice Boutet de Monve l(1895) (Wikipedi, per National Gallery of Art creative commonsa)

It's not necessary to point out that Michael the Archangel is God's chief warrior. Let us remind ourselves that Joan was a farm girl, and farm girls in the 15th century didn't lead armies.

No sooner had she cut her hair and donned trousers at the start of her mission at Vaucouleurs did Joan herself become a warrior. A farm life didn't prepare her for it, and neither did the festivals and children's games of Domrémy. No where does Joan say or even suggest that God or St. Michael endowed her with martial skills. Military prowess in all its forms was inherent to her mission, and since her mission was given her by the Archangel, we can only conclude that those skills needed to accomplish it were also given her as a grace.

Another aspect of Saint Michael is seen in his scales of judgment, as he is traditionally depicted holding. Saint Michael appears but twice in the New Testament, the Epistle of Jude and, more famously, Revelation. In Jude, the Apostle teaches,

Yet the archangel Michael, when he argued with the devil in a dispute over the body of Moses, did not venture to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”

In the Old Testament the Archangel appears as the angel "with a sword," such as in Daniel,

“Your fine lie has cost you also your head,” said Daniel; “for the angel of God waits with a sword to cut you in two so as to destroy you both.”

As the lie had already "cost" -- i.e., been judged -- the Archangel was the instrument of God's punishment, and not himself the judge. Joan consistently treats her mission as that of carrying out God's will, and not exercising herself any reason or justification for it. This is significant: she ever attributes her choices and actions to God. When accused of disobeying her parents, she replied:

If God commanded, it was right to obey.

In the slightest things, she bowed her will to that of God, even in petition. At the Rouen Trial, she was pressed about saying blasphemies, to which she replied,

No; sometimes I said: "bon gré Dieu"

meaning "by God's good will," which was Joan's way of conditionalizing insults or ill thoughts to God's will. Here we can point to Joan's statement to a friendly acquaintance in her home town whom she subjects to punishment should God will it, a story Mark Twain so enjoyed,

I knew only one Burgundian at Domremy: I should have been quite willing for them to cut off his head—always had it pleased God.

Her outburst here barely scratches her larger adherence to Saint Michael's role and example, by which Joan exercised mercy upon her enemies,

On the Sunday after the taking of the Forts of the Bridge and of Saint Loup, the English were drawn up in order of battle before the town of Orleans, at which the greater part of [our] soldiers wished to give combat, and sallied from the town. Jeanne, who was wounded, was with the soldiers, dressed in her light surcoat. She put the men in array, but forbade them to attack the English, because, she said, if it pleased God and it were His will that they wished to retire, they should be allowed to go. And at that the men-at-arms returned into Orleans.

Her numerous displays of mercy towards the enemy shocked and even revulsed her commanders, who would have otherwise slaughtered the English stragglers -- as the English would have done to them. The point is that Joan was free of vengeance, exercising God's will but not exceeding it. Were her mission but to "save France," then murdering as many English and Burgundians as possible would contribute to it.

In Article XXXV of the Seventy Articles stated,

Jeanne hath boasted and affirmed that she did know how to discern those whom God loveth and those whom He hateth.

The court then demanded,

What have you to say on this Article?

It's a core theological question: did Joan assume judgment upon her enemies?

I hold by what I have already said elsewhere of the King and the Duke d’Orléans; of the others I know not; I know well that God, for their well-being, loves my King and the Duke d’Orléans better than me. I know it by revelation.

The Archangel with the scales, from Maria zu den Ketten Church (mediawiki commons)

She would not yield to this charge. Joan stood firmly not as God's judge but as his instrument, like the Archangel Michael, for his judgment.

Joan's intersection with Saint Michael ceased upon her delivery to the English at the Battle of Compiègne and her imprisonment by the Duke of Luxembourg She told the court at Rouen,

I have not seen Saint Michael since I left the Castle of Crotoy.

With her delivery to the English, the duties of the warrior Saint Michael had ceased; however, Saints Catherine and Margaret, virgin captives and martyrs took custody over her, and guided her from there, at times reluctantly on Joan's part, to her martyrdom.

Nevertheless, Joan turned to Saint Michael just before her death, during her crisis of faith, after having signed the documents of Abjuration and then upon the stake. Her abjuration was conducted in public, in which the priest insulted her, especially after she defended the integrity of the King of France, telling her to shut up. She afterwards prayed to the Archangel, at least twice. Pierre Lebouchier, a priest, testified that after Joan was denounced in the public by Father Érard, Joan turned to the Archangel:

I was not present at the Process [trial]; but, after the preaching at Saint-Ouen, Jeanne, with her hands joined together, said in a loud voice that she submitted to the judgment of the Church, and prayed to Saint Michael that he would direct and counsel her.

He also saw her martyrdom, before which he watched,

While they were tying her to the stake she implored and specially invoked Saint Michael.

Saint Michael was not just the warrior Angel, but also Joan's protector.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel

With histories of Joan we hear less of Saint Gabriel than of the others, although she also tells of his visits to her. The Rehabilitation Trial recollections of her battle standard are ambiguous, but at the Rouen trial, Joan was clear: she had placed on it the two Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, on it to either side of the Lord who was depicted holding the world in his hands, with Jhesus Maria written to the side. The standard was of great concern to the court at Rouen, not just for what her interrogators considered its presumptuous design, but because that battle flag was a key instrument in her victories over the English and was prominently displayed at the coronation of the Charles VII as King of France. To the English partisans, the standard was demonic. The formal charges included that she had been saying about her battle flags, a ring, some linens and her sword that,

... these things were very fortunate. She made thereon many execrations and conjurations...

Joan replied,

In all I have done there was never any sorcery or evil arts. As for the good luck of my banner, I refer it to the fortune sent through it by Our Lord.

To an earlier interrogation over the banner and the Saints, Joan's responses are marvelous:

“Did the two Angels painted on your standard represent Saint Michael and Saint Gabriel?”

They were there only for the honour of Our Lord, Who was painted on the standard. I only had these two Angels represented to honour Our Lord, Who was there represented holding the world.

Were the two Angels represented on your standard those who guard the world? Why were there not more of them, seeing that you had been commanded by God to take this standard?

The standard was commanded by Our Lord, by the Voices of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, which said to me: "Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven"; and because they had said to me "Take the standard in the name of the King of Heaven," I had this figure of God and of two Angels done; I did all by their command.

Did you ask them if, by virtue of this standard, you would gain all the battles wherever you might find yourself, and if you would be victorious?

They told me to take it boldly, and that God would help me.

Which gave most help, you to your standard, or your standard to you?

The victory either to my standard or myself, it was all from Our Lord.

The hope of being victorious, was it founded on your standard or on yourself?

It was founded on Our Lord and nought else.

If any one but you had borne this standard, would he have been as fortunate as you in bearing it?

I know nothing about it: I wait on Our Lord.

If one of the people of your party had sent you his standard to carry, would you have had as much confidence in it as in that which had been sent to you by God? Even the standard of your King, if it had been sent to you, would you have had as much confidence in it as in your own?

I bore most willingly that which had been ordained for me by Our Lord; and, meanwhile, in all I waited upon Our Lord.

The exchange informed one of the Seventy Two Articles, no. LVIII, which reads,

Jeanne did cause to be painted a standard whereon are two Angels, one on each side of God holding the world in His hand, with the words “Jhésus Maria” and other designs. She said that she caused this standard to be done by the order of God, who had revealed it to her by the agency of His Angels and Saints. This standard she did place at Rheims near the Altar, during the consecration of Charles, wishing, in her pride and vain glory, that it should be peculiarly honoured. Also did she cause to be painted arms, in the which she placed two golden lilies on a field azure; between the lilies a sword argent, with a hilt and guard gilded, the point of the sword pointing upwards and surmounted with a crown, gilded. All this is display and vanity, it is not religion nor piety; to attribute such vanities to God and to the Angels, is to be wanting in respect to God and the Saints.

Murray compiled the various descriptions of the banner, and gave the following depiction:

The description of this banner varies in different authors. The following account is compiled from them. "A white banner, sprinkled with fleur-de-lys; on the one side, the figure of Our Lord in Glory, holding the world, and giving His benediction to a lily, held by one of two Angels who are kneeling on each side: the words 'Jhesus Maria' at the side; on the other side the figure of Our Lady and a shield with the arms of France supported by two Angels" (de Cagny). This banner was blessed at the Church of Saint-Sauveur at Tours (Chronique de la Pucelle and de Cagny).

In that Archangel Gabriel's scriptural role is to announce or clarify God's will and offer comfort in faith in it, Joan's design and use of the standard was by no means a vanity. With Saint Michael on one side, representing execution of God's judgment, and Saint Gabriel on the other, informing God's design, the banner was for Joan a beautiful act of Christian Hope.

According to Murray, Joan also used two "pennons," or a small banners, which are typically hung from a lance. One, purchased at Tours along with the battle standard, depicted the Annunciation, and the other was made at Poitiers, showing a white dove with a scroll in its beak that read, De par le Roy du Ciel, which means "By the King of Heaven," and which she used personally. (Note that the battle flag might be held by a page, although Joan mostly wielded it instead of a lance or sword during battle, for it was her primary instrument of war.) The Annunciation, of course, was delivered by the Archangel Gabriel, who said to Mary in Luke 1:28,

Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.

It might be a symbolic gesture towards Mary, but if we consider that Joan's Voices ordered its design, and for what purpose she used it, Gabriel's greeting to Joan becomes significant: she was chosen by God for this mission. Lastly, that the battle standard depicted the Lord "giving His benediction to a lily," which, along with the figure of Mary on the opposite side, we must consider. The significance of the lily was not just as symbol of France or the monarchy, but of the Annunciation, as Our Lady was frequently depicted with it. At the command of her Voices, Joan deliberately employed explicit connections to the Archangel Gabriel.

When on May 3 Joan was threatened by the torture machines it was Saint Gabriel who consoled her:

Last Thursday I received comfort from Saint Gabriel; I believe it was Saint Gabriel: I knew by my Voices it was he.

The theological implications therein are significant. Saint Gabriel is God's trumpet -- the announcer of God's will. The Archangel, then, was preparing her for the martyrdom to soon come. Saint Gabriel appears in the Old Testament twice, both in Daniel. Here from Daniel 8:15-17:

While I, Daniel, sought the meaning of the vision I had seen, one who looked like a man stood before me, on the Ulai I heard a human voice that cried out, “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.” When he came near where I was standing, I fell prostrate in terror. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision refers to the end time.”

I can't imagine that Joan knew this passage, as it does not appear in the modern Roman Missal and was likely not in hers. In Chapter 8, Gabriel is sent to Daniel to explain God's message -- something Joan may well have appreciated after being threatened with torture. In Daniel 9:21-23, he again appears to assure Daniel of God's purpose and support for him:

I was still praying, when the man, Gabriel, whom I had seen in vision before, came to me in flight at the time of the evening offering. He instructed me in these words: “Daniel, I have now come to give you understanding. When you began your petition, an answer was given which I have come to announce, because you are beloved. Therefore, mark the answer and understand the vision."

We can draw another connection to Daniel, again one Joan would have been unlikely to know about, in that the Book of Daniel was written under Hellenistic oppression of Antiochus IV, the Seleucid Greek king who seized power amidst a succession crisis in which he usurped the throne from the proper heir, his brother's son. Gabriel's appearance to Daniel helped the prophet to sort out the Babylonian, and subsequently Seleucid oppressions, and focus on God's will.

Joan would have been more familiar with Saint Gabriel's appearances in the New Testament in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In Luke, Gabriel brings glad tidings, not a message that they were about to be burned on the stake, as it was for Joan. Still, Zachariah, Mary, and the shepherds needed his consolation,

Do not be afraid

Joseph, also, needs the Archangels' consolation,

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid

A larger, less expected connection to the Archangel's appearance at this moment to Joan may be found in Daniel, "to give you understanding," as the Angel said to him in Chapter 9. The Archangel assured Daniel, as he did Zachariah, Mary and Joseph of God's purpose: thus he similarly gave Joan "comfort," as she testified.

Joan would even less likely have heard of the apocryphal Book of Enoch, though it has informed Catholic traditions and the role of Gabriel to petition God to judgment:

And to Gabriel said the Lord, "Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy the children of the Watchers from amongst men. Send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle, for length of days shall they not have.

The passage definitely points to the end of the Hundred Years War, which was resolved, finally, with betrayal of the English by the Burgundians. Each side used the other, which is why they both so desperately needed Joan's removal, as she exposed their tenuous relationship in face of a resurgent France that Joan had launched.

Whatever it means, Saint Gabriel's comfort for Joan is not a side-story.

Saints Charlemagne & Louis

When, just before the Battle of Orléans, Joan warned the French commander, the Bastard of Orléans, to quit futzing around and get busy so she could save France, she told him that it wasn't about her, it was about God:

This succour does not come from me, but from God Himself, Who, at the prayers of Saint Louis and Saint Charlemagne, has had compassion on the town of Orleans, and will not suffer the enemy to hold at the same time the Duke and his town!

Saints Louis and Charlemagne?

The Rouen court heard that Saint Denis was supposed to have come to her, and on March 12 asked her about him. If Joan was, in her imagination, or whatever, invoking French national protectors, Saint Denis would have been a natural, as he was a Patron Saint of both Paris and France, and Joan presented her arms at his Basilica at Saint-Denis. But no, she replied, "Not that I know." As for Saints Louis and Charlemagne, though unmentioned by Joan in the Rouen Trial, the Bastard Dunois' recollections of Joan's invocation of these two national Saints is specific.

When Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum (emperor of the Romans) in 800, he was crowning the Frankish king Charles (Carolus, Karlus) King of western Christianity, creating what would later become the Holy Roman Empire. In submitting as a vassal to the Pope, Charlemagne legitimized both his own rule and that of Roman Catholicism across his empire. Among the religious legacies of Charlemagne was the practice of the laity memorizing and reciting the Our Father prayer and the Apostle's Creed with the filioque and the traditional singing of "Noel" at coronations in honor of Charlemagne's coronation by the Pope on Christmas Day.

Saint Louis was the French King Louis IX (reigned 1226-1270). Crowned at Reims, he ruled as a devout and pious Christian to such extent that he was canonized not long after his death. Louis' reign was marked by consistent protection of the clergy and Church from secular rule and strict allegiance to the papacy. He is considered the quintessential "Christian" -- i.e., Catholic, king. As for historical context regarding Joan, in 1259 Saint Louis consolidated French rule over Normandy at the Treaty of Paris with English King Henry III. Some historians attribute Louis' concession of Duchy of Guyenne to the English under French vassalage to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, but there is no direct causality to make that connection, and, even if there was any unfinished business, Louis preferred settlement over continued war.

If Joan's mission was to save France, Philip II (reigned 1165-1223) would have been the better intercessor, not Charlemagne or his descendant St. Louis, for Charlemagne's empire extended across Germany, Louis ruled only portions of France. It was Philip who created the modern France that Joan defended. But, Philip, as they say, was no saint, so in Saints Charlemagne and Louis IX, Joan would be appealing more to a Roman Catholic France than to the territorial one. Or, in that Joan's exhortation to the Bastard was about Orléans and not France, perhaps "the prayer of St. Louis and of St. Charlemagne" was just for the city. But Orléans was the key to it all, for as went Orléans, so went France -- and, ultimately, French Catholicism.

The French King Charles V (reigned 1364-1380) who recovered much of France in the second phase of the Hundred Years War in the 1370s, promoted veneration of Charlemagne, including to dedicate a chapel to him at Saint Denis with an elaborate reliquary that treated Charlemagne like a Saint. The city of Reims maintained a cult of Charlemagne and actively supported his canonization by the antipope Paschall III in 1165. After resolving the 12th century schism of antipopes aligned with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I ("Barbarossa"), Pope Alexander III annulled the acts of the schismatic popes, which included the canonization of Charlemagne. So we can't say that it was of regional tradition or a remnant of the revoked canonization that Joan invoked, but we do know that when referring to Saints Charlemagne and Louis prior to Orléans, Joan was under the guidance of her Voices. She invoked their names for a reason.

Into France

It's not random that Joan came from without and had to "go to France" to save it. The standard historical view attributes it to a dynamic whereby she was shaped by her experiences in disputed lands which elevated her sensitivity to the plight of France and hatred of the English -- as if no one else in war-torn France was similarly affected. I prefer to see it that her hometown of Domrémy was so insignificant, so borderline, that God chose it for the source of his servant Joan, since no one would think much would ever come from Domrémy. Like from the Book of John,

But Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

When asked,

Why to you rather than to another?

Joan explained,

It has pleased God so to do by a simple maiden, in order to drive back the enemies of the King.

Joan the peasant girl

Missa Notre Dame - Kyrie. Composed c. 1365 by Guillaume de Machaut, la Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) was one of the first complete settings of the Ordinary Mass, i.e., by a single composer for use on a regular Mass, and one that Joan of Arc would have heard.

Joan was a peasant girl, but not just a peasant girl. Her father, Jacques, owned about 50 acres of land for cultivation and grazing and a house large and furnished enough to lodge visitors. He served as the village doyen, which included responsibility to announce decrees of the village council, run village watch over prisoners and over the village in general, such as to collect taxes and rents, supervise weights and measures, and oversee production of bread and wine. He was not an inconsiderable man, although he was at best a big man in a small village. Joan's mother was more formidable, coming from a modest but better off family. It was she, Isabelle Romée, who after Joan's death championed her to the Church and the French government and forced the reassessment of Joan's condemnation at Rouen.

Joan grew up with daily chores in the household, mostly spinning wool, and on the farm and village, such as to help with the harvests. She said she tended the animals when she was younger, though not much, and did not do so, she insisted at Rouen, after she reached the "years of discretion." On the second day of the Trial, after what would become the usual admonition to tell the full truth, and Joan's usual reply that she'd speak of some but not all things, Beaupère's opening question was loaded:

How old were you when you left your father's house?

An unmarried girl who left her father's house was headed to the convent or brothel. Joan ignored it and answered plainly,

On the subject of my age I cannot vouch.

The follow up question, with classic prosecutorial front-loading, reveals the intent:

In your youth, did you learn any trade?

The Latin register reads in juventute didicerit aliquam artem, literally, "in her youth did she learn any art?" As opposed to Murray's use of "trade" and Barret's "craft," artem carries the sense of "acquired knowledge," so Beaupère's artem reaches beyond an occupation or skill. However, any suggestion of harlotry, sorcery, or other forms of "art" was neutralized by Joan's honest but clever response that not only did she practice a certain art, she was better at it than anyone around:

Yes, I learnt to spin and to sew; in sewing and spinning I fear no woman in Rouen.

Joan then diverts into a set of other topics, each to knock down Beaupère's insinuations, as well as to deflect what she knew was coming her way:

For dread of the Burgundians, I left my father's house and went, to the town of Neufchâteau, in Lorraine, to the house of a woman named La Rousse, where I sojourned about fifteen days. When I was at home with my father, I employed myself with the ordinary cares of the house. I did not go to the fields with the sheep and the other animals. Every year I confessed myself to my own Curé, and, when he was prevented, to another Priest with his permission. Sometimes, also, two or three times, I confessed to the Mendicant Friars; this was at Neufchâteau. At Easter I received the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

Joan knew they'd go after her stay with "La Rousse," an innkeeper, so she got it in early, and the same regarding Confession and Communion. Beaupère followed up with a question about the Eucharist, but Joan redirected it to describe the first time she heard her "Voice." Everything Joan said in the Trial was with purpose. And she had good reason for adding to her answer here about learning "any art" with her insistence that she did not tend animals -- just as the Beaupère had a reason for going back to it two days later, with an abrupt change of topic:

Did you not take the animals to the fields?

The insistence that she was an unlearned shepherd served to portray her as ignorant and superstitious, but also deceitful and susceptible to the demonic. Article no. XXXIII of the Seventy Articles got in both sides of that design with,

Jeanne hath presumptuously and audaciously boasted, and doth still boast, of knowing the future and of having foreseen the past, of knowing things that are in the present, but hidden or unknown; all which, an attribute of the Deity, she claims for herself, a simple and ignorant creature.

The charge ties in with another about being raised not just by rural ignorants, but witches, as here from Article IV, which brings up the fuller implication of Beaupère's use of artem:

In her childhood, she was not instructed in the beliefs and principles of our Faith; but by certain old women she was initiated in the science of witchcraft, divination, superstitious doings, and magical arts. Many inhabitants of these villages have been known for all time as using these kinds of witchcraft.

The accusation, of course, ignores her own testimony during the Trial, such as that she had learned the basic Catholic prayers at home:

From my mother I learned my Pater, my Ave Maria, and my Credo. I believe I learned all this from my mother.

As for the "old women" of Domrémy who were supposed to have taught her the "magical arts," the charge was pure fabrication. Cauchon had commissioned several agents, including the notary Nicolas Bailly and another man, Gerard Petit, to inquire into Joan's background and reputation with the locals around Domrémy and Vaucouleurs. Baily couldn't get anyone to say anything bad about her. He told the Rehabilitation examiners:

As notary I was appointed by the Sieur Jean de Torcenay, Knight, then Bailly of Chaumont, by the authority of the pretended King of France and England, and, with me, the late Gerard Petit — then Provost of the said Andelot — to proceed to an enquiry on the subject of Jeanne, at that time detained in prison at Rouen, Many times, in her youth, I saw Jeanne before she left her father's house: she was a good girl, of pure life and good manners, a good Catholic who loved the Church and went often on pilgrimage to the Church of Bermont, and confessed nearly every month — as I learned from a number of the inhabitants of Domremy, whom I had to question on the subject at the time of the enquiry that I made with the Provost of Andelot. When I and the late Gerard made this enquiry, we examined twelve or fifteen witnesses. Afterwards, we certified the information before Simon de Thermes, Squire, Lieutenant of the Captain of Montclair.

On submitting his report, Bailly recalls that he was "suspected" of not submitting a false report, that is, for reporting truthfully what he heard. He said,:

[we] were suspected of not having conducted the said inquiry improperly; and when the said bailiff [of Chaumont] saw the report... he said that the said [we] commissioners were treacherous Armagnacs.

Cauchon was outraged at the exculpatory evidence and refused to pay the men for their services. That Joan was a decent, exemplary, peasant girl and Catholic -- of whom one of Cauchon's investigators said he had learned nothing he "would not willingly know of his own sister" --- was affirmed by all who knew her at Domrémy, and no one, not even a Burgundian acquaintance of hers, contradicted that general assessment. In his Rehabilitation testimony about her character, that friend, Gérardin, emphasized Joan's religiosity, twice calling her devoted:

Johanna was modest, simple, and devout. She readily went to church and to holy places; she worked, spun, mended, and did necessary household chores as daughters do. She confessed willingly because she was very devout.

This Seventy Articles business about witches and witchcraft lay in stories from Joan's hometown about the "Fairies Tree," an old, flowing beech tree that rose from the springs below Domrémy. Whether from Bailly, the notary sent to investigate her at Domrémy, the Poitiers Examinations, or from common knowledge, it was the only evidence of tangible sorcery Cauchon could find. Joan knew it would be used against her. On the third day of the Trial, Beaupère asked,

What have you to say about a certain tree which is near to your village?

She was prepared for it, and produced a lecture on the tree and its meaning -- and lack thereof. Historians latch on to her evasive answers, calling them uncertain or contrived, yet they ignore her expansive ones, as if she was speaking from different motives in each instance. In her testimony, she withheld or hinted as much as she explained, such as in this response to the question about a "certain tree":

Not far from Domremy there is a tree that they call "The Ladies’ Tree"—others call it "The Fairies’ Tree"; near by, there is a spring where people sick of the fever come to drink, as I have heard, and to seek water to restore their health. I have seen them myself come thus; but I do not know if they were healed. I have heard that the sick, once cured, come to this tree to walk about. It is a beautiful tree, a beech, from which comes the "beau may"—it belongs to the Seigneur Pierre de Bourlement, Knight. I have sometimes been to play with the young girls, to make garlands for Our Lady of Domremy. Often I have heard the old folk—they are not of my lineage—say that the fairies haunt this tree. I have also heard one of my Godmothers, named Jeanne, wife of the Maire Aubery of Domremy, say that she has seen fairies there; whether it be true, I do not know. As for me, I never saw them that I know of. If I saw them anywhere else, I do not know. I have seen the young girls putting garlands on the branches of this tree, and I myself have sometimes put them there with my companions; sometimes we took these garlands away, sometimes we left them. Ever since I knew that it was necessary for me to come into France, I have given myself up as little as possible to these games and distractions. Since I was grown up, I do not remember to have danced there. I may have danced there formerly, with the other children. I have sung there more than danced. There is also a wood called the Oak wood, which can be seen from my father’s door; it is not more than half-a-league away. I do not know, and have never heard if the fairies appear there; but my brother told me that it is said in the neighbourhood: "Jeannette received her mission at the Fairies’ Tree." It is not the case; and I told him the contrary. When I came before the King, several people asked me if there were not in my country a wood, called the Oak wood, because there were prophecies which said that from the neighbourhood of this wood would come a maid who should do marvellous things. I put no faith in that.

It's a fantastic description of life in rural medieval France, and Joan's memories of it are almost sweet, with no rancor or censure in her recollections of her youth. Her long exposition, though, was purposeful, dispelling what she knew would be used against her, especially the cause of her revelations as some magical force or place, which would be assumed as demonic. Of course the Fairies Tree was put into the Seventy Accusations. Joan wanted it on the record in her own words, including, as we see immediately following her dismissal of the stories about receiving her the prophesy at the Tree, of the arrival of "a maid" from an Oak wood, a story that ran through France upon her arrival to Chinon. By saying, "I put no faith in that," Joan was asserting that her Voices were divinely transcendent, not magical, and not the stuff of the imaginations of a simple villagers.

From the Rehabilitation Trial witnesses we hear much about Joan's piety, her church-going and social activities, the Fairies Tree, etc., because they were each asked the same set of questions regarding those topics. A different aspect of her character, however, that her contemporaries noted came without any such prompting, her kindliness and generosity. One witness heard that she told the local pastor that if she had any money she'd give it to him; another called her, simply, "charitable."

Her father's house stood on an ancient road, and received passersby frequently, for whom Joan gave up her bed, and, according to one witness from Domrémy, also for the poor. Later, during preparations for the march on Orléans, as related by her confessor Jean Pasquerel, she maintained that concern for others:

When she was in a neighbourhood where there was a Convent of Mendicant Friars, she told me to remind her of the day when the children of the poor received the Eucharist, so that she might receive it with them; and this she did often: when she confessed herself she wept.

And this on the way to battle. At the Rouen trial, Joan made a revealing off-hand comment about her concern for others. The interrogation was attempting to establish that she had deviously fooled the people into worshipping her, an accusation included in the Seventy Articles:

In what spirit did the people of your party kiss your hands and your garments?

Au contraire, as they say. She was just being kindly:

Many came to see me willingly, but they kissed my hands as little as I could help. The poor folk came to me readily, because I never did them any unkindness: on the contrary, I loved to help them.

These are the values she learned and the character she built growing up in little Domrémy. To summarize, the young Saint Joan was illiterate, unschooled in all but the lessons of farming, spinning, Church, and local lore. She enjoyed a happy childhood, played with other children, joined village festivals, attended Church regularly and joined pilgrimages. Additionally, she was compassionate and kindly. The following description of her childhood from Butler's 1894 "Lives of Saints" is apt and consistent with that record, if inaccurate about the sheep:

While the English were overrunning the north of France, their future conqueror, untutored in worldly wisdom, was peacefully tending her flock, and learning the wisdom of God at a wayside shrine.

It all changed in her twelfth year when she was visited by the Archangel Saint Michael. The other children noticed that she withdrew from their games and instead prayed constantly, urging them to go to Church. One, Mengette recalled,

She was a good girl, simple and pious — so much so that I and her companions told her she was too pious.

Another, Jean, testified,

I saw Jeannette very often. In our childhood, we often followed together her father’s plough, and we went together with the other children of the village to the meadows or pastures. Often, when we were all at play, Jeannette would retire alone to “talk with God.” I and the others laughed at her for this. She was simple and good, frequenting the Church and Holy places. Often, when she was in the fields and heard the bells ring, she would drop on her knees.

Joan's Voices would frequently accompany the ringing of the bells, and if the bells were late, she would chide the boy responsible for being inattentive. The bell-ringer, Perrin, recalled,

When I forgot to ring for Service, Jeanne scolded me, saying I had done wrong; and she promised to give me some of the wool of her flock if I would ring more diligently

Joan explained it to the Rouen court:

Ever since I knew that it was necessary for me to come into France, I have given myself up as little as possible to these games and distractions.

From then on, it was a matter of instruction and timing.

Domrémy

Maps adapted from Domremy-la-Pucelle (Wikipedia)

Today called Domrémy-la-Pucelle, after "the Maid," Joan's home village of Domrémy lay along the upper Meuse River in northeastern France. The town itself was divided by a stream called "Three Fountains," as it was fed by springs, along one of which grew the "Fairie Tree," made famous in her Trial of Condemnation as an implication of sorcery. The village was considered geographically in the general region of Lorraine, thus the later name for her, "the Maid of Lorraine," but it was politically under the Duchy of Bar, indicative of the transient and complex nature of medieval borders and allegiances. When a French peasant from Bar said that her voices told her to go to "France," it made perfect sense to everyone, as she was speaking to the distinction between these regions and territories and their various alliances. The Duchy of Bar lay across both French and Holy Roman Empire (Germany) lands and associated lands, with Domrémy in the western part that was a fief of the Kingdom of France. France itself was elsewhere.

At Domrémy the Meuse was yet a small river, but significant enough to contain an island that Joan's father negotiated with its landowners to use to protect and hide the villagers and their livestock during military raids in the ongoing civil war between French factions and during the escalated Hundred Years War when Joan grew up. These raids came in the late 1420s as the English expanded control of northern France.

Domrémy itself was politically and economically unimportant, but was nevertheless mixed up in the ongoing war that went on around it, on the periphery but susceptible to raids, cross-alliances, and fluid feudal land arrangements. The people of Domrémy were loyal to the French cause and to the Dauphin Charles. Across the region, a map of loyalties would look like Swiss cheese, or, to be more French, a melted Camembert, with pockets and shoots of loyalties across the various regions. Tracking the Meuse northward through western modern Belgium and into the North Sea in lower Netherlands, we can see how the river was an important highway through the ambitions of the Dukes of Burgundy.

The name of the village, Domrémy, means, essentially, "Saint Remi," though with the honorific, "Dom" it becomes more emphatic as "under the dominion" of Saint Remi. Interestingly, the Rouen trial refers to the village as Dompremi, whereas in the Rehabilitation it is called villam de Dompno-Remigio. I think it's fair to read into the Rouen usage Cauchon's preference to suppress mention of Saint Remi, in whose city by Joan's intervention Charles VII was crowned. The Rehabilitation, of course would want to promote any association with Saint Remy. Nevertheless, Joan's hometown was named for the Saint, who was, naturally, the patron of her local church.

Joan was a peasant girl from a town nobody ever heard of that was named for the Saint under whose authority her king would be crowned by her intervention. The Christological typology screams for attention here given the village of Nazereth's etymology from Isaiah 11:1:

But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse

Saint Remi would have been mentioned at every Mass, his feast day celebrated every first of October, and his name invoked with every mention of the village's name Now, did Joan go about crowning the King of France at Reims because of it? Of course not, but with God all things are possible: perhaps that's why he chose "a simple maiden" from a town named for the Saint who baptized the King of the Franks, Clovis.

Neufchâteau

France in 1429. Yellow is France, Red is English, Green is Burgundian. White is contested or unaligned. Note the small yellow section at Domrémy at the border of the Duchy of Lorraine. (Mediawiki Commons)

Regionally, three towns along the upper Meuse were of importance to Joan's story, Domrémy, Vaucouleurs, and Neufchâteau, all lying on the margins of these opposed loyalties. When Joan's home village, Domrémy, was pillaged by Burgundian forces, it was part of an operation ordered by the English to take the loyalist French garrison at Vaucouleurs. During one raid, Joan's family fled to Neufchâteau and stayed at the inn of one Madame la Rousse, whom the court at Rouen would intimate was a brothel-keeper, implying, thereby, that Joan worked there as a prostitute. From the Seventy Articles:

Towards her twentieth year, Jeanne, of her own wish, and without permission of her father and mother, went to Neufchâteau, in Lorraine, and was in service for some time at the house of a woman, an inn-keeper named La Rousse, where lived women of evil life, and where soldiers were accustomed to lodge in great numbers. During her stay in this inn, Jeanne sometimes stayed with these evil women, sometimes took the sheep into the fields, or led the horses to watering in the meadows and pastures: it was there that she learnt to ride on horseback and to use arms.

The accusation provides an excellent example of the Cauchon's manipulation of the clean report of Joan's home life by Nicolas Bailly and his fellow commisssioners, pulling from it insinuation and non-existent scandal. Joan's family's stay at Neufchâteau gave a perfect setup. The innkeeper's name was "La Rousse," which means "the red head," with all the implications of a "madame" therein. Neufchâteau was a regional administrative and military center and strategic objective of the Duke of Burgundy, who managed to occupy the city in 1436. The Rehabilitation Trial examiners understood what the Rouen court was up to, and asked Domrémy locals about it. One of Joan's several Godfathers, Jean Morel, set the record straight:

When Jeanne went to Neufchâteau on account of the soldiers, she was always in the company of her father and mother, who stayed there four days, and then returned to Domremy. I am sure of what I say, because I went with the rest to Neufchâteau and I saw Jeannette there with her parents.

Joan seems to have stated that she went there on her own, telling Beaupere,

For dread of the Burgundians, I left my father's house and went to the town of Neufchâteau, in Lorraine, to the house of a woman named La Rousse, where I sojourned about fifteen days.

Joan's statement does not preclude going there with her parents, but it only matters, anyway, in Beaupere's construction of her as a runaway delinquent. Supposing that she ran to Neufchâteau by herself, and working at a brothel that served soldiers, the Rouen court found a rather convenent explanation for otherwise inexplicable martial abilities, oh, and she was a shepherd and a whore:

Towards her twentieth year, Jeanne, of her own wish, and without permission of her father and mother, went to Neufchâteau, in Lorraine, and was in service for some time at the house of a woman, an inn-keeper named La Rousse, where lived women of evil life, and where soldiers were accustomed to lodge in great numbers. During her stay in this inn, Jeanne sometimes stayed with these evil women, sometimes took the sheep into the fields, or led the horses to watering in the meadows and pastures : it was there that she learnt to ride on horseback and lo use arms.

To clarify: Joan was not a prostitute; Joan did help with the animals at Neufchâteau; and Joan did not learn to use arms there. But we can learn a few things from the accusations: first, she helped the innkeeper with the domestic chores and the animals: most modest and helpful; next, given the frontier town's unruly nature, Joan may well have learned not to ride but how to manage herself among soldiers; and, if she had gone there by herself, she manage herself admirably and effectively.

Vaucouleurs

1415–1429 Territories controlled by Henry VI of England in red. Territories controlled by Philip III of Burgundy in purple. Territories controlled by Charles VII of France (previously the Dauphin) in blue. The dotted white line marks Joan's journey from Domrémy to Chinon, and the dotted dark blue line her raid from Orléans to Reims in 1429. (Wikipedia)

Vaucouleurs lay along the Meuse to the north of Domrémy. The city was loyal to the French cause, but was precariously located along disputed lands between France, English-aligned Burgundy, and the neutral Holy Roman Empire. The town was fortified and held by a French garrison led by Captain Robert de Baudricourt, an exceptional commander who managed to maintain his position against the Burgundians and the English. His hold on the city was due to deft negotiations as well as the city's elaborate fortifications. When Baudricourt met Joan, he had already agreed to yield official control of the city to the Burgundian, Antoine de Vergy, but he had not yet handed it over. Baudricourt never actually ceded the city, although he was forced into a a pledge of neutrality. (Don't play poker with Baudricourt.)

Perhaps coincidentally, or not, a similar surrender to that which Baudricourt refused to conclude was submitted by one Étienne de Vignolles, who will be known to us in the story of Saint Joan as "La Hire," one of her most loyal commanders and a key warrior in the ultimate French victory in the war. La Hire sported a, shall we say, vibrant personality, as did many of those who were attracted to and served her cause. The Burgundian official he delivered the city of Vitry to was one Pierre Cauchon, a French Bishop allied with the Burgundians and an unapologetic English-loyalist, and the very guy who orchestrated Joan's trial and execution.

"The Three Frances" as of 1429 (fr.wikipedia) This map provides a good view of the geographic divisions of France. Although "Rayaume de Bourges" is the largest, it is the most tenuous, depending entirely on the disposition of Orléans.

These odd alignments across the rejoin conjoin to form an essential contingency for Joan's mission, especially her instruction to "go to France." Situated amidst shifting and restless alliances, Baudricourt's loyalty to the Dauphin was necessary for Joan's introduction to the Dauphin. Her voices told her to go to Vaucouleurs and that she would recognize Baudricourt once there. Additionally, it was on the dangerous ride through Burgundian territories from Vaucouleurs to the Dauphin's residence at Chinon that Joan's companions, including a knight, realized her purity, piety, and honesty, and the divine nature of her mission. Their testimonials upon arrival at Chinon played a significant role not only in Joan's introduction to the Dauphin but to the growing public enthusiasm over her arrival.

Baudricourt dismissed Joan twice before agreeing to send her to Chinon. At her first encounter, he famously instructed her uncle who had brought her to him to,

take her back to her father and to box her ears.

We can hear his annoyance in these exchanges with Joan, as related by one of Baudricourt's squires,

She told him that “she came to him in the name of her Lord; that the Dauphin must be compelled to persevere and to give battle to his enemies, that the Lord would give him succour before the middle of Lent; that the kingdom belonged not to him, the Dauphin, but to her Lord; that her Lord would have the Dauphin King and hold the kingdom in trust; that she would make him King, in spite of his enemies, and would conduct him to his coronation.” “But who is this Lord of whom you speak?” asked Robert of her. “The King of Heaven,” she replied.

He even had a priest -- and to her great annoyance -- say an exorcism prayer over her:

One day, I saw Robert de Baudricourt—then captain of Vaucouleurs—and Messire Jean Fournier, our Curé, come in to our house to visit her. After they were gone, she told me that the Priest had his stole, and that, in presence of the said captain, he adjured her, saying: “If you are an evil spirit, avaunt! If you are a good spirit, approach!” Then Jeanne drew near the Priest and threw herself at his knees: she said he was wrong to act so, for he had heard her in confession.

By her second encounter in early 1429, people had gotten curious, including two of Baudricourt's lieutenants, both of whom would later lead her to Chinon. Her steadfast witness to her mission had raised much interest and wonder. Word of her arrived to the Duke of Lorraine, a rather substantial figure who had ties to both the Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin's House of Valois, although he declared himself a neutral party as the civil war arose. The Duke sent for Joan. Jean Morel testified at the Trial of Rehabilitation,

I heard it said that the Lord Charles, then Duke of Lorraine, wished to see her, and gave her a black horse.

The Duke, though, was less interested in saving France than in his own health. As Joan explained to the court at Rouen,

The Duke of Lorraine gave orders that I should be taken to him. I went there. I told him that I wished to go into France. The Duke asked me questions about his health; but I said of that I knew nothing. I spoke to him little of my journey. I told him he was to send his son with me, together with some people to conduct me to France, and that I would pray to God for his health. I had gone to him with a safe-conduct: from thence I returned to Vaucouleurs.

We see from the Duke's request just how much Joan had stirred up the region. With lands crossing France and Germany, the Duke of Lorraine was a European political player. He expected much of Joan. However, his ambiguity after meeting her, expressed by the gift of a horse and some francs, lay in his disappointment that she didn't cure him and, worse, her insistence that he drop the mistress and get right with God. That was it from the Duke.

Joan told of this encounter to a lady of the court at Chinon, who testified,

Jeanne told me that the Duke de Lorraine who was ill, wished to see her, that she talked with him, and told him that he was not living well, and that he would never be cured unless he amended; also she exhorted him to take back his good wife.

The Duke sent her back to Vaucouleurs, where she has her third encounter with Baudricourt. This time Baudricourt engaged Joan, although we have few details other than that she told him about the bad news from the Royal army "near Orleans." The day she spoke with the Captain was February 12. That day, over 200 miles away, the French suffered a terrific defeat at of the Battle of the Herrings. A week later, when news arrived to Vaucouleurs of the French disaster, Baudricourt sent her to the Dauphin, tout-de-suite, as they say in France.

The story is disputed by historians who point out that no one in the Rehabilitation Trial mentioned it, and the Chroniques de la Pucelle, where it is found, is unreliable. Baudricourt lived until 1454, so his stories would have been current at the time of the writing of the Chronique by its author Guillaume Cousinot de Montreuil (1400-1484) in 1456. These same historians are glad to latch on to the chronicles when they see it reasonable, even if accepting other details not included in the testimonies. The Chronique de la Pucelle states it plainly, and I see nothing to contradict it. That none mentioned it tweny-five years later at the Trial of Rehabilitation is no proof it did not happen. In fact, it makes sense as the trigger for Baudricourt's change of mind, which the historical record otherwise lacks. The Chronicler describes Baudricourt's reaction to Joan's claim that "Dauphin suffered a great loss near Orléans":

The captain kept these words in mind and pondered them, and only later learned that the day in question was when the Constable of Scotland and the Lord of Orval were defeated by the English. The said captain was deep in thought about what to do; and he resolved and decided that he would send her.

The French defeat at the Battle of Herrings was on February 12, and Baudricourt sent her on February 22. Joan of Arc biographer Régine Pernoud says that on the 12th Joan met the Captain and he began that day preparations to send her to Chinon. But the historian contradicts herself, as she and others record that Baudricourt sent Joan away for the second time on February 13. News from Orléans would have taken more than a few days, so the timeline of Baudricourt's decision fits the Chronique's story about Baudricourt's moment of stupefaction when he put together that bad news and the girl's prediction of it on the day of the battle over a hundred miles away.

Joan told the Rouen court about her meeting with Baudricourt,

The third time, he received me, and furnished me with men; the Voice had told me it would be thus.

Some historians claim that Joan was an object of court manipulation by Rene d'Anjou, son of Yolande of Aragon, mother of the Queen and thus Charles' brother-in-law. The claims have no other evidence than that miracles, apparently, don't exist, so something or someone had to have gotten Baudricourt to send her and the King to receive her. It's one of those marvelous division points between "Joan of Arc" and "Saint Joan of Arc." Those theories aside, we have one more piece of evidence from Joan herself that Baudricourt didn't just decide to send her to Chinon. The Rouen court asked her,

As to your visions, did you speak of them to your Curé or to any other Churchman?

No; only to Robert de Baudricourt and to my King.

She told him something. He sent her to Chinon.

Fishes

The 15th century Chronique de Charles VII by Perceval de Cagny labels the "Battle of Herrings," La destrousse des Harens, or "the plunder of the herrings," which speaks to the French intention. The name, "herrings," though was current from the beginning, as we see in a reference in the contemporaneous Journal du Siege d'Orléans to a "journée des Harengs, or "Day of the herrings." 19th century historian Jules Michelet colors the name for the fish that were spilled on the field like corpses:

after this sorry business; and the inhabitants [of Orléans], always inclined to the satirical, called the fight the battle of herrings. Indeed, many of the barrels having been burst open by the shots, the field seemed strewed with herrings rather than corpses.

Day of the Herrings (note the spilled fish depicted here from "Histoire de France en cent tableaux" 1883 (Gallica via Wikicommons)

The Battle took place on February 12, 1429 at Rouvray, along the path between Paris and Orléans, where the large English supply train had encamped for the night. Led by John Falstaff, with knights and fifteen hundred solders and archers who protected, the train English consisted of, according to a contemporaneous account, "about three hundred wagons and carts loaded with victuals and with many items of war equipment, such as cannons, bows, quivers, arrows, and other things." The "victuals" were barrels of pickled herring which were to feed the troops through lent.

Three hundred wagons and carts would make a train over a mile and a-half long. Along with solders were a thousand laborers, carters, pages, cooks, etc. and other "men of the common." That's not a small operation. In fact, it's a large investment by both the English and Burgundians, as the provisions originated in Paris. The English and Burgundian forces at Orléans weren't starving, but they were running short and so would have otherwise depended on local raids. Again, this was February. After the Battle, when the train reached the English positions, the friendly Burgundian chronicler Wavrin noted,

The next day, departing from there, Sir John Fastolf and all his men, of whom he was the sovereign captain, took the road toward Orléans. They managed their march and their convoy so well that, a few days later, with great rejoicing, they arrived at the siege, where they were received in great celebration by their comrades, who, when they learned of their good fortune, gave thanks to God with all their hearts, sounding trumpets and clarions in loud triumph. They were also much refreshed by the victuals that had been brought to them; and from that day forward the encounter was commonly called the Battle of the Herrings, the cause of which name was that a great part of the English convoy had been laden with herrings and other Lenten provisions.

The siege on Orléans had started the prior October 12, 1428, when an English army approached from the north and set up fortified encampments, called bastilles, outside the walls of the city, which itself lay on the north side of the Loire River. The English very quickly seized the entrance to a bridge across the river and its pair of towers, called Les Tourelles. Fortified and barricaded, this important entrance further isolated the city, as they had already taken several other crossings of the Loire. By the end of the month, only a path along the river from the west remained, suitable only for small forces or messengers to enter the city. Larger forces could approach that way, but only with a show of force. Throughout this period, the English bombarded the city with cannon fire and held off French sorties led by local commander Raoul de Gaucourt, an experienced fighter who was loyal to the House of Orléans.

By December and into January, supplies were low in the city and the soldiers defending it had gone unpaid, which means the French were not willing to risk moving money in, forcing the city to melt silver and gold furnishings to use as currency. Skirmishes and test attacks continued, such following a Christmas truce, as described by the Journal du Siège,

During the feasts and holidays of Christmas, one side or the other shot strong and horrible bombards and cannons. But above all, much harm was done by a gunner, a native of Lorraine, then part of the garrison at Orléans, named Master Jean, who was said to be the finest master of that craft around. And he well proved it: for he had a large cannon, which he often fired while stationed among the pillars of the bridge, near the boulevard de la Belle Croix, killing and wounding many English. And, to mock them, he would sometimes fall on the ground, pretending to be dead or wounded, and have himself carried into the city. But he would immediately return to the skirmish, and make a scene so the English knew he was still alive, much to their dismay and displeasure.

Both sides settled into small clashes, neither risking larger defeat, nor trying for total victory, and taunts, as we see from the marvelous Master Jean, which also expresses frustration and anxiousness for a resolution. On January 9, two French knights from La Hire's company personally challenged the English to a joust. One of the French got the better of his opponent, while the others parried without result. So it continued through to late January,

On Wednesday the twenty-sixth of the same January, there was a fierce skirmish in front of the boulevard at the Porte Bannier: because the English prudently considered that the sun was shining in the faces of the French, who were outside the boulevard to skirmish. And they sallied forth from their host with great force, showing a great semblance of boldness: and they did so much that they pushed back the French to the moat of the boulevard and the city; so close did they come that they brought one of their standards to a lance's length from the boulevard, although they only held it a little while: because from Orléans and the boulevard, many thickly-targeted shots of cannons, bombardments, culverins, and other projectiles were being thrown at them. It was said that in that skirmish twenty Englishmen were killed, not counting the wounded. But among the French, only one of the Archers of the Marshal of Sainte-Severe died, who was hit by a cannon from Orléans itself, causing his master and the other lords to be greatly dismayed.

By early February, though, the French realized something had to give. On the 7th, several "ambassadors" returned from meeting with the King with news that "aid that was to come to lift the siege." Things were looking up:

The next day, Tuesday, there entered into the city of Orléans many very valiant and well-equipped men-at-arms, and among them Sir William Stewart, brother of the Constable of Scotland, the Lord of Saucourt, the Lord of Verduran, and several other knights and squires, accompanied by a thousand fighting men, so well arrayed for war that it was a very fine sight to see. That same night there arrived two hundred fighting men belonging to Sir William d’Albret, and soon after six score others (one hundred and twenty) belonging to La Hire.

Whether they intended "to lift the siege," the best strategic move was upon English supplies and not a direct attack upon the fortifications around the city. It makes sense, but it also shows the weakness of the French position -- or, perhaps, their perception of their own weakness. The English response to the escalated French activity was to put a move on things, especially to get the supplies from Paris. Learning of Falstaff's train, the French and Scottish allies caught up with the English convoy at Rouvray, just more than half-way from Paris to Orléans.

Here, Royal politics got in the way, which, we should note, took Joan of Arc to settle (over time). With the Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy in English captivity, the one's half-brother and the other's eldest son were in charge. The son of the Duke of Burgundy outranked the bastard son of the Duke of Orléans, so the ranking officer during this operation was the Count of Clermont, Charles. Clermont, a nineteen year old boy, will screw things up -- opening the way for a seventeen year old girl to clean things up. One of Joan's larger long-term effects was the consolidation of the French army from feudal and regional to national control. The French attack upon the English supply train was marred by the conflux of royal and feudal command. As frequently happened, the French attack at Rouvray was disconcerted. Having located the English train, the French launched an artillery bombardment and to good effect.

The Franco-Scottish forces from Orleans under Dunois, La Hire, and Xaintrailles arrived to Rouvray first. However, Clermont ordered them to stay put until his arrival. That done, the battle started with a French bombardment. The Scots, though, unused to the new technology, disconnected from the French chain of command, and, most importantly, anxious to kill English, charged, which forced the French to stop the cannonade in order not to hit them. The English easily repelled the attack from behind the wagons with arrows and bolts. The French and Scotts lost about 400 soldiers and nearly lost Dunois, who was severely injured with an arrow in his foot. The biggest casualty, though was Royal prestige, as the newly knighted Count of Clermont and his troops retreated from the field "but shamefully." After his recovery, and back at Orléans, Dunois assumed overall command of the city's defense. He sent Xaintrailles to negotiate a surrender of the city to the Duke of Burgundy.

In "France"

Chinon

While Joan and her escorts arrived to Chinon on March 4, 1429, her fame got there first.

So, too, at Orléans did talk precede her arrival to France. Word of the Maid's coming arrived from Gien, which is along the Loire and closer to Orléans than Chinon. The Bastard, Jean Dunois, rather than ignoring or dismissing the news, sent messengers from Orléans to the King at Chinon "in order to be better informed on the subject of this young girl."

They returned from the King, and reported to me publicly, in presence of all the people of Orleans [assembled] to know the truth, that they had seen the Maid arrive at Chinon.

From the Bastard's lack of incredulity and the expectant enthusiasm of the people of Orléans, It is clear they had already heard about the Joan before word of her came from Gien. There's been much made of whether or not the people, or Joan herself, had announced her as fulfillment of prophesy of a maiden who would save France. We know excitement over the possibility grew upon notice of her coming to Chinon.

Historians like to catalog the 14th and 15th century Valois kings and their prophets, from the floating mystic Guillemette de la Rochelle who counseled Charles V to Marie de Maillé, the virgin widow whom Charles VI, the Mad, insisted his brother, Louis Duke of Orléans, present to him to cure his insanity. Charles was keen on mystics, as his mental states had no resolution. Historians accuse his son Charles VII of fascination in astrology and other mysticisms, which is supposed to explain his endorsement of Joan. They otherwise point to background legends and prophesies that were supposed to have opened the imaginations of the French people of 1429 to the arrival of the salvific Maid of Lorraine, who, they say, was just some girl with a crazy imagination of her own. Christine de Pisan's poem, La Ditié de Jeanne d'Arc, written at the height of Joan's triumphs after Reims (and before the frustrating delays of her march upon Paris), goes heavy on the various legends, including the wizard Merlin of the Arthurian tales and the sibyls, Greek mythological priestesses endowed with prophesy, bringing them together to present Joan of Arc.

Known as the "Venerable Bede," the 8th century Catholic monk Bede of Jarrow wrote an important early history of the "Angli," or English-speaking Anglo-Saxons. The 12th century priest Geoffrey of Monmouth expanded Bede's history into an apocryphal account of English kings, including of Arthur and the wizard Merlin. Probably of Norman or Breton descent, Geoffrey wrote after the Norman invasion, and so by expanding upon the existing legends he sought to legitimize the Norman conquest of Saxon -- but not Angle -- kings, whom Arthur was supposed to have fought. It's rather twisted stuff, but so was the Hundred Years War, which naturally drew from these and other legends in order to justify one side or the other. Various versions of these legends circulated in 14th and 15th century France, as the country struggled against a foreign invasion. After the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war, which led to the 1420 Treaty of Troyes that yielded France to the English King Henry V, the idea was current among the Armagnacs that France, suffering from deserved divine punishment, would be saved by a virgin.

Too much can be made of the impact of these legends, either to the view that they were meaningless, or that they were the reason why Joan was embraced by the French. Joan understood the power of these stories, but also how unrealistic expectations could interfere with her mission. Her directedness here is remarkable, as she really could have let it go to her head, as her accusers at Rouen charged. At the Trial, Joan told the Judges:

When I came before the King, several people asked me if there were not in my country a wood, called the Oakwood, because there were prophecies, which said that from the neighbourhood of this wood would come a maid who should do marvellous things. I put no faith in that.

"Marvelous things" aside, at Vaucouleurs she did affirm, if obliquely, the Maid of Lorraine legend: Her uncle Durand Laxart recalled her telling him why she needed to "go into France":

Was it not foretold formerly that France should be desolated by a woman, and should be restored by a maid?

Similarly Catherine, wife of Leroyer, Joan's hostess at Vaucouleurs, recalled the same scenario, that after Baudricourt reproached her she explained why she must get to Chinon:

When she saw that Robert refused to conduct her to the King, she said to me that, nevertheless, she would go and seek the Dauphin. "Do you not know," she said, "the prophecy which says that France, lost by a woman, shall be saved by a maiden from the Marches of Lorraine?" I did indeed remember the prophecy, and remained stupefied.

These memories are surely authentic, but in no way do they contradict Joan's testimony at Rouen that she "put no faith" in stories of a maid "who should do marvellous things." Whereas at Chinon she denied rumors of the magical powers of a maid from Lorraine, at Vaucouleurs she affirmed that a maiden from Lorraine must get to Chinon. At Vaucouleurs, it was a persuasion, which is why she posed it as a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, we cannot doubt that rumors about a Maiden were flying. One story, though, was both more current and more specific.

In the 1387, the antipope at Avignon, Clement VII, witnessed a miraculous curing of a paralytic before the tomb of the just-deceased Pierre de Luxembourg, a supporter of Clement. Pierre had tried to resolve the papal schism, but for it was driven from his bishopric at Metz. He soon after died of a severe austerity he had imposed upon himself for his failures. After her curing, the paralytic, Marie Robine, picked up on the cause of Clement and his successor Benedict XIII. For that support, she became known as "Marie d'Avignon." By 1398 her stature as a mystic and visionary had grown such that she was granted an audience with Charles VI. Unsuccessful in her appeal for the King to continue to support Benedict XIII, her visions turned grim with warnings and tribulations, especially upon the University of Paris, whom she blamed for turning the King against Benedict. Having become a liability for both sides, Benedict himself later refused her an audience, and she turned reclusive and ambiguous in her support for him. She died soon after, in 1399. Into the 15th century she was largely forgotten -- until Joan arrived to Chinon.

During the clerical examinations at Poitiers, Jean Erault questioned if Joan was not the fulfillment of one of Marie d'Avignon's prophesies. Priest Jean Barbin recalled,

In the course of these deliberations Maître Jean Erault stated that he had heard it said by Marie d'Avignon, who had formerly come to the King [Charles VI], that she had told him that the kingdom of France had much to suffer and many calamities to bear: saying moreover that she had had many visions touching the desolation of the kingdom of France, and amongst others that she had seen much armour which had been presented to her; and that she was alarmed, greatly fearing that she should be forced to take it; but it had been said to her that she need fear nothing, that this armour was not for her, but that a maiden who should come afterwards should bear these arms and deliver the kingdom of France from the enemy. And he believed firmly that Jeanne was the maiden of whom Marie d'Avignon thus spoke.

That prophesy is not included in the surviving manuscript, Le Livres des Révélations de Marie Robine, but that doesn't mean she never said it. Historian Matthew Tobin notes that one vision in the manuscript, an apocalyptic revelation of swords and arrows hurling towards earth, may have been related to Erault's recollection, though, Tobin writes, "It is quite possible that Erault cited a prophecy of Marie Robine that was never written down, or whose text was lost." Indeed, from Barbin's testimony, Erault specifically "heard" and did not "hear about" what Marie said to the King. Anyway, Erault was convinced: it was he who wrote out Joan's Letter to the English.

Prophesies aside, Joan's demeanor and resoluteness affirmed for the French that she was for real. We can test that belief against the hostility at Rouen towards the certitude of her mission, which the court took as evidence of heresy. What Joan declared at Rouen,

for in truth I am sent by God,

had the direct opposite effect upon the people of France two years before when she said,

I am come from the King of Heaven

Joan's persuasion worked:

I saw Jeanne with the King at Chinon, and heard what she said; to wit, that she was sent from God to the noble Dauphin, to raise the Siege of Orleans, and to conduct the King to his anointing and coronation.

However, it wasn't so easy. As Gerson pointed out that sending an army to Orléans with a girl at its head posed a disastrous downside, the moment of Joan's arrival to Chinon was likewise risky. The Chronique de la Pucelle tells us that the King and his counselors were of "great doubt" as to receiving her or not, and they were of "various opinions and speculations" on it. We ought consider that this was no easy decision for the King and his court. As such, perhaps what changed Baudricourt's mind -- probably her prediction of the Battle of Herrings -- was what influenced the King to agree to meet her. We know that one of Joan's escorts to Chinon was a regular messenger to the King from Vaucouleurs. We also know that the story of the Battle of Herrings was current at Chinon. From the Chronique,

Among other things, [the King and the court] marveled how she told to Messire Robert de Baudricourt, on the day of the battle of Rouvray, otherwise called of the Herrings, that which had happened; and also of the manner of her coming, and how she had arrived without hindrance as far as Chinon.

Joan's escorts from Vaucouleurs arrived to Chinon in a state of amazement. They may not all have started off so convinced. We don't hear it from her escorts, but a Vaucouleurs local recalled a story that speaks with clarity to the moment, and not just from hindsight and pride those escorts felt from having taken her to Chinon. The man recalled,

I heard, at the time when she was taken from Vaucouleurs to the King, that some of the soldiers who conducted her feigned to be on the other side, and, when those who were with her pretended to fly, she said to them: "Fly not, in God's Name! they will do us no harm."

Of course they did. The girl had been ridiculed for months while trying to convince Baudricourt to send her to the King. These were young men, military men. Why wouldn't they play this trick? Joan wasn't fooled, and the story stuck as another of her marvels. Other testimony similarly confidence and authority. Her host at Vaucouleurs, Henri Leroyer recalled (and herein is the source of a famous Joan of Arc quotation),

I saw them depart, all six, and Jeanne with them. When she spoke of leaving, she was asked how she thought she could effect such a journey and escape the enemy. "I fear them not," she answered, "I have a sure road: if the enemy are on my road, I have God with me. Who knows how to prepare the way to the Lord Dauphin. I was born to do this."

That trip was not an easy shot. The Knight Jean de Metz described it,

We travelled for the most part at night, for fear of the Burgundians and the English, who were masters of the roads. We journeyed eleven days, always riding towards the said town of Chinon. On the way, I asked her many times if she would really do all she said. "Have no fear," she answered us, "what I am commanded to do, I will do; my brothers in Paradise have told me how to act: it is four or five years since my brothers in Paradise and my Lord — that is, God — told me that I must go and fight in order to regain the kingdom of France."

And the squire Bertrand de Poulengy recalled,

On starting, the first day, fearing to be taken by the Burgundians and the English, we travelled all night. Jeanne said to me and to Jean de Metz, while we were journeying, that it would be well for us to hear Mass; but while we were in the enemy's country, we could not, for fear of being recognized ... I should never have dared to molest her, because of the great goodness which I saw in her. We were eleven days on the road, during which we had many anxieties. But Jeanne told us always that we had nothing to fear, and that, once arrived at Chinon, the noble Dauphin would show us good countenance.

From the road Joan dictated a letter to the Dauphin requesting an audience. By the time she arrived to Chinon, her story was abuzz. The King and his court already knew about her, and it is certain that upon their arrival the King's courier related the entire adventure. Joan told the interrogators at Rouen that she arrived to Chinon "towards mid-day" then went to see the King "after dinner." Other accounts have the King delaying to receive her for two days. It doesn't really matter, but what does is how she was received. All the histories agree that there was hesitation and distrust from the Royal court. Joan was unconcerned. We'll let her describe the situation.

From the second day of the Trial:

The Voice had promised me that, as soon I came to the King, he would receive me. Those of my party knew well that the Voice had been sent me from God; they have seen and known this Voice, I am sure of it.

A few days later in the Trial she elaborated,

Afterwards, I went to the Castle of Chinon, whence I sent letters to the King, to know if I should be allowed to see him; saying, that I had travelled a hundred and fifty leagues to come to his help, and that I knew many things good for him. I think I remember there was in my letter the remark that I should recognize him among all others.

Her Appeal to the Dauphin from Jeanne D'Arc by Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel (1906) The Duke and Duchess of Bourbon are depicted sitting as if they were the King and Queen, but Joan recognized they were not and spotted the real King. (Wikipedia, image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)

The traditional story, as variously told and with details fictionalized, is that, distrusting Joan, upon her entrance to the castle the Dauphin pretended to be among the courtesans. She was instead shown to the throne with a couple pretending to be the King and Queen. She halted, declared he was not the King, then turned to another man and pointed to him, falling to her knee before her true King. The incident goes largely unreported in the Rehabilitation Trial, though one witness stated, simply,

When she came to the King, she recognized him, though she had never seen him before

The Chronique de la Pucelle relates,

Then the king and those of his council had great doubt whether the said Jeanne would speak to the king or not, and whether he should have her come before him; upon which there were various opinions and imaginings, and it was concluded that she should see the king. The said Jeanne was brought into his presence, and said that they should not deceive her, and that they should show her the one to whom she ought to speak. The king was well accompanied, and although several pretended that they were the king, nevertheless she addressed herself to him quite plainly, and said to him that God was sending her there to aid and to succor him;

The Greffier de la Rochelle provides a more contemporaneous account that has more details, including who stood in for the King:

And when she had arrived at the said place of Chinon where the King was, as has been said, she asked to speak with him. Then they showed her Monseigneur Charles of Bourbon, pretending that he was the King; but she immediately said that he was not the King, that she would well recognize him if she saw him, although she had never seen him before. And afterward they brought before her a squire, pretending that he was the King; but she recognized well that it was not he. And soon after, the King came out of a chamber, and as soon as she saw him, she said that it was he, and told him that she had come to him on behalf of the King of Heaven, and that she wished to speak with him. And it is said that she told him certain things in secret, at which the King was greatly amazed.

Pernoud characterizes the episode as "a theatrical set piece." Stolpe goes further, calling it a story of "nauseating sentimentality." Another theory holds that the court was having a costume ball in celebration of Laetare Sunday, and so the joke on the country girl played itself out naturally. All these theories hold that Joan of Arc didn't need divine intervention to meet the King. Indeed, Joan was sure and confident, and everyone knew she had arrived, but I have a hard time seeing any disconnect between the story and her self-assuredness, much less from a confidence born of divine guidance.

And it's too bad for the skeptics, for it's not just a great story (many are), it makes sense (most don't). If it didn't happen, then Joan was simply introduced to the guy with a big nose sitting in a big chair with everyone else standing around him. Anatole France, surprisingly, takes the episode at face value, sort of:

On hearing of Jeanne's approach, King Charles buried himself among his retainers, either because he was still mistrustful and hesitating, or because he had other persons to speak to, or for some other reason.

Anatole France's view that the king "buried himself among his retainers" merely softens the king's intent, or to suggest it was all an accident, as he was just talking to someone else. Not a chance. There was no small discussion about allowing her in, and it would have been no small escort that brought her there. Joan was most specific in her testimony about the moment:

I recognized him among many others by the counsel of my Voice, which revealed him to me.

There's no reason for that detail from Joan unless a trap was set. Had the king accidentally turned away as she came in, or fell upon some other distraction, or took up the idea amidst a masquerade, there'd have been no need for Joan to point him out from "among many others." She would have been told to wait, or, Look, he's over there. He'll be right with you. As such, had she been, finally, introduced to the King, the impressions she made upon him would become even more miraculous, as it was her pronouncement of who he was that opened the King to listen to her.

Taking the story as real, had Joan knelt before the wrong man, she'd have been ridiculed and dismissed. (And so much for France.) Everyone in the room knew what was going on, otherwise why would some other guy be sitting on the throne or pretending to be the King? Everyone had to be watching as the girl was led into the trap. There had to have have been snickers and wry smiles -- watch this! watch the country fool! The King hid himself. Joan wasn't fooled. All were amazed.

On the literal level, the story explains the King's sudden attention to her, such that he spoke to her privately, that he allowed her any time at all. Allegorically, though, the story is imperative: Joan identified the King of France from a pretender.

Le Puy

The pilgrimage city of Le Puy was and still is a starting point for the Camino Santiago.

Before moving along with the story of Saint Joan's path to Orléans, we must first take a little historical pilgrimage to a remarkable, isolated place in south-central France.

On May 14, 1420, for the Feast of the Ascension, Dauphin Charles arrived to Le Puy, perhaps the most important pilgrimage site in medieval France. The Dauphin's loyalist forces had cleared central France of Burgundian allies, securing Armagnac control of central France below the Loire. The Prince had some thanks to give, some recognition to share, and some authority to assert.

Of his trip to Le Puy, 19th century historian Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt records,

It was more as pilgrim than sovereign that Charles made his solemn entrance into Le Puy on May 14: he had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and he came to thank Our Lady of Le Puy for the success of his arms. On the 15th, dressed in the surplice and almuce, he attended the First Vespers of the Ascension, admitting himself there as a canon. The next day, he received communion at the solemn High Mass celebrated by the Bishop of Le Puy; and then knighted Bernard of Armagnac and several other lords.

A week later up at Troyes, the Dauphin's father signed away his son's inheritance.

The usual take holds that at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation du Puy, Charles consecrated France to the Virgin Mary amidst the desperation of the English onslaught and his father's abandonment of him. The historian Beaucourt does not mention a consecration, so if Charles did, it was without the larger ceremony or pronouncement that would show on the historical record. Even if he did, the act would have been limited to what a prince and disputed heir could affect. Beaucourt says the Dauphin was there to give thanks for military victories that spring, but that would not preclude the consecration.

Now called Puy-en-Velay (Fr.Wikipedia)

Beaucourt does provide for us an image of the Dauphin dressed in the clerical attire of a canon, a significant honor, though, one conferred not obliged. The dynamic is one of mutual recognition, from ruler to Church and Church to ruler, all before Our Lady of Puy. Bestowing the title as canon recognized Charles' legitimacy, and accepting it asserted the importance of the shrine and its officials. As he consolidated Armagnac France in the Loire region, then, and later under Saint Joan on his way to the coronation at Reims, and after, as the English were expelled, Charles came to to perfect the "Royal entrance," which consisted of an exchange of honors, homage and negotiations. When he entered Paris in 1437, the Bishop of Paris unexpectedly -- to Charles, anyway -- locked the doors to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and demanded that the King first swear an oath to defend the church. Charles was there to assert himself and so disputed the challenge. The Bishop explained it was customary. Charles settled the standoff by conceding, though rather brilliantly,

as my predecessors have sworn it, I swear it.

At Le Puy, by taking the role of a canon Charles affirmed his obedience to the Church. And if there was a formal consecration of France -- and why not? -- in submitting his country to the Our Lady of Puy he dedicated France to service to God. Consecrare means "to make sacred," with "sacred" meaning "apart," as in setting aside, or apart, for God. Such consecration, then, places the King at the service of God, not country. We can look upon the act from a couple perspectives. Modern historians might attribute it to ceremony with no substance than what the participants impart of it unto themselves, like a baseball player ritually preparing for an at-bat. In that view, the act is designed to bolster confidence and reduce uncertainty. They might also see it within the purposes of social or political governance, as -- and I hate this word -- a performative act designed to affirm allegiance and common cause. To borrow from the skeptical views of Saint Joan, well, the Dauphin and his followers really meant it, so that's all that counts. I'll give them this: ritual reinforces belief, focuses the mind upon the desired outcome, and reduces that stultifying uncertainty that governs fear. But those explanations far from sufficient to understand what was going on at Le Puy in May of 1420.

Le Puy en Velay Panorama

The word "puy" is from the Latin podium for raised or elevated place, and it came to describe any settlement upon a raised dome or hill, but here it stuck. Situated amidst a basin or "geological bowl" between raised volcanic basalt domes, Mont Anis, the larger, and rocher d’Aiguilhe, named for its sharp, needle-like rise, Le Puy is geographically magnificent. Originally called Mont d’Aniciumin, perhaps after a Roman family, Mont Anis is capped by a wonderfully named outcrop, rocher Corneille, for "rook," likely for a crow's rook, or from "rook" as in a fortified tower, which itself comes from the Old French word, roche, for rock. I like that one, as it would make rocher Corneille mean "rock rock," though in the sense of a projecting rock, as in the Latin cornu, for "horn" with all the symbolism therein of projection and pronouncement. With its outcroppings, well before the Christian era the site radiated spiritual presence. For Christians, the valley itself seemed like the nave of a cathedral, explicitly reminiscent of the field before the Mount, a natural amphitheater like that of Mount Eramosa, the Mount of Beatitudes in Galilee.

The Christian presence started with construction of a shrine to the Virgin Mary built at the base of rocher Corneille, at the order of Saint Martial, "the Apostle of the Gauls," an early third century bishop and Saint. The shrine was built upon "the fever stone," upon which the "Paralyzed Lady of Ceyssac" was laid upon in prayer, and was miraculously healed. Suffering paralysis and a persistent fever, the Paralyzed Lady just as persistently invoked the Blessed Virgin, who responded by telling her to go to Mount Anis for healing. She was carried there, laid upon the stone, and experienced a vision of the Virgin surrounded by angels. The Holy Virgin told her,

Go and announce to Vousy, the bishop, what you have seen, and tell him that as a remedy and salvation for the ailing and for sinners, let him build here, in my name, a house in which the episcopal seat shall be transferred, as the good widow lady had told Georges [the prior Bishop], your predecessor.

This consistency with Marian visions across time aside, the historicity of some event can be affirmed insofar as the shrine was built, becoming one of the earliest and most important Marian shrines in France. Archeological evidence points to 5th century constructions, which means that the pilgrimages and Church presence well preceded any such significant building as to leave significant remnants. The 221 date of the Paralyzed Lady of Ceyssac, then, is not implausible. There is nothing to say but from historical skepticism that it did not happen. Whatever the story or dating of the Marian shrine at Le Puy, we know for certain that by the fifth century the site had become a pilgrimage destination with some type of shrine or church, and enough so that a full church was constructed by the 6th or 7th centuries. The fever stone itself today sits in a chapel in the Cathedral.

By the 700s, Le Puy was prominent such that Charlemagne made two pilgrimages there, 772 and 800. Saint King Louis IX went twice, in 1244 after recovering from an illness, and in 1254 on his return from the problematic Seventh Crusade. For that second visit he brought from the Holy Lands an ebony statue of the Blessed Virgin, one of the "Black Virgins" that would be venerated across Europe and later around the world. For Saint Louis, these were pilgrimages of offering and thanksgiving. Other kings, several Popes, and a number of Saints are associated with Le Puy, including Saint Anthony of Padua, who ran a Franciscan convent there, and Saint Vincent Ferrer, whose order had established a church there in 1221. Tradition holds that Saint Dominic had earlier visited Le Puy, and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case, and it would explain the Dominican priory. Le Puy tradition also holds that the Salve Regina was penned there by the 11th century crusader Bishop, Adhemar of Puy, though its association with Le Puy is more likely tied to the antiphon's Dominican usage, which would have filled the streets with the chants during Annunciation feasts.

Medieval Marian devotion was focused on the Holy Mother's presence in mortal life. Starting with the Salve Regina itself, "Pray for us, oh Mother of God," Marian devotion was focused intercessory prayer. As the Marian scholar Judith David observes,

Some collections [of Marian miracles] were for liturgical use. Others, in the vernacular, address lay as well as clerical audiences, presenting detailed and vivid portraits of Mary, echoing or paraphrasing apocrypha, reflecting facets of learned treatises as well as popular legends. Some stress her virginity; some, her influence with Jesus, her Son, to save sinners from the consequences of their regrettable choices; others, her mercy and kindness. All emphasize her unique status as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, which enables her to intervene in human affairs.

Such was the purpose of a young and very troubled King, Charles VI of France, when in 1394 he made his way to Le Puy, two years after his delusional attack upon his own guards and a year after the Bal des Ardents, a masquerade dance in which he nearly burned to death. We cannot know his prayer, but intercession by the Mother of Mercy for relief from demons, or even Satan himself, was a common theme in Marian devotion and folklore, or as the French call it, Marieles. In May of 1420, the son of Charles the Mad likewise sought the consolation of Our Lady of Puy.

If the historian Beaucourt is right that Charles was there to offer to Our Lady of Puy his successes, not failures, then he was feeling rather optimistic. And perhaps he had reason, for despite the 1418 Armagnac expulsion from Paris, despite his backfired assassination of John the Fearless, and despite his father's banishment of him over it, by 1420 the Dauphin's claim as regent and heir was supported by a working government at Bourges that financed his military victories that spring. It is possible, too, that therein lay an additional debt of gratitude for the Dauphin's own life had been saved during the June 1418 clearing of Armagnacs from Paris by the Burgundians: Charles had been carried out of the city in his bed sheets. The Treaty of Troyes that transferred the royal line to Henry V brought no new news, for it formalized an English regency that was already in place. More devastating was the Treaty of Amiens of 1423 that formally aligned England, Burgundy and Brittany, delivering all of northern France to England, and cutting the Dauphin from almost every western port.

If France was sustained by Our Lady of Puy, it may have come through the workings of three notable woman. As the court around the Dauphin cut deals for themselves, stole revenues needed to sustain the army, fought amongst themselves, or were outfought by the English, Charles' finances, decision-making, and luck were sustained through, in that order, his mother-in-law, his wife, and an unrelated Belgian heiress whose timing for drama worked out perfectly for Charles.

Charles's Dauphine, Marie d'Angjou and her mother, Yolande of Aragon (whom many biographers, without any credit, credit for saving France through deft and tricky management of Joan of Arc) sustained his rule. Marie d'Anjou was variously regent, diplomat, and royal steady hand, and his mother-in-law was dedicated to and importantly helped finance the Armagnac cause.

A third woman, Jacquelina of Hainault, brought the Dauphin Charles an incredible stroke of luck. In 1421 she ran off to England to escape her husband, the Duke of Brabant. Henry V protected her, and after his death, his brother, now Regent of England, Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, married her. Interestingly, for a couple years Jacquelina had been Dauphine of France, as she was married as a 14 year old to the fourth son of Charles VI who became heir when his older brother died in 1415. He, too, died two years later, and Jacquelina returned to Hainaut, which she inherited soon after. Her mother and the Duke of Burgundy seem to have arranged her marriage to the Duke's nephew, whom she ran away from in 1421. Through her, Humphrey who got it in his head that he was now ruler of Jacquelina's ex-husband's lands. For the his brother, the Duke of Bedford, Humphrey's timing couldn't have been worse, as he launched his venture only a few months after the 1424 Battle of Verneuil, known as the "second Agincourt." Reinforced with Scottish soldiers, the French had sought to challenge the English in an open battle in order to push them out of lower Normandy and thus open the way for Charles VII's sacramental coronation at Reims. Once again, an outnumbered English crushed the French and Scottish, who lost 6,000, a stunning number of troops. The English victory opened the path to central France.

However, Humphrey's marriage to Jacqueline and their claims upon Hainaut had already complicated the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, to the point that Bedford had dismissed 1,000 Burgundian troops prior to Verneuil. But with Humphrey landing a small army that October at Calais in order to claim Hainaut, Duke of Burgundy moved his army to the Low Countries to fight the English. Bedford may already have chosen to consolidate his hold on Normandy and Maine rather than pressing south on Bourges, but the Dauphin's lands were his for the taking. With Burgundy nearly split from the alliance, Bedford himself had to regroup and consolidate, thus allowing the French plenty of time to recover from the terrific loss at Verneuil. Jacqueline may well have saved the Dauphin, for a time.

Our next visit to Le Puy gets a touch complicated, as the record is confusing as to the timing and sequence of events, to the point that the Joan of Arc master biographer, Jules Quicherat, disbelieved it happened.

At the Trial of Rehabilitation, Joan's confessor, the Augustinian Jean Pasquerel, with whom historians have a mixed relationship as source of fact or legend (selecting from his testimonies as convenient), told the examiners about his own pilgrimage to Le Puy for the Annunciation and Good Friday celebration, which, though not overlapping, were close enough to cause a special pilgrimage that March of 1429:

The first time I heard of Jeanne, and that she had come to find the King, I was at Anche, in which town was her mother and some of those who had accompanied her thither. One day, they invited me to go with them and see her, and told me they would not leave me till I had seen her. I came then with them to Chinon; then to Tours, in which town I was at that time Reader in a Convent; and there we found her lodging in the house of a citizen named Jean Dupuy, a burgher of Tours. My companions addressed Jeanne in these terms: "Jeanne, we bring you this good father; when you know him you will love him much." "I am very glad to see you," she said to me; "I have already heard of you. I should like to-morrow to confess myself to you." The next day, indeed, I heard her in confession, and recited Mass before her. From that day onward, I always followed her and was always with her as her Chaplain, until Compiègne, where she was taken prisoner.

Anche, it turns out, was mistranslated by Quicherat from the Latin, Aniciensis, which would be a Latin name for Le Puy. Other historians, nevertheless, have made much of this pilgrimage by Joan's mother, Isabelle Romée. And duly.

That year, the Annunciation, which is March 25, and which was the focus of the pilgrimages to Le Puy, fell within several days of Good Friday, making for a special celebration, so much so that the Dauphin Charles wrote that February to Pope Martin V for an extension of the Jubilee to include both Annunciation and Good Friday. It is thought that René d'Anjou, King of Naples and brother of Charles' Queen, Marie d'Anjou, attended, which accords with the extension request of the Jubilee. The years of 1428-1429 were not ones of celebration for the French. The Anglo-Burgundian alliance was in force, both running raids across northern and central France, including Domremy, and, of course, Orléans was under siege, But that March, something special was going on.

It's rather incredible, actually, to think that two of Joan's escorts from the ride to Chinon from Vaucouleurs, Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy, after delivering her to Chinon, left for Le Puy. To get there for the Annunciation, they'd have to have left Chinon by the 10th or so, about when she was sent to Poitiers for the clerical examinations. Even more remarkable is that Joan's mother went there. To get to Le Puy from Domrémy, she'd have had to have left by early March, perhaps earlier if she first went to Chinon. The record doesn't tell us if any of them had been to Le Puy before, and perhaps they did. But it is clear that they all had good reason to go for the 1429 Annunciation festivals.

Let's think through the "Annunciation" a moment: from Luke 1:26-31:

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.

Call me skeptical, but I can't help but think that this was on the minds of those around Joan as she left for Chinon. And to add another touch of un-cynicism, I have little trouble wondering that whether they met at Chinon or Le Puy (my guess), they bonded right away. They were amidst something they knew was special. So when they returned from the pilgrimage and found their way to Tours, where Joan was being outfitted for war, they were well acquainted with one another -- and with Joan's mission. Upon meeting him, Pasquerel tells us, she said,

I am very glad to see you. I have already heard of you. I should like to-morrow to confess myself to you.

He added,

The next day, indeed, I heard her in confession, and recited Mass before her. From that day onward, I always followed her and was always with her as her Chaplain, until Compiègne, where she was taken prisoner.

We note here also that two of Joan's brothers were also there, and would join her on the campaigns through to her capture a year later.

The team was in place.

Poitiers

Almost two decades later, one of Joan's severest antagonists and her principal interrogator at the Trial at Rouen, Jean Beaupère, told the investigators:

With regard to the apparitions mentioned in the Trial of the said Jeanne, I held, and still hold, the opinion that [the said apparitions] rose more from natural causes and human intent than from anything supernatural; but I would refer principally to the Process.

Note the use of the word "apparitions" instead of "visions" or "voices," which is meant to indicate wickedness. During the Trial back in February of 1431, Beaupère tried to get Joan to admit that her Voices were the result of hallucinating from fasting. Or, as he suggested at the Rehabilitation Trial, it was "from human intent" -- that is, she lied. At the end of testimony, though, Beaupère reveals his hand:

As to her innocence, Jeanne was very subtle with the subtlety of a woman, as I consider.

So there you have it: Joan was no maiden. Instead she was "subtle," that is, Eve seduced by Satan. The historian Pernoud takes Beaupère's statement at face value, seeing it as an accusation of "malice inherent in the nature of women." The anticlerical Joan biographer Anatole France saw it more cynically, and not without truth, that,

These scholars of the University were human; they believed what it was to their interest to believe; they were priests and they beheld the Devil everywhere, but especially in a woman.

Beaupère's slur puts into question his claim that Joan made it all up, as the reference to "subtle" is itself hardly subtle, a direct reference to Genesis 3:1, in which we find a synonym for subtle, "cunning":

Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made. He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”

The Hebrew "arum," for "shrewd," "cunning" or "crafty" (with a play on a similar word, "arummim" for "naked"), translates into French as "rusé" ("sly" or "cunning"). Beaupère would also have known Saint Paul's reference to Genesis in 2 Corinthians 11:3 about false teachers:

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning

In the best light, we can take from Beaupère's accusation, as does Pernoud, that he means that women exercise inherent malice, perhaps not as implicated in Genesis. But the word choice, emphasized by its repetition, "subtle with the subtlety of a woman" was deliberate. If he did mean "subtle" in connection to Genesis, then it belies his claim that Joan's apparitions were "from natural causes," as in that sense "subtle" implies the work of Satan.

Furthermore, while the Rouen court only needed for Joan to recant her abjuration to put her to death, which was the point of entire exercise, anyway, they were going to find a way to execute her no matter what. Early on in the trial, as the Rouen priest Massieu testified in 1450,

When I was taking her back to prison, the fourth or fifth day, a priest named Maître Eustace Turquetil, asked me: "What dost thou think of her answers? will she be burned? what will happen?" and I replied: "Up to this time I have seen in her only good and honour; but I do not know what will happen in the end, God knows!" Which answer was reported by the said priest to the King's [of England] people; and it was said that I was opposed to the King. On this account, I was summoned, in the afternoon, by the Lord of Beauvais, the Judge, and was spoken to of these things and told to be careful to make no mistake, or I should be made to drink more than was good for me. I think that, unless the Notary Manchon had made excuses for me, I should not have escaped.

Outright belief that Joan was under Satan's spell made the case both easier and more justified for the Rouen judges.

Beaupère, an old associate of Cauchon, was rewarded by the English King in 1431 with the position of canon of the Cathedral of Rouen and given a significant honorarium. By the time Rouen fell to the French in 1449, Beaupère had retired to elsewhere, but had to return to the city to collect his honorarium, whereupon the next year he stumbled into the first interrogations for the Rehabilitation process, just then starting at Rouen. Beaupère was covered by the amnesty Charles VII had issued for Normandy, so he had no fear in expressing his resentment of Joan, which was deep -- he was the object of many of Joan's most glorious retorts during the Rouen Trial, such as her inspired response when he asked if she was "in the grace of God?" What usually gets left out of that quotation, though, is an equally magnificent rhetorical question Joan posed following it, one that must have infuriated Beaupère:

But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me?

Joan was absolutely correct: if the Voices were of God, then she was "in the grace of God" -- a logic entirely inimical to everything Beaupère was trying to prove, and thus more proof for him that she was exercising "female subtlety" and all he meant by that. The best he could say, then, as he tried to prove in the trial, and maintained twenty years later, was that her voices were of "natural causes" and devised through her "human intent," not through God. However, Joan's question as to the Voices coming to her unless she were in a state of Grace forces an answer to the same rhetorical question Jesus posed to the Pharisees in Mark 3:23,

How can Satan drive out Satan?

Joan wasn't driving out demons -- though her works certainly defied natural explanations, not even Beaupère questioned what she had done. Indeed, he wanted her burned for it, and for subjecting herself, as the final Sentence of heresy put it, to "the perfidious Sower of Errors":

All the pastors of the Church who have it in their hearts to watch faithfully over their flock, should, when the perfidious Sower of Errors works by his machinations and deceits to infest the Flock of Christ, strive with great care to resist his pernicious efforts with the greatest vigilance and the most lively solicitude, and above all in these perilous times, when so many false prophets are come into the world with their sects of error and perdition, according to the prediction thereof made by the Apostle.

Eight days before her execution, the Bishop Érard admonished Joan in a public sermon, during which Manchon recalled his having lamented,

Ah! noble House of France, which hath always been the protectress of the Faith, hast thou been so abused that thou dost adhere to a heretic and schismatic? It is indeed a o great misfortune.

Ysambard de La Pierre similarly recalled the scene,

I was at the sermon of Maître Guillaume Érard, who took as his theme, ''A branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the Vine," saying that in France there was no monster such as this Jeanne: she was a witch, heretic, and schismatic; and that the King who favoured her was of like sort for wishing to recover his kingdom by means of such an heretical woman.

It's precisely what Beaupère meant all along: God would never have chosen a girl for this purpose, much less this girl who wasn't just a liar, but one seduced by demons.

When Joan first appeared at Chinon in 1429, these same prejudices guided her reception. At Chinon and then at Poitiers, the doubts were salient, and, if we ponder upon it, not a lot different from what she received from the judges at Rouen, confounded, though, by the uncertainties faced at Poitiers, albeit not hardened by experience as at Rouen. The ideological perspective at Poitiers certainly reflected the opposite of that at Rouen, with those under the English clinging to what they had under the English and those at Poitiers angling to get theirs back.

On Joan's arrival to Chinon, the Archbishop of Embrun, Jacques Gélu, a loyal Armagnac, and an adviser to the French King, considered the situation and, despite positive news of early interviews with her, warned the Dauphin to be careful with a peasant girl from a class that is "easily seduced." Gélu advised the King to proceed with caution:

He does not wish, nevertheless, that the King reject her, since the arm of God is not shortened, and it may well be that the injustice of his enemies has provoked his just wrath, and that the his affliction has awakened God's mercy.

Gélu recommended that the King not speak alone with Joan, and instead fast and pray that he may be "be enlightened by Heaven and preserved from error." And, he advised, subject her to further inquiry, "that her mind must be thoroughly picked apart by learned and pious persons."

Later, Gélu reflected on the confusion that prevailed amongst the French leadership upon her arrival to France,

It has been asserted to us that men highly learned consistently say that the aforesaid Maid was not sent by God, but rather deceived and deluded by diabolical art, and that she carries out what she does not by the power of God, but through the ministry of demons.

Or, he said, others argued,

Likewise, if the things foretold were divine, God would have appointed an angel, not a simple young girl raised with sheep, subject to every illusion and easily deceived on account of the nature of her sex and the solitude of a life spent in idleness. For the devil, being cunning, very often deceives such persons. This we experience daily, especially in these regions in which we live.

After the sign given by the Maid at Orléans, Gélu celebrated,

if there be doubt concerning anything relating to an action entrusted to the Maid—whom we piously believe to be an angel of the Lord of hosts, sent to bring about the redemption of his people and the restoration of the kingdom—then judgment must be made according to divine wisdom rather than human.

And he advised the Dauphin,

Moreover, we would advise the king that each day he do something certain that is pleasing to God and acceptable to his will, and that concerning this he confer with the Maid, and after her advice bring it into effect humbly and devoutly, lest the Lord have cause to withdraw His hand, but rather continue His grace.

It was quite a reversal. But so was Orléans. Recommending that the King send her to battle was no easy decision for the Doctors at Poitiers. It was a remarkable leap of faith, actually. As they initially considered her meaning and purpose, they may have been amazed she had arrived to Chinon safely at all, or wondered that she had predicted the recent French loss at the Battle of Herrings at Rouvray. But defeat the English?

Though finding nothing wrong in her over several days of clerical and social examinations at Chinon, following Gélu's recommendation it was decided upon a more thorough investigation of her at Poitiers. The King's friend and fellow noble, Jean, the Duke d'Alençon, recalled,

One day when dining with me she told me that the clergy had examined her well, but that she knew and could do more than she had told them. The King when he had heard the report of his commissioners, wished that she should still go to Poitiers, in order to submit to another examination.

Poitiers was the clerical, political, and intellectual center of France under Charles VII, and the remnants of his French Parlement met there. Two years later, at Charles' request, Pope Eugene IV issued a bull chartering the University of Poitiers, which opened in 1432 with five "faculties," or areas of study. The school was staffed by many of the "Doctors" who had examined Joan. Séguin de Séguin described the assembly at Poitiers in February of 1429:

I saw Jeanne for the first time at Poitiers. The King's Council was assembled in the house of the Lady La Macée, the Archbishop of Rheims, then Chancellor of France, being of their number.... The Members of the Council told us that we were summoned, in the King's name, to question Jeanne and to give our opinion upon her. We were sent to question her at the house of Maître Jean Rabateau, where she was lodging. We repaired thither and interrogated her.

The Chronique de la Pucelle gives a good, if compressed, account of the Poitiers examinations, the core of which the Chronique indicates took place on the first day of the trial, whereupon we see that the clerics and lawyers approached the Maid with doubt:

Then several notable doctors of theology and other bachelors were assembled, who entered the hall where she was; and when she saw them, she went and sat at the end of the bench and asked them what they wanted. Then it was said, by the mouth of one of [the doctors] that they had come to her because it was said that she had told the king that God sent her to him; and demonstrated by fair and gentle arguments, that she ought not to be believed.

That day or not, the Chronique describes her persuasion:

They remained there for more than two hours, during which each spoke in turn; and she answered them — at which they were greatly astonished, that so simple a shepherd-girl, a young woman, could respond so prudently.

Signed statement by Joan's host at Poitiers, Jean Rabateau, dated 1435.

It is better understood that Joan was subjected to a series of inquiries over a couple weeks, formal and informal, which, according to historian Henri Daniel-Lacombe, took place entirely at Rabateau's residence, La Maison de la Rose. Daniel-Lacombe reproduces a 1435 affidavit of sorts from Rabateau affirming his trust in the Maid, and affirming for us that Joan was interviewed periodically:

And I know well and with certainty that many notable persons, both clerics and laymen, came often to see her and to speak with her, and that she was by many examined and questioned concerning the faith and other matters touching her person and her mission.

Along the way, we get from the Chronique a preview of the theological traps Joan would two years later face in her heresy trial at Rouen under the English, when another of the Doctors quizzed her on theological grounds:

And among the others there was a Carmelite, a doctor of theology, a very caustic man, who told her that Holy Scripture forbade placing faith in such words unless a sign were shown; and she replied plainly that she did not wish to tempt God, and that the sign God had ordered for her was to raise the siege before Orléans and to lead the king to be crowned at Reims; that they should come there, and they would see it.

That the sign would be shown at Orléans and Reims, and not there at Poitiers, didn't go over well, as noted by the chronicler,

which seemed a hard thing and almost impossible, given the power of the English, and because from Orléans, or from Blois, as far as Reims, there was no French-held place.

Another gotchya question from a Doctor again presaged Joan's inspired responses in the later trial, one that a Poitiers participant recalled nearly verbatim a quarter century later:

There was another doctor of theology, of the Order of Preachers, who said to her: “Jeanne, you ask for men-at-arms, and yet you say that it is God’s will that the English leave the kingdom of France and depart to their own country. If that is so, there is no need of men-at-arms, for the will of God alone can defeat them and make them go back to their country.” To which she replied that she asked for men — not in great number — who would fight, and God would give the victory.

According to the Chronique, this all seems to have happened two sittings, continuing:

After this reply made by the said Jeanne, the theologians assembled to see what they would advise the king; and they concluded, without any contradiction, that although the things said by the said Jeanne seemed very strange to them, the king ought to place his trust in it and attempt to carry out what she said.

Unfortunately we don't have the direct transcript of the Poitiers examinations, for reasons I will discuss later. Among the tragedies of the loss, or, more likely, destruction, of the register is that we don't hear more of these exchanges such as we see in her Condemnation trial. Nevertheless, from the little we have from La Chronique de la Pucelle, especially, it seems that each of the Doctors was given a shot at her, and, as at Rouen, she didn't just deflect the questions, she reshaped them.

In addition to the theological and legal queries, inquiries were made into her at Vaucouleurs and across the Bar Mouvant. The character studies of Joan continued within Poitiers society itself. From the Chronique,

On the following day several notable persons went there, both presidents and councillors of Parliament, and others of various estates; and before they went, what she said seemed to them impossible to accomplish, saying that it was nothing but dreams and fantasies; but there was not one who, when he returned and had heard her, did not say that she was a creature of God; and some of them, as they returned, wept hot tears. Likewise there were ladies, young gentlewomen, and towns-women who spoke with her, and she answered them so gently and graciously that she made them weep.

However, there remained the problem of her clothes:

Among other things, they asked her why she did not take the dress of a woman; and she answered them: “I well believe that it seems strange to you, and not without cause; but since I must arm myself and serve the noble Dauphin in arms, it is necessary that I take the clothing suited and necessary for this; and also, when I am among men, being in men’s clothing, they will not have carnal concupiscence for me; and it seems to me that in this state I shall better preserve my virginity, in thought and in deed.”

Joan proved herself most uncomplicated, as was her promise to show a "sign" at Orléans -- everything, including her apparel, lined up to her declared purpose, which included crowning the King at Reims, something no one even considered, much less felt was important. Neither the Poitiers Conclusions nor the Chronique de la Pucelle mention Reims. It came up because Joan refused to call Charles "King." One of his ministers, François Garivel asked her why not:

When I asked Jeanne why she called the King Dauphin, and not King, she replied that she should not call him King till he had been crowned and anointed at Rheims, to which city she meant to conduct him.

Whatever reservations the French clerics had held about her before Orléans turned after the battle either to acknowledgement of her as emissary of God, such as we see from Gélu and Gerson. The momentum created by Joan at Orléans continued in the sweep of towns at the Loire crossings, making the idea of a coronation at Reims not just possible but inviting, including for hte Chancellor de Chartres, for whom it became the first opportunity to exercise his office as Archbishop at Reims itself. The Poitiers recommendation came through his authority, but crowning Charles VII was fully to his advantage. It came of events beyond his making -- but not beyond his resentment, which would follow soon. Loyalty to Joan was won on the battlefield despite her sex, but not in the chambers of the Royal court, where that resentment grew precisely because she was a girl, and worse, a peasant girl, of the kind, as de Chartres would say upon her capture the next year, that was easily seduced by vanity, pride and disobedience.

The moment at Poitiers was large, but not so smooth. At the Condemnation trial Joan spoke of "trouble" with the clerics at Poitiers. When asked,

When the sign came to your King, what reverence did you make to it? Did it come from God?

She gave a curious response that confounded the interrogators and has confounded historians ever since:

I thanked Our Lord for having delivered me from the trouble that I had with the clergy of my party, who were arguing against me; and I knelt down several times. An Angel from God, and from none other, sent the sign to my King and for this I have many times thanked Our Lord. The priests of that party ceased to attack me when they had recognized the sign.

That Angel and sign we will get into later, but for now let's keep in mind that things weren't so easy with the clerics as the Poitiers Conclusions makes it seem. Whether about them, about her early encounters at Vaucouleurs, or during her travails as the King's ministers isolated her after the coronation at Reims, Joan suffered what we can only imagine most mystics endure, the doubt and the doubters. Number XLVIII of the Seventy Articles included the accusation that,

although she can report no sign which can be of a nature to prove that she hath in reality had this communication; she hath consulted neither Bishop, Priest, nor Prelate, nor any ecclesiastical person whatsoever, to know whether she ought to have faith in such spirits;

After dismissing part of the Article with her usual, I already answered that, she revealed to her persecutors a deeply difficult part of her experience:

And as to the signs, if those who asked for them were not worthy, I could not help it. Many a time did I pray that it might please God to reveal it to some of this party. It is true, that to believe in my revelations I asked neither Bishop, Priest, nor any one else.

Joan's Moment

Joan of Arc at Blois, by Charles-Henri Michel, 1901 (Wikicommons)

An Invitation to the English

In her Letter to the English, written as she was unleashed upon the English at the end of the Poitiers Examinations, Joan called upon the Duke of Bedford:

If you will give [the Maid] satisfactory pledges, you may yet join with her, so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom.

The Letter was addressed to the King of England and Bedford, but it also named the English commanders at Orléans, to where it was likely first sent. We know it was reproduced later by French and Burgundian chronicles, so it got around, but we don't know when and where it was sent or copied at the time. It is unlikely the Duke of Bedford saw it before the battle, as he was not at Orléans, but it could have easily been passed along to him in Rouen, and if not, it is not unlikely that word of it was passed along to him. The Letter was likely received at Orléans with the same derision and insult given to a subsequent letter Joan sent over the lines upon her arrival.

The historian Pernoud says that the Letter to the English may have been the first time the English had heard of Joan, although Pernoud notes that rumors of the Maid circulated France after her arrival to Chinon, which means that the Burgundians, and so the English, had picked up on the excitement in France over La Pucelle. English historian Barker claims the Letter was "circulated far afield" and that it shows how "the dauphin had put the full weight of his propaganda machine behind the Pucelle." That the French court used her propagandistically there is no doubt, but later, not at the time of the Letter. Barker's claim that it was sent about France is unsupported. However, its impact was such that for two years the English had kept a copy of it at Rouen. Joan was shown it before the Trial, and, of course, it was used as evidence against her in it. The preservation and presentation of the Letter at Rouen shows is a strong measure of its impact.

The 1460s Chronique de la Pucelle rather blandly introduces the Letter, as if it just was, which was probably just so to an historian looking back upon the English collapse in France, surprised by then by nothing about La Pucelle:

The Maid stayed at Blois, preparing for the campaign at Orleans, wrote and sent by a herald to the war-chiefs who were besieging Orleans, a letter, the tenor of which follows, and is as follows:

upon which we find the letter printed in full. The author clearly felt the Letter speaks for itself, as the 19th century historian Auguste Vallet de Viriville notes:

The chronicle, as soon as it has reached the coming of the Maid, suddenly changes its proportions: it immediately becomes an extended memoir, to the point of reproducing entire documents in the text of the narrative. Such, for example, is the famous letter written by the Maid to the English, summoning them to return to England.

That same March that Joan arrived to Chinon, Bedford had rejected the offer of neutrality of Orléans in exchange for lifting the siege. Following the French disaster at the Battle of the Herrings, given Dunois' offer of capitulation and Bedford's rejection of it, everyone clearly expected another English victory along the Loire -- which meant, certainly in Bedford's vision, victory over all of France. Dunois thought so, too, and went for the most advantageous exit strategy.

Historians have questioned the severity of the situation, claiming that the Battle of Herrings was a relatively minor setback that had no serious implication upon a French operation to rescue Orléans, and, anyway, Dunois' appeal to John the Fearless yielded to the French the larger advantage of causing a rift between the English and Burgundians, whose small presence at the siege was ordered out by the Duke. The degree of peril facing the French at Orléans may be historically debatable (or not), it was not so to the French at the time.

A first measure would be to compare the mood that the French may have wielded had they won at Rouvray to that following their defeat. With the arrival of Royal forces to Orléans, French confidence was high. Had the French destroyed the English supply train, the joyous celebrations of the English upon the caravan's safe arrival to the barricades would have been reversed and wildly amplified, perhaps to expulsion then and there of the English. Instead, as the Burgundian chronicler observed,

For this unhappy event that had thus befallen the French, King Charles felt deep sorrow at heart, seeing that on every side his affairs were turning contrary to his desire and going from bad to worse.

While historians point to the French material advantages against the English siege, after Rouvray, at Orléans and Chinon defeatism reigned. Additionally, testimonies of the historical participants hardly support confidence among the French. The wife of a counselor to the Charles VII recalled,

I was at Bourges when Jeanne arrived at Chinon, where the Queen was. In those days there was in the kingdom — especially in that part still obedient to the King — such great calamity and penury as was sad to see so that the followers of the King were almost in despair: and this I know, because my husband was then Receiver General, and at that time neither of the King's money nor of his own had he four crowns. The town of Orleans was in the hands of the King, and there was no way of help. And in this calamity came Jeanne, and I firmly believe that she came from God and was sent for the relief of the King and his faithful subjects, who then were without hope save in God.

Fr. Seguin Seguin, an Examiner at Poitiers, placed the logic of their trusting in Joan to the peril they faced:

considering the extreme necessity and the great peril of the town

We have already seen the how "all the people of Orleans" gathered to hear from the messengers Dunois had sent to Chinon to report on the Maid's arrival to France. A resident of Orléans similarly described the moment:

Many of the inhabitants of Orleans desired the coming of the Maid, for they had heard the current rumour that she had told the King how she was sent from God to raise the siege then held against the town; the inhabitants were then in such straits, on account of the English, that they knew not where to turn, except to God.

Another report expresses by counter-distinction the anxiety at Orléans, as seen by the relief upon her arrival,

I was in the town when Jeanne reached it. She was received with as much rejoicing and acclamation from old and young, of both sexes, as if she had been an Angel of God; because we hoped through her to be delivered from our enemies, which indeed was done later.

One of Joan's Examiners at Poitiers, Guillaume Aymerie, asked her,

You assert that a Voice told you, God willed to deliver the people of France from the calamity in which they now are; but, if God wills to deliver them, it is not necessary to have soldiers.

Joan replied,

In God's Name! The soldiers will fight, and God will give the victory.

Fr. Seguin, too, questioned what good could she possibly do, and why should France risk putting an army before her:

Do you believe in God?

In truth, more than yourself!

Poitiers in the 16th century. Defensible, but not impenetrable. (Wikipedia)

Even were the situation not entirely dire, to anyone in Poitiers in 1429 memories and stories were yet fresh of the horrific 1356 French defeat ten miles from the city in the battle named for it, as well as a 1372 siege of the city itself by a English-aligned Gascon captain, Jean de Grailly, which was only relieved by the brilliant French commander, Bertrand du Guesclin. The happy days that followed Guesclin's victories under Charles V's were reversed by the English Henry V and, subsequently, the Duke of Bedford, whose armies regularly threatened Poitiers and freely raided the region. The minds of the Poitiers Examiners were hardly concerned with long term solutions.

After testing Joan by asking if she believed in God, Sequin continued,

But God wills that you should not be believed unless there appear some sign to prove that you ought to be believed; and we shall not advise the King to trust in you, and to risk an army on your simple statement.

In God's Name! I am not come to Poitiers to shew signs: but send me to Orleans, where I shall shew you the signs by which I am sent. Send me men in such numbers as may seem good, and I will go to Orleans.

Seguin's testimony continued,

And then she foretold to us — to me and to all the others who were with me — these four things which should happen, and which did afterwards come to pass: first, that the English would be destroyed, the siege of Orleans raised, and the town delivered from the English; secondly, that the King would be crowned at Rheims; thirdly, that Paris would be restored to his dominion; and fourthly, that the Duke d'Orléans should be brought back from England. And I who speak, I have in truth seen these four things accomplished. We reported all this to the Council of the King ; and we were of opinion that, considering the extreme necessity and the great peril of the town, the King might make use of her help and send her to Orleans.

Dunois, too, must have been relieved to hear from his messengers who reported back to him on her that,

They said that the King at first had no wish to listen to her: she even remained two days, waiting, until she was permitted to present herself before him, although she persisted in saying that she was come to raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct the Dauphin to Rheims, in order that he might be consecrated; she at once asked for men, arms and horses.

If there was any planning for a French relief of Orléans, the English weren't expecting it, as after the Battle of Herrings the commander John Falstaff wasn't sent back to Orléans until after the Joan's army had arrived. What had changed for all, regardless of the situation or its degree of peril, was the timetable. Joan turned it into "now."

The people of Orléans had little reason to expect anything but brutal treatment by the English were the city to fall. In that the Duke of Orléans was in an English prison, the entire English operation violated the norms of medieval warfare that prohibited assaults upon the city of an imprisoned titled head. Other French cities that had held out against the English suffered terribly.

Irish kerns by Albrecht Dürer, 1521 (Wikipedia0. These lightly armored soldiers who during Henry V's invasion of Normandy conducted countryside raids to starve out besieged cities and terrify the poeple.

Sieges were especially brutal upon inhabitants. At Caen in 1417 Henry V's soldiers were let loose on the city, murdering upwards 2,000 inhabitants. In 1424, to starve out the besieged residents Rouen, a city with formidable defense works, Henry sent bands to ravage and scorch the surrounding lands, including the infamous Irish kern, mobile solders dressed colorfully who rode with severed heads or babies strewn over their horses' backs. Desperate and the people starving, the city sent out the gates thousands of residents. Henry refused their passage, and they were forced to find refuge in ditches outside the walls. An English chronicler, wrote of a baby suckling at its dead mother's breast, while another mother clung to her own, dead infant. The French Chronicler Chartiers wrote,

From the beginning of October, they were forced to eat horses, dogs, cats, mice, rats, and other things not fit for human beings; and in addition to this, they had already driven out of the city some twelve thousand poor people — men, women, and children — the greater part of whom died miserably in the city’s ditches.

Such were the experiences of France under Henry V's invasion. At Orléans, it was not yet so dire, as supplies made it into the city due to an incomplete English encirclement. That in no way lessened the possible English treatment of the people of Orléans were the city taken, and which had to have informed Dunois' offer of peaceful capitulation. Whatever its form, a potential English victory was on everyone's minds as Joan arrived to Chinon.

The Poitiers Conclusions, written just before Joan's letter, framed the cause for sending Joan to Orléans not just in terms of the royal "necessity" but for the wishes of the people:

considering the continual prayers of his poor people toward God and all others loving peace and justice

Christine de Pisan celebrated the change in fortunes for France with,

The verse has truly turned around
from great sorrow to new joy

La Chronique de la Pucelle more carefully notes that "sorrowful" state of mind in France that the arrival of Joan, indeed, "turned around":

The inhabitants, therefore, in great doubt and in danger of being lost and subjected to their enemies, heard that there was a maiden who came to the king, who claimed she could lift the siege of the said city of Orléans.

Given that mood, we can see the impact of Joan's arrival through her Letter to the English, with all its certitude and defiance. The Chronicle of Perceval de Cagny, also written c. 1450s, records:

In this year, the [6th] day of that month of March, a maid [virgin?] of the age of eighteen years or so, from the borderlands of Lorraine and Barroiz, came to the king at Chinon; who was of simple, laboring folk, who said many marvelous things, always speaking of God and his Saints; and said that God had sent her to the aid of the gentle king Charles to assist his war. Whereupon the king and all the people of his court, and others of whatever estate they might be, were greatly amazed at how she spoke of ordinances and the conduct of war, as well as knights and squires could have who were experienced in war. And on the words which she said of God and of the conduct of the war, she was daily examined by clerics and theologians and others, and by knights and squires; and she was found to be of firm and single purpose.

Courage in War

The Historian Fraioli admits that "looked at through slightly more cynical eyes, "the Letter" can be read as a mere license for aggression and violence," but, she notes, following Anatole France, that its appeal to Deuteronomy Chapter 20's Courage in War "provides a model for violence as well as peace." France observes of the Letter,

It was written in a new spirit; for it proclaimed the kingship of Jesus Christ and declared a holy war. It is hard to tell whether it proceeded from Jeanne's own inspiration or was dictated to her by the council of ecclesiastics. On first thoughts one might be inclined to attribute to the priests the idea of a summons, which is a literal application of the precepts of Deuteronomy:

Outside of demand for surrender, the "summons" was a Medieval form of war that we don't need to get into here, as Joan's purpose was not summonsing but warning, not a call to arms or peace, but prophesy. Equally unnecessary here is Anatole France's claim that the references to Deuteronomy demonstrate an "ecclesiastical touch." It ought not cause wonder, or derision, that a priest may have contributed, directly or indirectly, to invocation of the "kingship of Christ" and "holy war," though at Rouen Joan stated flatly that the letter was her own.

Nevertheless, let's play along with Anatole France and consider what if the theologian and Joan's scribe, Jean Erault, had himself inserted those references to Deuteronomy. Where the Letter states,

She is come here by the order of God to reclaim the Blood Royal.

Deuteronomy 20:4 reads,

For it is the LORD, your God, who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies and give you victory.

Joan didn't need a theologian to make that connection, nor did she need one to make her demands, which logically align with but not necessarily come from Deuteronomy 20:10-13:

When you draw near a city to attack it, offer it terms of peace.

If it agrees to your terms of peace and lets you in, all the people to be found in it shall serve you in forced labor.

But if it refuses to make peace with you and instead joins battle with you, lay siege to it,

and when the LORD, your God, delivers it into your power, put every male in it to the sword;

The peace offer was sincere-- as was her promise of consequence if denied:

And believe surely that the King of Heaven will send greater power to the Maid, to her and her good men-at-arms, than you can bring to the attack; and, when it comes to blows, we shall see who has the better right from the God of Heaven.

The Seventy Articles (accusations) makes no such assumption of a "summons," instead treating her letter as quite the opposite, an un-Christian call for unholy violence:

Article XXV. Usurping the office of Angels, Jeanne hath said and affirmed that she hath been sent by God; and she hath said this even for cases which tend openly to violence and effusion of human blood: a proposition the most foreign to all holiness, horrible and abominable to all pious souls,

What have you to say to this Article?

First, I begged them to make peace; and it was only in case they would not make peace that I was ready to fight.

We need not interpret here: she meant it all, and without contradiction: give back what you stole, or I'll take it back by force.

Joan wrote the Letter just off of a frustrating several weeks of clerical interrogation. Now liberated to act upon the green light to Orléans, if anything, the letter marks that frustration and her burn to get moving. As her confessor, Jean Pasquerel testified,

She told me she was not pleased at so many examinations; that they prevented her carrying out the work for which she was sent, and that it was quite time for her to act.

At Blois, before she left for Orléans, she ordered Pasquerel to acquire her banner and march it to the city in a parade of priests. He was amazed:

Then, some days after, accompanied by the. whole army, I came to Orleans by way of the Beauce — always with this same banner surrounded by Priests — meeting no obstacle. When Jeanne knew of our approach, she came to meet us; and together we entered Orleans without difficulty, bringing in the provisions in sight of the English. This was a marvellous thing; for the English were in great number and strength, all prepared for fight. They had opposite them our army, very inferior to theirs: they saw us; they heard our Priests singing; I was in the midst of the Priests bearing the banner. The English remained immovable, never attempting to attack either the Priests or the army which followed them.

That moment stayed with Pasquerel:

they saw us; they heard our Priests singing;

And the English "remained immovable." It's a memorable moment because it was so unexpected -- the expectation would have been that the English would interfere, yet they did not. What a joy for those priests -- and what a relief that Joan's banner, as they saw it, preserved them from interference or worse. We begin to see the moment more clearly, both for its impact upon those priests and the English. Marching for La Pucelle and for God, those priests felt every word of the Letter to the English. Of course Joan -- or Erault -- invoked Deuteronomy in it. From the Letter to the march on Orléans, it was a mesmerizing moment for the priests, watching and participating in the hand of God.

La Pucelle^®

While pronouncing that Joan was on the move, that the time had come, and the promise of victory at Orléans, Paris and across France, the Letter employed a bit of branding of La Pucelle, with all the religious implications therein. Thinking of the Letter as a public announcement, her use of The Maid becomes strategic. Joan does not call herself La Pucelle except in her Letters. Her use of "the Maid" acts as a title, which she otherwise neither possess nor claims. Also, it makes sense that she would use La Pucelle in her letters, as she is addressing herself to others as they knew her. Both allies and enemies embraced the term, labeling her, the one "called the Maid," showing how entrenched had become the label.

First, it lends credence to the legends of "a maiden who would save France" and other such prophesies, which the English themselves had heard, and thus amplifying the impact of Orléans. Next, La Pucelle, for virgin, leant directly to its opposite vocation, prostitute, thus the insults from the English lines that so offended Joan, which the Bourgeois of Paris duly recorded:

And it was said that she had told an English captain that he should withdraw from the siege with his company, or else harm and shame would come to them all. The captain reviled her with much foul language, calling her ribaulde and whore.

The juxtaposition of pucelle and putain also heightened for both sides associations of La Pucelle with the Vierge Marie. When Christine de Pisan wrote of Joan, the reference to the Virgin Mary is barely shy of explicit:

Par tel miracle vrayement
Que, se la chose n'est notoire
Et évident quoy et comment,
Il n'est homs qui le peust croire ?
Chose est bien digne de mémoire
Que Dieu, par une vierge tendre,
Ait adès voulu (chose est voire)
Sur France si grant grace estendre.

My translation goes,

Through such a miracle, truly,
if the matter was not so well known
and so clear in what and how
is there any man who would believe it?
It is well worthy of memory
that God, through a tender virgin,
has willed (it is real!)
upon France this an enormous grace.

On the French side, we have seen already Joan's impact upon the soldiery, her insistence on confession and Mass. La Pucelle gave them purpose, confidence, and energy. One of the Examiners at Poitiers put her impact upon them plainly:

All the soldiers held her as sacred.

The Letter's threats followed their fulfillment at Orléans, whereupon it became downright scary for the English. For the French, the Letter's logic was affirmed by Orléans and the subsequent crowning at Reims: God had chosen sides. The Letter filled the texts and imaginations of the events, spurring fear and contempt just as awe and joy as we see in Gélu's De mirabilis victorius and Christine de Pisan's poem. With Joan's capture, though, the Letter returned to opposing sides, where Joan was either a witch, or ignored and abandoned, which is why the original copies we have of it are not from Poitiers or Blois, but from Orléans, which never lost faith in Joan -- and at Rouen where it was used as evidence of deviltry. From the Seventy accusations:

The tenour of the letter contained in the preceding Article proves well that Jeanne hath been the sport of evil spirits, and that she often consulted them to know what she ought to do; or, at least, that, to seduce the people, she imagined these inventions by lying or wickedness.

Saint Joan's moment

Joan's moment was made possible by her delivery of Orléans, the "sign" she had promised the Doctors at Poitiers. The importance of Orléans was easy to understand. But the need for the coronation at Reims was unclear. Sure, it was the traditional site of French coronations, and so held symbolic value. But, as the Dauphin and his advisors argued, it wasn't necessary, and could wait. The Dauphin was already King of France, Charles VII, having claimed the title at the death of his father in 1422, in what is called, without a coronation, an "ascension" to the throne. There would normally be as little delay as possible between an ascension and coronation, but the symbolism of the coronation was not necessary to hold the throne, and for the besieged House of Valois it wasn't convenient to adhere to the tradition. Indeed, Joan's insistence must have been most discomfiting, as it raised an issue they didn't want to face. It was especially difficult for the Dauphin, as his attempt to reach Reims for a formal coronation in 1424 was thwarted by bad luck and, unlike the usual English victories in the Hundred Years War, English armor, at the Battle of Verneuil.

As a religious ceremony affirming the Divine rights of kings, the coronation was a supremely important rite. Indeed, the coronation was referred to as a "consecration," thus the French name for Reims, la cité des sacres (with sacres indicating consecrated coronation.) Thus for Joan, Charles was not King until he was ceremonially and by the authority of the Church crowned. François Garivel, the King's Councillor-Genéral, related,

When I asked Jeanne why she called the King Dauphin, and not King, she replied that she should not call him King till he had been crowned and anointed at Rheims, to which city she meant to conduct him.

The problem was that Reims was surrounded by Burgundian-held territory. After a frustrating month's delay back at Chinon following the relief of Orléans, Joan insisted upon, and prevailed in, clearing the passage to Reims for the coronation.

Recollections of Joan's arrival to Vaucouleurs, where she needed to convince the French Captain, Robert de Baudricourt, to send her to Chinon, recall her mission as to "save France," such as Jean De Novelmport:

What are you doing here, my friend?" I said to her. "Must the King be driven from the kingdom; and are we to be English?" "I am come here," she answered me, "to this royal town, to speak to Robert de Baudricourt, to the end that he may conduct me or have me conducted to the King: but Robert cares neither for me nor for my words. Nevertheless, before the middle of Lent, I must be with the King— even if I have to wear down my feet to the knees! No one in the world — neither kings, nor dukes, nor the daughter of the King of Scotland, nor any others — can recover the kingdom of France; there is no succour to be expected save from me; but, nevertheless, I would rather spin with my poor mother — for this is not my proper estate: it is, however, necessary that I should go, and do this, because my Lord wills that I should do it." And when I asked her who this Lord was, she told me it was God.

Upon her arrival to Chinon, testimonies recall her focus on Orléans, and not upon the King's coronation, although she did mention it. Her uncle, who introduced her to Baudricourt, said,

she told me she wished to go into France, to the Dauphin, to have him crowned.

Guillaume de Ricarville, a royal Steward, who first heard news of her from Orleans, recalled,

when news came that there had passed through the town of Gien a shepherdess, called the Maid, conducted by two or three gentlemen of Lorraine, from which country she came; that this Maid said she was come to raise the siege of Orleans, and that afterwards she would lead the King to his anointing; for thus had she been commanded by God.

In the summary of their findings, the Doctors at Poitiers spoke of Orléans and not of the coronation at Reims. The point wasn't to deny that second outcome but to set proof for it at Orléans. Seguin recalled Joan's four prophesies of Orléans, Reims, Paris and return of the Duke of Orléans, but the only record we have from Poitiers, the Poitiers Conclusions, speaks only of Orléans. Perhaps the recollections from the Rehabilitation Trial conflated events and ascribed to Joan a prophesy about them. But it makes no sense for the Poitiers Conclusions to mention the crowning, as the Doctors were concerned solely with Joan's first sign, delivery of Orléans. Also, for the theologians to endorse Joan's mission to crown the King at Reims would risk questioning the King's legitimacy at Bourges, thus it was a topic they would not want to touch. We do know from her testimony at Rouen that Joan mentioned the Archangel and the Saints at Poitiers, so the discussions certainly covered additional ground past Orléans, making an obvious question be what's after that?

All the other prophesies were contingent upon Orléans. So Orléans had to happen first, and none of the others would matter if the "sign" she promised did not arrive there.

It all seems so easy: this girl shows up at the French royal pretender's court, declares he is the true heir to the throne and that she will save his country from a twenty-five-year civil war and a ten-year foreign occupation. The pretender king shrugs and says, here, priests, see if she's real. They do, she is, and the king gives her armor, a horse, and an army and off she goes.

Joan explained it during the Trial at Rouen, when asked,

Why was your King able to put faith in your words?

He had good signs, and the clergy bore me witness

What a great summary! Nevertheless, what Joan had to accomplish to get there is hidden in the compression of the events. So let's review the contingencies, the one thing she needed to do to accomplish the next, starting with her goal to save France:

To save France, Joan needed to affirm the legitimacy of the French King, the Dauphin Charles, required for him to claim and retake Paris; to crown him legitimately, she needed to take him to the traditional site of coronation at Reims; to get him to Reims, she needed to clear a path through enemy-held territory; to start that campaign, she needed first to relieve the city of Orléans from an English siege; to take Orléans, she had to earn the loyalty and enthusiasm of her fellow military commanders and troops and to exercise tactical brilliance and remarkable bravery; to lead the army, she needed the support of the Dauphin and his court; to convince the Dauphin's court, she had to demonstrate Catholic orthodoxy to her ecclesiastical interrogators at Poitiers; to even be subjected to that investigation, she had to convince the Dauphin of the possibility of her divine mission; to convince him of it, she had to meet with him; to meet with him she needed to have generated popular enthusiasm and curiosity as to who she might be, especially that she might be the fulfillment of the legend of a girl who would save France; for that she had to be thoroughly convinced of it herself; to be convinced of it herself, she had to experience not just the Visions but to embrace and submit to them and their effects upon her piety and faith.

To those ends, several things stand out:

• she believed and obeyed her Voices;
• submitting to their insistence and encouragement, she would not take 'no' from those in her way;
• she accurately prophesized events and outcomes;
• she generated tremendous enthusiasm from the people;
• she breathed confidence into the French army, which had been browbeaten and self-defeated until she inspired them with her leadership and example and disciplined them through the Confessional and the Mass;
• she exercised decisive military and political leadership, knowing when and where to attack at key moments and taking crucial steps towards formal coronation of the Dauphin Charles as King Charles VII at Reims;
• she frightened and demoralized the English and Burgundians, shifting battlefield confidence to the French.

And that's just to save France.

To become a Saint Joan had to suffer betrayal and martyrdom in a uniquely well-documented show trial at the hands of the English in the "Trial of Condemnation." To preserve the transcripts and memory of that trial, two decades later, with Joan largely forgotten, her mother had to convince the French King and the Pope to reassess her prior conviction in a similarly and uniquely well-documented investigation in the "Trial of Rehabilitation." These transcripts created a rare historical record of a medieval personage which form our understanding of Saint Joan. Without them we likely would never have heard about a Joan of Arc, much less a Saint Joan of Arc.

As Pope Benedict XVI describes,

Joan of Arc did not know how to read or write, but the depths of her soul can be known thanks to two sources of exceptional historical value: the two Trials that concern her. The first, the Trial of Condemnation, contains the transcription of the long and numerous interrogations to which Joan was subjected in the last months of her life (February-May 1431) and reports the Saint’s own words. The second, the Trial of Nullity of the Condemnation or of “rehabilitation”, contains the depositions of about 120 eyewitnesses of all the periods of her life.

Saint Joan was not canonized for having saved France, nor was she canonized for her visions. She was canonized for her faith, which included faithfulness to her Visions. As Benedict beautifully expresses it,

In Jesus Joan contemplated the whole reality of the Church, the “Church triumphant” of Heaven, as well as the “Church militant” on earth. According to her words, “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing”. This affirmation, cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 795), has a truly heroic character in the context of the Trial of Condemnation, before her judges, men of the Church who were persecuting and condemning her. In the Love of Jesus Joan found the strength to love the Church to the very end, even at the moment she was sentenced.

Victory at Orléans

From the testimony of Jean Luilier, a Burgher of Orléans at the Trial of Rehabilitation,

On the [7th] May, 1429, I remember well that an assault was made on the enemy in the Fort of the Bridge, in which Jeanne was wounded by an arrow; the attack lasted from morning till evening, and in such manner that our men wished to retreat into the town. Then Jeanne appeared, her standard in her hand, and placed it on the edge of the trench; and immediately the English began to quake, and were seized with fear. The army of the King took courage, and once more began to assail the Boulevard; and thus was the Boulevard taken, and the English therein were all put to flight or slain. Classidas and the principal English captains, thinking to retreat into the Tower of the Bridge, fell into the river, and were drowned; and the fort being taken, all the King’s army retired into the city.

Pretty much sums up the events at Orléans. It is not the business of his work to narrate that battle, as it is well-described elsewhere. However, we must take careful note of the role in it of Joan's standard. Her flag won the battle, there and elsewhere, quite literally, as she testified at Rouen, and so its place at her King's coronation at Reims was well earned:

It had shared the pain, it was only right it should share the honour.

The Battle Flag

Angel bringing the Golden Lilly to Clovis, from the 15th century Bedford Book of Hours (Wikipedia)

The Rouen court took much interest in Joan's battle flag and its, to them, heretical depiction of the Archangels, Christ, and a fleur-de-lis, which made it especially repugnant to these representatives of the English claimant to the French throne. We have various descriptions of the flag, but here from Joan herself:

I had a banner of which the field was sprinkled with lilies; the world was painted there, with an angel at each side ; it was white, of the white cloth called 'boccassin'; there was written above, I believe, 'Jhesus Maria' ; it was fringed with silk.

Her confessor, Pasquerel, who was there when it was produced recalled:

She told me she had asked from the Messengers of her Lord — that is to say, God — who appeared to her, what she ought to do; and they had told her to take the banner of her Lord. It was for this she had her banner made, on which was painted the image of Our Saviour seated in judgment on the clouds of Heaven, with an Angel holding in his hand a fleur-de-lys which Christ was blessing. I was at Tours with her when this banner was painted.

The Rouen court recognized the banner's symbolic power, and so attempted to denigrate it by accusing Joan of using it and her smaller pennons, which also had fleur-de-lys, as demonic charms. Two of the "Seventy Articles" of accusation against Joan reference her standard. Here from one, Article XX:

She hath put faith in her ring, in her banner, in certain pieces of linen, and pennons which she carried or caused to be carried by her people, and also in the sword found by revelation, according to her, at Saint Catherine de Fierbois, saying that these things were very fortunate. She made thereon many execrations and conjurations, in many and divers places, publicly asserting that by them she would do great things and would obtain victory over her enemies; that to those of her people who carried pennons of this kind no ill could happen.

As she generally responded to each Article, she did here, to Article XX, with,

I refer to what I have already said.

But then she added,

In all I have done there was never any sorcery or evil arts. As for the good luck of my banner, I refer it to the fortune sent through it by Our Lord.

France Moderne by Charles V, 1376 (Wikipedia)

France ancien (Wikipedia)

American football fans associate the name and logo of the New Orleans football team to jazz music. Though it has been a while since the House of Bourbon controlled the city, the team's name was explicitly associated with Catholic France with the team's official announcement coming on All Saints Day. The logo may be familiar to some fans from the city of New Orleans flag, or as the Louisiana state emblem, but it is doubtful that many recognize it as the ancient symbol of the French monarchy.

If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will learn that early kings of France were fond of a pretty yellow flower that grew along the River Lis, and that Clovis first adopted it as a herald after his baptism at Reims. In Catholic France, however, the legend holds that an angel, or even the Virgin Mary herself, presented "the golden lily" to Clovis as a symbol of purification at his baptism. Whatever the origin, the fleur-de-lis became a profound symbol for the divine right of French kings.

Charles V, the Dauphin Charles' grandfather, reduced the royal coat of arms, the France Ancien, and its field of golden lilies, to just three flowers for the Holy Trinity and so to more clearly mark the source of his divine rule. We can see, then, how freaked were the Rouen judges, and by extension, the English, at Joan's assertion upon her battle flag of the divine right of the French monarchy. (We might say, then, that the Hundred Years War was fought over a flower.)

The Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto by Paolo Veronese, c. 1572 (Wikipedia. The "Serenissima," representing Venice, introduced to the Virgin Mary by Saints Justina and Mark

Knights typically displayed a banner, but a full standard was of high rank only, as each banner sequentially represented battle segments. That Joan was allowed a full standard tells us of not only her authority, but of her resolve. Joan's Voices ordered its design and procurement. So, perhaps, we can see it as God's will done by Joan, or done at her insistence; but that she was allowed the standard at all ought to rank among the miracles that laid out her path. Why would the French have even allowed it? A battle standard is, ultimately, the king's symbol, especially one as explicit in its message as was Joan's, of the Angels, the Lord, the fleur-de-lys. That standard spoke, thereby, of Joan's endorsement from the Dauphin, which was trumpeted by its rise with the Maid on the march to Orléans and against the walls of the English fortifications.

Discipline and morale win wars, nothing new there, but Joan's discipline was for the soul of the man first, then the soldier. The standard had the image of the Lord on it -- not just a Cross or IHS, but Christ himself holding the world in his hands, or, as described elsewhere (or about a different banner), blessing the French herald, the fleur-de-lis, with the Archangels to either side and framed by the words, Jhesus † Maria to the side. If you've been sent by God, you want to advertise it.

Marketers like to think of "ecosystems" of messaging and reinforcement. Joan's imaging operated on several levels, starting with the literal imprint of God's warrant upon her. That's all good and nothing new, but she next connected her people, the soldiers, especially, but not only them, to that God and the mission he imparted upon her.

We might not expect a secular historian to recognize the power of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, although a professor of literature ought to recall that Shakespeare felt it was good for war, having his Henry V, prior to Agincourt (in a Protestant way), praying for forgiveness for having usurped the throne. More dramatically, and in a more historical example, Pope Pius V ordered prayers and fasting before the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, and his Holy League admiral, Don Juan of Austria, ordered priests aboard ships to hear individual confessions and make general absolutions prior to the battle. At Orléans Joan insisted upon it. We hear from a priest, Pierre Campaing, how Joan by order, example, and elicitation, brought the French army to Catholic piety through the Sacraments:

I have seen Jeanne, at the Elevation of the Host, weeping many tears. I remember well that she induced the soldiers to confess their sins; and I indeed saw that, by her instigation and advice, La Hire and many of his company came to confession.

The absolution for sins not only frees one of the guilt of sin but reorients one to right purpose. That is, repent, yes, but sin no more, which Joan insisted upon. We hear from witnesses, such as the squire Simon Baucroix,

She would not permit any of those in her company to steal anything; nor would she ever eat of food which she knew to be stolen. Once, a Scot told her that he had eaten of a stolen calf: she was very angry, and wanted to strike the Scot for so doing.

Joan famously taught La Hire to curse more appropriately, using 'Par mon martin ("by my baton") instead of the Lord's name. Even the Duke d'Alençon was compelled to watch his mouth around her. Louis de Contes, of an important Orléans family, recalled,

To hear blasphemies upon the Name of Our Lord vexed her. Many times when the Duke d'Alençon swore or blasphemed before her, I heard her reprove him. As a rule, no one in the army dared swear or blaspheme before her, for fear of being reprimanded.

The Duke mentioned it himself, admitting,

She was very vexed if she heard any of the soldiers swear. She reproved me much and strongly when I sometimes swore; and when I saw her I refrained from swearing.

And, of course, there would be no "camp followers" around to tempt and corrupt the troops. Baucroix continued,

She would never permit women of ill-fame to follow the army; none of them dared to come into her presence; but, if any of them appeared, she made them depart unless the soldiers were willing to marry them.

And Contes similarly recalled,

She would have no women in her army. One day, near Château-Thierry, seeing the mistress of one of her followers riding on horseback, she pursued her with her sword, without striking her at all; but with gentleness and charity she told her she must no longer be found amongst the soldiers, otherwise she would suffer for it.

These are distinct memories, data points we can use to understand the moment in time, but together, we see how Joan's battle flag reinforced the essential messages of repentance and justification for devotion and military order. Such was her presence that without a formal command she exercised the moral authority expressed in her pennants.

Wearing the Pants

Remarkably, what we do not hear of from Joan's military compatriots is any mention, much less any complaints, of her male attire. Jean Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans doesn't mention her dress. And neither does the overall commander, the Duke d'Alençon. As always, the historical agenda is illogically supported in the absence of mention of her clothing in the memory of participants at the Trial of Rehabilitation, as if it were a deliberate white-washing of the problem. Her male attire only mattered to her opponents for whom it was proof of what they already believed, that she was a witch sent by demons.

Her team understood what she was doing and why. It either didn't matter to them or was so logical to her vocation that it was a non-issue. Frankly, for those looking back upon her life twenty years later upon all she accomplished -- or from today as the moderns do -- making a big deal out of her clothing is, well, let's say it misses the point. Joan's squire, Jean d'Aulon testified that Joan was given by the king a suit of armor "or the safety of her body." Simple enough.

For the French clerics at Poitiers, her male dress was an impediment to her endorsement but was accepted not just as an expedient but as Biblically consistent with the examples of the female warriors Deborah and Judith. The problem for the clerics was not her attire but whether or not she was "from God." Once it was discerned that Joan was not against God, and that she was with God if confirmed by the signs she had promised at Orleans, the matter of her dress was dropped by the theologians. In his post-Orléans apologia, or defense of Joan, De mirabili victoria ("Miraculous Victory") Jean Gerson addressed the matter of her dress, as he recognized the theological concern. The logic from Poitiers was that if she was from God, she'd win at Orléans. She won, and was, therefore, from God. Therefore her attire was appropriate. Gerson still felt compelled to defend it in De mirabili victoria. He argued,

This law, matter insofar as it is judicial, nor insofar as it is moral, condemns the wearing of manly and wearing like clothes by the maid who was a warrior and acts in a manly manner, while unquestionable signs proved that she has been chosen by the king of heaven as his standard bearer in the eyes of everyone to crush the enemies of justice and to revive its defenders; To overthrow by the hand of a woman, a young girl, a virgin the powerful weapons of iniquity; This Maid, finally surrounded by helpful angels with whom their virginity forms a link of friendship and relationship, as Saint Jerome says and it is frequently seen in the history of Saints -- Cecile's for instance -- where they appear with crowns of lilies and roses.

As did the soldiery around her, the Bishop realized that if God sent the Maid to save France by arms then she needed to dress accordingly. Throughout the Trial of Rehabilitation, the only mention of Joan's male attire concerned witnesses to the Rouen Trial or from the first encounters with her at Vaucouleurs where she was given men's clothing and a horse to ride to Chinon. The soldiers and people of Vaucouleurs cared only that Joan be appropriately attired for her mission and otherwise mention it with utter lack of concern. From Durand Lexart:

She told me she wished to go, herself, and seek Robert de Baudricourt, in order that he might have her conducted to the place where the Dauphin was. But many times Robert told me to take her back to her father and to box her ears. When she saw that Robert would not do as she asked, she took some of my garments and said she would start. She departed, and I took her to [Saint-Nicolas].

It's perfectly logical that if she were sneaking off to see the King by herself that she'd want to disguise herself as a man, to which Lexart provides no objection. Later, when Baudricourt finally gave the order to accompany her to Chinon, Lexart explains,

She came back to Vaucouleurs; and the inhabitants bought for her a man's garments and a complete warlike equipment. Alain de Vaucouleurs and I bought her a horse for the price of twelve francs, which we paid, and which was repaid to us later by the Sieur Robert de Baudricourt. This done, Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengey, Colet de Vienne, together with Richard the Archer and two men of the suite of Jean de Metz and Bertrand, conducted Jeanne to the place where the Dauphin was.

Metz, too, testified that the "inhabitants of Vaucouleurs" had provided her with "a man's dress made for her, with all the necessary requisites." What it came to was that If the Maid was going to fight she needed to be dressed for it. There was no saving France in a dress, and certainly not scaling walls or riding a horse in one. And certainly not in the "red dress, poor and worn," that many, such as Jean de Metz, testified she wore upon reaching Vaucouleurs.

Upon its conclusion, the Grand Inquisitor of the Trial of Rehabilitation, Jean Bréhal, issued a summary of his findings which historically, logically and precisely tore into the Rouen show trial, denuding it of all its premises and manipulations. The authors of the 1893 re-publication of Bréhal's Summary, provide Bréhal's conclusion as regards Joan's male attire:

The question thus resolved from the theoretical point of view, the inquisitor adds that, in fact, Joan had excellent reasons -- which she often invoked during the trial -- to justify having adopted the use of male attire. Obliged by her mission to live among the soldiers, she protected her modesty and that of others, whom her youth and female clothing would have exposed to violence or shameful desires. The civil laws, as well as the ecclesiastical laws, proclaim the sufficiency of these motives, and consequently the honesty of her conduct.

It's an interesting point, there, about protecting the modesty of others. Modern historians denigrate -- mock, even -- the testimony of men who slept by Joan or saw her in the flesh when injured, who attested to feelings of chastity around her. Jean de Metz, who accompanied her to Chinon said,

On the way, Bertrand and I slept every night by her — Jeanne being at my side, fully dressed. She inspired me with such respect that for nothing in the world would I have dared to molest her; also, never did I feel towards her — I say it on oath — any carnal desire.

Were she in that worn red dress, would he have felt differently? Well, we can't know because she would never have been in that dress, as her Voices had instructed her to put on a pair of pants. The Catholic Church refers to it as the "occasion of sin," whereby the situation yields the temptation. As alcoholics may wish to avoid bars, a medieval virgin campaigning with professional soldiers may have wanted to deemphasize her femininity.

Joan rather explained it as a matter of necessity and faith. She told the Rouen court,

blockquote>It was necessary for me to change my woman's garments for a man's dress. My counsel thereon said well.

Throughout the Trial at Rouen, Cauchon tried to get her to put on a women's dress, in part of to coax her into admission that her men's attire, which she said she wore by the order of God, was wrong, and in part to negotiate with her for a larger admission of her errors, especially in exchange for the Eucharist. Joan wouldn't have it, but she also used the matter to tweak the court.

And what say you, if I have sworn and promised to our King my Master, not to put off this dress? Well, I will answer you this: Have made for me a long dress down to the ground, without a train; give it to me to go to Mass, and then on my return I will put on again the dress I have.

Sadly, the modern vision of Saint Joan of Arc as a cross-dresser mirrors the Rouen court's own obsessions to make her something she was not. Her clothes didn't matter to the French, who not only were not confused by it, but understood it as part of her service to God. As with Gerson, who recognized the absurdity of sending a girl to lead an army, any incredulity regarding her dress was irrelevant to the larger problem of how, par mon martin, did this young girl do what she did? Faith dissolves such questions.

A crucial aspect of leadership is authenticity, so as a military leader her male attire was a necessary baseline and otherwise unimportant. Far more important was her presence before the army, in armor, holding either a lance or battle flag -- on a horse.

Knight in Shining Armor

The Maid in Armor on Horseback from Jeanne D'Arc (1909) by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (via Wikipedia)

At Rouen, the inquisitors spoke of horses frequently, but only about their high expense, as they wanted to prove Joan dishonest and corrupt. One would think it far more astonishing that the Maid could ride a warhorse than that somebody gave her one. Nevertheless, that was their purpose, especially regarding warhorses, which were expensive:

Had you, when you were taken, a horse, charger, or hackney?

I was on horseback; the one which I was riding when I was taken was a demi-charger.

Who had given you this horse?

As the Trial went on through late February, 1431 Joan provided more detail about her Voices. On February 22, she gave a condensed view of the period of time from May, 1428, when she first went to Vaucouleurs, to October of that year, when the siege of Orléans began, to February of 1429 when Captain Baudricourt agreed to send her to Chinon:

When I heard it for the third time, I recognized that it was the Voice of an Angel. This Voice has always guarded me well, and I have always understood it; It said to me two or three times a week: "You must go into France." My father knew nothing of my going. The Voice said to me: "Go into France! " I could stay no longer. It said to me: "Go, raise the siege which is being made before the City of Orleans. Go!" it added, "to Robert de Baudricourt, Captain of Vaucouleurs: he will furnish you with an escort to accompany you." And I replied that I was but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting. I went to my uncle and said that I wished to stay near him for a time. I remained there eight days. I said to him, "I must go to Vaucouleurs." He took me there. When I arrived, I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, although I had never seen him. I knew him, thanks to my Voice, which made me recognize him. I said to Robert, "I must go into France!" Twice Robert refused to hear me, and repulsed me. The third time, he received me, and furnished me with men; the Voice had told me it would be thus.

Key to that testimony is that she was "but a poor girl, who knew nothing of riding or fighting." Somehow, between May of 1428 and March of 1429, Joan developed martial skills that not only amazed those who saw her, but confounds historians who recognize that handling a lance the way Joan did takes years of training. The Duke d'Alençon recalled among his first encounters with Joan,

After dinner the King went for a walk; Jeanne coursed before him, lance in hand. Seeing her manage her lance so well I gave her a horse.

Yes, we're allowed laugh at that one -- She was so amazing, I gave her a horse!

Nothing funny there for the Rouen court, which accused Joan of learning to ride and fight while living with soldiers and prostitutes in Neufchâteau, where she and her family had stayed for two weeks during Burgundian raids on her hometown in 1428. This entirely false charge served the dual purpose of explaining how she learned to fight and intimating that she was, shall we say, not a virgin. So, how do the skeptical historians explain her martial skills? Oh, they're just hagiographic, reconstructed memories that exaggerate the details to strategically construct unverifiable, emotionally potent national narratives. Totally absurd. The English and their show-court at Rouen had no doubts of Joan's prowess on a horse, and used it instead as evidence of witchcraft. Or, we can look to the extent to which the Burgundians celebrated having taken her down from one upon her capture at Compiègne. An account of her capture by the Burgundian chronicler, Georges Chastellain describes her valor:

... the Maid, surpassing the nature of woman, bore a great burden, and took much pain to preserve her company from loss, remaining in the rear as becomes the chief and most valiant of the band, when -- there, as fortune did so permit, to end her glory and for the last time that she should ever bear arms-- an archer, a coarse man and very bitter, holding great spite that a woman of whom he had heard so much talk should drive back so many valiant men as she had done, seized her from one side by her coat of cloth-of-gold, and pulled her from her horse to the ground;

Chastellain was the Duke of Burgundy's chronicler, so his admiration for Joan here is notable. In one sense, it's consistent with military honor to recognize the skills of a defeated enemy. But more largely, as Chastellain's narrative continues as to how Joan surrendered to a knight who claimed to be a noble, we see in it the chivalric courtesy of surrender to an equal -- an armored knight.

Biographer Murray, summarizes her horsemanship with,

Jeanne appears to have been a good horse-woman; she rode “horses so ill tempered that no one would dare to ride them.” The Duke de Lorraine, on her first visit to him, and the Duke d’Alençon, after seeing her skill in riding a course, each gave her a horse; and we read also of a gift of a war-horse from the town of Orleans, and “many horses of value” sent from the Duke of Brittany. She had entered Orleans on a white horse, according to the Journal du Siège d’Orléans; but seems to have been in the habit of riding black chargers in war; and mention is also made by Châtelain of a “lyart” or grey.

Murray continues the discussion with "A story, repeated in a letter from Guy de Laval," that I will relate from the source, a letter dated June 8, 1429, sent to his mother. De Laval says he personally saw it happen. He is stunned by the moment as he watched Joan display not just horsemanship, but command of people -- and holiness:

It seems a thing divine to look on her and listen to her. I saw her mount on horseback, armed all in white armor, save her head, and with a little axe in her hand, on a great black charger, which, at the door of her quarters, was very restive, and would not let her mount. Then said she, "Lead him to the cross," which was in front of the neighboring church, on the road. There she mounted him without his moving, and as if he were tied up; and turning towards the door of the church, which was very nigh at hand, she said, in quite a womanly voice, "You, priests and church-men, make procession and prayers to God." Then she resumed her road, saying, "Push forward, push forward."

Horsemanship takes leadership. The animals are keenly sensitive to human emotions and temperament. A wonderful story of Alexander the Great's management of a wild horse, which became his warhorse, Bucephalas, stands as testimony to the relationship between horsemanship and leadership. Joan had it, too. A story went that when the Duke of Lorraine gifted to her a horse, she sprang upon it like Alexander upon Bucephalas, without touching the spurs. We know Bucephalas existed, for Alexander named a city for it. The story of his taming and acquisition of the huge animal, true or not, tells us much about Alexander. Joan clearly left an impression upon those who saw her mount that and other horses. We might dismiss the literal story while learning about her from the allegory.

In his 1906 "Young Readers" series book on her, Andrew Lang tells the story of Joan processing by horseback into Orléans alongside Jean Dunois, the people crowded around Joan, some trying to kiss her hand. A torch lit her banner, which scared her horse. She deftly reigned the horse and crushed the fire with her gloved hand.

From "The Story of Joan of Arc" by Andrew Lang (1906)

Another take on the story is that she wielded the horse to put out the fire with its tail. I like that one better!

A Valiant Champion

Having convinced the Royal court and inspired the people, leading up to Orléans, Joan still needed to exercise practical leadership over the soldiery, which meant on the field. The commanders yet considered her a mascot. As she arrived to the city, a group of French officers jeered,

Look, here comes a valiant champion and capitiane to save the kingdom of France!

However, one of the group, stood up for Joan, as related by the chronicler,

And they murmured against the king and his counsellors, except for the duke of Alençon and a valiant and good-willed captain named La Hire, who stepped forward and said and swore that he would follow her with all his company wherever she would wish to lead them — for which she was very joyful.

La Hire's endorsement was essential for Joan's success, but even he didn't want the army led by a girl. A witness at the Rehabilitation Trial recalled that at the subsequent Battle of Beaugency,

On this day La Hire commanded the vanguard, at which Jeanne was much vexed, for she liked much to have the command of the vanguard.

That audacity was what Joan brought to the French army, La Hire, included. For Joan it was á l'arm! ("to arms"). She abhorred hesitation and delay. At the Rouen trial, she was asked,

Which fortress was being attacked when you made your men retire?

The interrogator was trying to suggest, rather pathetically, actually, that if she was acting upon God's will, why would she order a retreat? Joan replied,

I do not remember. I was quite certain of raising the siege of Orleans; I had revelation of it. I told this to the King before going there.

The retreat, which Joan did not order but was caught up in, was nearly disastrous. In an act doubting historians consider apocryphal, Joan turned around, and like Moses lifting his arms to rally the Israelites, raised her banner, shouting, "Au nom de Dieu!" The French regrouped and took the fort. Joan didn't explain all that, just that she "was quite certain" of victory, so that was that. The follow up question again went after Joan's leadership, this time intimating that it was all about her:

Before the assault, did you not tell your followers that you alone would receive the arrows, cross-bolts, and stones, thrown by the machines and cannons?

No; a hundred and even more of my people were wounded. I had said to them: "Be fearless, and you will raise the siege." Then, in the attack on the Bridge fortress, I was wounded in the neck by an arrow or cross-bolt; but I had great comfort from Saint Catherine, and was cured in less than a fortnight. I did not interrupt for this either my riding or work. I knew quite well that I should be wounded; I had told the King so, but that, notwithstanding, I should go on with my work. This had been revealed to me by the Voices of my two Saints, the blessed Catherine and the blessed Margaret. It was I who first planted a ladder against the fortress of the Bridge, and it was in raising this ladder that I was wounded in the neck by this crossbolt.

Interior mural of Joan at battle at the Basilica of Saint Joan of Arc, Domrémy-la-Pucelle (Wikicommons)

Heading the vanguard was pure leadership by example and exhortation, and she repeatedly led the charge at just about every battle she was in. One incident provides a hint as to how and why. In the fall of 1429, La Trémoille, in order to keep her out of the way, sent her on mop-op operations in the Nivernais region, next to and traditionally aligned with the Duchy of Burgundy. an English-backed warlord had entrenched himself there on behalf of the English. Outside the walls of Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, Joan's squire Jean d'Aulon, found Joan by herself at the walls after a retreat had been called:

he noticed that the Maid was left accompanied by very few of her own people and others ; and [d'Aulon] fearing that trouble would follow therefrom, mounted a horse, and went immediately to her aid, asking her what she was doing there alone and why she did not retreat like the others. She, after taking her helmet from her head, replied that she was not alone, and that she had yet in her company fifty thousand of her people, and that she would not leave until she had taken the town;

Seeing but 4 or 5 men with her, the squire told her "she must leave that place and retire as the others did." Instead Joan ordered him to bring material to make a bridge over the trenches:

she cried in a loud voice: "Every one to the faggots and hurdles, to make the bridge!" which was immediately after done and prepared, at which the Deponent did much marvel, for immediately the town was taken by assault, without very great resistance;

"Fifty thousand of her people"? It's tempting to infer by that she meant fifty thousand angels,especially since d'Aulon's next stated,

That, all the deeds of the Maid seemed to him to be more divine and miraculous than otherwise, and that it was not possible for so young a Maid to do such things without the Will and Guidance of Our Lord;

It's easy to forget the physicality of what she did, and the bravery -- or confidence -- required for it. Across all that she accomplished her primary job was to get things moving and keep them moving, which she did by displaying total confidence in her mission and its outcome.

Stuck at Poitiers answering questions from priests was not Joan's idea of saving France. Despiite her frustration, the delays from the clerical inquiries had the effect of ramping up enthusiasm, as well as giving the French time to prepare for the campaign. While the enthusiasm was high, which Joan sparked with her declarations and the urgency she displayed, doubt, obviously, for those to whom the Saints did not whisper, lingered. Her confidence overcame the uncertainties. Of the things a warrior might recall of his time with her, this one stuck in the memory of one of her most loyal fellow commanders, Raul de Gaucourt:

After numerous interrogations, they ended by asking her what sign she could furnish, that her words might be believed? “The sign I have to shew,” she replied, “is to raise the siege of Orléans!”

Imagine to hear that from this young girl with her hair shorn, and dressed like a squire. There she is, annoyed and impatient, and there they are, expectant but unsure, defaulting to, essentially, "we don't find anything wrong in her," and she goes straight at it. Even after the February disaster at the Battle of Herrings and Dunois' failed diplomatic solution, for the French leadership there was no apparent deadline on Orléans, content, as it was, to let it hold on. Only Joan knew it was about to be lost. Perhaps the French would have mounted a relief of the siege at Orléans, and perhaps they would have won there. But not the way and timing as created by Joan. The plans were so uncertain that when Charles sent Joan to Orléans, he had to scramble pay for it. It was Joan's agenda, her demands, and her leadership that dragged the reluctant French court into action.

She explained it all in response to accusation XVII of the Seventy Articles. Annoyed, but insistent, she replied to the charge that "she boasted of knowing all by revelation" that she would save Orléans, crown the King and drive the English from France,

[she answered] And that in this she was a messenger from God; and that he should set her boldly to work; and that she would raise the siege of Orléans.

"Boldly," that was her motif. What else could explain that how she could walk around with the King and demand of his approaching cousin, "who are you?"? Jean d'Alençon recalled how he arrived to Chinon having gotten word of "a young girl who said she was sent by God," and first encountered her in conversation with his cousin, the Dauphin,

Having approached them, she asked me who I was. “It is the Duke d’Alençon,” replied the King. “You are welcome,” she then said to me, “the more that come together of the blood of France the better it will be.”

The next day he saw her wielding the lance, and the Duke was convinced: Joan was authentic. Her prophesies had not yet been fulfilled, so he was acting on intuition and observation. After Orléans, of course, everyone believed. D’Alençon subsequently and personally experienced another of Joan's miraculous interventions at the Battle of Jargeau, after Orléans:

Jeanne said to me: “Go back from this place, or that engine”—pointing out an engine of war in the city—“will kill you.” I retired, and shortly after that very engine did indeed kill the Sieur de Lude in that very place from which she told me to go away. On this account I had great fear, and wondered much at Jeanne’s words and how true they came.

To follow Joan was to believe in her. Until her capture a year later, to confront Joan in battle was to believe her if not spiritually guided, but something, as well, as we heard from the English general's letter to his King, attributing his loss at Orléans to the French to his troop's "lack of firm faith, and unlawful doubt that they had of a disciple and limb of the devil, called the Maid, who used false enchantments and sorcery." Indeed, we might attribute the ferocity of the Trial at Rouen and the rush to burn her to the shame of having been humiliated by a girl.

As she approached Orléans at the head of the army, Joan met with Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans. He had been ordered by the French Court to lead Joan's army away from the city and take to take a town, Chécy, first. The idea was to use Joan to present a diversion to the English at Orléans. Joan was furious:

Are you the Bastard of Orléans?

Yes, I am, and I rejoice your coming.

Are you the one who gave orders for me to come here, on this side of the river so that I could not go directly to Talbot [English commander] and the English?

Dunois explained that the "wisest" men around him had advised the action. She replied,

In God's name, the counsel of Our Lord God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought that you could fool me, and instead you fool yourself; I bring you better help than ever came to you from any soldier to any city: It is the help of the King of Heaven. This help comes not for love of me but from God Himself, who at the prayer of St. Louis and of St. Charlemagne has had pity on the city of Orléans. He has not wanted the enemy to have both the body of the lord of Orléans and his city.

The French commanders were hesitant about the crossing of the Loire, as the city was accessible from one side only, and the English defenses otherwise spanned around it on both sides of the river. The current and the wind made it especially tricky. To the Bastard's surprise, Joan gave the order to move supplies by the river, and the winds, which blowing upstream had allowed his vessels to arrived there, reversed, allowing for the operation sailing downstream. Joan and her forces entered the besieged city, which was stirred up and, finally, hopeful. But again Joan was forced to wait as the French army gathered and prepared. During this time, she wanted out to an embankment and yelled at the English to go home. They replied with insults, including one from an English commander that she was a "cowherd" and would be burned at the stake.

Impatient, impetuous, and sure, Joan was frustrated at the delays. Finally, some skirmishes commenced, with Joan leading one that took an English embankment. It was a small victory, but the first by the French, and invigorating for them. Joan, for her part, was dismayed by the violence, and prayed strenuously for the souls of her fallen soldiers, especially those who she feared had not confessed before their deaths. On Ascension Thursday, she sent a third letter of warning to the English to go home:

You, men of England, who have no right in this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you by me, Jeanne the Maid, that you quit your strong places, and return to your own country ; if you do not I will cause you such an overthrow as shall be remembered for all time. I write to you for the third ^ and last time, and shall write to you no more.

Signed thus —

"Jhesus † Maria, Jehanne la Pucelle."

With the post script:

I would have sent you this letter in a more suitable manner, but you keep back my heralds: you have kept my herald Guyenne; I pray you to send him back, and I will send you some of your people who have been taken at the Fort of Saint Loup, — for all were not killed there.

Since the English held her herald who brought the first two letters, she sent the last by arrow. They English shouted, "Here's news from the whore of the Armagnacs!" which greatly distressed her, as had their previous insults.

Against various opinions, Joan ordered an assault, and pushed the English back from a second fortification that they had moved to from a first which they abandoned. They were worried. The French commanders, though, exercised their usual defeatism, and begged Joan to just hold the city behind it's fortifications. Her confessor, Jean Pasquerel recalled,

there came to her a noble and valiant captain, whose name I do not remember. He told her that all the captains were assembled in Council; that they had taken into consideration the small number of their forces in comparison with the large forces of the English, and the abundant grace which God had granted them in the success already obtained: "The town is full of supplies; we could keep it well while we await fresh succour, which the King could send us; it does not seem," he ended by saying, "expedient to the Council that the army should go forth to-morrow."

Joan wouldn't have it. Pasquerel continues,

"You have been to your Counsel," Jeanne answered him," and I have been to mine; and believe me the Counsel of God will be accomplished and will succeed; yours on the contrary will perish."

Joan turned to Pasquerel and said,

Rise to-morrow morning even earlier than you did to-day; do your best; keep always near me; for to-morrow I shall have yet more to do, and much greater things; to-morrow blood shall flow from my body, above the breast.

Holding her banner, Joan led the frontal push, but while exhorting the attack in a ditch before the walls, she took an arrow or bolt through her neck and shoulder. She fell and the French assault collapsed. Brought behind the lines, she removed the arrow herself, refused superstitious treatments, taking olive oil and lard instead, confessed to Pasquerel, and wept.

Later that day, Joan returned to the lines and found an impasse. Even La Hire wanted to retire. She told him, no, but, in a minute, and went to pray in a nearby vineyard for about fifteen minutes. She then grabbed her standard from her squire, and rushed towards the English embankment. The French army spontaneously erupted in a charge following her and took the main English stronghold. Orléans was saved.

Road to Reims

Noble Dauphin! hold no longer these many and long councils, but come quickly to Rheims to take the crown for which you are worthy

The path between the victory at Orléans and the the coronation at Reims wrapped around a mixture of French court indecision, Joan's insistence on getting on with saving France, not just Orléans, and the next moves by the English. Joan's strategy was simple, just as she had employed at Orléans,

Let us advance boldly in God’s Name!

The crowning of Charles VII by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel. Joan's mission was to have the Dauphin properly crowned and consecrated the traditional location at the Cathedral of Reims.

The sacred coronation did not have to take place, and without Joan's insistence would not have they way and when it did. With the victory at Orléans the Dauphin and his court considered holding the coronation at Orléans instead of the rather inconveniently Burgundian-surrounded Reims. Joan wouldn't have it anywhere else. With hindsight we can see why: had the French not asserted control of Reims, the English may have managed to coronate Henry VI as King of France there, as opposed to at Paris as they did in 1431 after Joan's death. The coronation of Charles VII at Reims, therefore, was not merely a symbolic act: it politically and militarily denied the English use of the city's tremendous symbolism.

Back in 1360, the English King Edward III marched upon Reims to claim the French Crown by coronation at the sacred site. The French prince, Charles V, who was at the time regent for his captured father, John II, ignored the English advances. As the people of Reims alone resisted the English siege, Edward realized that Charles hadn't taken the bait, so he moved his army southward hoping to provoke Charles by burning towns around Paris. But when the English army was camped outside of Chartres, southwest of Paris, a hailstorm struck it, killing a thousand knights. Hailstorms don't usually kill a thousand knights, but when they do it's understandably seen as an act of God. And so Edward saw it, and he sued for peace.

Reims, meanwhile, having asserted itself against the English, kept that sense of independence and singular importance as the crowning city, and maintained loyalty towards Armagnac France, despite that at the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 Charles VI had submitted the city to the English as an instrument of the succession to Henry V. Occupying it was another thing. The Burgundians kept pressure on the city but were unable to take it. While Reims remained loyal to Charles VII, he had to get to it first.

A genre of Joan of Arc historiography focuses on her military exploits, generally seeking to answer questions as to her necessity and impact upon French military success, especially as to her actual involvement in employed tactic and battles. The answer is, yes, she led the army but was not its primary leader; yes, she was frequently at the front lines, only fighting with her banner and not her lance; and, yes, her strategy was to attack, always attack. All these, except for Joan it wasn't a strategy, it was on orders from above. Joan held no doubts as to her victory.

Battle of Patay, June 18, 1429, an enormous French victory sparked by a scared - God sent? - buck. (Page image from the Chronicle of Charles VII )

The problem was those around her. The sign at Orléans was indisputable, and indisputably miraculous, so even the King, if with hesitation, subsequently did as Joan asked. Still managing a month's delay, ever frustrating to Joan, the army reorganized, rearmed, and went on the advance to clear the English from along the Loire. For their part, the English, reeling from the suddenness of Orléans, reorganized and reinforced their positions. Though the English fought hard, the old tactics failed to work as before, the walls failed to hold up, and the certainty of Henry V's providence failed to uphold English courage. God's favor was upon Joan and the French.

There were battles such as at Jargeau, where Joan's standard, again raised at the walls after she had been seriously injured, sparked the French breakthrough. There were battles such as at Patay, where a startled stag alerted a French cavalry led by La Hire to an English ambush, setting off a French rout that would not have happened had Joan not insisted that La Hire continue the advance, whereupon he encountered the ambush.

At the beginning of the campaign, the French commanders gathered and considered what to do about a strong English fortification at Jargeau, Jean d'Alençon recalled that Joan told them,

No, do not fear their numbers; do not hesitate to make the attack; God will conduct your enterprise; if I were not sure that it is God Who guides us, I would rather take care of the sheep than expose myself to such great perils!

Outside the town, Joan and her standard rallied the French after a successful English attack. But even La Hire was unsure about the enterprise, and tried to negotiate with the English commander, Lord Suffolk. D'Alençon, the overall commander of the French army, ordered him to cease, but he, too, was hesitant, and needed Joan's encouragement,

Forward, gentle Duke, to the assault!

D'Alençon described the moment,

And when I told her it was premature to attack so quickly: "Have no fear," she said to me, "it is the right time when it pleases God; we must work when it is His Will: act, and God will act!" "Ah! gentle Duke," she said to me, later, "art thou afraid? dost thou not know that I promised thy wife to bring thee back, safe and sound?"

In the assault Joan directed artillery, encouraged d'Alençon to ignore Suffolk's entreaties, and, of course, personally led the escalade upon the walls, during which, having scaled a ladder, she was struck on the head by a stone. She fell to the ground, rose and declared,

Friends! friends! come on! come on! Our Lord hath doomed the English! They are ours! keep a good heart.

Leading up to Patay, where the English suffered a greater loss of number than at Orléans, "Jeanne and the army," as d'Alençon described it, cleared out the rattled English from their holds at Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency. It was at Beaugency, however, where there arrived to the French the endgame of the entire Hundred Years War, the return of the former French Constable, Arthur de Richemont. It changed everything; though it took Joan to make it happen.

De Richemont was husband of the daughter of the assassinated Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, brother of the English ally, the Duke of Brittany, and the exiled Constable of France. He brought needed troops, but too much political baggage, as he was considered treasonous for having sided previously with the English. Upon de Richemont's arrival, should he be allowed to join the Armagnac cause, d'Alençon, along with other officers, threatened to resign.

Joan broke the impasse, telling de Richemont:

Ah! fair Constable, you have not come by my will, but now you are here you are welcome.

De Richemont's arrival is notable, as he was inspired to rejoin the French cause by Joan's stupendous victory at Orléans. In embracing de Richemont, Joan essentially applied the Lord's counsel to the Apostles who worried about some man who was casting out demon's in Jesus' name. From Mark 9:38:

John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us."

While the French court and forces shunned de Richemont, and while he never campaigned with Joan, he would prove indispensable to the ultimate French victory in the Hundred Years War, both for his diplomatic and military skills. The Chronique de la Pucelle, looking back more favorably upon the moment, describes the encounter of the French captains with their hated -- and future, thanks to Joan -- comrade:

The Count of Richemont, Constable of France, came to this siege with great chivalry; and with him were the Count of Périgord, Jacques de Dinan, brother of the Lord of Châteaubriant, the Lord of Beaumanoir, and others.

And because the said Constable was in the displeasure of the king, and for that cause held as suspect, he placed himself in all humility before the said Maid, beseeching her that—since the king had granted to her the power to pardon and remit all offenses committed and perpetrated against him and his authority, and since, by certain sinister reports, the king had conceived hatred and ill-will against him, in such manner that he had caused letters to be made forbidding that any reception, favor, or passage be given him to come into his army—the Maid would of her grace receive him, in the king’s name, into the service of his crown, to employ therein his body, his power, and all his lordship, pardoning him every offense.

And at that hour were there present the Duke of Alençon and all the high lords of the host, who requested the Maid concerning this; which she granted, taking in their presence the oath of the said Constable to serve the king loyally, without ever doing or saying anything that might turn to his displeasure. And, to hold this promise firm without breaking it, and to be constrained by the king if the said Constable should be found failing, the said lords bound themselves to the Maid by letters sealed with their seals.

Then it was ordained that the Constable should set his siege on the side of Sologne, before the bridge of Beaugency.

The Loire Campaign, May-June, 1429	Dates	Notes
The Siege of Orléans.	May 4-8	Click expand for details After learning of a French assault that had begun the afternoon of May 4, Joan ordered her mount and standard and rode to the action, where she joined the assault. On May 6, after Joan reluctantly agreed with the French commanders to pause for the Feast of the Ascension on the 5th. Early on the 6th, Joan led a militia of Orleans citizens out of the gate and singlehandedly halted an English rally by turning against it, raising her standard and yelling, Au nom de Dieu! ("In the name of God"). Though wounded in the foot, Joan insisted on joining the assault on the 7th upon the English stronghold directly across from the city, again leading the citizen army. That morning, though, she was struck between her neck and shoulder by a longbow, fulfilling her premonition from the day before that she was to be wounded. She was carried back to the city, but returned to the battle that evening, claiming that the fortress would be taken. After the French commander called off the assault, Joan left for prayer, the returned with instructions that the fortress would fall once her banner touched the wall. This she did, and shouted, Tout est vostre – et y entrez! ("All yours, go in!"). The French overran the English fort, and the English army retreated from Orlėans the next day.
Battle of Jargeau	June 11-12	Click expand for details The French offensive started upon the "suburbs" of Jargeau, then upon the walled city. Joan commanded artillery positions and targets, then led the assault. While scaling a wall with her banner in hand, Joan was knocked to the ground by a large stone that split her helmet. To Joan got back up, and rallied the French army, which broke through and cleared the city of the English.
Battle of Meung-sur-Loire	June 15	Click expand for details Base for the English commanders and located by an important bridge, the French first assaulted the bridge, then drove the English from the town into a nearby fortified castle. The French moved onward to the next strategic bridge at Beaugency.
Battle of Beaugency	June 16-17	Click expand for details Like Meung-sur-Loire, the town was taken by the English the year before to isolate the French to the south of the River and to stage the English offensive upon the entire region. Pushed to the attack by Joan, the French took the bridge, which pushed the English to within the castle walls. The English surrendered on the 17th. Most importantly, it was at Beaugency that the hated Duke of Richemont arrived with 1,000 men. Against the wishes of the French commanders, Joan welcomed him to the cause.
Battle of Patay.	June 18	Click expand for details While not directly involved in the fighting, Joan's role was, as always, to push the French commanders to continued attack. The English, meanwhile, were reinforced with longbowmen, who prepared a trap for the French calvary. While making their preparations, a stag jumped from the woods, alerting the French as to the English position. The knights under La Hire attacked immediately and destroyed the French forces.

De Richemont's forces there skirmished with English patrols. Far more importantly, his arrival forced the English to give up on the castle at Beaugency and regroup at Patay, where La Hire destroyed them. Even so, Joan had to push her fellow captains onward. At Patay, d' Alençon recalled, Joan's exhorted the captains,

"In God's Name! We must fight them at once: even if they were hanging from the clouds we should have them, because God has sent us to chastise them." She assured us she was certain of obtaining the victory, saying in French: "The gentle King shall have to-day the greatest victory he has ever had. My Counsel has told me they are all ours."

Another knight recalled that he and La Hire warned Joan that the English were yet dangerous:

The day that the English lost the battle of Patay, I and the late La Hire, knowing that the English were assembled and prepared for battle, told Jeanne that the English were coming and were all ready to fight. She replied, speaking to the captains: "Attack them boldly, and they will fly; nor will they long withstand us." At these words, the captains prepared to attack: and the English were overthrown and fled. Jeanne had predicted to the French that few or none of them should be slain or suffer loss: which also befell, for of all our men there perished but one gentleman of my company.

Regarding the consequence of Patay, Joan's Voices did not lie: as Orléans shocked the English, Patay knocked them them out of central France, clearing a path to Reims. At Patay, the elements of the ultimate French victory were compounded: the English lost leaders and confidence, -fearful of the the Maid -- or the witch, shocks which, more importantly, were felt in Paris by the Burgundian leaders, as well; French military leadership consolidated under d'Alençon, de Richmond, and La Hire, who were instrumental in the ultimate French victory; and, above all, Joan directed and redirected French attention to the purpose given her by her Voices to coronate Charles at the place of coronation of French kings. None of that would have happened without Joan's constant admonition to push forward in total confidence of fulfilling God's will.

Even after the victories along the Loire, Joan's exhortations and her banner were yet needed. Jean Dunois recalled how the King took council on what to do with the city of Troyes, which lay in the path to Reims, try to take it or bypass it, describing,

The place where the King first halted, with his army, was under the town of Troyes; he there took counsel with the nobles of the Blood, and the other captains, to decide whether they should remain before this town, in order to lay siege to it, or whether it would not better avail to pass on and march straight to Rheims, leaving Troyes alone. The Council were divided in opinion, and no one knew which course to pursue, when Jeanne suddenly arrived, and appeared in the Council. "Noble Dauphin," she said, "order your people to come and besiege the town of Troyes, and lose no more time in such long councils. In God's Name, before three days are gone, I will bring you into this town by favour or force, and greatly will the false Burgundy be astounded." Then Jeanne, putting herself at the head of the army, had the tents placed right against the trenches of the town, and executed many marvellous manœuvres which had not been thought of by two or three accomplished generals working together. And so well did she work during the night, that, the next day, the Bishop and citizens came all trembling and quaking to place their submission in the King's hands. Afterwards, it was known that, at the moment when she had told the King's Council not to pass by the town, the inhabitants had suddenly lost heart, and had occupied themselves only in seeking refuge in the Churches. The town of Troyes once reduced, the King went to Rheims, where he found complete submission, and where he was consecrated and crowned.

Following the coronation, Joan endured more agonizing delays as Charles spent his triumphant moment in public adulation and under the assumption that the Duke of Burgundy would yield out of respect for his formal consecration. Instead, Charles and his ministers were baited by the Duke into circular negotiations, temporary truces, and increasing demands from the Burgundians that included yielding back to them cities already recovered by the French.

Joan of Arc biographer Anatole France, an anti-clerical writer, claims that on insisting upon the Coronation at Reims Joan lost the moment to seize Normandy and thus Paris. The claim conflates Joan's mission of saving France with territorial conquest, something Joan understood simply as "to make war on the English." Joan knew -- was told -- that the Anointment must come first, although she had no idea that God's plan operated on a different timeline for its culmination in saving France, and, especially for her role in it, which wound through her capture by the Burgundians at a minor battle at Compiègne in Burgundian-held France. The French court ignored her thereafter, declining to ransom her, and going on as if she had never existed. To the Burgundians and English, though, it was everything: the witch was defeated.

At the Trial of Condemnation at Rouen, on March 12, 1431, Joan was asked,

Has not the Angel, then, failed you with regard to the good things of this life, in that you have been taken prisoner?

I think, as it has pleased Our Lord, that it is for my well-being that I was taken prisoner.

Has your Angel never failed you in the good things of grace?

How can he fail me, when he comforts me every day? My comfort comes from Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.

Joan's modern biographers agree with the English and Burgundians who thought that after the Coronation Joan's magic had worn off. Instead, Joan's destiny was, like so many Saints, and in the likeness of Christ, betrayal, doubt, faith, and martyrdom.

Crown delayed

There is a curious story that the Rouen court spies had picked up on, likely from Vaucouleurs, that during Joan's final meeting with Robert Baudricourt in early 1429, she told the Captain that she would marry and have three sons, and that the Captain proffered to that end his personal assistance, at least for one of the sons. Although the trial transcript contains no mention of it, one of the court's Seventy Articles is dedicated the story, accusing her of,

Having become familiar with the said Robert, Jeanne boasted that, after having done and accomplished all that had been commanded her of God, she would have three sons, of whom the first should be Pope, the second Emperor, and the third King. Robert de Baudricourt, hearing this, said to her, " Would I could be father to one myself, if they are to be such great people! my own value would thereby be the greater!" "Nay, nay, gentle Robert," replied Jeanne, "it is not time; the Holy Spirit will accomplish it." This is the tale which the said Robert hath in many places often affirmed, told and published, and this in presence of prelates, lords, and high personages.

What have you to say to this Article?

I refer to what I have already said. I never boasted that I should have three children.

The Rouen court was not stupid, and did not, as the Captain supposedly had, take the exchange, even if it did happen, literally. While deliberately suggesting a sexual relation with Baudricourt, we can also infer from the accusation a fear of Joan's larger purposes -- the King, yes, got that, but also Pope and Emperor? More important to the Rouen court was theological heresy than licentiousness, which was nevertheless a useful charge when trying a witch. And so, invoking the Holy Spirit for motherhood of Pope, Emperor and King was no small matter, and not just for the allusion to the Virgin Mary, but also in relation to recent schisms in the Church and the ever-ongoing contests over the Holy Roman Empire and the various Papal lands in Italy.

For the Rouen court, that Joan was now a prisoner of the English meant that her birthing of a Pope and Emperor was a false claim or had been avoided. If she made it up about the Pope and Emperor, then her actions to crown -- birth -- the French King were false, too. The entire Trial was all about proving that the coronation was the product of a demonically-driven witch. And they went after it constantly, especially regarding Joan's confounding, complicated and evolving descriptions of an the signs given to the Dauphin Charles, including an angelic crown.

Throughout the Trial, the court mostly interrogated Joan on what it already knew. They were, though, deeply surprised by her courtroom dexterity and the theological depth of her answers. However, the topic of a angelic crown was entirely unexpected and bewildering to them. Thereby Joan didn't talk about it in the Poitiers Examinations, which Cauchon had access to, either in writing or by personal account. The "sign" Joan promised at Poitiers was Orléans, so talk of coronations and crowns would necessarily come after she proved herself along the Loire. But she introduced to the Rouen court this other "sign," one made of great riches, a treasure, and brought by angel, witnessed by many, including the Archbishop of Reims, de Chartres, who must not have seen or recognized it, for Cauchon would otherwise have known about it in advance.

As the hearing of February 24 started, only two days into the Trial, Joan dropped a hint that her Voice had something of great interest for the court:

I have revelations touching the King that I will not tell you.

That one sparked the interrogator Beaupère's interest:

Has it forbidden you to tell those revelations?

I have not been advised about these things. Give me a delay of fifteen days and I will answer you.

Something more than a hint came on March 1, but fifteen days from February 24... well, that'd be March 10, which just happened to be the day she threw an angelic wrench into the proceedings that would confound, complicate and delay the Trial. The discussion was going on about banners and horses and Joan's or the King's money. On March 10, the examiner, now de la Fontaine, went back to the "sign" Joan had mentioned on the First of March:

What was the sign that came to your King when you went to him?

It was beautiful, honourable, and most credible; the best and richest in the world.

The follow-up question reveals the unexpectedness of the response:

Then why will you not tell it and shew it, since you wished to have the sign of Catherine de la Rochelle?

Usually the interrogator would latch on to what Joan said and redirect it to something prepared as part of the case being built against her. This question reveals a prosecutor without mooring, scattering for something, but unsure what. The question about Catherine de la Rochelle was a reach that Joan easily redirected and dismissed:

I might not have asked to know the sign of the said Catherine, had that sign been as well shewn before notable people of the Church and others, Archbishops and Bishops, as mine was before the Archbishop of Rheims and other Bishops whose names I know not. There were there also Charles de Bourbon, the Sire de la Tremouille, the Duke d'Alençon, and many other knights, who saw and heard it as well as I see those who speak to me to-day; and, besides, I knew already, through Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, that the doings of this Catherine were as nothing.

The court had been trying to nail her down on "revelations" about or experienced by the King, which she herself first mentioned on the second day of the Trial. She thereafter gave hints and limited details about a, or the, "sign" given to the King, which she described on March 1 as coming in the form of "a crown a thousand times more rich" than that he received at his coronation at Reims. Given the court's mission to delegitimize Charles VII's coronation, this one needed flushing out.

While most keen to use these stories against her, and against Charles, the court seems to have been genuinely curious what this angelic crown was about, and returned to the topic frequently, if smugly. There were two threads of these visions that Joan introduced in her testimony at Rouen -- and which has driven modern historical questions about Joan's sincerity. For the Rouen court, these visions of an angelic crown gave opportunity to denigrate not just her but Charles. For modern academics, it can be only of delusion or deceit.

From the Seventy Articles, starting with Article LI, which d'Estivet embellished mightily:

Jeanne hath not feared to proclaim that Saint Michael, the Archangel of God, did come to her with a great multitude of Angels in the house of a woman where she had stopped at Chinon; that he walked with her, holding her by the hand; that they together mounted the stairs of the Castle and together gained the Chamber of the King; that the Angel did reverence to the King, bowing before him, surrounded by this multitude of Angels, of which some had crowns on their heads and others had wings. To say such things of Archangels and the Holy Angels is presumption, audacity, lying, as in the holy books we do not read that they did a like reverence, a like demonstration, to any saint — not even to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. Jeanne hath said that the Archangel Saint Gabriel hath often come to her with the blessed Michael, and sometimes even with thousands of Angels. She hath also proclaimed that the same Angel, at her prayer, did bring in this company of Angels a crown, the most precious possible, to place upon the head of her King — a crown which is to-day deposited in the treasury of the King; that the King would have been crowned at Rheims with this crown, if he had deferred his consecration some days: it was only because of the extreme haste of his coronation that he received another. All these are lies imagined by Jeanne at the instigation of the devil, or suggested by demons in deceitful apparitions, to make sport of her curiosity, — she who would search secrets beyond her capacity and condition.

The Seventy Accusations remind us that the Rouen court knew what the French knew, including gossip and stories running across all of France that proved convenient to her prosecution. There could not have been a person in France who had not heard about a sign Joan gave the Dauphin at Chinon, although no one but Joan and the King knew for sure what it was, either by vision or word.

She stood firm by her story, replying:

On the subject of the Angel who brought the sign I have already answered. As to what the Promoter suggests on the subject of the thousands of Angels, I do not recollect having said it — that is to say, the number; I did certainly say that I had never been wounded without receiving great comfort and help from God and from the Saints Catherine and Margaret. As to the crown, on this also I have replied. Of the conclusion which the Promoter makes against my deeds, I refer me to God, Our Lord; and where the crown was made and forged, I leave to Our Lord.

On the second day of the Trial, February 22, as Beaupère queried Joan about her background, she freely told her story, starting with her first Voices and the instructions to "Go into France!" As she described heading from Vaucouleurs to Chinon, Beaupère interrupted her to ask the all-important question for the court, "Who counselled you to take a man's dress?" She "several times refused to answer," then stated that she needed them to get to Chinon safely. She next described her first meeting there with the Dauphin, and how the "Voice... revealed him to me." , Most keen on the idea that her Voices were hallucinations. Beaupère asked,

When the Voice shewed you the King, was there any light?

Pass on.

Did you see an Angel over the King?

The question seems to follow the inquiry into "any light," and not from any prior information about an angel over the King. Joan had told him earlier that, "rarely do I hear [the Voice] without its being accompanied also by a light," thus the questioning about "any light" appearing when she met the King. Having passed on that question, Beaupère tried out "an Angel over the King." To that, Joan replied she wouldn't say, but did bring up a new detail:

Spare me. Pass on. Before the King set me to work, he had many apparitions and beautiful revelations.

Beaupère asked,

What revelations and apparitions had the King?

Joan's responded with a rather beautiful affirmation of her experiences:

I will not tell you; it is not yet time to answer you about them; but send to the King, and he will tell you. The Voice had promised me that, as soon I came to the King, he would receive me. Those of my party knew well that the Voice had been sent me from God; they have seen and known this Voice, I am sure of it. My King and many others have also heard and seen the Voices which came to me: there were there Charles de Bourbon and two or three others. There is not a day when I do not hear this Voice; and I have much need of it. But never have I asked of it any recompense but the salvation of my soul.

At the next session two days later, the questions focused on Joan's Voices, and with various attempts by Beaupère to associate them with her habit of fasting, or to get her to admit that she herself was the author of them by isolating inconsistencies in order to show they were of her deficient imagination. After Joan stated,

My Voices have entrusted to me certain things to tell to the King, not to you. This very night they told me many things for the welfare of my King, which I would he might know at once, even if I should drink no wine until Easter . . . the King would be the more joyful at his dinner!

The follow-up question reeks of sarcasm:

Can you not so deal with your Voices that they will convey this news to your King?

Joan answered the sarcasm with sarcasm,

I know not if the Voice would obey, and if it be God's Will. If it please God, He will know how to reveal it to the King, and I shall be well content.

Fair enough. Beaupère continued,

Why does not this Voice speak any more to your King, as it did when you were in his presence?

I do not know if it be the Will of God. Without the grace of God I should not know how to do anything.

During the next session Beaupère went back to the lights (which gave Joan the opportunity to make fun of him, saying the light "doesn't come to you!"), then back to an angel over the King,

Was there an angel over the head of your King when you saw him for the first time?

By Our Lady! if there were, I know nothing of it; I did not see it.

Back to his theory:

Was there a light?

There were more than three hundred Knights and more than fifty torches, without counting the spiritual light. I seldom have revelations but there is a light.

She again asserted that the King "had good signs" and that the clerics at Poitiers knew it all.

Two days later, March 1 Cauchon led the inquiries. Ater long and extensive questioning on a variety of topics, the court turned back to the "sign" that Joan had given the King:

I think my King took with joy the crown that he had at Rheims; but another, much richer, [was] given him later. He acted thus to hurry on his work, at the request of the people of the town of Rheims, to avoid too long a charge upon them of the soldiers. If he had waited, he would have had a crown a thousand times more rich.

Have you seen this richer crown?

I cannot tell you without incurring perjury; and, though I have not seen it, I have heard that it is rich and valuable to a degree.

When we connect this comment of March 1 to Joan's deferral from February 27 that she could speak more openly "in fifteen days," it becomes clear that Joan was building a larger story here, not just making things up on the fly. The biographer Pernoud rightly observes that Joan's account here "has disconcerted historians," some of whom say she made up the story just to mess with the court, or just because she was crazy. Pernoud explains it away as symbolic heraldic language that was losing currency during the reign of the University of Paris scholastics who sought logical and not symbolic thought. Anatole France holds that Joan related here, as elsewhere in the Trial, her account of angels delivering the "crown" to Charles to what she would have known about the angelic crown Saint Catherine bestowed upon the Roman Emperor Maxentius' wife, who was herself martyred for converting to Christianity. The historian France writes,

This question bore upon matters which were of great moment to her judges; for they suspected the Maid of having committed a sacrilegious fraud, or rather witchcraft, with the complicity of the King of France. Indeed, they had learnt from their informers that Jeanne boasted of having given the King a sign in the form of a precious crown.

The biographer elsewhere reviews legends about Joan, cataloging what contemporaries and later writers said she did that he wants us to recognize as evidence of the myth-making of Saint Joan. One concerns the "crown" that the Joan stated at Rouen that Charles had "deferred." One legend goes that Joan herself, through divine punishment forced a bishop to yield the "crown of Saint Lous," which had been hiding, for the crowning of Charles VII, The biographer explains,

It is not difficult to discern the origin of this story. The crown of Charlemagne, which the kings of France wore at the coronation ceremony, was at Saint-Denys in France, in the hands of the English. Jeanne boasted of having given the Dauphin at Chinon a precious crown, brought by angels. She said that this crown had been sent to Reims for the coronation, but that it did not arrive in time. As for the hiding of the crown by the bishop, that idea arose probably from the well-known cupidity of my Lord Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, who had appropriated the silver vase intended for the chapter and placed by the King upon the high altar after the ceremony.

Joan could not have known about that story, and if she did she would have dismissed it, as she did regularly whenever the Rouen court would throw rumors or legends at her, such as that of someone catching butterflies with her battle standard:

My people never did such a thing: it is your side who have invented it.

France's apocryphal story hardly satisfies Joan's testimony. The allegorical explanation also fails since Joan is speaking literally here, if prophetically, an explanation which I do not find in any of the commentaries. If so, I wonder that Joan worries that the King had hurried to his coronation for some other reason than an angelic or symbolic crown from heaven or Saint Denis. It's odd, though, since it was Joan herself who rushed Charles to Reims, and, while ever frustrated by inaction, she pushed the army, with the king in train, towards Reims. So for what, if not a crown held by the English at Saint Denis, was Charles supposed to await before the coronation?

In another work, the biographer Pernoud states that it was a canard Joan had made up,

possibly to throw her judges off the scent, to allude to that sign as to a concrete object, a crown brought by an angel. In the course of the following interrogations she amplified that image as if at random; it is easy to grasp the symbolic bearing.

Pernoud's logic is that Joan just went with the court's questions that treated the "sign" as a literal object. On March 13, she was asked,

How did the Angel carry the crown? and did he place it himself on your King's head?

Joan replied,.

The crown was given to an Archbishop — that is, to the Archbishop of Rheims — so it seems to me, in the presence of my King. The Archbishop received it, and gave it to the King. I was myself present. The crown was afterwards put among my King's treasures.

So it was allegorical, a "signal"? Wait -- an allegory needs its concrete counterpart. So what was the crown?

Of what material was the said crown?

It is well to know it was of fine gold; it was so rich that I do not know how to count its riches or to appreciate its beauty. The crown signified that my King should possess the Kingdom of France."

She was asked,

This crown, did it smell well and had it a good odour? did it glitter?

I do not remember about it I will think it over. [Remembering:] Yes, it smelt good, and will smell good always, if it be well guarded, as it should be. It was in the form of a crown.

There you have it: "It was in the form of a crown." So what was "it"?

The Rouen court obsessed over this story, and made it a significant element of the "Subsequent Examinations," post-hoc testimony of certain clerics' supposed conversations with Joan on the day of her execution in which she was supposed to have admitted the she and not an actual crown that the angel bestowed upon the King. If we discount the Examinations and take Joan's testimony about the "sign" and the "crown" both literally and symbolically, then Joan was speaking to more than her own role in Charles' coronation.

When we look at the crown in tandem as literal and figurative, it gives us a little light on the "crown sent from God," as it aligns with her statements about the "sign" at Chinon:

The sign was that an Angel assured my King, in bringing him the crown, that he should have the whole realm of France, by the means of God's help and my labours; that he was to start me on the work — that is to say, to give me men-at-arms; and that otherwise he would not be so soon crowned and consecrated ... The crown signified that my King should possess the Kingdom of France.

As such, both "signs," or, more accurately, visions, are about "France" and not the Coronation. Clearly, Joan was speaking about herself -- that's the angel they all saw. The "crown," too, was an actual thing -- France, which negotiations delayed in its delivery to the King. Subsequent events support the thesis.

Following his coronation, Charles VII gained no further lands than what Joan had delivered to him on the way to Reims. Indeed, he ceded some lands back to the Burgundians in an ill-fated attempt at reconciliation. And instead of continuing Joan's advance, he dithered and delayed, and set Joan to the side. By bringing Charles to Reims, Joan had saved France, but the culmination of that outcome took decades, something Joan never conceived -- except in this vision that Charles was impatient and as a result lost the larger crown.

Charles had the army in place. He had the inertia. He had the right military leaders in d'Alençon, de Richemont, La Hire -- and Joan. Instead, he issued equivocal proclamations to raise money for war but focused on consolidation not expansion. In not prosecuting the war, Charles extended it. The haste, then, was that of inaction, festina lente, which surrendered the immediate opportunity of a larger, more glorious crown.

Road to Rouen

Burgundian possessions under the rule of Duke Charles the Bold, 1465–1477 (Wikipedia). Go here for an animated map showing the growth of the Burgundian state. Note the dotted-line that marks the border between France and the Holy Roman Empire, which the Duchy strides. The death of Philip the Good at the 1477 Battle of Nancy against the Swiss Federation allowed the French King Louis XI (son of Charles VIII) to absorb the French portion of the Duchy, thus ending the "Valois House of Burgundy" started in 1363 by Philip the Bold, the brother of the French King Charles V (grandfather of Charles VII).

Even as Joan led the French army and its King towards Reims for the sacramental coronation of Charles VII, the French minister La Trémoille commenced negotiations with the Burgundian court. The talks advanced enough so that the day after the coronation a fifteen day truce was begun.

France was Charles VII's for the taking, especially Paris, but now, not later. Instead, the newly crowned King preferred the adulation of the people along a slow march towards but not into Paris -- which means he did not want to take Paris. Charles and his ministers had ceded authority over the war to their enemies.

How do we even make sense of this? The English were reeling from Joan's onslaught, and as the French army marched triumphantly to and from the sacred coronation of the French King, the Burgundians faced the logic of an English alliance that was losing its authority among the people. And the French minister proposes Burgundian neutrality? It's hard to see to what advantage La Trémoille was leveraging, much less what was the actual situation being leveraged.

At best, La Trémoille's strategy would isolate the English, perhaps weakening their hold on Normandy. At worst, it would have forced the English to seize Paris, which they had otherwise left to the Burgundians to run under a small English guard. It wouldn't look good to crown Edward VI at Rouen, a city of no cultural significance. Or, just as bad for the French, Burgundian neutrality may have opened access for that coronation to take place at Reims. If so, and if the English managed to pull off the sacred coronation at Reims, it would have meant not just dual claims on the Crown but competing claims of the anointed Crown, which could have forced the Vatican to take sides -- and which would may well have provoked another papal schism were one side or the other to reject that papal intervention.

The problem with the French Court's strategy, which came down to wishful thinking, is that it left everything in the hands of the other parties. So long as the English regent of France, the Duke of Bedford, was in command of an experienced, formidable army -- and married to the sister of the Duke of the Burgundy -- and so long as the Duke of Burgundy had nothing to lose in the negotiations, neither lands nor, in effect, his English partners, the English-Burgundian alliance would hold, especially since the textile factories in Flanders were supplied by English wool. The French strategy to isolate the English through Burgundian neutrality failed to cover the strong hands the Dukes of Bedford and Burgundy were holding. Ultimately, La Trémoille's desired Burgundian realignment to France was achieved, but not due to or under him. Meanwhile, he and de Chartres thought a deal would magically follow Charles' coronation, which is why after it they came to see Joan's presence as inexpedient.

Recalling Joan's vision of the crown and her description of it at the Trial,

I think my King took with joy the crown that he had at Rheims; but another, much richer, would have been given him later. He acted thus to hurry on his work

The situation conforms to Joan's vision that Charles rushed off in his plans, impatient for a quick and easy resolution to the war through Burgundian capitulation. Had he rather supported Joan's crusade, built up the army, suffered the angst of war, the French could have overwhelmed the English, whose battlefield confidence was instead reestablished after Joan's death. Charles rushed into the wrong plan, and so denied himself a greater glory than that he eventually earned in reuniting France at the conclusion of the Hundred Years War in 1453, which, finally, earned him the epithet, "Charles the Victorious," a crown of sorts, but much lesser than that of Joan's vision of the angelic crown.

The standard historical explanation that we encounter for the French abandonment of Joan and her reconquest of France is that La Trémoille and de Chartres, came to resent her out of jealousy, misogyny, or something, and so worked against her, whether that be to French advantage or not. The biographer Murray writes,

There existed a bitter feeling of jealousy towards Jeanne in consequence of her great successes in the field. This was notably shown during her attack upon Paris, where she was thwarted in every direction, and all possibility of victory was taken from her by the conduct of the King.

That's exactly what happened, especially at Paris, but "jealousy" hardly satisfies the motives. There's far more to it.

At Orléans Joan had proven herself authentic, and the entire country was awed and amazed, including the rather complicated figure, Arthur III de Richemont of Brittany who had fought for the French at Agincourt, switched to the English side, rejoined the French Court, only to be kicked out of it two years prior to Joan's arrival. Making it even more complicated, after his father died, his mother married Henry IV of England, becoming Queen Dowager at Henry V's court, and de Richemont himself was married to the sister of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. His homeland, Brittany, had an identity distinct from England and France, although it was geographically attached and thereby more largely tied to France. Yet even in the name "Richemont," a francophone version of the English "Richmond," do we see the crossed identities. Just as French clerics at Paris tied their ambitions to the English, and through the myopia of self-advancement loathed Joan's challenge to their English nest egg, de Richemont, inflamed by the miracle at Orléans, and with a latent patriotism for France -- and recognizing opportunity, raised an army of a thousand and marched to the Loire to fight alongside the Maid.

We recall that the Burgundian state was in part a fief of both France and the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, Burgundian Flanders was technically a French fief that in practice was ruled outright by the Duke. As they extended their holdings, the Dukes of Burgundy, though Valois French, saw themselves more and more as lords of an autonomous state. Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy of Joan's time, had fruitfully expanded Burgundian Flanders, which neither the English nor the French could claim. So it really didn't matter to Philip whether the King of France was English or French: what mattered was the given advantage to him. By 1429, the assassination of the Duke's father ten years before had become as much an opportunity as a rationale for the war against the Armagnacs, as it empowered him as hegemon.

Where the Armagnac-Burgundian split was originally a fight between French factions, by Joan's time the Armagnacs were "the French" and the Burgundians had become "the Burgundians." The French court, though, held to the view that the Duchy of Burgundy was French, and thus the factional split was an internal affair, whereas the English problem was external. Yet, had the English seized Orléans and so isolated France to the south, or defeated it outright, the Duchy of Burgundy would have become effectively an English and no longer French vassalage; that is, French in name only, while its Flemish and Germanic holdings would have become more and more defining of an independent country, as opposed to a duchy of French origins. The French believed that the Anglo-Burgundian alliance was not sustainable, and so it was, but that view ignored the deep ambitions of both parties: the English wanted France to become English, while the Burgundians wanted it Burgundian.

Joan and her military victories tore into these cross-ambitions. Her insistence upon taking the English and Burgundians on the field was entirely at odds with court machinations that sought negotiated settlements. For Joan, as long as the Burgundians were allied with the English they were equally the enemy. She told the Rouen court,

As soon as I knew that my Voices were for the King of France, I loved the Burgundians no more. The Burgundians will have war unless they do what they ought; I know it by my Voice.

Having welcomed de Richemont to the fight, Joan struck at the heart of the French court's feudal designs. De Richemont's entry meant war, not compromise. Joan knew it so. She was sent to save "France" and not "feudal France," and so rejected diplomatic settlements and insisted, as she had stated plainly in the Letter to the English, on a full expulsion of the English from "the whole of France." To the Burgundians, she demanded restoration of Royal lands, which would include Paris, and told the Duke, essentially, if you are not with us, you are against us. Leading up to Reims, Charles refused de Richemont's help, even to ban him from the coronation, which was by custom de Richemont's due. Charles said, according to a chronicler,

he would rather never be crowned than have my lord [de Richemont] in attendance.

Joan, the chronicler reported, was angry at de Richemont's exclusion. She certainly knew of but didn't care about palace back stories and generational resentments. She wanted to win the war. If that meant peaceful Burgundian recognition of Charles as King of France, so be it, which is why she invited the Duke of Burgundy to the Coronation. The day thereof she wrote the Duke again, saying,

And it has now been three weeks since I wrote to you and sent good letters by a herald, inviting you to be present at the anointing of the king, which today, Sunday the seventeenth day of this present month of July, is taking place in the city of Reims. Of this I have had no reply, nor have I heard any news since from the said herald.

Back to war, then, for which de Richemont's help was most welcome to Joan -- should Charles allow it.

Arthur III of Brittany (wikicommons)

Historians have recognized this aspect of Joan's influence upon events, especially in the later re-militarization of France under de Richemont who, empowered by his effective reentry to French politics, had expelled La Trémoille from the Court. Arriving with his soldiers to Jargeau was his first ploy to regain power as Constable. By welcoming him, it was Joan who put into place the dynamics that would lead to the reconciliation of Burgundy with France four years after her death. Though well before the final expulsion of the English, for which de Richemont was the crucial commander, that reconciliation was a key turning point, also coming through the presence of de Richemont. Joan made it happen.

Date	Timeline of Arthur III de Richemont
Early life	Younger son of the Duke of Brittany, John IV and Joanna of Navarre, who subsequently married Henry IV of England.
1410-1414	aligns with Armagnac faction during open conflict with Burgundians
1415	fights for French at Agincourt; wounded, captured and held for five years
1420	convinces brother, Duke of Brittany to join English side in Treaty of Troyes that recognized the English king as heir to France; Dukes of Brittany and Burgundy set informal understanding of mutual support
1422	entitled by English as Duke of Touraine
1424	returns to French Court and made Constable of France
1425	Duke of Brittany signs Treaty of Saumur with Charles VII
1427	English raids force Duke of Brittany to enter truce, separating Brittany from France
	kicked out of French court by de La Trémoïlle
1429	in June brings army to join Joan of Arc, and fights with the French at Battle of Patay
1430-1431	prosecutes the war against the English in Brittany and northeastern France without French support or recognition;
1432	March, Treaty of Rennes signed between Charles VII and Duke of Brittany, enhancing de Richemont's status with French court
1433	overthrows La Trémoïlle
1435	helps negotiate Trety of Arras which re-aligns Burgundy to the French
1444	heads reorganization of the French army on professional terms
1450	commands French victory at Battle of Formigny, in Normandy, and lays seige on Caen
1457	becomes Duke of Burgundy upon death of his nephew
1458	dies

La Trémoille and de Richemont's mutual history and animosities were large. Both had deep ties to the Burgundians: La Trémoille was raised in the Burgundian court alongside the future John the Fearless, and de Richemont was married to one of his daughters. Both joined the Armagnac cause during the height of the armed conflicts with the Burgundians of the early 1410s. Both fought for France at Agincourt and were captured by the English. La Trémoille was released right away, while de Richemont, who was injured in the battle, was held for five years, after which he joined the English cause, indicating either a conversion or, more likely, a deal. Keen on joining the winning side, he convinced his brother, the Duke of Brittany, to join the Burgundians in support of the English at the 1420 Treaty of Troyes. The English rewarded de Richemont, but with a title and not a high command, so, frustrated at the sidelining, he returned to the French court, upon which he brought his brother back into the Armagnac fold through a treaty with Charles VII.

At the French court, de Richemont, who was recruited by La Trémoille, helped Trémoille to oust and replace Charles' favorite court minister, Pierre de Giac. But things fell apart for the pair, in 1427 when La Trémoille turned on him, in part because of de Richemont's volatile personality, and mostly because de Richemont's brother the Duke of Brittany had been forced by battle into signing a truce with the English. The alignment switch was seen by the French as an unforgiveable betrayal, and thus the source of severe animosity among the Armagnacs against de Richemont. After his return to the French cause with the welcome from Joan of Arc, de Richemont maneuvered himself back into the good graces of Charles VII, and took revenge upon La Trémoille, kidnapping and ransoming him for money and a pledge to stay out of the French Court. Amidst the oscillating alliances and defections stood Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy knew these characters well, and so after Joan's death, he offered to de Richemont lands that belonged to La Trémoille in exchange for loyalty. However, de Richemont was one of the few French commanders, though still isolated from the French King, carrying on the war against the English. Had de Richemont switched sides again, a united France would have been impossible.

As we consider the betrayal of Joan by the French upon her capture, perhaps we owe it to La Trémoille and de Chartres that they didn't maliciously abandon her and were instead practicing standard statecraft. >>here Negotiation was as much a part of medieval warfare as swords and crossbows. After all, even Jean Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans himself, for example, offered the city to the Duke of Burgundy in exchange for relief from the English. The Maid had gotten in the way of it all, which makes the French diplomatic maneuvering leading up to and after the coronation of Charles so glaringly odd: Bedford was absolutely right: Orléans gone, France gone, which affirms Joan's logic, Orléans saved, the King of France saved; the King crowned at Reims, France saved; Paris taken, France liberated. While it may seem reasonable to some historians that a personal spat in the French Court got between God's plan for France and what its leadership chose to do, that hardly explains the larger outcomes, which are more historically explanatory if understood as defined by Joan's path from Chinon to her martyrdom at Rouen.

A final explanation offered by historians for the betrayal of Joan brings us into the ever dubious realm of "psychohistory," which tries to understand the past by putting it on the sofa and asking about its childhood. At first it seems reasonable that much of the capitulation to the Burgundians that Charles VII had authorized was due to his deep sense of guilt over the murder on the bridge of John the Fearless. The King suffered, the theory goes, from lingering baggage from the assassination of the Duke, which cemented the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war and which opened the door for the English, who were already on the move in northern France, to sign the Treaty of Troyes handing France over to the English. This dark history weighed upon Charles, we are told.

If so, we must imagine a newly crowned and victorious King waking up the next day thinking himself unworthy of it all. Were he that emotionally torn, he never would have accepted the crown, and we'd have to thereby attribute to such guilt his well-known proclivity for play over work. It's not just dubious, its nonsensical, much less provable. And, it's just another instance of how historical doubt of Joan's Voices misreads the history. We do know from Joan that in the "sign" she showed Charles back at Chinon, a golden crown brought by angels, whether Charles saw it or not (Joan says he did) lay a clear message: he's King of all of France, not just Bourges. Even if Charles felt bad over his uncle's murder, survivor guilt washed away quickly when God's agent delivered the country to him. More specifically to his post-Coronation equivocation, Charles' strategy had nothing to do with the murder. It was a point of negotiation, perhaps not a trivial one, but far from the endgame, which this theory implies.

The entire matter was that Duke of Burgundy must recognize Charles VII as King of France. Getting there, psychodrama or not, was the stickler. Joan explained it to the Rouen court, which thought it illuminating to question her on supporting regicide:

Do you think, and do you firmly believe, that your King did right in killing, or causing to be killed, my Lord the Duke of Burgundy?

Joan's reply is complex, concise and marvelous:

It was a great injury to the Kingdom of France; and, whatever there may have been between them, God sent me to the help of the King of France.

Joan, as we have seen, on the day of the Coronation affirmed the Charles' peace overtures to Burgundy, only under far different terms from those La Trémoille and de Chartres were seeking. Joan wrote that the Duke would do better to wage war against the "Saracens" than the French, by which historians believe she meant either the Ottoman Turks or, as I see it, the heretical Hussites of Bohemia. Her letter in full reads:

Jhesus † Maria

Great and formidable Prince, Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne the Virgin requests of you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, that the King of France and yourself should make a good firm lasting peace. Fully pardon each other willingly, as faithful Christians should do; and if it should please you to make war, then go against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, beg, and request as humbly as I can that you wage war no longer in the holy kingdom of France, and order your people who are in any towns and fortresses of the holy kingdom to withdraw promptly and without delay. And as for the noble King of France, he is ready to make peace with you, saving his honor; if you’re not opposed. And I tell you, in the name of the King of Heaven, my rightful and sovereign Lord, for your well-being and your honor and [which I affirm] upon your lives, that you will never win a battle against the loyal French, and that all those who have been waging war in the holy kingdom of France have been fighting against King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world, my rightful and sovereign Lord. And I beg and request of you with clasped hands to not fight any battles nor wage war against us – neither yourself, your troops nor subjects; and know beyond a doubt that despite whatever number [duplicated phrase] of soldiers you bring against us they will never win. And there will be tremendous heartbreak from the great clash and from the blood that will be spilled of those who come against us. And it has been three weeks since I had written to you and sent proper letters via a herald [saying] that you should be at the anointing of the King, which this day, Sunday, the seventeenth day of this current month of July, is taking place in the city of Rheims – to which I have not received any reply. Nor have I ever heard any word from this herald since then.

I commend you to God and may He watch over you if it pleases Him, and I pray God that He shall establish a good peace.

Written in the aforementioned place of Rheims on the aforesaid seventeenth day of July.

Joan struck in the thigh by a bolt at the walls of Paris (by Roze, Wellcome) (wikicommons)

The French ministers, instead, made it altogether too easy for the Duke, seducing him with "greater offers of reparation than the royal majesty actually possessed," including to yield the town of Compiègne, which a year later continued to hold out against the Burgundians, although at the expense of Joan's capture and ransom to the English. The Duke of Burgundy had no intention of respecting "neutrality," and instead took advantage of the French self-deception in order to reinforce his position with the English -- who themselves took advantage of unexpected reprieve to reinforce Paris with 1,000 troops.

Hurrying slowly to Paris, Charles spent over a month at Compiègne, carrying on negotiations. Yet, indicative of the authority Joan yet held, she and the Duc d'Alençon moved, finally, an army towards Paris. After they took Saint Denis just outside of Paris on August 26, Charles quickly concluded a peace with the Burgundians, only he now had to exclude Saint Denis from the truce, since Joan, again, had forced his hand. Charles commenced the days-long march of about 50 miles to Saint Denis, arriving September 7. He now had no choice but to allow the attack on Paris, which Joan and d'Alençon launched the next day, September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, which the Burgundian clerics at Paris greatly resented and which the Rouen court later noted.

Joan was at the front. After an all-day assault that induced both panic and expectant enthusiasm within the city, as the sun fell, Joan "reached the walls of Paris" but was struck in the thigh by a crossbow bolt. Joan described it to the Rouen court matter-of-factly, saying,

I was wounded in the trenches before Paris, but I was cured in five days. It is true that I caused an assault to be made before Paris.

We find greater details from a witness who was rather amazed by it all:

The Maid took her standard in hand and with the first troops entered the ditches toward the swine market. The assault was hard and long, and it was wondrous to hear the noise and the explosion of the cannons and the culverines that those inside the city fired against those outside, and all manner of blows in such great abundance that they were beyond being counted. The assault lasted from about the hour of midday until about the hour of nightfall. After the sun had set, the Maid was hit by a crossbow bolt in her thigh. After she had been hit, she insisted even more strenuously that everyone should approach the walls so that the place would be taken; but because it was night and she was wounded and the men-at-arms were weary from the day-long assault, the lord of Gaucourt and others came to the Maid and against her will carried her out of the ditch, and so the assault ended.

Must have seemed like another Orlėans or Jargeau about to happen -- the Maid is down! the Maid returns to the attack! Such was in Joan's mind, as well, for the next morning she went looking for d'Alençon to resume the attack. But the King had halted the campaign the night before, ordering d'Alençon to tear down a bridge that he had hurriedly constructed to assist the next day's maneuvers. The retreat meant a return to the Loire, back to where it had all started, Orléans.

Mural at the Basilica of Saint Joan of Arc, Domrémy-la-Pucelle,likely depicting Joan pulled from her horse at her capture (Wikicommons)

Joan was certain about taking Paris. She had warned the English King and his regent, Bedford, in her Letter to the English,

And do not think in yourselves that you will get possession of the realm of France from God the King of Heaven, Son of the Blessed Mary; for King Charles will gain it, the true heir: for God, the King of Heaven, so wills it, and it is revealed to him [the King] by the Maid, and he will enter Paris with a good company.

A letter dated June, 1429 from the young lord, Guy de Laval, who would distinguish himself fighting with Joan, and who had just joined the army In enthusiasm at the news of the Maid after Orléans, wrote of an encounter with her,

After we had arrived at Selles, I went to her lodging to see her, and she called for wine for me and said she would soon have me drink it in Paris.

A report sent before the attack to the French Queen and her domineering mother, Yolanda of Sicily, discussed the progress of La Trémoille's negotiations, hoping for a "good treaty," yet also declared that Joan

leaves no doubt that she will bring Paris under her control.

This was her way: flat promises of battlefield success. Neither in these statements, nor elsewhere does Joan proclaim prophetically that she herself would be in Paris. The King would, absolutely, but for her, as with the young lord whom "she would have" drink wine in Paris, or bringing Paris "under her control," might or might not mean she would be there. Similarly, at the Rouen trial she answered questions about the Count d'Armagnac who wrote her regarding the papal schisms:

I replied, among other things, that when I should be at rest, in Paris or elsewhere, I would give him an answer.

The court read out the Count's letter, then her reply, dated, August 22, 1429, in which Joan wrote,

This thing I cannot tell you truly at present, until I am at rest in Paris or elsewhere; for I am now too much hindered by affairs of war; but when you hear that I am in Paris, send a message to me...

It's all ambivalent and conditional. In fact, Joan's Voices never told her she would be in Paris. From the Rouen trial,

When you came before Paris, had you revelations from your Voices to go there?

No, I went at the request of the gentlemen who wished to make an attack or assault-at-arms; I intended to go there and break through the trenches.

Paris would come to the French, as she predicted, but not with Joan herself entering the gates. Rather than carrying her battle flag through its streets, she would take the city through her long term effects.

Before leaving St. Denis, where Charles VII had resided during the Paris campaign, Joan presented her white armor and a sword she had seized in battle to the altar at the church of Saint Denis, a traditional act of thanksgiving by a wounded soldier. After the King left Saint Denis to the English, they took Joan's armor and in all likelihood destroyed it. Seven years later, Charles would have to retake Saint Denis, and Paris, by force. Following the retreat from Saint Denis in September, 1429, the usual story is the the King abandoned Joan, while allowing her to engage in limited, unsupported military campaigns, which is true. For her part, Joan never gave up on her claim that France would defeat the English.

Charles VII was not entirely deceived by his counselors, but he was duplicitous with Joan. Back at the French Court, he feted her, brought her from castle to castle, but ignored her pleas to carry on the war. Her opportunity came when the need arose to put down continued Burgundian resistance within the Loire region itself, at a town called Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier. Sent officially by the Court, Joan took the fortified, moat-protected town, but only she insisted upon a second assault and stood at foot of the walls to inspire the troops forward.

The next order was to attack another town in the region, La Charité, an important crossing of the Loire, and which was well fortified. But the court denied her additional artillery or funds, perhaps marking a terrific act of betrayal by La Trémoïlle, who was accused of diverting money intended for the army to himself. Whatever happened, Joan was forced to raise her own army for the attack, which was unsuccessful, her first defeat after Paris, giving the Court further excuse to ignore her and to adhere to the supposed truce with the Duke of Burgundy. On her own accord, Joan moved north to defend areas that, despite the truce, the Burgundians had attacked further to the north. That Joan knew Burgundian violations of the truce were ongoing means the French Court knew it, too, but deliberately ignored it under the guise of the truce agreement. That Joan acted on her own authority or the King's doesn't matter.

The capture of Joan of Arc, from the book, La prise de Jeanne d'Arc by Alexandre Sorel, 1889 (Gallica)

What matters is that she went to defend Compiègne, where she had languished impatiently under Charles' extended stay after the Coronation, and which was an ongoing article of negotiation between the French and Burgundians, all the while under Burgundian and English attack. The town had few resources and limited defenses. Joan took a small force of loyalists to relieve the city and its residents whom she had gotten to know rather well the year before when Charles lingered there before moving to Paris. Outside the city she was captured, but, as always, standing fast amidst battle, only this time there was no rallying the troops, as they had prudently escaped the losing battle into the city. To prevent an imminent breach, the gate was closed behind Joan, as the Burgundians and English surrounded and pulled her from her horse. She refused to surrender to any but a nobleman, who took her submission.

Joan lamented not having been able to successfully defend Compiègne, and she worried about the city while imprisoned. On top of that concern, when she learned of her pending transfer to the English, she leapt from her cell atop a tower, a fall of some sixty feet. Questioned at the Rouen trial about the attempted escape, she explained,

I had heard that the people of Compiègne, all, to the age of seven years, were to be put to fire and sword; and I would rather have died than live after such a destruction of good people. That was one of the reasons. The other was that I knew I was sold to the English ; and I had rather die than be in the hands of my enemies, the English.

The siege was raised on October 24 of 1430, so perhaps Joan knew this when she testified elsewhere that,

I said that before Martinmas many things would be seen, and that the English might perhaps be overthrown.

Martinmass, or the feast of Saint Martin, was November 11 of that year, so the saving of Compiègne would have been just while she was about to be transferred to the English by the Burgundians, which happened in early November. That Joan prophesized the relief of Compiègne through Saint Catherine might be disputed, because she may have heard of the relief of the city from prison. It's possible that she knew it, but that doesn't mean her Voices didn't tell her. When she stated that she thought "many things would be seen" by Martinmass, she was being pushed by the questioners on another topic, her shocking statement that "Before seven years are passed, the English will lose a greater wage than they have already done at Orleans."

As regards Compiègne, here it gets even more interesting. As was their technique, here the interrogator pulled out some background intelligence, trying to throw her off. He asked her,

Did you not say that this would happen before Martinmas, in winter?

It's astounding. Clearly Joan had told someone back in prison under the Burgundians, which the Rouen court picked up on, her prophesy about a defeat of the English coming "before Martinmas." Thereby, Joan did not use any post hoc knowledge, or, as suggested by some historians, just make it up on the fly to throw off or appease her interrogators. Even more notably, she affirmed what they had heard, but without reference to Compiègne.

She did say that Saint Catherine told her, after her leap, that,

those at Compiègne would have succour.

Joan herself did not connect those two events, an English defeat before Martinmas and of the raising of the siege at Compiègne. We can make the association by looking back on it logically. With that connection, her prophesy that "the English might perhaps be overthrown" before Martinmas becomes even more astounding when we consider what happened at Compiègne. Events there, indeed, marked a hugely important moment for the ultimate French victory years later.

A Marshall of France named Jean de Brosse, Lord of Boussac, believed in Joan from the beginning. He had urged Charles to send her to Orléans, and accompanied her there as she rode at the head of the army. Two years later, having fought beside Jean Dunois, La Hire, de Richemont, and, another of Joan's compatriots, Jean Poton de Xaintrailles, all of whom were the key figures in the ultimate French victory, and all of whom had been sidelined by La Trémoille's and de Chartres' various and failed negotiations and truces, de Brosse, and those others, remained loyal to Joan. They didn't just believe in her, they believed in her divine mission. De Brosse died in 1433, so we don't have his assessment of Joan, but it likely conformed with that of Dunois who believed that "Jeanne was sent by God."

De Brosse was greatly grieved at the capture of Joan and pleaded with the King to save her. Charles refused, so de Brosse, already badly in debt, raised his own army, which further stressed him financially. In May, just after Joan's capture, he and de Xaintrailles led 4,000 troops to Compiègne in order to liberate Joan, whom they thought was still being held there. Joan had been delivered to the Burgundian ally, the Duke of Luxembourg, who held her at his castle, Clairoix, where she tried to escape, and then at Beaurevoir, where she jumped from the tower. Meanwhile, de Brosse and de Xaintrailles continued their defense of Compiègne, lifting the siege on October 26, recovering a city in ruins and suffering famine and disease. Joan's concern for the inhabitants was justified.

We should note several important aspects of de Brosse's operation at Compiègne. It was not atypical of a lord to raise and fight with his own army, but under feudal arrangements it would be at the call of the King. This was not. The diplomatic program of the French court and its truces forced, or freed, perhaps, these warlords into independent mercenary campaigns, which they were happy to do for the profit in it through ransom and plunder. Nevertheless, characterized by one historian as "chivalric," the operation at Compiègne, and two later attacks, one by La Hire to rescue Joan from imprisonment at Rouen and the other by de Brosse to punish the city of Rouen after Joan's death, were unique in that they were conducted out of loyalty to Joan and not under orders from the King or strictly for personal gain.

On November 10, 1449, Rouen welcomed King Charles VI (wikicommons)

More importantly, these warriors were prosecuting the plans of Joan of Arc more than those of Charles VII. The mercenary campaigns weakened the English hold on Normandy and forced the Duke of Burgundy to the table at the Congress of Arras, the treaty which annulled that of Troyes under which Charles VII's father disinherited him. Next, as a result of their continued rampaging, and having been forced into a military aspect in order to enforce the Treaty of Arras, in the 1440s, Charles VII turned to de Richemont to professionalize the army, something considered one of Charles' greatest accomplishments. Essentially, de Richemont returned to the kind of warfare Joan had commenced at Orléans by reorganizing the kind of warfare she was forced to turn to after Paris. Most of these generals were active in the Hundred Years War prior to Joan's arrival, but it was she who coalesced them into the common cause of saving France, not just defeating the Burgundians or the English in defense of their local regions or interests. As we see from La Hire's rescue attempt and de Bosse's retaliatory raid on Rouen, perhaps it took Joan's imprisonment and execution to push these outcomes. And, if so, that's what it took to elevate Charles VII from schemer to statesman.

During her imprisonment by Luxembourg, the Duke's wife befriended Joan, and used a promise of an inheritance as lever for the Duke not to ransom her to the English. When the Duchess died on September 18, Luxembourg commenced negotiations for her ransom to the English, who assumed control of her in late November of 1430. She was then taken to Rouen, where Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, who oversaw her ransom to the English, organized the show trial. He fully expected to be made Archbishop of Rouen as a reward.

Trial and Martyrdom

It is not the purpose of this study to work through the narrative of the Trial of Condemnation, which we have reviewed in pieces leading up to here. The Trial serves us, instead, in Joan's clear demonstration in it of her divine mission. We also see in the Trial the extent to which the English and Burgundians went to justify the execution of Joan, and the utter hatred of her that the court at Rouen exercised, which demonstrates by opposing virtue her righteousness. We will see in the following chapter how throughout the Trial Joan so outwitted the court that Bishop Cauchon was compelled to construct a false narrative of admissions of guilt from John on the morning of her death.

Saint Joan of Arc is not a Catholic martyr, and correctly so, as she was condemned and died for disobedience to the Church and not for her private revelation. An additional obstacle to a cause of martyrdom is that Cauchon's trial was canonically constituted, for which he fastidiously constructed and documented it. (History is the beneficiary of his wrath against Joan.) Nevertheless, Joan is commonly -- and correctly -- thought of as a "martyr," for she certainly died for her belief in her Voices and mission. It's a reasonable label for her so long as we recognize it outside the context of her canonization.

Betrayed

It confounds the honest reader the betrayals, denials, and injustices that Joan suffered. It's tempting to recognize the interests and intrigues she provoked as normal reactions to the challenges to authority she presented on all sides, including to her parents (one of the accusations against her). If, further, we disbelieve her Divine mission, then we start reading into her the various pathologies like teen rebellion, gender morphism, etc., that fueled those injustices, but which distort her reality. What I find far more interesting is Joan's own confoundment at those reactions to her and her situation.

The Christological typology is clear: Joan is betrayed by a follower, ransomed by blood money, persecuted by religious leaders using the authority of a foreign occupier, abandoned by her followers, accused of deviltry, abused and put to death by that foreign power, but upheld by a small core of devoted followers, especially her mother. The history depicts the typology explicitly. However, we can still ask, why'd she have to go through it all?

In the Rouen Trial, Joan only mentions betrayal regarding her own treason against her Voices when she disobeyed them at Beaurevoir and the Abjuration. A story circulated, though, in Compiègne, where she was captured, that she had predicted it as a betrayal. The city was dear to Joan, and under great threat. She was there with an undersupplied, small force to protect it from an Anglo-Burgundian resurgence that erupted at the end of the negotiated peace between the French factions. Joan knew the peace was a fraud and had carried on fighting without the support of the French government, which had already betrayed her through military isolation and in hope of rapprochement with the Burgundians which she opposed except for Burgundian recognition of Charles VII as true King of France. The translator Murray reports,

Alain Bouchard states that, in the year 1488, he heard from two aged men of Compiègne, who had themselves been present, that a few days before her capture, the Maid was attending Mass in the Church of St. Jacques. After communicating and spending some time in devotion, she turned to the assembled congregation, and, leaning against a pillar, uttered this prediction: "My good friends, my dear little children, I am sold and betrayed. Soon I shall be given up to death. Pray to God for me, for I can no longer serve the King and the Kingdom of France."

After that capture and her ransomed to the English, Joan was handed an ecclesiastical and not military court. For the English, it'd be an easy solution to put her death, as they did other mystics such as the Shephard of Gévaudan, who was dispatched by the English without process or ceremony. Additionally, while Joan could claim noble protection, having been knighted by Charles VII after Paris, but the English would neither accept that nor allow such niceties to complicate her execution. Still, it was a tricky situation: this young woman brought upon them debilitating and humiliating defeats and roused the sentiments of the loyal French within their hold. For those common French people who did support the English, they were embracing traditional ties going back to the times of Normal rule of England, as well as hatred of their French rivals and the burdens and punishments of intermittent French rule. The Burgundian elites, nobility and ecclesiastic, however, were, if not enthusiastic for English rule, steadfast in its support, as it not only gave them power over their Armagnac rivals but it empowered their political and religious economies. An English-ruled France was to their interests.

Given top-down support and the dangers of bottom-up resentment, or even potential rebellion, that Joan represented, to the English and the Burgundian elites, she simply had to die. Only, it had to be justified, and no greater justification could be found in the 15th century than from the Church. To get there, it had to be carefully orchestrated with clear lines of authority. However, when Joan was captured by Burgundian forces under the Count of Luxembourg, she was de facto held by a Burgundian ally but de jure held by an independent entity. This was an important distinction because it removed from English and the Duke of Burgundy direct jurisdiction over her. To overcome the problem, the location of her capture was invented to place her under the command of the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. There commenced the serious irregularities of her treatment, most egregiously her confinement in a military and not ecclesiastical prison.

The French word for a court proceeding is procès, which, better than the English "trial," for a "test," reflects its nature of an established process by which its legality is assured. The transcript itself was an important part of that process, and had the scribe Manchon not insisted on upholding its accuracy -- or had Joan not tested the scribes on it, as one of the notaries, Colles, testified at the Rehabilitation,

I remember well that Jeanne answered more prudently when questioned a second time upon a point whereon she had been already questioned ; she failed not to say that she had elsewhere replied, and she told the notaries to read what she had already said.

-- the integrity of the transcript itself may have been corrupted. In all aspects of the Trial, Cauchon was bound to regular process, at least in appearance. Nevertheless, the Trial was marred by procedural shortcuts, so much that one of the day's most celebrated jurists, Father Jean Lohier, left Rouen disgusted with it all. The notary Manchon detailed Lohier's complaints, which included: 1) it was an extraordinary, i.e., out of form trial; 2) it was moved to private hearings; 3) it violated the honor of the King of France; and 4) up to his departure, no formal charges had been filed for Joan to respond to, "especially those, as she said, which related to her revelations."

The bishop, Beauvais, was indignant, Manchon described it:

"This Lohier wants to put fine questions into our Process: he would find fault with everything, and says it is of no value. If we were to believe him, everything must be begun again, and all we have done would be worth nothing! " And, after stating the grounds on which Lohier found fault, my Lord of Beauvais added: "It is clear enough on which foot he limps. By Saint John! we will do nothing in the matter, but will go on with our Process as it is begun!"

Lohier told Manchon,

It seems they act rather from hate than otherwise; and for that reason, I will not stay here, for I have no desire to be in it.

More tricky yet was the problem of martyrdom. A clean military execution wouldn't do: she had to be removed of any taint of justification. To that end, the strategy was to deny her counsel, abuse, threaten and humiliate her physically and emotionally, trip her up in testimony and theology, and to turn her from French hero, and, even at Rouen and Paris, a sympathetic curiosity, to loathsome witch. Joan defeated those plans with inspired replies, not just countering but reversing upon her accusers their own accusations of her. She made them look bad. Hence the trial was removed from a public to a private location, and she was only shown in public under a controlled scenes with berating sermons in the final attempts at forcing into admission of heresy,

Here came an even larger problem. Having manipulated Joan into a public abjuration, the court could label her a self-admitted heretic. Except now they couldn't burn a repentant. I have no evidence that it was planned, but the evidence overwhelmingly points to prior arrangement of the attacks on her by her English guards after she returned to women's clothes under the terms of the abjuration (which was likely the only point of clarity in it from Joan's point of view). Cauchon's "gotchya" when she put on the men's clothes that the guards then threw upon the floor before her, was absolutely fulfillment of a plan and not glee at a favorable event. Now they could put her to death.

We see much testimony form the clerics who were interviewed during the Trial of Rehabilitation as to the irregularity of her execution by secular authorities who omitted any process and put her straight to the stake. By then, the English were just trying to get rid of her, and whether or not she had abjured, then relapsed, they were going to kill her. Bedford was impatient to get on the move, and had been preparing for some time the campaign he launched nearly immediately after Joan's death. There would be no coronation of Henry VI as King of France with Joan still alive.

We must note that the transcript of the Trial of Condemnation was not released for some time. The only documentation on Joan to come from Rouen was the hurriedly released, fake testimony of her recantation in the "Subsequent Examinations," as Murray calls it, which were not official documents from the Trial. Bedford and Burgundy issued public pronouncements, hoping that was that. The trial transcripts, so embarrassing to the court and exculpatory of Joan were compiled, translated into Latin and tucked away in the Church archives at Rouen, recovered only twenty years later by the French Inquisitor, Jean Bréhal, the Inquisitor of France.

We will never know what Charles VII thought of Joan's execution, although having done nothing to save her, he likely knew it was coming and had already walled himself off from anything to do or feel about it. For a man who was supposedly so wrought up over the killing of John the Fearless, who had only recently before then massacred several thousand French loyalist in Paris, that Charles was suddenly stoic about Joan's death, for which he had to know he held a large responsibility, makes no sense. He was in charge of a country, and was making decisions, frequently poor ones, as he thought best.

As for Joan's military comrades, we have already seen how La Hire and de Brosse both went, albeit hopelessly, after Rouen. All of them, however, such as Dunois and de Richemont, kept their faith in Joan and her mission and continued to prosecute her kind of war, not Charles', to which he came around later. The common people, we know, never gave up their love, pride and admiration for Joan. Her mother's crusade to redeem her daughter's name would have gone nowhere but for the vast feelings of injustice over Joan's treatment felt across France and held on to over time.

Whether it was God's plan -- Saint Catherine told Joan she would be captured and liberated, something Joan did not understand likely until the very end -- or if God was as ever yielding good from the bad, Joan's death was understood immediately to have been martyrdom. The following May, the city of Orléans held the first annual Feast of Joan with military displays, processions and Masses.

Common French defiance only solidified after her death, which she herself, eyes fixed on the cross held before her, chanting, "Jesus, Jesus," marked as the foundation of a new, united and Catholic France.

Misfiring

When things get off to a bad start, it's either from missteps in process or misguided principles. With the Trial of Saint Joan, it was both. A first problem was that of jurisdiction, as Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, needed an act of creative cartography to include the location of her capture within his diocese. That wasn't so hard, but the next problem was to give him authority to try Joan in Rouen, halfway across northern France from Beauvais. The obvious question is, what was wrong with the proper geographic authorities? Well, Cauchon checked every English box except for location, so they made fit the square peg into the round hole and let him at her. He was truly the right guy: he was intensely dedicated to his own promotion and glad to do what it took to get there. He wanted the Bishopric of Rouen, the Anglo-Norman capital, and Joan was his ticket. He also resented her. He was perfect for the job.

Not everyone wanted it. The Inquisitor General under Anglo-Burgundian France at Paris, Jean Graverent, passed the case off on his subordinate, the Inquisitor for Rouen, Jean Le Maîstre, who did his best to endorse the Trial without getting any dirt on his hands. Two witnesses at the Rehabilitation Trial stated that Le Maîstre was "compelled to attend" the trial, which rather clearly suggests that he was also compelled authorize it. Whether forced into or not, as little involvement as possible was his goal. Le Maîstre even defended several priests who had earned Cauchon's ire.

Historical observers have questioned the Trial's extended "Inquisitive" phase, which went from February to late March without formal charges, making it not a trial but an investigative hearing, which we might call today, and without irony, a "witch hunt." The charges were finally drawn up by the prosecutor d'Estivet in his wandering and often fictional Seventy Articles, which, when read out to Joan, finally marked the "Trial in Ordinary," as they acted as formal charges (of sorts) and to which she responded laboriously over two days. There's also the little problems that Joan was held in a military prison for men and that she was not allowed counsel. These irregularities reflect not just the extrajudicial nature of the Trial, but it's deep political significance to the English and Burgundians. They only allowed Joan to live so she could be tried, convicted, and killed. God, too, several times kept her alive through to that horrible end.

The Trial proceedings opened on January 9, followed by several weeks of hearings led by Cauchon to organize and appoint offices and roles, such as the Promoter d'Estivet, the scribes and Joan's "usher" or doorkeeper, the priest Jean Massieu. The surviving Trial record includes much correspondence between Cauchon, the office of the Inquisitor, and the various authorities, including the local Church at Rouen, the University of Paris, the Dukes of Burgundy and Luxembourg and the English King, who granted authority to the Ecclesiastical court to run the Trial. The whole affair was legalistically formulaic, and carefully recorded.

All the authorizations were collected, but by mid-February, Le Maîstre still hadn't signed off on it. On the 19th, Cauchon summoned him to discuss:

Yet, since he was especially appointed for the diocese and city of Rouen only, he doubted whether his commission could be interpreted to include the present trial, although the territory had been ceded to us, because we had nevertheless undertaken these proceedings in virtue of our jurisdiction in the diocese of Beauvais.

The next day, February 20, Le Maîstre was again summoned to Cauchon, whose scribes noted,

Whereupon the said brother Jean Le Maîstre replied that for the serenity of his conscience and the safer conduct of the trial he would not participate in the present matter, unless he received especial authority. Nevertheless as far as he lawfully might he allowed that we the said bishop should proceed further until he had received more ample counsel upon the question whether he could in virtue of his commission undertake the conduct of this trial. Thus with his consent we once again offered to acquaint him with the past and future procedure. And after receiving the decisions of the assessors, we decreed in our letters of citation transcribed below, that this woman should be summoned to appear before us on the following Wednesday, February 29th.

Here and throughout the Trial, you can sense the constant English backdrop to the entire affair. Cauchon's job was to condemn and dispatch the woman so the English could get on with conquering France. The same day Le Maîstre invoked his conscience, Cauchon invoked his own, and wrote to the Inquisitor's boss, Graverent, demanding the Grand Inquisitor come to Rouen right away, "so that you are not charged with the grievous delay." And, by the way, we're starting the trial without you.

The "public" Trial with Joan's presence opened up on Wednesday, February 21, 1431 without that authority from the Inquisitor or his Deputy. Le Maîstre, though, was present. The primary caution coming from Graverent's office regarded the unusual authority given to Cauchon in a foreign diocese, and -- I'm guessing here -- the overall extralegal nature of the Trial given the structure of a "composite tribunal," as Murray observes, with overlapping authorities and expediencies. Something or someone intervened, ahem, and the next day, Thursday, February 22, Le Maîstre acquiesced. He essentially gave his authorization in a double negative, basically telling Cauchon, I don't not authorize you to try the witch. The register reads,

In their presence we showed that Jean Le Maîstre, vicar of the lord Inquisitor, then present, had been summoned and required by us to take part in the present proceedings, and that we had offered to communicate to him all that had been so far or should subsequently be done; but the deputy said that he had been appointed and commissioned by the lord Inquisitor for the city and diocese of Rouen only, whereas we were holding the trial, by reason of our jurisdiction in Beauvais, on ceded territory. Therefore, to avoid the nullification of the trial, and for the peace of his conscience, he put off his participation with us until such time as he should receive a fuller counsel and should have from the lord Inquisitor more extended power or a commission; in the meantime the said deputy, as far as he might, would be pleased to see us proceed further and without interruption with the trial. When he heard our account, the deputy answered, saying: "What you have said is true. I have been and I am, as far as in me lies, content that you should continue the trial."

By early March, but two weeks into what was thought would be an easy inquiry, things hadn't gone as planned. Upon Joan's capture the year before, haste was cautioned by all parties to her custody, and after these frustrating weeks of haggling with the Inquisitor's office, with the Trial finally moving forward, Joan's inspired presence and responses refused to satisfy the hurried cause to condemn her. She was getting the better of them. After six "public examinations," by which is meant held in the "public," or ceremonial, areas of the castle at Rouen (not before the public), Cauchon moved the hearings into the prison, or private, area. That, and a notable change in the transcript from direct to mostly indirect quotations of Joan's responses, reflects Cauchon's frustration, or that of his English backers, with the progress.

Around that time, on March 14, Joan realized that the entire trial might be repeated at Paris, so the next day she told the Judges,

If it should be that I am taken to Paris, grant, I pray you, that I may have a copy of my questions and answers, so that I may lend them to those at Paris, and that I may be able to say to them: "Thus was I questioned at Rouen; and here are my answers": in this way, I shall not have to trouble again over so many questions.

Her sense or knowledge of the involvement of Paris was accurate, as not only were the accusations against her sent to the University for approval, but soon after there was actual talk of moving the trial there.

Easter came and went, as did April and continued examinations of Joan that had only gotten more complicated with her additional details about the "angelic crown" on March 10. Worse for him, Cauchon's various attempts to mollify Joan utterly failed. One try came on Palm Sunday, March 25 with the offer of a Mass in exchange for putting on a dress, a deal which de la Fontaine had tried on March 15. The gambit was that by abandoning her men's clothing she was admitting she was not acting on orders from God, or, by betraying God's command to wear men's clothes she would have proven herself heretical by her own standards. Now, a week before Easter, Cauchon told her,

We told her, that many times already and notably yesterday, she had requested, because of the solemnity of these days and the time, that she might be permitted to hear Mass to-day, Palm Sunday; in consequence, We were come to ask her if, supposing this favour were accorded to her, she would consent to put off her man's dress, and to take the dress of a woman, as formerly she had been accustomed to wear it in her birth-place, and as worn by all the women of her country?

It got him nowhere, as did another demand the following Saturday that she submit "to the judgment of the Church on earth for all [she has] said or done, be it good or bad?" The timing was explicit: the next day was Easter Sunday. There was another attempt by Cauchon the following week to entice her to submit to his authority, this time by sending her a fish for dinner. All it did was nearly kill her. He hadn't actually tried to kill her with a spoiled fish, as his job was to kill her on the pyre, not in the jail. One last try came on April 18 with an exercise to "exhort her charitably" as well as to offer up the Sacraments in exchange for submission:

If you will have the rights and Sacraments of the Church, you must do as good Catholics do, and submit yourself to the Church. If you persevere in your intention of not submitting to the Church, you cannot have the Sacraments you ask administered to you, except the Sacrament of Penance, which We are always ready to give you.

These enticements failed, which explains subsequent events whereby he moved from persuasion to coercion.

April was otherwise spent tidying up the charges against her, sending them off to Paris for approval. By May 2, the Twelve Articles had been reviewed and Cauchon wanted to get on with things. That day "Six Articles" of admonitions and accusations were read out to her by one of the more hateful of the group, the Archdeacon of Evreux, Jean de Chatillon. The exercise provoked no change in Joan, and only resulted in Joan's own admonition to de Chatillon to take care for his soul. It also yielded another problem for the legitimacy of the proceedings, as Joan offered to tell all to the Pope in Rome:

Will you submit to our Holy Father the Pope?

I don't think de Chatillon was expecting her response, otherwise he wouldn't have asked the question. In another her inspired replies, she took him up on it:

Take me to him, I will reply to him.

That didn't work out so well, and neither did de Chatillon's attempts to trap her into admitting she had made up the angelic crown:

On the subject of the sign given to your King, will you refer to the Archbishop of Rheims, to the Sire de Boussac, to Charles de Bourbon, to the Seigneur de la Trémouille, and to Etienne, called La Hire, to whom or to some of whom you say that you shewed the crown, these being present when the Angel brought it to the King, who afterwards gave it to the Archbishop? or will you consent to refer to some of your party who may write under their seal about it?

Again, it's remarkable that he hadn't anticipated her response, sure, why not?:

Give me a messenger and I will write to them about this Trial.

The register then notes, "Otherwise she would not believe in or refer to them," which seems more like cover for the inquisitors than for Joan. The guy had done his homework, but he was clearly a slow learner. After referring back to what she already said as regards Accusation no. 6, Chatillon pushed her on testimony from her compatriots:

If three or four Clergy of your party are sent to you, coming under a safe conduct, will you refer yourself to them on the subject of your apparitions and of all that is contained in your trial?

Let them come; I will answer." [She would not refer nor otherwise submit to them on the subject of the trial.]

That not getting anywhere, he asked,

Will you refer or submit yourself to the Church of Poitiers, where you were examined?

She replied,

Do you think you will take me in that way, and draw me to you by it?

No hearings were held the following week, but by May 9, the need for Joan's admission had grown larger yet upon Cauchon, who meant to get it one way or another. She was brought before him and a few judges:

We did require and warn her: To speak the truth to Us on divers and numerous points on which she hath hitherto refused to reply or hath replied untruthfully, the which are established in the highest degree by informations, proofs, and grave presumptions. A great number of these points were read and shewn to her. Then she was told that, if she would not tell the truth, she would immediately be put to the torture, the instruments of which were here, in this same tower, under her eyes. There also were present the executioners, who by Our order had made all the necessary preparations for torturing her, in order to bring her back by this means into the way and knowledge of the truth, and thus to procure for her salvation both of body and soul, which she doth expose to such grave peril by her lying inventions.

As ever, Joan defeated this move through the perfect reply, here in full:

Truly if you were to tear me limb from limb, and separate soul and body, I will tell you nothing more and, if I were to say anything else, I should always afterwards declare that you made me say it by force. Last Thursday I received comfort from Saint Gabriel; I believe it was Saint Gabriel: I knew by my Voices it was he. I asked counsel of my Voices if I ought to submit to the Church, because the Clergy were pressing me hard to submit, and they said to me: "If thou willest that God should come to thy help, wait on Him for all thy doings." I know that Our Lord hath always been the Master of all my doings, and that the Devil hath never had power over them. I asked of my Voices if I should be burned, and my Voices answered me: "Wait on Our Lord, He will help thee."

The Trial register records what happened next:

Seeing the hardness of her heart, and her manner of replying, We, the Judges, fearing that the punishment of the torture would profit her little, decided that it was expedient to delay it, at least for the present, and until We have had thereupon more complete advice.

A few days later, May 12, the Judges held a vote on torturing her. One, Loyseleur, one of the more malicious of the group, said it'd be "a salutary medicine for her soul," but he, like all but two voted against it. Most called it "not expedient," which is hardly a morally brave stance, though one gave a reason for the inconvenience of a torture, "lest a trial so well conducted should be exposed to calumny." -- most revealing, that admission. The larger reason for not going through with the torture was what Joan had said plainly to the threat, that she'd just deny later anything she said under the thumb. The Register admits it plainly:

We, the Judges, after having gathered the opinion of each, taking into consideration the answers made by Jeanne at the Sitting on Wednesday last, taking into consideration also the disposition of her mind, her will so energetically manifested, and all the other circumstances of the Case, decide that it is neither profitable nor expedient to submit her to the torture; and for the rest, We will proceed later.

Foiled again. The episode shows not just Cauchon's frustration, but what he was up against in Joan. The torturer, himself, testified at the Rehabilitation Trial,

I was summoned to the Castle of Rouen, with my assistants, to submit Jeanne to torture. On this occasion, she was questioned on various subjects and answered with such prudence that all present marvelled. Then I and my associates retired without doing anything.

Neither logic, theology, enticement, nor physical coercion had worked. Those options exhausted, Cauchon turned to deceit.

Joan's Treason

The final session of the Trial, Wednesday, May 23, was held in private by the prison. The priest Pierre Maurice read out the Twelve Articles and demanded her response to each. He then lectured her on the "perils which endanger your soul and body," starting out with,

Jeanne, my very dear friend, it is now time, at the end of your Trial, to reflect well on all that has been said to you.

He went on, as recorded across several pages in Murray's translation, and then duly "admonished and exhorted" Joan who "did reply":

What I have always said in the Trial, and held, I wish still to say and maintain. If I were condemned, if I saw the fire lighted, the faggots prepared, and the executioner ready to kindle the fire, and if I myself were in the fire, I would not say otherwise, and would maintain to the death all I have said.

Game on. The next step was to sentence her formally, but only in order to induce the needed admission.

Much has been made of Joan's Abjuration -- which she called her own "treason" to her Voices -- in which she signed a document of admission, at least as laid out in the single page document she signed, as opposed to the multi-page paper Cauchon presented on the record. As Quicherat noted, Cauchon was no fool. But, as Quicherat failed to see, Cauchon was too smart by half. He used the ecclesiastical process for political statement, and ended failing in both.

The Abjuration itself was nothing unusual. What was unusual was the subterfuge employed to get Joan to sign it. Nevertheless, whatever the situation, whatever words or paper Joan actually agreed to or signed, whatever Cauchon or the promotor switched it for, it was not sufficient for Cauchon's needs, as a week after her burning he produced false testimonies of her supposedly having come clean the morning of her death.

The ecclesiastical court was bound to the doctrine that a repentant heretic may be spared death, though the burden of sin may still be punished with imprisonment. If Joan did not submit herself to the charges of heresy, she would be excommunicated and handed over to the English to be burned. All good that, but it risked manufacturing a martyr. More dearly than her death they needed her admission of witchcraft to fix upon the French king. After the false-start on torture and Maurice's failed preaching, the next step was to to set her up to willfully and publicly sign an abjuration. The problem, as we shall see, is that Joan did repent and sign, but it was muddled by the way it happened and what she actually signed.

The whole thing was well planned out with designated roles: a damnatory sermon that charged her with the worst of heresies and dangers, a warning to her followers, i.e., the French, and a formal sentence to be read out while priests pushed her to save her own soul by signing a paper, at which point another sentencing document would be produced. It was quite a show, actually. A public spectacle was prepared:

On Thursday after Whitsuntide, the 24th day of May in the morning, We, the Judges, did repair to a solemn Assembly, publicly held in the Cemetery of the Abbey of Saint-Ouen, at Rouen.

The Church was incomplete in 1431, but the layout was about the as this 1711 plan of the Abbey of Saint-Ouen of Rouen. (Wikicommons)

The cemetery at the Abbey of Saint-Ouen was just off the south side of the church. In Medieval society, churches, obviously, but also cemeteries, were centers of ritual and congregation. Two platforms were set off to either side, with Joan and the star speaker that day, Guillaume Érard, a local Rouen canon and Master at the University of Paris (who taught several of the judges in the Trial) on one, and Cauchon and the judges on the other. The executioner was also present and ready to cart her off. The public gathered before them across open grounds facing the church, numbering, perhaps, into the low thousands. There was plenty of space for a large crowd, and it is certain a crowd would show, for, after three months of closed hearings, the people would finally have a look at the witch, maybe even to see her burn -- or. as may have been current among some, get the better of the clerics. Let's just say that "solemn" was not the word of the day. Neither was "spontaneous." Bishops from around the region showed up for the event, including Henry Beaufort, "commonly called cardinal of England," the register reads, who was advisor to the child King, Henry VI. Also present was the brother of the Count of Luxembourg, the Bishop of Thérouanne and the Duke of Bedford's main man in Paris, who would become Bishop of Rouen in 1436 instead of Cauchon. Expectations were high for that day, though they were not well thought out. As ever, expediency guided Cauchon's steps.

Cauchon had no intention of burning Joan that day. The executioner was there, but with a cart, not a pyre. Cauchon needed the abjuration and meant to get it, as he had failed to secure anything close to an admission from her throughout the unusually long Trial. We can't say what would have happened had Joan refused to sign the Abjuration, except that some form of admission would have been produced, as Cauchon owed it to the English -- perhaps she would have been tortured back in the prison until she said something of use, or a more outright fiction along the lines of the post mortem testimonies of priests who claimed Joan admitted the morning of her death that it was all a lie. For Cauchon, the moment was precarious. He needed a clear confession before he needed her dead. The Abjuration failed on both counts, which led to plan B, the "relapse," or return to heresy as charged by her return to men's clothes. Whether that was planned in advance, I can't say, but we know that events in the prison were deliberate, and it started with the Abjuration show at Saint-Ouen.

The "sinister comedy," as Pernoud describes it, opened with a lengthy sermon from Érard, one of the most partisan of the French collaborators with English. Alongside Joan on the platform, Érard, according to the transcript,

showed how this Jeanne had cut herself off from the unity of our Holy Mother Church by many errors and grave crimes, and how she had frequently scandalized the Christian people. He admonished and exhorted her and the multitude of people by salutary doctrines.

The Trial register does not record the full speech, though we know it went on for some time. Neither have we indication of the crowd's reaction, which would be nice to see, such as "[gasps]" or "[light applause]," which may have followed Érard's admission of what the entire Trial was about, which we have from Jean Massieu's recollection:

When Jeanne was taken to Saint-Ouen to be preached to by Maître Guillaume É, at about the middle of the sermon, after she had been admonished by the words of the preacher, he began to cry out, in a loud voice, saying, "Ah! France, thou art much abused, thou hast always been the most Christian country; and Charles, who calls himself thy King and Governor, hath joined himself, as a heretic and schismatic, which he is, to the words and deeds of a worthless woman, defamed and full of dishonour; and not only he, but all the Clergy within his jurisdiction and lordship, by whom she hath been examined and not reproved, as she hath said."

That through Joan the French King himself was an illegitimate heretic was the entire point of the Trial. Another priest, Ysambard de La Pierre, recalled it in even harsher terms,

I was at the sermon of Maître Guillaume Érard, who took as his theme, ''A branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the Vine," saying that in France there was no monster such as this Jeanne: she was a witch, heretic, and schismatic; and that the King who favoured her was of like sort for wishing to recover his kingdom by means of such an heretical woman.

Even if consistent with the purpose of an abjuration to condemn the followers and not just the heretic, here Érard said the quiet part out loud. It's not a random memory by Massieu or La Pierre, nor one reconstructed, though we can hear the skeptics saying they said it to justify themselves under the newly restored French rule at Rouen in 1449. La Pierre, maybe, but Massieu had no need to excuse himself. As Joan's bailiff and usher, he grew sympathetic towards her, even to the point of being admonished for it during the Trial. As these and other testimonies conform, the memories show not the bias of 1450 but that of Érard of 1431, thinking the English triumphant. Massieu's description continues,

Two or three times he repeated these words about the King; and, at last, addressing himself to Jeanne he said, raising his finger: "It is to thee, Jeanne, that I speak, I tell thee that thy King is a heretic and schismatic!" To which she replied: "By my faith! sir, saving your reverence, I dare say and swear, on pain of death, that he is the most noble of all Christians, and the one who most loves the Faith of the Church, and he is not what you say." And then the preacher said to me: "Make her keep silence."

While the Trial transcript walks lightly upon the scene, biographer Pernoud states that Érard "condemned [Joan] violently," which would reference both during the sermon and during Cauchon's reading of the Final Sentence amidst a near mêlée as Joan was berated into signing the Abjuration document. The transcript does tell us that Érard ended his lecture with,

Behold my Lords your judges who have repeatedly summoned and required you to submit all your words and deeds to Our Holy Mother Church, showing and pointing out to you that in the opinion of the clergy many things are to be found in your words and deeds which it is good neither to affirm nor uphold.

Despite the scene carefully laid out to intimidate her, she astutely replied,

I will answer you. Touching my submission to the Church, I have answered them on this point. Let all that 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.

The register continues,

She said that she charged no one with them, neither her king nor any other; and if there were any fault it was hers and no other person's. Asked whether she would revoke all her words and deeds which are disapproved of by the clergy, she answered: "I refer me to God and to our Holy Father the Pope."

Érard's failure here to produce an admission from Joan was further complicated with her call for a papal appeal. At the Rehabilitation trial his assistant testified,

He said he would he were in Flanders this business disturbed him much.

That is, it didn't work out so well for the Master, an interesting reflection on how things turned out later at Arras where Érard failed to settle a treaty for the English, and which led to fulfillment of Joan's prophesy that France would retake Paris. Érard gave Joan three more admonitions, which didn't work out, either:

Then she was told that this would not suffice, that it was not possible to seek Our Holy Father the Pope at such a distance: that the ordinaries were each in his own diocese competent judges. Therefore she must needs submit to Our Holy Mother Church, and hold as true all that the clergy and other authorities had said and decided concerning her words and deeds. Whereupon she was admonished by three admonitions.

Consequently, Cauchon had to move forward with the "Final Sentence" and condemnation. But here comes the real theater. Whatever the text of the Final Sentence is not recorded, but it was certainly as condemnatory as the "Sentence after the Abjuration," which started out with with the satanic origin of Joan's Voices,

All pastors of the Church who desire and endeavor to lead the Lord's flock faithfully must, when the perfidious sower of errors laboriously attempts with great cunning to infect the flock of Christ with virulent poisons, assemble their whole strength in order to combat the assaults of the Evil one with greater vigilance and more urgent solicitude.

As Cauchon read the first condemnation, Érard played the role of provocateur. The Trial register reads,

Then, as this woman would say no more we the said bishop began to read the final sentence. When we had already completed the greater part of the reading, Jeanne began to speak, and said she would hold all that the Church should ordain, all that her judges should say and decree, and would obey our ordinance and will in all things. She said repeatedly that inasmuch as the clergy had pronounced that her revelations and apparitions were not to be upheld or believed, she would not maintain them; but would refer in all things to her judges and our Holy Mother Church. Then in the presence of the aforenamed and before a great multitude of people and clergy, she made and pronounced her recantation and abjuration, according to the formula of a certain schedule written in French which was then read, which she uttered with her own lips and signed with her own hand.

The scribe Manchon who recorded or signed off on that text, recalled at the Rehabilitation Trial with greater clarity,

Two sentences had been prepared, one of abjuration, the other of condemnation: both were in the hands of the Bishop, and, while he was reading the sentence of condemnation. Maître Nicolas Loyseleur continued to press Jeanne to do what he had advised, and to accept the woman's dress. There was a short interval, in which an Englishman addressed the Bishop as a traitor, to which he answered that he lied. At this instant, Jeanne declared herself ready to obey the Church; and then the abjuration was read to her. I do not know if she repeated it, or if after it was read, she said that she agreed. But she certainly smiled. The executioner was there, with the cart, waiting to take her to the burning.

Massieu's recollection skips Cauchon's reading of the "final sentence" and instead focuses on Érard's actions:

The said Érard, at the end of his sermon, read a schedule containing the Articles which he was inciting Jeanne to abjure and revoke. To which Jeanne replied, that she did not understand what abjuring was, and that she asked advice about it. Then Érard told me to give her counsel about it. After excusing myself for doing this, I told her it meant that, if she opposed any of the said Articles, she would be burned. I advised her to refer to the Church Universal as to whether she should abjure the said Articles or not. And this she did, saying in a loud voice to Érard: “I refer me to the Church Universal, as to whether I shall abjure or not.” To this the said Érard replied: “You shall abjure at once, or you shall be burned.” And, indeed, before she left the Square, she abjured, and made a cross with a pen which I handed to her.

Be it Loyseleur or Érard or both and others, the public spectacle, the frenzy, and elevated upon a platform in a cemetery and with the priests admonishing, exhorting and urging her to sign the document, the people clamoring and yelling, if only for her own life Joan signed the "abjuration," as recorded by the Trial clerks,

She said repeatedly that inasmuch as the clergy had pronounced that her revelations and apparitions were not to be upheld or believed, she would not maintain them; but would refer in all things to her judges and our Holy Mother Church.

In later testimony, Massieu added more details:

Érard, holding the Schedule of Abjuration, said to Jeanne, "Thou shalt abjure and sign this schedule," and passed it to me to read, and I read it in her presence. I remember well that in this schedule it was said that in future she should not bear arms or male attire or short hair, and many other things which I do not remember. I know that this schedule contained about eight lines and no more; and I know of a certainty that it was not that which is mentioned in the Process, for this is quite different from what I read and what was signed by Jeanne.

It's clear she signed a paper that was not the Abjuration as presented in the Trial record. It's also clear that the moment was not just chaotic, it marked crossed interests. Massieu continued:

While they were pressing Jeanne to sign her abjuration, there was a great murmur among those present. I heard that the Bishop said to one of them, "You shall pay me for this," and added, that he would not go on unless satisfaction were done him.

The murmuring was likely from the English. If so, it reveals their transactional relationship with Cauchon. Massie continued,

During this time I was constrained to warn Jeanne of the peril which threatened her if she signed this schedule. I saw clearly that she did not understand it, nor the danger in which she stood. Then Jeanne, pressed to sign, said: "Let the clerics of the Church examine this schedule. It is in their hands I ought to be. If they tell me to sign I will do it willingly." Then Maître Guillaume Érard said: "Do it now, otherwise you will end in the fire today." Jeanne replied that she would rather sign than burn; and there arose a great tumult among the people, and many stones were thrown, but by whom I know not.

It's an interesting detail Manchon provided about the moment of Joan's at the time she may or may not have recited the Abjuration out loud,

then the abjuration was read to her. I do not know if she repeated it, or if after it was read, she said that she agreed. But she certainly smiled.

Another witness from Rouen, one of the judges and an important local canon, Guillaume du Désert, says, per Murray's translation, that at that moment Joan actually laughed,

I saw and heard the recantation made by Jeanne, and that she submitted to the decisions, the judgments, and the commands of the Church. A certain English Doctor who was present, being much displeased that the abjuration was received — because Jeanne was laughing when she pronounced the words — said to the Bishop of Beauvais, the Judge, that he was doing wrong to admit this recantation, since it was a mere farce. The Bishop, irritated, told this person that he lied : for, as Judge in a cause of faith, he must seek rather her salvation than her death.

Murray follows other French renditions of the text using "she was laughing," but if we look carefully at the Latin it becomes clear that du Désert didn't necessarily say she was "laughing," and neither did he say she spoke the entirety of the Abjuration text, which Manchon neither denies nor affirms. Manchon merely states that he was unsure if she repeated the Abjuration, but he was certain that she "smiled" when it was read to her. Let's straighten it out.

Du Désert was appointed Canon of Rouen by Henry V of England. As of 1448, the year before Cauchon's death, du Désert employed Cauchon. On the French seizure of Rouen, he and the others clerics were immunized, or pardoned, by Charles VII for their treason. He still had to defend his actions, and in his testimony of 1452 he was still in defensive mode, justifying Cauchon and even the English in his ambiguous responses. Of his twenty-two responses in the Rehabilitation inquiry, he basically took the fifth on most of them, denying knowledge of or participation in the charges against the Condemnation Trial. On the question of Joan's Abjuration, though, he suddenly became specific, giving the details of Joan's "laughing," the reaction to it by the unnamed Englishman, and Cauchon's defense of the Abjuration which spared her life at that moment.

But he puts in the detail about her laughing at it all, which belies his attitude towards her. Where Manchon saw she "smiled," du Désert say her "laughing" marks an entirely different take on the moment. This particular testimony from Manchon came three years after that of du Désert, so it's fair to maintain them in isolation. Manchon suggests Joan's positive reaction to the situation -- indeed, her life was spared and she thought she was to be taken to a Church prison under female guards. Du Désert suggests she mocked the entire thing, which Anatole France thinks, as well, calling it her acting in "gaiety.". Another English-allied judge from the Rouen Trial said that,

many said that it was a mere trick, and that she had acted only in derision.

It makes sense that the Anglo-Burgundian view would hold that Joan swore the Abjuration in "derision," as it would further justify her return to the English prison and subsequent Relapse, for which she was burned. We go, then, with Manchon's "she certainly smiled," especially in the better sense of the Latin subridebat, which is a diminutiveform of ridere, which itself implies a "subdued laugh," thus "smiled gently" for subridebat. It not only tells us Joan's state of mind in signing the Abjuration, it explains why she did it: to escape the men's prison, for that would be the only outcome she would have embraced in signing it.

Joan in the English men's prison wearing a dress after her Abjuration (by Pyle Howard; wikicommons)

At the end of the sermon at Saint Ouen, after the abjuration of the Maid, because Loyseleur said to her, "Jeanne, you have done a good day's work, if it please God, and have saved your soul," she demanded, "Now, some among you people of the Church, lead me to your prisons, that I may no longer be in the hands of the English."

May the historical problem therein be settled: Joan agreed to the public abjuration in exchange for placement in a Church prison for women, that is, no longer under the English male guards. In the "Relapse" hearing at the prison the following Monday, reminiscent of her leap from the tower at Beaurevoir, she explained,

I did not intend so to do or say. I did not intend to deny my [Voices] — that is to say, that they were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret; what I said was from fear of the fire: I revoked nothing that was not against the truth. I would rather do penance once for all — that is die — than endure any longer the suffering of a prison. I have done nothing against God or the Faith, in spite of all they have made me revoke. What was in the schedule of abjuration I did not understand. I did not intend to revoke anything except according to God's good pleasure. If the Judges wish, I will resume a woman's dress; for the rest, I can do no more.

The final entry in the Trial register for that day of the Abjuration, May 24, gives an account of the priests, led by the Deputy Inquisitor, Le Maîstre, taking Joan to the prison -- which she thought she would not be sent back to. The Register reads,

We and our assessors explained to her how God had on this day been most merciful to her, and how the clergy had shown her great mercy by receiving her into the grace and pardon of our Holy Mother Church: how therefore it was right that she, Jeanne, should humbly submit to and obey the sentence and ordinance of the lord judges and ecclesiastics, and should altogether abandon her errors and her former inventions, never to return to them; how, if she did return to them, the Church would not receive her to clemency, and she would be wholly abandoned. Moreover, she was told that she must put off her male costume and take woman's dress, as the Church had commanded. Jeanne answered that she would willingly wear woman's dress, and in all things obey and submit to the clergy. She was given woman's dress which she put on immediately she had taken off the male costume: she desired and allowed her hair, which had hitherto been cut short round the ears, to be shaved off and removed.

King's letter

As our pious Mother Church rejoices when the sinner repents, and to the fold brings back the lamb wandering in the wilderness, so she confined her in prison for her salutary penance.

It was a complete fraud to have put her back into the men's prison, though it was still her victory to be back in a woman's dress, even if deceived or betrayed by the priests that she would be held appropriately by the Church.

Relapsed

A larger question in the Abjuration is if Joan knowingly denied the Saints. The question was a serious matter for her beatification trial, as it would be rather un-saintly to deny one's Saints --- which skeptics have always picked up on: if God was talking to her why would she deny him? Go ask Saint Peter.

For Joan, of course she signed it. She wanted out of her men's clothing, out of the prison, and out of the Trial. Oh, and the fire -- understandably in the face of it she signed the paper. Like Saint Peter, she wasn't ready. But she would soon be.

A few days after her abjuration, she was brought back before the court for a "Relapse" trial for having put back on the men's garments. It gave the court the opportunity to not only accuse her of breaking her vow to wear women's clothes but to force her into a denial of her recantation of the Saints.

Now imminently facing the stake, Joan declared that by signing the abjuration document she had betrayed the Saints:

They said to me: "God had sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life!" Before last Thursday, my Voices did indeed tell me what I should do and what I did on that day. When I was on the scaffold on Thursday, my Voices said to me, while the preacher was speaking: ‘Answer him boldly, this preacher!’ And in truth he is a false preacher; he reproached me with many things I never did. If I said that God had not sent me, I should damn myself, for it is true that God has sent me; my Voices have said to me since Thursday: ‘Thou hast done a great evil in declaring that what thou hast done was wrong.’ All I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire.

When she put on men's clothes that her guards had set before her after either threatening to or actually assaulting her, she was brought before a delegation of judges who asked what was going on.

Joan declared,

I have but now resumed the dress of a man and put off the woman's dress.

Why did you take it, and who made you take it?

I took it of my own free will, and with no constraint: I prefer a man's dress to a woman's dress.

You promised and swore not to resume a man's dress.

I never meant to swear that I would not resume it.

Why have you resumed it?

Because it is more lawful and suitable for me to resume it and to wear man's dress, being with men, than to have a woman's dress. I have resumed it because the promise made to me has not been kept ; that is to say, that I should go to Mass and should receive my Saviour and that I should be taken out of irons.

Did you not abjure and promise not to resume this dress?

I would rather die than be in irons! but if I am allowed to go to Mass, and am taken out of irons and put into a gracious prison, and [may have a woman for companion] I will be good, and do as the Church wills.

It's notable that Joan was sentenced to prison the Thursday before, her case apparently settled, yet nearly the entire set of assessors, judges and notaries were still hanging around the following on Monday. Most of them were ready and waiting.

Now to the heart of the matter:

Since last Thursday [the day of her abjuration] have you heard your Voices at all?

Yes, I have heard them.

What did they say to you?

They said to me: "God had sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life!"

The standard view holds that Joan was burned for violating the terms of her abjurement by breaking her vow to wear only women's clothes, but the more serious "Relapse" came from invoking her Saints. The next day, Wednesday, May 30, Cauchon officially excommunicated her as a relapsed heretic, and after more admonishments, including to quote from scripture,

O, shame! — that, as the dog returns again to his vomit, so hast thou returned to thine errors and crimes;

and, according to Murray, in the traditional formula,

Rogando eam ut cum velit mite agere

she was handed over to the English who burned her that morning.

On May 9 she had told the court,

I asked of my Voices if I should be burned, and my Voices answered me: "Wait on Our Lord, He will help thee."

Setting the record wrong

Trial of Condemnation with attestations and signatures of the the three notaries and seals of the Bishop and Inquisitor. (Champion)

Throughout the 1431 Trial of Condemnation at Rouen, the notaries compared and consolidated their journals, which were taken in French. Four or more years later, a Latin translation was prepared as an official document, and signed by the notaries and a third translator. Copies were presented to the English King's regent in France, the Duke of Bedford; the Grand Inquisitor of English-held France; the Judge in Ordinary, Pierre Cauchon; to the University of Paris, whose theologians had reviewed and approved the final accusations against Joan; and, perhaps, to the Vatican. I see no reason for the delay in preparation of the official document other than there was no rush on printing an inconvenience, and, besides, the witch was burned. Why it was ultimately concluded is clear, though, as regular Church form, always of utmost importance, required it.

Wherever kept, for the Anglo-Burgundians, the transcripts remained but records of a settled case. The Trial of Rehabilitation, however, renewed their relevancy, providing the inheritance we receive today of the incredible historical evidence of the Trial itself and of the interviews conducted in the investigation into the Rouen Trial and into Joan's life -- due to her mother, Isabelle Romée, who heroically pursued restoration of her daughter's story and name.

For Cauchon and the English, the Rouen Trial transcripts made for poor trophies. It wouldn't look good to advertise how Joan had outsmarted them. They got what they wanted in discarding her ashes in the Seine, but to justify it they needed something far less ambiguous than a complicated, three month trial record, hyperbolic accusations deftly countered by the accused, a messy, unclear abjuration, and, finally, in a trumped-up relapse for the heretical condemnation, especially as the English prepared for their largest offensive since the Battle of Agincourt in order to clear the way to Paris to coronate Henry VI as King of France. What they relied upon for a direct pronouncement of Joan's guilt came not from the Trial transcript, the Twelve Accusations, or the Abjuration, but from a set of depositions taken by the Cauchon the week after Joan's burning.

Entitled in Latin, Informatio post exsecutionem, which, following the English translator Murray, I will refer to as the "Subsequent Examinations," or simply "Examinations," Cauchon's document consists of highly dubious testimonies by seven clerics, including several of the more vociferous of Joan's persecutors, a priest who was not involved in the Trial at all, and two obscure Dominican brothers, one of whom seems to have been on hand or otherwise useful for the exercise. We have biographic records for five, who were all deeply tied to Cauchon or to the English, or both, including the stray priest, Lecamus, a Cauchon intimate who appears in the Trial transcript but once, two days before Joan's execution. One of the two Dominicans, Ladvenu, participated in the Trial from the beginning, so Cauchon knew him well enough. The other, Toutmouillé, does not appear in the transcript at all.

The Examinations witnesses claim to have spoken with or overheard others speak to Joan in the prison the morning of her execution, a day they refer to either as "Eve of the Feast of Corpus Christi" or "the day of the sentence." At seven o'clock that morning, the Trial court bailiff, the priest Massieu, signed an order for him to bring Joan from the prison to the public square at eight o'clock for her sentencing. It was not until "towards nine o’clock" that she was brought in a cart to the "Old Market," where she was publicly lectured, read the "Final Sentence" of condemnation, and then "abandoned" to the English and burned. Whatever happened in the prison that morning, it had to have happened rather quickly.

The witnesses to the Examinations all claimed that Joan had admitted her Voices had deceived her and that a certain angel she had spoken about during the Trial was actually a reference to herself. It's an interesting document, not for its veracity but because it shows what Cauchon had failed to achieve in the Trial and in the Abjuration fiasco: a clear admission of guilt from Joan herself, as well as resolution to some vexing aspects of her testimony. Coming eight days after Joan's May 30 death, Cauchon's cover clearly needed tightening.

In this analysis, I will take the text of the Examinations transcript at face-value; that is, the words of the witnesses as recorded in the document. It's possible it was written out for them, or what they said was edited extensively or blatantly differed from what they actually said. But the historical analysis necessarily derives from the evidence as presented, and from which the analysis must proceed, so I will quote from the text as written. That said, we must first recognize that the Examinations assert not what happened the morning of Joan's death, but what was said eight days later had happened, and under the direction of a compromised and angry Burgundian bishop who was satisfying the purposes of his English masters while under a deadline. With its chronological and factual inconsistencies, its timing, and an intent detached from the events discussed, the Examinations is marred by unmistakable elements of post hoc fabrication.

The 19th century historian and publisher of the Trials, Jules Quicherat accepted the Examinations documents as accurate on purely external grounds, first, that Cauchon was corrupt but not stupid, next, on the credibility of one of the deponents, the priest Courcelles. Additionally, a theologian consulted at the Rehabilitation Trial in the 1450s had argued for the authenticity of the Examinations in that Joan's admission that her Voices had deceived her means she held to them as real. It was a backwards, but what probably seemed at the time, necessary affirmation of her Voices. From Quicherat,

I will say to this what I have already said several times: a clever man like the Bishop of Beauvais exaggerates or reduces the truth; he doesn't fabricate lies from thin air. The posthumous information [Examinations] cannot be a pure invention; next, because of the testimony of Courcelles, editor of the Trial, is alleged; second, because it was accepted by the most considerable of the doctors consulted during the Rehabilitation.

Evidently, Quicherat was under fire for having accepted Cauchon's Examinations document as legitimate, thus his defensiveness over it. But his evidence relies on the credibility of two proven liars, Cauchon and Courcelles, the latter who tried to doctor the Trial's Latin translation, as well as lying about it in his oral testimony at the Rehabilitation Trial by saying he never voted to torture Joan -- which he did. Courcelles was one of Cauchon's witnesses for the Examinations, and no matter how useful to the Rehabilitation Trial -- and to Charles VII whom he came to serve as counselor, back in 1431 at Rouen he was deep into Cauchon's charade. As for the theologian and his logic, Quicherat admits the Examinations don't make Joan look good, so he rationalizes the doctor's conclusion by arguing that she admitted to the deception by her Voices because she was "humiliated before her judges in hopes of receiving communion."

Quicherat's weak character evidence and suppositions aside, textual evidence within the Examinations proves otherwise. To the extent that, as Quicherat puts it, the Examinations were not "a pure invention," he earns a point, as the Bishop was, indeed, "clever," and likely built his lies on an actual event, though not its "substance," as Quicherat claims. In his gut, though, Quicherat doesn't fully believe it:

The posthumous information can therefore be accepted as to its substance; but I find in it a character so different from that which it treats, that its formulation becomes an insoluble problem for me.

Pierre Champion, the greatest of Joan of Arc biographers, held to no such subtleties or nuance. For Champion, it was an outright fraud:

It is hard to find something more clearly rolled out than this conclusion of the trial. Must we say that all this is as far from plausible as possible? That is smells like an after-the-fact conclusion? Yes, more than the trial of Jon of Arc, the judges present us here with their preemptive defense.

Post hoc ad hoc

The Subsequent Examinations commences with the statement,

Thursday, 7th day of June, 1431, We, the Judges, did ex-officio take information upon certain things which the late Jeanne had said before persons worthy of credit when she was still in prison and before being brought to judgment.

The official transcript of the Condemnation Trial includes neither the June 7 Subsequent Examinations nor the May 30 events testified to in it, even as the events of the 30th occurred while the scribes were still on duty. It was not unusual for the official notaries to record conversations outside of Trial hearings. In fact, the original instructions to the Notaries, given to the priests Guillaume Colles and Guillaume Manchon, conferred rather broad powers of witness to them:

And we give them licence, faculty and power to have access to the said Jeanne as often as they need to question her or hear her questioned, to receive the oaths of witnesses, to collect the confessions of Jeanne, the sayings of witnesses and the opinions of the doctors and masters, and to report them, word for word, in writing to us, to put in writing all the present and future facts of this case, to set down in writing and draw up the whole proceedings in the proper form, and in short to perform all the tasks of a notary whenever and wherever suitable.

That the gathering that morning fell within these duties, it was either unintentionally missed by the scribes or purposefully excluded from or by them. When the Examinations document was prepared the following week, the notary Manchon refused to sign off on it. He knew something was up:

And thus I returned, and was at the continuation of the Trial, up to the end — except that I was not at a certain examination made by people who had spoken with her privately, as privileged persons; nevertheless, the Bishop of Beauvais [Cauchon] wanted to compel me to sign, and this I would not do.

We know from the official transcript of the Trial that between his own speech at the Old Market and the reading of the Final Sentence, Cauchon twice urged Joan to Sacramental Confession just prior to her burning. As the historian Pernoud points out, at the sentencing and burning Joan was not gagged, as was customary, which could have the sole purpose of allowing her to speak. Pernoud observes,

If Cauchon had stayed there till the last moment, if, contrary to custom, Joan had not been gagged, was it not because they expected from her a public retraction which would have definitely destroyed all belief in her mission and, furthermore, have wrecked the [French] royal cause?

Had Cauchon gotten the confession he wanted from Joan that morning in the prison, he would not have called for a formal Confession from her in the public square, or he would have mentioned it in his speech -- and if so, he would have had her gagged so as to avoid a retraction. Cauchon's public speech did reference the events that morning at the prison, but only that "two venerable Dominicans" had met with her with "admonitions and counsels profitable to her salvation." Nothing there of Joan's admissions as discussed in the Examinations. Cauchon likely didn't much care what Joan said in public one way or the other: if she admitted to lying or being deceived by her Voices, repeating then, what was claimed in the Examinations, then he was right all along; if she continued in the "obstinate temerity" of "her errors," or said nothing at all, she was guilty as charged. Repentant or unrepentant, she would burn. It was upon looking at it backwards after her death that the need for an admission became apparent, especially since Joan did speak out at her burning, only in pious cries to the Lord Jesus, which was not part of Cauchon's plan.

Ironically, events leading up to the Examinations had placed Cauchon in an awkward predicament: Joan's Abjuration the Thursday before her death was entirely unacceptable to the English, who wanted her dead. Her Relapse the following Monday, for having put on men's clothes, sufficed to annul the Abjuration and hand her over to the English to put her to death. But the Abjuration no longer sufficed as an admission of guilt. Cauchon, then, lacked a standing denial from Joan in public or in the official record.

Since what went on that Wednesday morning in the prison was done without foreknowledge of the later need, at a minimum the discussions with Joan could not possibly have been as directed, consistent, and declarative as presented in the Examinations, especially for what we know was a hectic, excited, and confused morning at the prison. In addition to the absence of the notaries, we see the improvised nature of the events at the prison in that, while the two Dominicans had gone in early to announce to Joan the coming Sentence and to minister to the soul of the condemned girl, Cauchon showed up later, but after the priests had requested permission from him to administer to her the Sacrament of the Eucharist. When he came, Cauchon brought along several others, including Lecamus, who "accompanied" Cauchon, but who was painted in afterwards as a formal witness in the Examinations.

The purpose of Cauchon's presence is unclear. It was not to prompt a Confession, as that was already done by the priests, as was the Eucharist which Cauchon had also authorized beforehand. Thereby, when Cauchon gave permission to Massieu to administer the Eucharist to her, he knew nothing of what Joan had said in Confession, formal or otherwise. In fact, Massieu's testimony indicates Cauchon's indifference as to what went on that morning at the prison:

[the Bishop] told me to inform Brother Martin that he might take her the Sacrament and whatsoever she desired.

My guess is that Cauchon decided to visit Joan as an afterthought, which would explain the presence of Lecamus, who happened to be around. It would also explain the forty-five minute delay to deliver Joan to the Old Market. Cauchon wanted to enjoy his triumph over Joan, and perhaps rub it in. If he was there out of concern for her soul, his smug remark to her reveals the disingenuity of the exercise:

Now then, Jeanne, you always told us that your Voices assured you that you would be delivered: you see now how they have deceived you; tell us the truth now.

That remark I have no doubt Cauchon made, as it became the basis of the Examinations, and was repeated or mentioned by every witness. Not authentic is the Examinations' portrayal of Joan's reply to Cauchon admitting it was all a lie, which is not only inconsistent with what multiple Rehabilitation Trial witnesses say she said to him there, it is its opposite in words, tone and gist, which even at a distance in time memory does not confuse. As the historian Quicherat noted regarding Cauchon's guile, the Examinations had some basis in actual events. That the gathering took place is adequately attested; what went on and what was said there is not.

The Final Examinations document ought give the historian pause if only for its consistency in certain phrasing and tight focus across the testimonies. When we consider the overall purpose, its insincerity is highlighted by the commonality of each testimony on two main points: 1) that Joan admitted her voices had deceived her; and 2) that the angel that bestowed the mysterious "crown" upon Charles VII was actually her.

Common witnesses to an event usually recall different details, such as we see in the testimonies regarding, for example, which priest heard Joan's confession, an event that is affirmed in the later Rehabilitation Trial. Of the three that say in the Examinations that she confessed to a particular priest, two say it was to one, and one that it was to another. Such inconsistencies indicate normal memory bias -- although they could also indicate a lack of coordination in saying who did what and when. On certain points, though, they each say the same thing in practically the same words, not coincidentally delivering exactly what the English needed to hear. Those evidences, unmet in the Trial, bely the precariousness of the document's validity.

Another significant portion of Cauchon's dilemma in the face of English expectation, is that there was much remorse expressed in Rouen during and after Joan's execution. One witness recalled,

And with the last breath she cried with a loud voice, so that all present might hear, "Jesus!" Nearly all wept for pity.

At the Dominican house that afternoon or evening, a brother, Jean Bosquier, declared that Joan's Judges "had done and did wrong." Cauchon brought him before "the rail" and made him apologize. The friar was later sentenced to imprisonment on bread and water alone through the following Easter, almost a year. The Trial clerk Boisguillaume testified as to the situation,

And I know, of a truth, that the Judges and their adherents were henceforward notorious to the population: after Jeanne was burnt, they were pointed at by the people and hated.

Cauchon's larger problem came from the English, who felt quite the opposite from the people of Rouen, that Cauchon had been overly just to Joan and needlessly delayed her condemnation. That finally done, Cauchon still hadn't satisfied the reason for holding a trial instead of just burning her: to prove that she was a witch. As the historian Pernoud puts it, "In the days that followed the burning of Joan at the stake in Rouen, the attitude of Pierre Cauchon suggests anxiety."

His work was incomplete.

Testimony too tight

Each Examinations witness mentions that Joan "confessed," and all but one mention it in the same construction that Joan did "say and confess." Each states that her Voices had promised to "deliver" her from prison but had "deceived" her, which all but one said she could now "see," as in realize. Two placed that exchange in the Bishop's voice, whereas the others repeated it for themselves or claimed to have overheard Joan's response that since she was not "delivered" from prison the Voices had "deceived her. Their testimony also gets mixed up as to when that conversation took place, as several place it before Cauchon arrived, the others after. Next, four testimonies echo that Joan was "of sound mind," which, along with the "promise and deceive" and "say and confess" repetitions, indicates a directive, if not common authorship.

A curious angle of the Examinations comes from three of the priests who stated that they had quizzed Joan about "what form the apparitions came to her," each stating in similar language that they appeared to her in a "multitude," "the smallest size" or "minute things" and "small forms." During the Trial Joan did describe Saint Michael as "quite surrounded by Angels of Heaven." Per the Examinations, the three priests each explained to her that these were "evil spirits." Note that an "apparition" implies of the Devil, and is a word that Joan did never used to describe her Voices. The references in the Examinations to a "multitude" of "apparitions" in various "forms" were meant to indicate demons, which were thought to come in various forms, and often, as in Scripture, a "Legion," or a multitude. Maurice was the only one to place the "multitudes" in the context of the angelic crown Joan had said was given by an angel to the French King, which was important because Joan had testified that the Angel was "accompanied by other Angels."

Maurice added another interesting detail on top of the "multitude" that none but Toutmouillé also mentioned, though both priests placed the conversation as having taken place in front of the others. Maurice said that Joan admitted to hearing voices "when the bells rang," which Toutmouillé repeated with a detail that Maurice did not mention, though Toutmouillé attributed it to Maurice:

She replied that she had really heard voices, chiefly when the bells rang Compline or Matins; and she persisted in saying this, although Maître Pierre Maurice told her that, sometimes when the bells rang, one thought one could hear and catch the sounds of human voices.

The Trial itself had gone deeply into the nature of Joan's Voices. On her first day of testimony she mentioned that her Voices first appeared at noon, which would be when the bells rang, so no surprise there. What I find revealing here is Maurice's attempt to attribute her Voices to a natural phenomenon. After the Trial, Maurice left for Rome in service of the English, and he died in Rouen in 1437 soon after his appointment as Henry VI's vicar-general. So we know only from the testimony of others at the Rehabilitation Trial about his interactions with Joan that morning, none of which mention the bells or the size of the apparitions, etc. Toutmouillé testified only once in the Rehabilitation Trial and did not mention Maurice or the "apparitions," saying only that it was Ladvenu who confessed her that morning, whereas in the Examinations he indicates it was Maurice (though "confessed" in the sense of "admitted" and not a "Confession"). In his Rehabilitation Trial statement, Toutmouillé addressed no other details from his testimony in the Examinations.

Maurice's theory is an odd piece added to the Examinations, as if serving as an alternative explanation should anyone wish to believe the Voices were not supernatural. It was not a new tactic, for back in February, the Judge Jean Beaupère tried to associate Joan's visions with fasting. Maurice was self-sure and overbearing, so it is consistent with what we know of him that he would push a grand theory, expecting Joan to awaken to his fabulous reasoning -- if he actually said it to her. Cauchon obviously liked the idea, and included it in the Examinations. Still, it presents a problem for the coherency of Cauchon's claim that Joan admitted her voices had "deceived her." Maurice's tactic was to convince Joan to deny the reality of her Voices altogether, whereas in the rest of the Examinations, as Quicherat and the Rehabilitation doctor of theology pointed out, Joan did not deny their existence, only that they had "deceived her."

It is in the final deposition that we see most clearly a deliberate design in the document. Nicolas Loyseleur, one of the more deceitful of the crew, gave the last and longest testimony. Right off, Loyseleur uses a word that reveals the attitude and purpose of the entire Examinations exercise. Discussing Maurice's questioning with Joan about the angelic crown, the Examinations reads,

[Loyseleur] went with the venerable master Pierre Maurice, professor of sacred theology, to the prison where Jeanne, commonly known as The Maid was confined, to exhort and admonish her for her salvation. Required to speak the truth concerning the angel who, according to her statements in the trial, had brought to him she called her king a more precious crown of very fine gold, and urged not to hide the truth inasmuch as she had nothing more to do but consider the salvation of her soul, the witness heard her say that it was she, Jeanne, who had announced to her king the crown mentioned in the trial, that she was the angel, and there had been no other angel but herself.

"Required to speak the truth" goes a touch further than "exhorted" or "asked," which Maurice's testimony used for the same conversation. Loyseleur, who discussed the angelic crown more than any of the others, used "required" deliberately for emphasis and assertion. It is followed by an interesting paragraph break, as if a pause between thoughts or points:

And then she was asked if she had really sent a crown to him she called her king. She replied that there was nothing beyond the promise of coronation which she herself made to him, assuring him he would be crowned.

On its face, this is bizarre. Having said Joan said she was the angel, Loyseleur then asks if she "really sent a crown," as if that were a separate possibility were it she and not an angel who delivered it. Perhaps it was for emphasis, or, more likely, it was to clear up a confusing matter Joan had discussed in the Trial of another crown. The long-form Abjuration (as opposed to the short text that Joan signed) covered the matter of the Voices, but did not mention the angelic crown, which was of specific concern in the Examinations, especially in Loyseleur's testimony. The response from Joan that he provides here directly contradicts what she had said in the Trial in describing the crown physically, thus his concern for, unlike the others who simply call it "the crown," describing it made of "fine gold.." By mentioning its appearance, Loyseleur very carefully shifts Joan's detailed story of the crown into a larger allegory of the crown itself, a take that historians from Quicherat onwards have held to.

Coming last, Loyseleur's testimony fills out and adds to what the others said, while otherwise mostly conforming to them, only with greater elaboration on certain points. But he concludes with two new details. First, that she begged permission of her confessor to "humbly ask pardon" of all the people she had deceived, saying that she said

she would do it willingly, but that she did not think she would be able to remember, when the proper moment came — that is to say, when she found herself in the presence of the people; she prayed her Confessor to remind her of this point and of all else which might tend to her salvation.

and then,

I heard her, in the prison, in presence of a great number of witnesses, and subsequently after [the] sentence, ask, with much contrition of heart, pardon of the English and Burgundians for having caused to be slain, beaten, and damned, a great number of them, as she [confessed].

A bit unlike Joan, that, as she ever appealed to God for salvation, and damnation of others was not in her vocabulary (though warning them of damnation was).

But let's assume for a moment that Loyseleur was merely speaking for her as she may have in her own manner. The story, then, is that Joan begged a priest to help her to beg forgiveness of the people, as she didn't feel up to it, but needed to do so for her own salvation, especially for having "slain, beaten, and damned" the English and Burgundians. What Loyseleur was up to here is setting up a rationale for why people didn't hear Joan speak this particular contrition in public and then saying she said it, anyway, just in case anyone missed it -- which they did, because she didn't say it. A next purpose was to help the English diminish the sting of their defeats through her statement of regret for having thrashed them in battle over the prior two years. These are not Joan's sentiments. Aside from her shame at ever having betrayed her Voices, Joan's biggest regret was in having been captured and turned over to the English and not being able to personally expel them from French soil.

Testimonies from the Trial of Rehabilitation disagree with Loyseleur's narrative here. One witness, another of the Dominicans, stated that she "had, at the end, so great contrition and such beautiful penitence that it was a thing to be admired." A Burgundian bishop who was not involved in the Trial but who witnessed her burning recalled that Joan "said that nothing she had done, either good or ill had been suggested by the King." Most recollections, of course, focus on her final words, such as her call to the Archangel Michael and, as the fire started, chanting, "Jesus!"

The priests Manchon and Massieu both reported at the Rehabilitation Trial that Joan did show contrition at the Old Market, but hardly in the words or for the purpose Loyseleur attributed to her. According to Manchon,

Patiently did she hear the sermon right through; afterwards she repeated her thanksgiving, prayers, and lamentations most notably and devoutly, in such manner that the Judges, Prelates, and all present were provoked to much weeping, seeing her make these pitiful regrets and sad complaints.

and more specifically, from Massieu,

And being in the Old Market-Place, after the sermon, during which she showed great patience and listened most quietly, she evinced many evidences and clear proofs of her contrition, penitence, and fervent faith, if only by her pitiful and devout lamentations and invocations of the Blessed Trinity and the Blessed and Glorious Virgin Mary, and all the Blessed Saints in Paradise — naming specially certain of these Saints: in which devotions, lamentations, and true confession of faith, she besought mercy also, most humbly, from all manner of people of whatever condition or estate they might be, of her own party as well as of the other, begging them to pray for her, forgiving them the harm they had done her...

Saint Joan at the stake. This depiction from 1843 by Hermann Stilke correctly shows an elevated pyre. (Her head was shaved after the Abjuration on May 24, so she has too much hair.) The priest Martin Ladvenu said the English executioner "had never been so afraid in executing any criminal as in the burning of the Maid... the English had caused a high scaffold to be made of plaster, and, as the said executioner reported, he could not well or easily hasten matters nor reach her, at which he was much vexed and had great compassion for the cruel manner in which she was put to death."

That is, her plea was to forgive them, not the other way around as reported by Loyseleur.

His fellow from the Examinations, Ladvenu, presented to the Trial of Rehabilitation a different memory of that morning. He recalled,

On the day of her death I was with her until her last breath. One present said he wished his soul might be where he believed Jeanne's soul was. After the reading of the sentence, she came down from the platform on which the preaching had been, and was led by the executioner, without any sentence from the secular Judges, to the place where the pile was prepared for her burning. The pile was on a scaffold, and the executioner lighted it from below. When Jeanne perceived the fire, she told me to descend and to hold up the Cross of the Lord on high before her that she might see it.

When I was with her [that morning in the prison], and exhorting her on her salvation, the Bishop of Beauvais and some of the Canons of Rouen came over to see her; and, when Jeanne perceived the Bishop, she told him that he was the cause of her death; that he had promised to place her in the hands of the Church, and had relinquished her to her mortal enemies.

Up to the end of her life she maintained and asserted that her Voices came from God, and that what she had done had been by God's command. She did not believe that her Voices had deceived her: the revelations which she had received had come from God.

Toutmoullé's witness at the Rehabilitation Trial also shows that Joan was not much focused that morning on regret over what she had done to the English and Burgundians:

The day when Jeanne was delivered up to be burned, I was in the prison during the morning with Brother Martin Ladvenu, whom the Bishop of Beauvais had sent to her to announce her approaching death, and to induce in her true contrition and penitence, and also to hear her in confession. This the said Ladvenu did most carefully and charitably; and when he announced to the poor woman the death she must die that day, as the Judge had ordained, and she heard of the hard and cruel death which was approaching, she began, in a sad and pitiful manner, as one distraught, tearing her hair, to cry out: "Alas! am I to be so horribly and cruelly treated? Alas! that my body, whole and entire, which has never been corrupted, should to-day be consumed and burned to ashes! Ah! I would far rather have my head cut off, seven times over, than be thus burned! Alas! had I been in the ecclesiastical prison, to which I submitted myself, and guarded by the Clergy instead of by my enemies, it would not have fallen out so unhappily for me. I appeal to God, the Great Judge, for the great evils and injustice done to me!"

Then,

After these complaints, the aforesaid Bishop arrived, to whom she at once said: "Bishop, I die through you." And he began to explain to her, saying: "Ah! Jeanne, have patience; you die because you have not kept to what you promised us, and for having returned to your first evil-doing." And the poor Maid answered him: "Alas, if you had put me in the prisons of the Church Courts, and given me into the hands of competent and suitable ecclesiastical guardians, this would not have happened: for this I summon you before God."

Joan had been held in the English military prison, chained, abused, and mistreated over three months, and possibly assaulted during her final days. She knew the purpose was to humiliate her bodily and emotionally. She had withstood it with a fastness we ought to look upon with awe. What was on her mind when she spoke to Cauchon was not the veracity of her Voices, but his cruelty in subjecting her to that prison. As we have seen, Joan signed the Abjuration the Thursday before, and made the promise to return to female dress, solely upon the understanding that she would be sent to a Church prison, away from the English. Instead, Cauchon sent her back to the English prison, "whence she was taken.

Listening in on Joan in her prison cell. "The Eyes" of Cauchon," by Henri-Paul Motte, from 1907 postcard (Wikicommons).

If Joan resented anything, it was this betrayal to be returned to the English prison. Loyseleur's story about Joan's apologies to the English and Burgundians matches nothing of Joan's intent, and everything of the purpose of the Examinations document. Let's just say that Loyseleur was dedicated to the English, who Pernoud says "without doubt very highly regarded" him. His appointment as Canon of Rouen came as replacement for an Armagnac priest who had fled the English arrival. Loyseleur early on in the Trial visited Joan in her prison cell pretending to be from Lorraine in order to gain her confidence and confession, all of which was witnessed by two others hidden nearby and which he reported back to Cauchon. The French historian Champion didn't hold back on the man:

Nicolas Loyseleur, intimate friend of Pierre Cauchon, was equally tied to Nicolas Midi, one of Joan's most bitter enemies; during the trial he played a perfectly odious role, that of false confessor.

Loyseleur's fiction conforms to an ad hoc reconstruction to account for the fact that Joan never actually admitted to having lied about anything or to having been deceived by her Voices. It also conforms to what a resentful Burgundian priest might come up with in order to delegitimize the woman who quite nearly popped his English cushion. Loyseleur's obsequious diligence on behalf of the English failed to pay off for him, as it failed Midi and Cauchon. Midi, we have seen, died of leprosy, and Cauchon had to flee when the French retook Paris. Though well compensated by the English and living out his life in comfort at Rouen, Cauchon never achieved his promised office of Archbishop of Rouen, as not even Bedford, the English governor who had promised it to him, could get the clergy of Rouen to go along with it, as they had gotten to know the man all too well in 1431.

Sacramentally Incomplete

As for the Sacraments given to Joan in the prison that morning, only one Examinations witness used the formal terms, "the Sacrament of Confession and Penitence" and "Sacrament of the Eucharist." That priest, Lecamus, had not been involved in the Trial and most probably did not witness her Sacraments. Other than to "accompany" Cauchon, why he was there that morning in the prison is unclear. That his testimony was an outlier, therefore, makes sense. He got in the "Voices... deceived me" business, but failed to mention anything about the angelic crown. Lecamus also mixes up the timeline, stating that Joan confessed to Ladvenu after he and the Bishop had arrived, which goes against other Examinations testimony, as well as that in the Rehabilitation Trial.

Where Lecamus used the term, "Sacrament" and the noun "confession," the others all referenced that Joan "confessed" something or "confessed to" someone, which could be but was not necessarily Sacramental. Toutmouillé, for example, says she "confessed" certain things without mentioning "a confession." Several of the later Rehabilitation Trial witnesses who were there that morning affirmed that the Sacraments were provided for Joan, although the memories had gelled differently, or, worse, the storyline got confused. Toutmouillé spoke of a compassionate Sacramental moment, now referring to the act of Confession as a noun:

I was in the prison during the morning with Brother Martin Ladvenu, whom the Bishop of Beauvais had sent to her to announce her approaching death, and to induce in her true contrition and penitence, and also to hear her in confession.

The priest Massieu recalled it rather differently, sticking to the verb, "to confess":

On the following Wednesday, the day she was condemned, and before she left the Castle, the Body of Christ was borne to her irreverently, without stole and lights, at which Brother Martin, who had confessed her, was ill content, and so a stole and lights were sent for, and thus Brother Martin administered It to her.

Normally, by "confessed her" he would mean Sacramentally, but there was little regular form to it this day. At the Rehabilitation Trial, Massieu was asked to clarify the scene, and he now explained it using the noun, which would indicate a Sacramental Confession:

On the morning of Wednesday, the day on which she died. Brother Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession, and afterwards sent me to the Bishop to tell him this fact and that she prayed the Sacrament of the Eucharist might be brought to her. Thereupon, the Bishop convoked some of the Assessors, and at the end of their deliberation he told me to inform Brother Martin that he might take her the Sacrament and whatsoever she desired. Then I returned to the Castle and told this to Brother Martin.

The scribe Manchon recalled the confusion that morning, and, importantly, that Joan was not confessed at the Old Market in public:

There had been much discussion among the Judges and their Counsellors, whether they should offer her the Holy Sacrament, and whether she should be absolved at the place of execution; but I did not see any absolution granted to her.

Ladvenu clarified that Joan confessed and received the Eucharist before Cauchon & Friends arrived on their witch safari to the prison:

I heard Jeanne, by license of the Judges, in confession ; I administered to her the Body of Christ ; she received it with great devotion and tears which I cannot describe.

From Joan's perspective, Confession and then Holy Communion were all that mattered, but by "Confession" we don't mean that she wanted to "confess," as in admit," anything. For her it was purely Sacramental and in preparation for the Eucharist.

Across her mission to save France, she received Sacramental Confession regularly. Asked in March,

Have you any need to confess, as you believe by the revelations of your Voices that you will be saved?

she replied,

I do not know of having committed mortal sin; but, if I were in mortal sin, I think that Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret would abandon me at once. I do not think one can cleanse one's conscience too much.

Had Joan actually repented that morning in the prison, or by the stake, even Sacramentally, it makes no sense that it was an admission of anything she had previously said. Upon the "Relapse" the Monday before, May 28, she already knew she would be put to death for having donned men's clothes again, or, at a minimum, be kept in the military prison, which for her was the same thing. There would have been no sudden sharpening of her mind Wednesday morning that threw her into a state of contrition, and no compulsion to accept Cauchon's public admonition. She had two full days, likely more, to think it over, as well as, undoubtedly, to be taunted about it by the English guards. If she wanted to confess anything, it would have been about having betrayed her Voices by signing the Abjuration.

On that prior Monday of the Relapse, she described how Saints Catherine and Margaret had told her,

the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life!

Repentance that morning in the prison or by the stake, even Sacramentally, would not negate Joan's "Relapse." It could have. Recalling the "good thief" who confessed upon the Cross next to the Lord, a sacramental Confession prior to the burning would be for the condemned's soul, not his life. Besides, Cauchon was going to hand her to the English to burn one way or the other; he had joyously declared it so upon seeing Joan back in men's clothes, which saved him from the English wrath over her Abjuration sentence of imprisonment not death. A Sacramental Confession was not what Cauchon had in mind.

The matter of her Confession, Sacramental or not, becomes more important for the Rehabilitation Trial examiners and their witnesses, who would have been concerned with the manner in which the Sacraments were handled, as well as for Joan's salvation through them. Witnesses to the Rehabilitation Trial mentioned repeatedly having seen her in Confession frequently. Modern historians have made much of it, as well. Along with Quicherat, biographer Anatole France claims that since Joan was allowed the Sacraments she must actually have spoken as claimed in the Examinations:

In my opinion the actual occurrences cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial report. It tells of Jeanne's second recantation, and of this recantation there can be no question, for Jeanne received the communion before her death.

Pernoud disagrees, and quotes an internet discussion board in which someone posted that, "to hear the confession of, and to give communion to a relapsed heretic was absolutely unthinkable." The case of Joan of Arc proves that is not always so. Nor does Anatole France's logic stand up against the multiple accounts that Joan made some type of Sacramental Confession before Cauchon's arrival at the prison, which was where all the "she did say and confess" business came from. We see from Manchon's Rehabilitation testimony that the Judges debated absolving her "at the place of execution" but, to his view of the scene, which was front and center, they never did, despite Cauchon's twice admonishing her there in public, that,

if true signs of penitence should appear in thee, that the Sacrament of Penance be administered to thee.

My concern for Joan's "confession" in terms of the honesty of the Examinations is that it conforms to the motives of the document but not the actual timeline and other testimony, both internally and externally. For example, Cauchon's guest, Lecamus, says he saw Ladvenu administer the Sacraments to Joan, yet we know Massieu went for permission to administer the Eucharist after Ladvenu had confessed her, and gave her Holy Communion before Cauchon arrived. The Examinations stories simply don't line up, so someone was either mistaken or lying -- or, to some extent, both, especially given the pressure from the English for something to use from Joan's own words lest they create a martyr.

The point of it all

Four days after the Examinations, Cauchon and all the participants in the Trial received "letters of guarantee" that protected them from liability for their actions in the Trial. There's no proof therein of a quid pro quo, but that was definitely a quid pro quo, and one that was likely connected to the Examinations. The timing here speaks for itself, especially as various payments and stipends were issued at the same time. The well-documented paper trail of reimbursements and remunerations tying the principle Judges to the English is without debate. The "letters of guarantee," then, guaranteed also that they could keep the money, if not in direct exchange, then complementary to these final words from Joan in the Examinations that the English so badly needed.

At the prison on May 30 before Cauchon's arrival, such thoughts were not on the minds of the priests. My best understanding is that they ministered to her in the prison sincerely, but went along with Cauchon's purposes and instructions in the Examinations the following week. Cauchon more than a few times during and after the Trial jailed or threatened to jail anyone who went against him, so they not only had priestly obedience to follow but may have acted on self-preservation, as well as self-promotion for some, given the rewards to be expected from the English and at the Burgundian-controlled University of Paris.

Saint Joan at the stake, from Vigiles du roi Charles VII 10 (wikicommons)

Prior to the public reading of the Sentence on May 30th at the Old Market, Joan was "last preached to" by the Midi, one of her Trial tormentors. The sermon goes unrecorded in the official Trial transcript, except for a line from One Corinthians, "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." The transcript then moves on to Cauchon, and how he "did admonish Jeanne to look to her salvation," including the reference to the "two venerable Dominicans" who had counseled her in the prison that morning and the dual appeals for Sacramental Confession in his speech and in the Final Sentence.

The day after Cauchon recorded his Examinations, June 8, the English released a statement from the child King, now ten, starting with,

A certain woman whom the vulgar called The Maid had in fact arisen, who with an astonishing presumption, and contrary to natural decency, had adopted man's dress, assumed military arms, dared to take part in the massacre of men in bloody encounters and appeared in divers battles. Her presumption grew until she boasted that she was sent from God to lead their martial struggles, and that St Michael, St Gabriel, a host of other angels, with St Catherine and St Margaret, appeared visibly to her.

Got in that bit about the "host of Angels," in case anyone had heard about a bunch of them delivering a crown to Henry's rival monarch. Next, the we get the Abjuration and Relapse, for which the Examinations paid off as evidence of her final contrition, which the Abjuration failed to secure:

At last the judges sentence of condemnation was begun, but before the reading of it was finished this woman altered her former way of speech and announced that she would utter better things. This her judges welcomed with Joy, hoping to have redeemed her body and soul from perdition, and they lent willing ears to her speech then she submitted herself to the authority of the Church, loudly denied and abjured her errors and pernicious crimes, and signed with her own hand the formula of this recantation and abjuration.

and echoing the language of Cauchon himself, which reveals the letter's likely authorship:

But the fire of her pride which then seemed lifted, renewed by the breath of devils, suddenly hurled out in poisonous flames, this wretched woman returned to her errors, to her false infamies which she lately had vomited away.

Now, Cauchon earned his keep:

Finally, as the ecclesiastical sanctions decree, to avoid the infection of the other members of Christ, she was given up to the judgment of the secular power which decided that her body was to be burned. Seeing then the nearness of her latter end, this wretched woman openly acknowledged and fully confessed that the spirits which she claimed had visibly appeared to her were only evil and lying spirits, that her deliverance from prison had been falsely promised by the spirits, who she confessed had mocked and deceived her.

On June 28, the English released another statement from Henry, again taking advantage of Cauchon's setup in the Examinations. Addressed to the "prelates of the Church, to the dukes, counts and other nobles and to the cities of his kingdom of France," the letter was directly political, and as such reveals the concerns of the English about sympathy for the Maid

Reverend father in God, it is fairly common report everywhere how more than two years ago the woman who called herself Jeanne the Maid, a false prophetess, did against divine law and the state of her sex, dress in man’s clothes, a thing abominable to God, and in that condition journeyed to our chief enemy [Charles VII], whom, with others of his party, clergy, nobles and populace, she frequently gave to understand that she was sent from God, and presumptuously boasted that she often had personal and visible communication with St Michael and a great host of angels and saints of Paradise, as well as with St Catherine and St Margaret. By these falsehoods and the hope she held out of future victories, she withdrew the hearts of many men and women from the way of truth, and converted them to fables and lies. She clad herself also in arms such as are worn by knights and squires, raised a standard, and, in excessive outrage, pride and presumption, asked to be given and allowed to bear the very noble and excellent arms of France, which she in fact obtained, and wore many conflicts and assaults, as her brothers are said to have done they were a shield azure with two fleurs-de-lis [of gold], and a sword between supporting a crown.

The problem that confronted the English was that much of France, even in Paris, believed Joan was sent by God, which by extension affirmed that Charles VII was coronated through God's agency and will. After a review of her evils and -- thanks to Cauchon -- her final admission the day of her burning, the letter instructs the English King's authorities and clergy to get busy setting the record straight:

Such was the issue of her works, such the end of this woman, with which we acquaint you by these presents, reverend father in God, so that you may be perfectly informed of this matter, and in such places of your diocese as you may think fit you may by public sermons or other means make these things known for the good and exultation of our holy faith and the edification of the Christian people who have so long been deceived and abused by this woman's works.

And the propaganda campaign continued, clearly from necessity, as the public relations problem didn't go away. The "Bourgeois of Paris, a Burgundian chronicler at the University of Paris, recognized divergent views of the Maid even in Paris, a month or more after her burning, noting,

There were people here and there who said that she was a martyr for her right Lord; others said that she was not and that those who had protected her had done wrong. So said the people, but whether for bad or good she had done, she was burned that day.

The University of Paris duly repeated the English King's message, including to forward his letter to Rome with the stock but grave warning, repeated throughout the Trial, including in the Seventy Articles and Cauchon's final sermon to Joan before her burning, of the dangers of copy-cat heretics, so that "the faithful of the Christian religion must be warned by such a sad example not to act so hastily after their own desires. In Paris on July 4, the Grand Inquisitor and English servant Jean Graverent preached a violent public condemnation of Joan in which he, too, warned of the repetition of Joan's errors. After condemning Joan for having "lived as a homicide of Christendom," he attacked the other mystics who arose along with Joan,

Still further he said in his sermon that there were four of them, from whom the [so-called] miracles had been taken: namely this Maid, and Péronne her companion, and one who is among the Arminalx, named Katherine of La Rochelle, who said that, when the precious body of Our Lord is consecrated, she saw marvels of the high secret of Our Lord God. And he said that all these four poor women had been governed by brother Richard the Cordelier, who after her had such a great following when he preached at Paris at the Innocents and elsewhere, for he was their paramour.

Brother Richard had been driven from Paris in 1428 or 1429 and Joan rejected Catherine de la Rochelle as a fake. Joan had no interest in the friar. Pierronne of Brittany may have been a follower of Brother Richard, but was burned in Paris in 1430 for her support of Joan. The English had no use for her. We see in Graverent's sermon the deep impact of Joan upon the politics and minds of the English and Burgundians.

Ultimately, though useful for the English, the Examinations didn't change anything. It didn't suffice as justification for her burning, and it wasn't needed, anyway. Her Sacramental Confession that morning, if it happened, neither jeopardized nor affirmed her Sentence, and had she taken Cauchon up on a Confession at the stake, it would have served the purpose of the Examinations -- she didn't, which adds to the evidence as to why Cauchon still needed a confession from her a week after her death. The Examinations, then, and Joan's supposed admissions in it, mattered for nothing. It was a propagandistic exercise, purely, and that it was needed at all further lends to its inauthenticity.

Unfortunately, important historians have taken up Cauchon on his charade.

La France

Had England conquered France, an English court in France would have taken on a larger French identity, which was the stronger of the two cultures. An English king of France would have distributed French lands amongst his loyalist both from England and France, which would have brought further assimilation. During his regency in France, for example, the Duke of Bedford adopted French culture, both for legitimization of his rule and out of genuine respect, if not envy, for it. Just as England became more fully English after its defeat in the Hundred Years War, it seems clear that had the English conquered France, the English court would have become more French and less English.

Still, English politics would have been imported into France, potentially to include the English seizure of the Church under Henry VIII, or, if not by him, likely by another. The English schemer John of Gaunt's use of John Wycliffe for political advantage translated into later English attempts to control the Church in England through ecclesiastical appointments (nothing new there) and exercise of the 1392 Statute of Praemunire enacted by Parliament under Richard II that aimed to limit foreign authority over English courts and ecclesiastical matters, including to give a royal veto over judicial appeals to the Pope. Henry VII, as they say these days, weaponized it against his political lay enemies in the War of the Roses and to generally keep the local Church obedient to him. Henry VIII turned it against Cardinal Wolsey for the Cardinal's inability to secure the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, then applied it to the entire English clergy as he seized the Church. European monarchs used these types of instruments whenever they could, but their effect accumulates over time. So had an English King of France drawn from praemunire, which, in its medieval usage, coming from pre- (before) + munire (to fortify) meaning "fortified in advance" or, more directly to its use against papal authority, "to be forewarned," it would have yielded are far larger claim over Catholic France than that taken by Charles VII in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of 1438, which claimed certain autonomy from the Holy See.

English France

An English-ruled France would have integrated more with the Low Countries and possibly spread its rule into Germany (tagging or preempting the Burgundian' expansion) while keeping the rising Spanish power out. Come Martin Luther and the Thirty Years War, we see how tenuous was the hold of the Holy Roman Empire upon Germany and central Europe. By the time the Spanish King took over the Holy Roman Empire, had England ruled France, and had France fallen to Anglicanism, the Holy Roman Empire may have been even weaker leading up to the early 17th century Thirty Years War. Any English conquest of France would be accompanied by Burgundian expansion, which would have integrated the Burgundian Flanders more deeply across northern France -- and England, and with all the implications of Dutch Protestantism.

Even if remaining Catholic through the Lutheran, Calvinist, and other revolts, English control of France would have had deep implications upon French Catholicism, which we can see in the English occupation of northern France in the 1420-30s. The University of Paris would likely have more successfully pursued its "conciliar" project to supersede papal authority through Church rule by council, or, barring success, it would have had an irresistible incentive to break from Rome, either under Anglicanism of some form or in another Catholic schism. While Charles VII pushed the conciliar movement in the Pragmatic Sanction, it was as much to reign in the University of Paris as anything else. Charles aggressively pursued French interests over Papal authority, including to declare it subservient to the French councils, but the movement failed largely due to papal pushback and the persistence of traditional Catholic identity of the people and clergy of the kind Saint Joan had expressed. By contradistinction, an English controlled France may well have more effectively implemented the conciliar movement, which was consistent with its tradition of strong parliamentary rule. We can't say.

We can say that things would have been vastly different. But given the events of the 16th century, one can readily see Roman Catholicism as a victim of an English ruled France and northern Europe. Certainly the French Wars of Religion of the late 1500s would have played out differently. Obviously, had England conquered France, Henry VIII may never have married Catherine of Aragon, or have demanded papal nullification of the marriage to her. Or, maybe he would have and the Pope more vehemently would have denied the annulment Henry demanded. The annulment was the excuse, not the cause of the break, as Lollardy yet lingered and pounced upon the moment. The same likely would have happened with Calvin, who was from northern France. A France ruled by Henry VIII would most certainly no longer be a Catholic France. Certainly, events may have prevented that, but we can imagine a straight line from the Church of England to the Church of France. Lots of contingencies here, but to assume that Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England was over the papal denial of that annulment is naive, at best. Even if given the annulment from Catherine, Henry would have dissolved the Catholic Church, which, if the English had conquered France, would have included its dominion over France.

Alternative histories are pure conjecture, as any number of contingencies may have changed the trajectory of an English-ruled France, including the War of Roses which brought Henry VIII's House of Tudor to power in England. The variables here are infinite, and counter-factual history can never prove anything. However, it can inform the actual history, which is the point here. We have as plain fact that England separated itself from Rome, and Valois and Bourbon France did not, and by saving France from English rule, it was Joan of Arc who created that possibility. With an eye to larger events that we do know, we can better understand Saint Joan's instructions to "go to France."

Vive la France!

During and since Joan's time, French patriots have looked to Joan for glory of France. While her memory faded across complicated subsequent centuries, it was large enough the the Jacobins suppressed her annual festival in Orléans that had centered around the Cathedral of Sainte-Croix, where Joan celebrated a Vespers Mass during the siege. Joan nevertheless remained useful for the Revolution as a symbol of the common people and "independence."

La vie de Jeanne d'Arc, Panthéon, Paris (Wikicommons)

Napoléon renewed the celebrations as well as to restore her birthplace at Domrémy as a national monument. His embrace of Joan met several needs: French nationalism, especially anti-British French nationalism, reinforcement of the Concordat of 1801 between the French government and the Vatican that officially restored the Church in France, and legitimization of his own mission to glorify France and himself as her savior. Interest in Joan grew from there, leading to the republication of her Trials and various original documents by Jules Quicherat in 1840.

We see Joan's popularity arise during times of crisis or national pride, such as the Bourbon Restoration, Franco-Prussian War of 1870, both World Wars, and French post-War nationalism under Charles de Gaulle. While modern academics have co-opted Joan for various agenda, from feminism and anti-patriarchy, to cross-dressing, "gender fluidity," and, indeed, anticolonialism, seeing in Joan everything but French nationalism and the Catholic faith, which, in turn, they deplore when Joan's image is adopted by "far right" monarchists and nationalists. Nevertheless, while seemingly all things to all people, Joan remains a dominant symbol of France, and correctly so.

What goes missing is her Catholicity. Despite depictions of her visions and divine associations, such as a panel in La Vie de Jeanne d'Arc at the Panthéon in Paris of a Dove escaping Joan's mouth at her death, the secularization of Joan that started with Shakespeare's characterization of her as a fraud in his quasi-historical drama Henry VI and in France in Voltaire's crude and demeaning 1730s play, La Pucelle, the secular view of Joan persists. Voltaire ridiculed Jean Chapelain's 1656 epic and very Catholic poem La Pucelle that emphasized her divine mission, which, as one modern academic frames it, "is devoted entirely and equally to Church and monarchy" -- oh, and the poem itself, the historian warns us, is "turgid." Voltaire's mockery was not just of Chapelain, but of the Maiden herself, and, of course, her virginity:

That Joan of Arc had all a lion's rage; You'll tremble at the feats whereof you hear, And more than all the wars she used to wage, At how she kept her maidenhead — a year!

He then compares Joan to the Medusa and has her riding into battle naked. But no need to get into it any further here, as Voltaire's tantrum was more about his own anti-clerical, anti-Catholic bigotry than about Joan of Arc. She was a useful target for his rebellion against the standing order.

On it goes into the progression of modernity, exemplified by the 1844 work of Jules Michelet, a 19th century anti-clerical French historian. Michelet is the originator of the term "Renaissance," meant to describe the end of an abysmal and backward Medieval period marked by superstition, oppression, and the Catholic Church (especially Jesuits), replaced by a "rebirth" of enlightened antiquity. Sadly, this socialist historian has deeply influenced the modern study of history. The term "Dark Ages" was first used in the 1300s by Petrarch, the Catholic scholar and often deemed founder of humanism. Petrarch, who lived a century before Joan, described the conditions in Europe following the fall of the Roman empire as "dark." Michelet applied Petrarch's "light" of antiquity to its supposed rebirth in the "light" of the "Renaissance":

Nature, and natural science, kept in check by the spirit of Christianity, were about to have their revival, (renaissance.)

All the while consigning Petrarch to the dark, and thus, Dante and other early "Renaissance" figures, for Michelet, there was one "dark ages" ambassador to hold on to: "The Maid of Orleans." For the inventor of the Renaissance, the medieval character, Joan of Arc, was a "simple Christian," that is, a good Christian, as opposed to the clerics around her, bad Christians all. While considering her visions mundane and common -- "Who but had visions in the middle age?" -- he presents her divinely-directed acts as if they just, well, happened. Here the historian's judgment is blinded by his prejudice, and like every secular take on her that dismisses the divine hand:

The originality of the Pucelle, the secret of her success, was not her courage or her visions, but her good sense.

Beyond that any application of "good sense" would have bound Joan to the fields of her home village, Domrémy, the only thing Michelet can do with her religiosity is to ignore it when inconvenient, exalt it when it contrasts with the hated clerics, and otherwise treat it metaphorically as just a backdrop to her true purpose, according to Michelet, ransoming France:

The Imitation of Jesus Christ, his Passion reproduced in the Pucelle -- such was the redemption of France.

I can't even begin to process the association of "redemption of France" with the "imitation" and Passion of Christ, and we're better off, as with Voltaire, just not going there. But Michelet gets even more grotesque with his impassioned, shall we say, 19th century romanticization of femininity represented by Joan:

Purity, sweetness, heroic goodness — that this supreme beauty of the soul should have centred in a daughter of France, may surprise foreigners who choose to judge of our nation by the levity of its manners alone ... old France was not styled without reason, the most Christian people. They were certainly the people of love and of grace; and whether we understand this humanly or Christianly, in either sense it will ever hold good. The saviour of France could be no other than a woman. France herself was woman.

To borrow from Saint Joan, "it's good to know" that Michelet considered France "a daughter," though perhaps not "of the Church," must less the "First Daughter of the Church." Such his how, when the secular replace the religious, the secular fills the empty space. Thus the Lincoln Memorial is a "temple" and George Washington rises to the heavens in a an "apotheosis" in the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Here Michelet transposes Joan's religiosity for France's raison d'être, claiming for France a soul that he otherwise denies Joan. Michelet, as least, recognized in Joan a good Christian, but like scholars who have followed sees her faith as an anachronism and her visions as irrelevant at best.

Saving Catholicism

Saint Joan saved France, yes. More importantly, she saved Catholic France, and, thereby, subsequent forms of Catholicism itself. Lets us consider Joan's mission and its historical implications upon Catholicism.

The Babylonian Captivity

Joan herself was born amidst an ongoing papal schism. When she was five years old, the "Western Schism" of 1378 was finally settled with a consensus selection at Rome of Pope Martin V, although two rival claims persisted. However, the antipope from Avignon, Benedict XIII, refused to concede, and he moved to Spain under the protection of the King of Aragon who used his presence there for leverage on other issues with Rome. It was Benedict's successor, the antipope Clement VIII who twelve years later finally gave up on the project on July 26, 1429 when the King of Aragon withdrew his support for him. Note the date: Joan's triumph at Orléans was in May and the coronation of Charles VII at Reims occurred on July 17. The coronation at Reims didn't cause the Aragon king's change of heart, but the sacramental affirmation of Charles through Roman authority spoke loudly to him.

There is an interesting parallel to Joan in the Schism itself, precipitated by Pope Gregory XI's move from Avignon to Rome in 1377, ending the uncontested "Avignon Papacy" but prompting the schismatic, French-backed papacy back at Avignon. Known as the "Babylonian Captivity," the official Avignon papacy lasted through seven Popes across sixty-seven years. We see in these events an inversion of antagonists from that of Joan's day: Where the English provoked God's wrath in the Hundred Year's War, the French caught themselves up in less-than-holy entanglements during the Avignon period, which ended only after the intervention of another female Saint, Catherine of Sienna.

In 1289, Pope Pope Nicholas IV allowed the French King Philip IV to collect a one-time Crusades tithe from certain territories under Rudolf of Habsburg (who was not happy about it) in order to pay down Philip's war debts. With the costs of ongoing wars with Aragon, England and Flanders, Philip was up to his ears in financial gamesmanship, including debasement of the currency, bans on export of bullion, and seizure of the assets of Lombard merchants. In 1296, he imposed a severe tax upon Church lands and clergy in France, which didn't go over well with Rome. Pope Boniface VIII responded with the first of three Papal Bulls aimed at Philip denying his right to tax the Church without papal permission and generally asserting papal over secular authority.

The "Palace of the Popes" in Anagni, south of Rome, where Philip IV attacked Pope Boniface VIII (wikipedia)

The Pope compromised by allowing such a tax for emergencies only, and Philip went ahead anyway with at least some. Things escalated from there, with Philip prosecuting clerical agents from Rome in royal courts and the Pope issuing a wonderfully named Bull, Ausculta Fili ("Listen, My Son"), which Philip not only ignored but had burned in public. Boniface called the French Bishops to Rome, the assembly of which Philip preempted by convening the first Estates General in France, a council with representatives from the nobility, clergy, and commons. Boniface issued another Bull asserting Papal authority and excommunicated anyone who prevented clerics from traveling to Rome. Philip did the obvious thing and sent a small army of sixty troops to arrest the Pope and force his abdication. The soldiers stormed the papal estate at Anagni, south of Rome, and held him for three days until residents retaliated and rescued the Pope from the French. Now Philip got an excommunication directed at him personally. Boniface, though, likely from injuries or trauma suffered from the attack, and possibly from poisoning by the French, died shortly after.

Philip's excursion to Anagni put pressure on the subsequent Papal conclave to avoid further antagonism with him. The next Pope, Benedict XI, rescinded the excommunication but not that of Philip's minister who led the attack on Boniface, thus leaving the conflict unsettled. Benedict, though, died within a year, and after a year-long impasse between French and Italian Cardinals at the ensuing Conclave, Philip had his way with selection of a French bishop as Pope Clement V. Clement basically did Philip's will, which included effective rescindment of Boniface's Bulls, a posthumous inquisition into Boniface in order to discredit him (which failed), sanction of Philip's arrest of the Knights Templar, and, most importantly, move of the entire Papal court to Avignon in the south of France. This was 1309.

Return from exile: Gregory XI & Saint Catherine of Sienna

Philip's capture of the Papacy worked well for him but no so much for the Church, which, bound to French dominance, lost its legitimacy elsewhere. At first the old enemies of Philip, England and Aragon, found it convenient not to have to deal with the Italians in Rome so did not object. However, a succession crisis among Philip IV's heirs led to the English claims on the French throne and outbreak of the Hundred Years War, over which the Avignon Papacy, while maintaining neutrality and assisting in treaty settlements, leaned towards the French side. So when Gregory XI moved the papacy back to Rome in 1376, the French were furious while the English could sit on their hands and shrug, "oh well." No objection from them. And no objection, either, from the Holy Roman Emperor, whose brand was quite literally diluted by the move from Rome to Avignon.

Map showing support for Avignon (red) and Rome (blue) during the Western Schism (Wikipedia)

Shortly after arriving at Rome, Gregory died. Under the threats from a Roman mob to appoint an Italian, i.e., not a French pope, and with disunity and among the French faction, as well as absence of some of the French Cardinals, the Conclave compromised on a bishop from Naples, who became Urban VI.

Two years later, with Urban refusing to return to Avignon, the French Cardinals held their own conclave south of Rome at Anagni, at invitation of the Count thereof, Onorato Caetani, who was angry at Urban VI for removing him from lands appointed to him by Gregory XI. The French Bishops selected a rather complicated man, Robert of Geneva, son of the Count of Geneva, who had studied at the Sorbonne, held a rectory in England, and earned the nickname "Butcher of Cesena" for authorizing the massacre of three to eight thousand people for the town's participation in a 1377 rebellion against the Papal States (lands directly ruled by the Pope). Now Clement VII, Caetani tried to set up shop in Naples, but was chased out of town by a mob who supported the Roman Pope, shouting, "Death to the Antichrist!" Charles V of France, who certainly had a say in Caetani's selection, welcomed him back to Avignon as Clement VII and gathered support from various regions and countries who, for whatever reason, preferred France over England, such as the Scottish who went with whatever the English did not.

This time period crosses with that of Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373) who was terribly upset at the Avignon papacy, but whose pleadings to the Church to return to Rome were ignored. In 1350, Bridget sought papal authorization for her order, the Bridgettines, but she refused to go to Avignon, and went to Rome instead where she awaited the Pope's return -- which occurred finally in 1367 when the Avignon Pope Urban V visited Rome as a symbolic gesture. In Rome, he ran the Holy See from the Vatican but ran into various problems with local lords who had gotten used to having things their way. Along with rebellions within the Papal States (taking advantage of the absence of Rome), Urban faced trouble with the bishops back at Avignon who demanded his return. He granted Saint Bridget her order in 1370, but as he prepared that year to return to Avignon, Saint Bridget told him that if he left Rome he would die. He left anyway, and three and a half months later died.

Urban's successor, Pierre Roger de Beaufort, who became Gregory XI, had witnessed in person Bridget's prophesy to Urban V, which may have, one can imagine, at least been in the back of his mind when he privately vowed before God to return the papacy to Rome should he be selected as Pope. Whatever the intention, for the first years of his papacy there were plenty of fires to put out, or try to, and reforms to institute, including, interestingly, his 1373 règle d'idiom, which instructed clergy to speak the local vernacular to their flocks outside of the liturgy, coming well before the proto-Protestant heretic John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English. Gregory's attempts to reconcile the kings of France and England failed.

The Avignon papacy was not tenable. And no matter how you look at it, Saint Peter died at Rome and not Avignon. Gregory XI seemed to think so, anyway, but he only acted on the conviction at the insistence of Saint Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380). Saint Catherine picked up where Saint Bridget had left off, dictating a series of letters to the Pope commanding him, among things, to return to Rome and in language Gregory characterized as having an “intolerably dictatorial tone, a little sweetened with expressions of her perfect Christian deference” -- perhaps in reference not to Catherine's words so much as to what Gregory did not want to hear. For example, she wrote,

I have prayed, and shall pray, sweet and good Jesus that He free you from all servile fear, and that holy fear alone remain. May ardor of charity be in you, in such wise as shall prevent you from hearing the voice of incarnate demons, and heeding the counsel of perverse counselors, settled in self-love, who, as I understand, want to alarm you, so as to prevent your return, saying, “You will die.” Up, father, like a man! For I tell you that you have no need to fear.

In 1376, Catherine traveled to Avignon on behalf of the Republic of Florence to negotiate a peace with the Papal States. She failed at the immediate mission, but through a divine inspiration won a far more important victory: when they met, she told him that she knew of his private vow to return the papacy to Rome. He so decided, but wavered in face of strenuous French objections. When Catherine heard of the indecision, she wrote,

I beg of you, on behalf of Christ crucified, that you be not a timorous child but manly. Open your mouth and swallow down the bitter for the sweet.

In January of 1377, Gregory moved the papacy back to Rome. He soon after died, and his successor Urban VI refused to return to Avignon, where the French bishops held their own conclave and selected Clement VII, the first antipope of the "Western Schism" that would last almost seventy years, and that would lay the ground for the Martin Luther and the protestant schisms that followed.

Saint Joan settles it

By the time of Joan's Trial of Condemnation in 1431, the Western Schism had been settled, but not the doubts, questions, and seditions. The Schism was yet on the mind of the people, including the Count d'Armagnac, who turned to Joan for an answer. The Rouen court tried to use her views on it to discredit her or trip her up. Perhaps thinking that Joan would take the French view of things, she was asked,

What do you say of our Lord the Pope? and whom do you believe to be the true Pope?

to which Joan gave one or her sublime replies,

Are there two of them?

Having that one swatted down, the court continued,

Did you not receive a letter from the Count d’Armagnac, asking you which of the three Pontiffs he ought to obey?

The Count did in fact write to me on this subject. I replied, among other things, that when I should be at rest, in Paris or elsewhere, I would give him an answer. I was just at that moment mounting my horse when I sent this reply.

It's a classic legal maneuver they pulled there, to lead the witness into a statement, then throw out contrary evidence, in this case, her exchange with the Count. But there was no deceit in Joan, whose testimony was entirely consistent with the evidence.

What had happened is that in July 1429, Jean IV, the Count d'Armagnac, sent a letter to Joan asking her to clarify the ongoing situation. They got the copies from him. Nevertheless, we have to assume the sincerity of the original letter, as well as the Count's intent: he genuinely thought Joan would provide divine guidance on the situation. As read at the Rouen Trial two years later,

My very dear Lady—I humbly commend myself to you, and pray, for God’s sake, that, considering the divisions which are at this present time in the Holy Church Universal on the question of the Popes, for there are now three contending for the Papacy—one residing at Rome, calling himself Martin V, whom all Christian Kings obey; another, living at Paniscole, in the Kingdom of Valence, who calls himself Clement VII; the third, no one knows where he lives, unless it be the Cardinal Saint Etienne and some few people with him, but he calls himself Pope Benedict XIV. The first, who styles himself Pope Martin, was elected at Constance with the consent of all Christian nations; he who is called Clement was elected at Paniscole, after the death of Pope Benedict XIII, by three of his Cardinals; the third, who dubs himself Benedict XIV, was elected secretly at Paniscole, even by the Cardinal Saint Etienne. You will have the goodness to pray Our Saviour Jesus Christ that by His infinite Mercy He may by you declare to us which of the three named is Pope in truth, and whom it pleases Him that we should obey, now and henceforward, whether he who is called Martin, he who is called Clement, or he who is called Benedict; and in whom we are to believe, if secretly, or by any dissembling, or publicly; for we are all ready to do the will and pleasure of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yours in all things,

Count d’Armagnac.

That outlier, the third, Benedick XIV, was from a city within the Count's territory, so perhaps he was looking to put him down ("who dubs himself"). Or, he really wanted to know what the Maid thought on the matter. It's all very strange, as the Count wrote the letter from Sully in northeastern France, and he was now opposed to Charles VII. Joan was probably inundated with these types of inquiries, by letter or in person. She dictated a reply to the Count's messenger, which is rather clever and to which her testimony at the trial corresponded:

Jhesus † Maria

Count d’Armagnac, my very good and dear friend, I, Jeanne, the Maid, acquaint you that your message has come before me, which tells me that you have sent at once to know from me which of the three Popes, mentioned in your memorial, you should believe. This thing I cannot tell you truly at present, until I am at rest in Paris or elsewhere; for I am now too much hindered by affairs of war; but when you hear that I am in Paris, send a message to me and I will inform you in truth whom you should believe, and what I shall know by the counsel of my Righteous and Sovereign Lord, the King of all the World, and of what you should do to the extent of my power. I commend you to God. May God have you in His keeping! Written at Compiègne, August 22nd.

From the trial:

Is this really the reply that you made?

I deem that I might have made this answer in part, but not all.

Did you say that you might know, by the counsel of the King of Kings, what the Count should hold on this subject?”

I know nothing about it.

Had you any doubt about whom the Count should obey?

And another perfect response:

I did not know how to inform him on this question, as to whom he should obey, because the Count himself asked to know whom God wished him to obey. But for myself, I hold and believe that we should obey our Lord the Pope who is in Rome. I told the messenger of the Count some things which are not in this copy; and, if the messenger had not gone off immediately, he would have been thrown into the water—not by me, however. As to the Count’s enquiry, desiring to know whom God wished him to obey, I answered that I did not know; but I sent him messages on several things which have not been put in writing. As for me, I believe in our Lord the Pope who is at Rome.

The Western Schism was settled by granting to a General Council of bishops the power to remove a Pope from office, which was done with the acquiescence of the Roman Pope, Gregory XII, who after removal of the two other competing Popes, himself resigned to be replaced by a Pope selected by the General Council, Martin V. Part of the agreement was that a council be held every ten years. Joan's simple affirmation of the Pope in Rome must not have sat well with the clerics from the University of Paris who were all in on conciliar rule.

Joan's voices didn't advise her on the issue of the papacy, so, as she said, she spoke for herself. Still, her impact on the issue was significant. A first question is if her reference to "the lord pope who is in Rome" is to Martin V or to Rome as the seat of the Papacy. It appears to be the latter, which would suggest something more than just Joan's "good sense," as Michelet called it. Rome had become unstable and subject to mob rule and invasion. It lay at the border of the Kingdom of Naples, which supported the Avignon papacy. Martin V's primary job was to secure and rebuild Rome itself. While subject to the General Council, by restoring the Vatican and the city around it, Martin V laid the foundation for the modern Papacy, which quickly overshadowed conciliarism, the idea that the Pope be subject the rule of a general council of bishops, and which was formally condemned at the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517).

Historians correctly attribute the Western Schism to the origins of the Protestant Reformation itself. At the Council of Constance, which ended the schism, proto-Protestant Catholic priest John Wycliff was posthumously condemned for heresy and his body ordered exhumed and burned, and his follower Jan Hus was defrocked and handed over to hostile secular authority which burned him at the stake. Both men challenged the authority of the Pope -- which brings up a question as to which Pope. Wycliff was active before the Western Schism, but wrote his most radical tracts after it. Wycliff would have come of age with fresh memories of previous Schism, as well as with the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. Hus, who received Holy Orders in 1400, was a clear product of the Schism, which had divided the University of Prague where he studied and became master, dean and rector in 1409. Hus' most drastic attacks on the abuses of the papacy were directed at the antipope John XIII, who was using (abusing) the authority he (did not) had to collect tithes. In other words, both men were products of a fractured Church that Saints Catherine and Joan sought to repair.

Joan, of course, had no say in any of these affairs, nor was anything she said in the Trial circulated until the Rehabilitation. By coronating Charles VII at Rheims, she secured the necessary monarchical authority for a secure Catholic hold on France, be it Gallic in nature. For Saints Catherine of Sienna and Joan of Arc, the papacy must be seated in Rome. Both faced a fight of Christian against Christian. Saint Catherine explicitly sought Christian unity in ending papal schism, while Saint Joan sought it in ending the Hundred Years War. Joan lamented the loss of life of both sides, but a united France for Joan meant a united Church.

The "fairest deed" in Christendom

In her Letter to the English, Joan challenged the Duke of Bedford,

you may yet join with her, so that the French may do the fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom.

Two Beasts

An historian who takes Joan's Letter to the English seriously, Deborah Fraioli, views it in theological terms as Joan's statement of Divine purpose, and thus a direct challenge to the English claim on the French throne, which Henry V had asserted as Divinely ordered. Fraioli points out that theologians at Joan's time would be aware of the connection between Joan's Letter and a 1360 prophesy of Saint Bridget:

One of them, with its teeth on the other's back, is trying to find an entrance to its heart by biting it to death. The other has its mouth against the other's breast and wants to get at its heart from there.

These two beasts stand for the kingdoms of France and England. The one king is never sated, for he wages war out of greed. The other king is striving to rise above others. Hence, both are full of the fire of anger and greed. The roar of the beasts says this:

Accept gold and worldly riches, and do not spare the blood of Christians! .... One of them is trying to injure it on the back, for he wants his unjust claim to be called just and the just claim of the other to be declared unjust. The second one is trying to injure the other's heart at its breast, because he knows he has a just cause and is therefore inflicting a lot of damage without caring about others' loss and misery and without showing any divine charity in his justice.

The Saint's revelation continues that,

If these two kings of France and England wish to have peace, I shall give lasting peace to them. However, true peace cannot be had without loving truth and justice. Hence, given that one of the kings does have a just claim, I would have peace brought about by means of a marriage. In this way the kingdom can attain a legitimate successor.

With the final message,

However, when the people of the French realm adopt true humility, then the kingdom will attain a legitimate successor and a noble peace.

Saint Bridget spent her latter years in Rome during the Babylonian Captivity of Avignon, and while canonized in 1391 by Pope Boniface IX, the 1415 Council of Constance, which ended the Western Schism, asserted the authority to review and affirm it. As Fraioli points out, some of the theologians at Poitiers had participated at Constance, and so were very familiar with Saint Bridget's revelations and the proceedings on them. By contrast to the canonization of Saint Bridget, Joan hadn't done anything yet, so Fraioli sees the Poitiers Conclusions as a hedge in that the Doctors didn't say she was from God, only that they recommended she be given the chance to prove it at Orléans. Perhaps, but Bishop Jean Gerson recognized the crazy gamble it was: what if she failed?

Secular historians can argue it was all just Medieval religiosity, political arguments justified by supernatural claims. By that view, Bridget's revelations were observation not prophesy. Let's take the alternative path and see what we learn if Bridget was pointing to Joan or not, or what we can learn about Joan from them.

The English interpretation would hold that the marriage Bridget referred to was that of Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI, to Henry V, which sealed the Treaty of Troyes, yielding France to the English king as its "legitimate successor." Several problems emerge therefrom. First, the disinheritance of the Dauphin, Charles, in the Treaty of Troyes had no legal standing, relying not on questions of legitimacy but the accusation of lèse-majesté for the murder of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Article 29 of the Treaty of Troyes reads,

In consideration of the frightful and astounding crimes and misdeeds committed against the kingdom of France by Charles, the said Dauphin, it is agreed that we, our son Henry, and also our very dear son Philip, duke of Burgundy, will never treat for peace or amity with the said Charles.

As discussed before, around the time of the Treaty, rumors circulated that Charles was the illegitimate son of an affair between his mother, Isabeau of Bavaria, and her brother-in-law, Louis, Duke of Orléans. The accusation was not used to justify the disinheritance, most likely because it was not true, but also to protect Charles VI himself. Additionally, from the point of view of Saint Bridget's prophesy, Henry V's sudden death prior to that of Charles VI demonstrates that Henry V was not the "legitimate successor." Though he had assumed Regency and used the title of King of France, he was never formally crowned. Moreover, the crowning of his heir, Henry VI, failed to usher a "noble peace," especially when a settlement was offered by the French in the early stages of the 1435 Congress of Arras, and the English rejected it.

At Arras, the French offered to yield the Duchy of Normandy, only under vassalage, which was unacceptable to the English, who felt they still held the better hand. French Chronicler Perceval de Cagny wrote,

At the assembly held in the said place of Arras were first begun negotiations with the English, who acted rather arrogantly and demanded very large parts of the lordships of the kingdom, saying that it all ought belong to them, since they currently possessed the fairest part.

The French did not yield on the matter of legitimacy, but were willing to settle for a peace that did not include Paris. Where Charles would capitulate the capital, Joan's former comrades, such as La Hire, pushed back with raids in Normandy, forcing the English to fully abandon a solution at Arras, especially with the Lords in Parliament questioning the war's cost and wavering in the overall project of taking France. Interestingly, the English at this point were arguing for succession from Charles VI, not Edward III, whose claim was based upon his maternal descent from the French king, Philip IV. The Hundred Years War, then, had inverted to a distinct claim based upon the disinheritance of Charles VII and not lineage from Philip. As happened back in 1420 at Troyes, the entire issue was up to Charles: had he accepted his father's capitulation to Henry V, France was England's.

That he was not the legitimate heir was said to have tormented Charles. We cannot know it, but it is likely that any self-doubt was combined with guilt over the assassination of John the Fearless, as evidenced in his acceptance of a condemnation of the act in the Treaty of Arras. At the same time, Charles denied responsibility for it, an ambiguity that speaks as much for his leadership as for his patterns of equivocal assertions of sovereignty. The assassination was the Burgundian Duke's leverage over Charles, who promised to punish those responsible for the act, effectively delivering nothing for nothing. Similarly, Burgundy agreed to recognize Charles as King but exempt from homage to him. These concessions by Charles were large, especially when we realize that military victory was his for the taking, should he pursue it -- Arthur de Richemont was now Constable -- which Charles did not.

But so goes diplomacy, then as today, where rationalization makes right, be it saving face in defeat or in asserting victory. The partial admission satisfied the Burgundian Duke, whose intention was to add to his holdings regardless of the overseer, be it English or French. Despite the repeated broken promises of truces with Philip following Charles' coronation at Reims, Charles accepted the promise at Arras of what came down to Burgundian neutrality. What neither party counted on was the continued warfare of Joan's fellow captains, which startled the Burgundians. They carried on the reconquest of Normandy without Charles' consent, much less his enthusiasm. All along, the French King just wanted to settle things, at least as guided by his Chancellor, Regnault de Chartres, leaning on expedience and compromises as the best possibilities.

The Treaty of Arras and all of Charles equivocations therein came after Joan of Arc's intervention, so whatever challenged his confidence at Arras was far worse in 1429. At worst, he received Joan out of submission to the situation before Orléans. His victory came less in embracing her as in not halting her, which he fell upon later. At Chinon, upon Joan's arrival that March, Charles really had no choice other than that which the Maid proposed. Joan made the choice for him.

La Chronique de la Pucelle tells us that the secret of the Dauphin that Joan affirmed was that he had prayed that he was the legitimate king:

One day she wanted to speak alone to the king, and said to him, "Gentle Dauphin, why do you not believe me? I tell you that God pities you, your kingdom, and your people; because Saints Louis and Charlemagne are on their knees before him, praying for you; and I will tell you, if you please, something that will make you believe me." At the moment, he was pleased that few of his people were there, and in the presence of the Duke d'Alençon, of Sire Treves, of Christophe de Harcourt, and Master Gerard Machet, his confessor, and at Joan's request that they not reveal anything said.She told the king something of great consequence, that he had known, but in secret; he was amazed because no one could know of it except God and him.

English Possessions in France, 1280 (Wikicommons)

A France that may have survived an English capture of Orléans would have preserved less than even the remnants of a France under the Anglo-Norman Angevin Empire, only without the Isle de France and Burgundy, affirming in fact the mockery of Charles VII as "King of Bourges." Without the city of Orléans, not only would Charles not have been crowned at Reims, he would never have escaped charges of being the bastard child of the Duke of Orléans. As it was, his father disinherited him and married his sister to the English King to whom the realm was effectively transferred. Charles VII's delays and equivocations up to and following the coronation at Reims reveal those doubts which Joan pushed from him as she pushed him to and from Reims.

Where Bridget's revelations were aimed at Edward III, who started the Hundred Years War. Her warnings that only "true humility" will yield "a legitimate successor and a noble peace" certainly points to the situation of France as Joan entered Chinon in March of 1429. If "true humility" alone could reconcile French rule, Joan's timing was perfect, as was her approach to its salvation. We might point to Joan's admonitions to the soldiers to avoid blasphemy and to go to Confession as fulfilling Saint Bridget's prescriptions. More importantly, it is the Letter to the English that most clearly speaks to Bridget's revelation. In it, her assertion that God sent her means that not supporting her violates God's will, which she was sent to impose, for the "true humility" was expressed in France's need for and embrace of a country maid to save itself.

As such Joan's Letter to the English speaks to the French as much or more than to the English. What, then, do we make of the Letter's offer to Bedford to join in,

The fairest deed that has ever yet been done for Christendom

It has been suggested that she meant that England should join France in common war against heresy, be it in Bohemia, the Balkans, the Holy Lands, or elsewhere. Or, also proposed by historians, she was referring to the coronation of Charles VII and a peaceful union of England and France under him. She did phrase it conditionally, "so that the French may do," which points to the coronation she was explicitly seeking. There's much to be said for that interpretation, as the superlative "fairest deed," le plus bel fait, was an exhortation and not necessarily a comparative claim.

Yet, perhaps when we think about "the fairest deed" we're overly focused on the scope of such deed, as opposed to its import. If, as Christine de Pisan thought, perhaps taken from the Letter to the English, that Joan would recapture Jerusalem, or, as Joan herself at one point thought (not yet), she would reform the Bohemian heretics, the "fairest deed" was never "done." Let's step back from the superlative, "fairest," and think instead of larger consequence, and we might see another outcome Joan's prophesy was pointing to. To explore it, we need to look at the state of Christendom at the time.

Pragmatically speaking

Through the Hundred Years War, the English remained loyal to the Roman as against the French-backed Avignon Popes, a loyalty carried through the disastrous and schismatic 1438 offshoot of the Council of Basel that elected the antipope Felix V. After the collapse of the Avignon papacy, French allegiance to Rome was restored, but clerical loyalty to papal authority, as seen in the conciliar movement, remained weak while ambitions to supersede it were strong.

The Council of Basel was first convened in 1431 amidst the two-fold crises of the Hundred Years War and the Hussite rebellion in Bohemia. At the Council, the Burgundian-controlled University of Paris pushed its agenda of conciliarism, for which, ironically, in light of Joan's impact upon the movement, its greatest French promoter had been Joan's Armagnac apologist, Bishop Jean Gerson. Inversely, and equally ironic, English loyalty to the papacy, which was as much anti-France as it was pro-Rome, waned as the University of Paris, inherited by the English from the Burgundian alliance, enthusiastically supported the Council. The English approach was cautious, and let the French clerics from Paris and Rouen do the speaking, which for the English was primarily papal conciliation while maintaining English autonomy. About fifteen of the Trial of Rehabilitation clerics from Rouen were sent to Basel as Anglo-Burgundian representatives. Armagnac France under Charles VII, meanwhile, cooled its own enthusiasm for conciliarism in order to hedge its relationships with both the Council of Basel and the new Pope, Eugene IV. The French made the presence at Basel only after the reassuming Paris.

Towards the end of the the Trial of Condemnation, Joan made direct appeals for her case to be brought to the Pope, which Cauchon and the judges ignored, demanding instead that she submit to the Church Militant, meaning his authority and not that of Rome. Upon its discovery of the Trial transcript in 1450, the French inquisitors at the Trial of Rehabilitation were appalled that Joan was denied her papal appeals. It wasn't as simple as Saint Paul exercising his right of Roman citizenship to be brought to Caesar, but it was an effective right in canonical law at the time, and one of great significance to Church. For example, at the Compromise of Avranches in 1172, the English king Henry II agreed to papal appeals as part of his reconciliation with Rome over Saint Thomas Becket's murder, a large concession. Such requests, though, ever troubled secular authorities, as they inherently yielded to the higher power at the See. And, as Joan was told, Rome was too far away.

With the French recapture of Paris in 1436, Charles VII re-inherited the conciliar movement through the University. Charles was enthusiastic for limits on Papal authority, though more for its advantages to the Crown than for the French Church. His moment came in 1437 when opportune events converged. First, with the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg ailing and on his death bed, the conciliar movement lost its most important secular backer. Pope Eugene IV took advantage of his absence to reassert papal authority by ordering the Council to move to Ferrara. It opened a month after Sigismund died, in January of 1438. Most importantly for Charles VII, some of the Council of Basel representatives refused the move and declared Eugene a heretic, which served only to highlight the dangers of conciliarism. Charles leveraged the situation for his own assertion over conciliar proponents in France, as well as over Eugene IV, both of whom were weakened politically by events at Basel.

In July of 1438, Charles issued the Pragmatique Sanction de Bourges, a secular statement of certain French autonomy from the papacy. By "pragmatic," the order asserted itself as a matter of state; the word, "sanction" means "law" or "decree"; By "Bourges," he meant his administrative seat of Armagnac France, and thereby not Paris. The Sanction asserted French legal and fiscal independence from Rome, including, for our purposes here, a demand for supreme councils every ten years and abolishment of appeals in ecclesiastical courts to the papal curia, including for cases of excommunication. The call for decennial councils was symbolic, as Eugene IV's move of the Council of Basel to Ferrara and then to Florence affirmed papal control over them.

The Pragmatic Sanction co-opted the conciliarist movement without directly transferring significant powers from the Church to the Crown. Through it, Charles deftly gave the University of Paris what it wanted while replacing direct papal authority with his own, if indirectly. With powers of ecclesiastical appointment removed from Rome to the French Church, Charles increased his own involvement in and leverage over those appointments. Additionally, by banning papal "annates," or annual payments to Rome of a newly appointed Bishop or Abbot's first year's income, Charles ensured that revenue would remain in France, while at the same time asserting a key conciliarist priority.

For the English, not much changed from the Councils of Basel and Florence, as England already limited papal appeals and exercised significant control over clerical appointments. For the French, with Sigismund gone and Eugene IV's dismissal of the Council of Basel, the Pragmatic Sanction's call for decennial councils was rendered symbolic. There were no more councils, and there were no more schismatic anti-Popes. What there was were a series of Popes who contested the various Papal lands and the Holy Roman Empire -- and the largest schism since the Great Schism of 1054 between the Eastern and Western Churches.

Otherwise, conciliarism died to Basel's extension into a rump session upon Eugene's move to Ferrara. There, Eugene not only exercised papal authority in the move itself, but enlarged its scope through negotiations for reproachment with the Eastern churches. Ironically, as the Council of Florence turned its focus upon reconciliation with the Eastern churches, which treated upon important theological discussions, especially regarding Byzantine agreement to the Filoque in the Creed and the Byzantine use of leavened versus unleavened bread, a far larger schism was just beginning.

Joan of Arc's role in all this is both direct and indirect. History is usually seen as cause and effect, but its larger meanings can be better understood through contingency. Historical actors inherit conditions not of their making, but create new conditions based on the choices they make. As regards French Catholicism, not only was it reconstructed upon the reunification of France, its nature was reshaped according to Joan's orthodoxy. Joan both set the foundation for Charles VII's Gallican project and the unintended collapse of French conciliarism that it caused.

The "Letter to the Hussites"

On March 23, 1430, exactly two months before her capture, Joan sent the Letter to the Hussites:

Jhesus † Maria

For a long time now, common knowledge has made it clear to me, Joan the Maiden, that from true Christians you have become heretics and practically on a level with the Saracens. You have eliminated the valid faith and worship, and have taken up a disgraceful and unlawful superstition; and while sustaining and promoting it there is not a single disgrace nor act of barbarism which you would not dare. You corrupt the sacraments of the Church, you mutilate the articles of the Faith, you destroy churches, you break and burn statues which were created as memorials, you massacre Christians unless they adopt your beliefs. What is this fury of yours, or what folly and madness are driving you? You persecute and plan to overthrow and destroy this Faith which God Almighty, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have raised, founded, exalted, and enlightened a thousand ways through a thousand miracles. You yourselves are blind, but not because you're among those who lack eyes or the ability to see. Do you really believe that you will escape unpunished, or are you unaware that the reason God does not hinder your unlawful efforts and permits you to remain in darkness and error, is so that the more you indulge yourselves in sin and sacrileges, the more He is preparing greater suffering and punishments for you.

For my part, to tell you frankly, if I wasn't busy with the English wars, I would have come to see you long before now; but if I don't find out that you have reformed yourselves I might leave the English behind and go against you, so that by the sword - if I can't do it any other way - I will eliminate your false and vile superstition and relieve you of either your heresy or your life. But if you would prefer to return to the Catholic faith and the original light, then send me your ambassadors and I will tell them what you need to do; if not however, and if you stubbornly wish to resist the spur, keep in mind what damages and crimes you have committed and await me, who will mete out suitable repayment with the strongest of forces both human and Divine.

Given at Sully on the 23rd of March, to the heretics of Bohemia.

Pasquerel [notary]

Historians ignore or dismiss the Letter, as it it appears in a contemporaneous German chronicle that earlier editions did not include, and its placement in the chronicle appears out of context, since it was written about and during the Council of Constance, which took place some fifteen years before Joan's Letter. The Council, though, excommunicated Hus, so its inclusion in that context makes sense. Also, the proceedings of the Council of Constance were not formalized as a Bull and were not published until the 1450s, as ordered by the Council of Basel, which would explain later publications of the earlier chronicle and its inclusion of a subsequent event, such as that of Joan of Arc. Other arguments against the Letter's authenticity is it that it is the only letter by Joan that appears in Latin and that the verbiage contains clerical expressions.

Anatole France treats the Letter as authentic but says that Joan's confessor and the scribe, Jean Pasquerel, embellished it with hyperbole. Pernoud thinks it was part of a larger campaign by Charles VII to repair relations with the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, who was unhappy with the English for diverting promised troops to France. Quicherat accepts its authenticity, and points to a 1601 work by a Dominican priest, Jean Nider, that mentions this and other "letters" Joan had sent:

At last, Joan’s presumption went so far that — before France had even been fully secured — she began to threaten the Bohemians, where there was then a multitude of heretics, through letters.

Nider is an interesting historical character who earned modern academic attention for his 1437 comment that, "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks of evil things," Known in his day as a Church reformer, he was sent to reconcile the the Hussites with the Church. Joan's letter must have been most alarming to him. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Letter to the Hussites survived in a German and not French source. It is equally unsurprising that the Letter, sent to the Germany, was composed in Latin, the universal language; or, if it was composed in French that a German chronicler would translate it into Latin.

If the Letter was not of Joan's composition, it accurately reflects her beliefs. Only with great difficulty can one square this letter with anything but a zealous, orthodox Catholic adherent and warrior who understood heresy as her enemy. A more careful look at the Letter reveals a clear view of Joan's informed and faithful understanding of her divine mission as fundamentally Catholic, and more so when we bring it into the context of Joan's invitation to Bedford to join her and France in common cause for "Christendom" and, in another letter to the Duke of Burgundy to stop warring against God in an unjust war against the "holy kingdom of France."

Followers of the antipapal heretic Jan Hus, the Hussites, are considered a proto-Protestant movement, and, along with John Wycliffe, who inspired Hus, a contingent precursor to the full-blown Protestantism of Luther, Calvin, Cromwell, Knox, and others. As with much of Protestantism itself, the movement was both religious and political -- as was Holy Roman Emperor's concern to squash it. When Hus was burned in 1415, his followers responded with attacks upon Catholic priests and adherents. A fuller rebellion broke out upon the death of the King of Bohemia, Wenceslaus IV, in 1419, which left the region to his half-brother, Sigismund, the King of Hungry, Germany, and "the Romans," thus in line for the vacant office of Holy Roman Emperor.

Bohemia within the Holy Roman Empire, 1618 (Wikicommons). Here for an animated map of the Holy Roman Empire over time.

Their father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Germany, installed Wenceslaus as King of the Romans, and following Charles' death he assumed the office but not the title of Holy Roman Emperor, settling back into his troublesome power base in Bohemia, where his father had installed him when he was a child. Wenceslaus and Sigismund, along with another German monarch, Rupert III -- who had seized Wenceslaus' title "King of the Romans" and which Sigismund took in 1410 -- were key figures in the papal schisms of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Hungarian and Polish politics were also mixed in, as Sigismund had married into the Hungarian crown, and the Polish theologian, Paweł Włodkowic, promoted conciliarism, playing a large role at the 1414-1418 Council of Constance.

Isolated in Bohemia, with Hus' execution Wenceslaus protected the Hussites, whereas Sigismund's job was to protect the Holy Roman Empire. A full rebellion exploded across Bohemia when Wenceslaus died, although the agitation was well on the way even beforehand. The moment was revolutionary, explosive, and provocative of reaction. Starting with the famous "defenestration of Prague," a couple weeks before Wenceslaus' death, when a Hussite mob stormed the city hall of Prague and tossed several members of the council out the window. The radical Hussites aimed to re-write Christianity without Catholic priests. As ever, the movement was pushed by the extremes, whereas most people either sympathized generally or aligned to a few key issues. Such it was, as, ultimately, the Hussite rebellion would split between the hard radicals and the moderates who -- shocking to the modern reader, but not to the day -- just wanted to receive Holy Communion with the Cup as well as in the form of the Bread.

In the early 1420s in its fullest enthusiasm, the Hussite movement considered itself a a "New Jerusalem," founding the city of Tábor, after the mountain it represented to them as the place of encampment of the Israelite army under Barak. As happens in such moments of intense zeal and rebellion against order, the wackjobs got out of hand, in this case the "Edenistic" or "Adamite" practices of nude worship and rejection of marriage. The Adamites were squashed by the genius Hussite military leader, Žižka, a minor noble and outlaw who was said to have had them burned alive in 1421. The sect was dispersed, mixing into other places with its anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism, especially as regards the Eucharist. Fanaticism yielded to realities of military command and social order, and in 1421 in Prague the main instigator of the rebellion, Jan Želivský, was put to death by city leaders who issued a set of demands called the "Four Articles" calling to strip priests of worldly goods, called "apostolic simplicity," and for reception by the people, children included, of consecrated wine at the Eucharist.

The Taborites under Žižka and associated groups, including the Orebites, whose name came from a mountain they renamed Mount Horeb, had been on the offensive, including expeditions into neighboring countries. These groups, which we can call collectively the Taborites, were zealously anti-Catholic and apocalyptic. The groups were alternatively focused on military efforts or social reorganization on communal ideals at Tabor. Into the 1420s, various Crusades called by Martin V and other military expeditions by Sigismund were defeated, even after Žižka's 1424 death. Žižka was a brilliant military commander most famous for his use of farm wagons to defend against armored calvary, as well as employment of small firearms for easy deployment by untrained troops. Like Joan of Arc, Žižka saw that gunpowder changed everything.

By March of 1429, when Joan wrote her Letter to the English, the Hussite movement controlled southern Bohemia, though split between radicals and moderates. The militaristic, millennialist Taborites refused to negotiate with Sigismund, and ran excursions into Hungary, Germany and Poland. At Prague, the moderate element had become known as the Utraquists, or Calixtists, both names in reference to "communion under both kinds" of the Eucharistic species. As followers of Hus, both elements were heretical, although the Ultraquists were open to reconciliation with the Church under their own terms of the "Four Articles."

By the time of Joan's entry to Chinon, events in Bohemia had stabilized following a fourth and failed crusade against the Hussites, this time organized under the English Cardinal, Henry Beaufort. Though the Taborites continued raids upon nearby regions in what they called "beautiful rides," nothing much from Bohemia would have impacted anything in France or garnered new attention there. Certainly, however, especially along the German borderlands of France where Joan was from, the Hussite reputation was yet infused by the early, radicalized days of the Adamites and other extremists. When Joan wrote her Letter to the Hussites at the end of March,1430, the moderate Hussites were conducting hesitant negotiations with Sigismund and papal envoys, though things would break down again into 1431, whereupon the Pope called for another Crusade. Sigusmund's German army was again humiliated in August of 1431. That fall, the Council of Basel commenced, which Sigusmund used to reopen peace negotiations with the Utraquists, which was completed in January of 1433 by agreeing to agree upon each side's own interpretation of the "Four Articles." Having leveraged the situation to finally get the formal crown of Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund put together the "Bohemiam League" made up of an alliance of Catholic and Hussite Bohemian lords who all pledged allegiance to Sigismund as King of Bohemia. In 1434, the league destroyed the Taborite and Sirotci armies, ending the Hussite Wars under the theory of Bohemi Bohemis superandi sunt, or, "Only Bohemians can defeat Bohemians."

That, as has been suggested, Joan was referring to the Hussites when she wrote to Bedford to make common cause for Christianity makes no sense, as the situation in Bohemia was not relevant at that point. Even if it were, had the Duke obeyed Joan's command to surrender and join France, putting down the Hussite rebellion may well have been a fair deed, though not the "fairest," in Christianity, at least not from the perspective of Sigismund who would have had a new problem on his hands. Didn't happen. And that's not what Joan was talking about.

It is possible that, as Pernoud points out, a year later when she wrote the Letter to the Hussites, their rebellion posed a renewed threat, prompting Sigismund's frustration at lack of support from the English, whose army was wrapped up in unexpected complications in France. Still, it is doubtful that Joan wrote the letter under orders of Charles VII, though we can see both their interests aligning in the sending of the letter. (It also shows that Joan's fame had spread across Europe.) There's more to it.

We see in it that Joan's fervor for Catholic fidelity had only grown since Orléans and Rouen. Shortly after sending the Letter, Joan prayed over an unbaptized dead infant, whose revival after three days was long enough to be baptized. To those there it was a miracle by Joan. The story spread wide enough that the Rouen court questioned her on it, though, and notably, no direct mention of it was made in the Seventy Articles. Joan saw it as simple piety, no a miracle:

How old was the child you visited at Lagny?

The child was three days old. It was brought before the image of Our Lady. They told me that the young girls of the village were before this image, and that I might wish to go also and pray God and Our Lady to give life to this infant. I went and prayed with them. At last, life returned to the child, who yawned three times, and was then baptized; soon after, it died, and was buried in consecrated ground. It was three days, they said, since life had departed from the child; it was as black as my coat; when it yawned, the colour began to return to it. I was with the other young girls, praying and kneeling before Our Lady.

Did they not say in the village that it was done through you, and at your prayer?

I did not enquire about it.

Whatever the case, the Holy Spirit was certainly present, and felt, if not by Joan, by her confessor Pasquerel, who recalled in his testimony to the Rehabilitation Trial:

I often heard her say of her work that it was her mission; and when people said to her: "Never have such things been seen as these deeds of yours. In no book can one read of such things," she answered: "My Lord has a book in which no Clerk has ever read, how perfect soever he may be in clerkship."

One thing both of Joan's Letters have in common is her itching need to get things moving. She had been delayed a month during the Examinations at Poitiers, and a year later, March of 1430, she was stuck in northern France without the support of her King. The Hussite letter came under vastly different circumstances for Joan.

By then, her triumphs at Orléans and Reims had been deflected by the Court under de Chartres and La Trémoille, who wanted to negotiate pieces of the kingdom Joan had delivered to them by arms the year before. Instead of pushing the English out of France, Joan was stuck putting out fires, this time at Lagny-sur-Marn, where a Burgundian warlord had been abusing the loyalist inhabitants. Around that time, Charles and his Court finally realized, or admitted, the duplicity of the Duke of Burgundy and his truce agreements, which he used to reinforce his positions in northern France, including Lagny and around Compègne, where Joan would be captured. Joan, meanwhile, was acting on her own, without French banners, rendering her a captain and not a general. It was during this ambivalent lull that she sent the Letter to the Hussites.

Both Letters entreat Christian union, implied as Catholic for the English and explicitly Catholic to the Hussites. Both letters threaten God's retribution through the force of arms. Both letters assert her military command. The difference between them is that she was unable to act upon the Letter to the Hussites. Even so, just as her promises in the Letter to the English were fulfilled after her death, so, too, was her admonition to the Hussites. Joan had nothing to do with the Hussite rebellion and its ultimate suppression -- or did she?

In her Letter, Joan accuses the Hussites of,

You have eliminated the valid faith and worship, and have taken up a disgraceful and unlawful superstition; and while sustaining and promoting it there is not a single disgrace nor act of barbarism which you would not dare. You corrupt the sacraments of the Church, you mutilate the articles of the Faith, you destroy churches, you break and burn statues which were created as memorials, you massacre Christians unless they adopt your beliefs.

Each accusation holds across the entire Hussite movement, although with distinctions between its sects. Hussite attacks on churches and the Church and its members was real -- and ongoing during Joan's time, especially by Sirotci raiders who carried out with enthusiasm the Fourth Article's demand to "destroy" all things "contrary to God's law." At first, that meant Catholic priests and nobles, including in Prague, but it came to be anyone who disagreed with Hussite rule. Of course the Catholic Church itself claimed this power, and Joan was put to death under it -- corruptly, yes, but through established rules (which drove the English crazy). But that's not the point.

Taborite rejection of Transubstantiation was probably the most severe break from orthodoxy, as the implications are enormous. However, even the Utraquist demand for "two kinds," i.e. both "species" of the bread and the wine is deeply challenging to Church order. The English Wycliffe started the complaint, claiming that belief and practices regarding the doctrine of Transubstantiation was an abusive exercise of clerical privilege. His idea that, "The bread is an effectual sign... not the material body of Christ" means that grace is not conferred through actual communion with the Eucharist but by faith in its symbolism. That is, if the wine spills, it's just wine. If you wonder why bother, then why would his followers bother with the Eucharist at all, Wycliffe's answer would be because Christ instituted the practice, so everyone, laity included, should receive "both kinds," which was the Hussite demand. Ironically, the Utraquists, who insisted on the Cup, maintained belief in Transubstantiation, which requires priestly consecration of the bread and wine. Even more ironically, the Taborites rejected Transubstantiation yet believed in the need to receive "both kinds" of the Eucharist, even though it was, to them, just bread and wine.

And, irony of ironies, the entire reason the Cup was generally reserved for clerical use only was precisely to uphold Transubstantiation, as spilt wine is literally spilt blood of Christ. The Church held, as Aquinas taught, that Christ is fully present in either species, so Holy Communion in the one or the other is complete Holy Communion with Christ. Wycliff's arguments were at their essence anti-clerical, but his followers in Bohemia took him literally though not completely. It was all a theological mess compounded by Bohemian power politics that had bedeviled Wenceslaus and Sigismund.

Despite Anatole France's underestimation of Joan's theological knowledge, when she -- or Pasquerel -- wrote,

You have eliminated the valid faith and worship

it was directed at the Taborite denial of Transubstantiation, and by

articles of the Faith

she referred not just to the Creed, but to obedience to the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Holy Orders, and also regarding Adamite heresy over the sacrament of marriage.

Joan had a lot to say to the Bohemians. That they heard her is unlikely. But someone in Germany did, thus the record of both it and the contemporaneous mention of it in a chronicle. That some historians would dismiss the letter entirely ignores its consistency with Joan's rhetoric and concerns, which were all about Catholic orthodoxy. Her eagerness to go on crusades is over-estimated, as the crusade is not the point: it is enforcement of orthodoxy that mattered to her.

All these challenges to Catholicism were, in part, of the papacy's own making. The mixing, layering and crossing with secular authority and politics weakened the papacy, opening it to conciliarism and other political or theological assertions over the Roman See. Discontents, like Wycliff, usually stifled under consensus orthodoxy, entered through the cracks, leveraging and widening them past heterodoxy to full heresy and, with enough velocity, outright schism. Wycliff and Hus did not arise in a vacuum. But neither did they arise from Church or clerical abuse. Other forces were at work.

Saving Catholicism

Just as inventions tend to appear in different places at the same time, heretical movements are as largely about their leaders as the moment in which they arise. Going back to the notion of historical contingency, the conditions were perfect for rebellion against orthodoxy and the political order in Germany. Wycliff's type of intransigence and rejection of authority would have no traction at another time, but for the 1370s it was rewarded in an atmosphere of Church schism, political volatility, and intellectual ferment, all of which was, especially under the backdrop of the plague.

Hus arose in a Bohemia ruled by the drunken Wenceslaus IV, whose brother at one point had him usurped and kidnapped for two years, and otherwise isolated him in Bohemia over his prior status as King of the Romans. All the German infighting ignited Bohemian, especially ethnic Czech, resentment against German rule, which wavered under Wenceslaus. A dominant issue was the influence of German clergy over the Bohemian church, especially at Prague. Along with supporting Pope Alexander V at the 1409 Council of Pisa, Wenceslaus reorganized the University of Prague for Bohemian control, resulting in over 1,000 German clerics to leaving to start their own university at University of Leipzig.

Through support of Bohemian control of the University of Prague, Wenceslaus protected Hus, if indirectly, although the leadership change at the University effectively endorsed Hus, who was immediately elected Rector. No mistake there. A year later, Pope Alexander ordered the burning of Wycliff's works and banned preaching his ideas. His successor Pope, John XXIII issued a bull excommunicating Hus and banning his preaching. Hus, of course, continued preaching, provoking further Bohemian resentment at Rome. Meanwhile, the ongoing Western Schism and its various alignments of three Papal claimants and their backers led to a war between Antipope John XIII and the King of Naples, who backed Gregory XII. In debt and at war with Naples, John XXIII went looking for funds across loyal lands, likely including simony, indulgences and other levies, which fueled more and more violent Bohemian protests. In the whirl of Popes, these charges were thrown around variously. True or not, back in Prague Hus profited in popularity from the external effects of Papal geopolitics in Bohemia. But the Council of Constance, supported by -- yes, Sigismund, who had designs on the Italy, controlling the Papacy and the official title of Holy Roman Emperor, put him to death at the stake. Hus was a minor character in all this, but hugely important locally and across time.

Wycliffe, too, had secular protection, in his case from John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster and political schemer. Gaunt intervened in Wycliffe's heresy trial, as Gaunt wanted to use Wycliff for leverage for taxing the Church in order to pay for English adventures in France. He came in to the court at Saint Paul's Cathedral with Wycliffe, and by disrupting the proceeding left Wycliffe uncharged. What's interesting here is that it was Gaunt interfering in an ecclesiastic trial, and not the Church interfering in a state process. The same dynamic ran Joan's Trial at Rouen, although the Church authority was aligned the state. The common assumption is that the Church abused its power -- no doubt. One cannot defend Papal intrigue, but neither can one isolate it as the cause of the intrigue. It was a two-way street, but one that, given the ultimate distribution of powers we see, was to the benefit of the secular rulers as much as to the papacy.

If so, then Joan's defense of Catholic orthodoxy is fully justified to the extent that Papal authority is not compromised by secular interests. The mendicant Waldensians and Franciscans preached the same clerical simplicity as these later self-styled reformers, yet the movements started by Waldo and Saint Francis entirely diverged. Each all preached clerical simplicity, asceticism and Church reform, with Waldo, Wycliff and Hus radicalized into anticlericalism. As did Hus, Waldo presented his argument to a Council just after the conclusion of a papal schism, and, like Hus, Waldo refused to submit to the Council's ruling banning his preaching.

While absent schism, Martin Luther, too, took advantage of a weak papacy to exert his independence, especially in exploiting the Holy Roman Empire's deteriorating hold upon Germany, including in Saxony, which lay just north of Bohemia. The new of Emperor Charles V, from Spain and nineteen years of age on taking the title in 1519, inherited German autonomy as part of his election as Emperor following Maximilian I, whose relations with German princes was severely weakened. While Pope Leo X tried to enforce Luther's excommunication, the Prince of Saxony, who protected Luther, had nothing to lose from Rome or Charles V, who was embroiled in various fights with the Ottomans and France. The Medici Pope Leo X was a skilled diplomat and magnificent promoter of the arts, which with his predecsssor's war debts led to serious revenue shortfalls.

Just as illuminating are the Church reformers who did not split from the Church, such as Saint Francis. Another example from the time is Luther's contemporary, Erasmus, who lived and worked mostly under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Empire, even to work directly for the Emperor as tutor for his brother, or for the orthodox kings of France and England. Obviously, heretical movements are not defined by the authorities around them, but their reach and impact most certainly are. In the case of the Hussites, the movement flourished during moments of a weakened Papacy and Holy Roman Empire, but once both were restored, the moderate elements reconciled with orthodoxy. Following that reconciliation, Bohemia remained mostly Catholic.

The "fairest deed" in Christendom

In both Letters to the English and to the Hussites, for Joan the battlefield was justified by the mission of Christian unity, and by that she meant orthodox Roman Catholic unity. Over time, Catholicism prevailed in France and Bohemia, in both cases over dissent and schism, and through force and national decree. Bohemian Catholicism was reimposed during the Thirty Years War, while French Catholicism morphed into its Gallican forms which emphasized Royal over Papal prerogatives. However, despite Charles VII's Pragmatic Sanction or Louis XIV's "Declaration of the Clergy of France" that further asserted Royal authority over the Church, French Catholicism remained intact. Through those and other contentious episodes, such as the spread of Huguenot Calvinism and its Catholic cousin, Jansenism, and, of course, the Enlightenment and its offspring, the French Revolution, through to her Beatification in 1920 Joan of Arc would have recognized a fundamental Catholicity at any Mass in France, and for the most part, even today.

Shortly after the French King Francis I and Pope Leo X negotiated an end to the Pragmatic Sanction, Leo excommunicated Luther, who had been agitating against Leo's indulgence to raise funds for the completion of Saint Peter's Basilica. Luther had turned discontent with the indulgences into an anti-clerical revolt. The moment was precarious for the Church, as Luther's movement turned into a political rebellion that would soon enough engulf England, and even France, which from 1562 to 1598 fell into a religious civil war that invited interventions by Spain, England, and the Netherlands.

After the "War of the Thee Henrys" was ended by the 1589 assassination of the last Valois and Catholic king, Henry III, the protestant King Henry of Navarre became Henry IV of France. These two "Henrys" had aligned to defeat a third "Henry," the Duke of Guise and his Sainte Ligue, or "Holy League," that aimed to eradicate Protestantism in France, and that was backed by Spain. The Duke of Guise, whose father was a leading figure in the first stages of the War of Religion, had formed the Ligue following Henry III's 1576 Edict of Beaulieu that recognized Huguenot worship and made certain reparations for the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre that had followed Catholic outrage at the marriage of the king's Catholic daughter to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, a marriage that was supposed to reconcile the warring religious factions.

The marriage was not to impact the Royal line, but at the 1584 death of the remaining brother of the childless Henry III, Henry of Navarre became Henry III's closest heir -- distant cousins with a common descent from the Capetian King Louis IX, as in "Saint Louis." Calvinists like Navarre had to walk carefully around that "Saint" part, as Calvin called their images and relics "idols." However, for legitimacy Navarre needed Saint Louis and his Catholic traditions, as did Henrys V and VI of England in their French royal ambitions, the sacramental crowning at Reims. But for the Huguenot Navarre, it was especially tricky, and crucial. The claim of divine rule without Catholic legitimacy carries a magnitude of which we today might not appreciate, though we might through the martyrdoms of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More who opposed Henry VIII's split from Rome.

To get a sense for the religious divide, a look at the rhetoric of the French "Jean Calvin," to whom the Huguenots adhered, speaks it clearly:

If the papists have any shame, let them no longer use this subterfuge, that images are the books of the illiterate; which is so clearly refuted by numerous testimonies from Scripture. Yet, though I should concede this point to them, it would avail them but little in defence of their idols. What monsters they obtrude in the place of Deity is well known. But what they call the pictures or statues of their saints — what are they but examples of the most abandoned luxury and obscenity? which if any one were desirous of imitating, he would deserve corporal punishment. Even prostitutes in brothels are to be seen in more chaste and modest attire, than those images in their temples, which they wish to be accounted images of virgins.

Outraged by the possibility of a protestant, Calvinist king, the Sainte Ligue mobilized to exclude Henry of Navarre from the royal lineage, and forced Henry III to replace the Edict of Beaulieu with the 1585 Edict of Nemours which outlawed Protestantism, thus removing Henry of Navarre as heir. Under the theory of keeping one's enemies close, Henry declared himself head of the Ligue, but only succeeded in furthering his break with Henry of Navarre while gaining no control of the ascendent House of Guise.

Areas controlled by Catholic (lighter shades) and Huguenot nobility (darker shades). (Wikipedia)

The War of the Henrys now commenced, with Henry of Navarre, backed by England, securing a crucial victory in the south of France, which we may recall, was long held by the English. Though the other two Henrys were still aligned, Henry the King and Henry the Duke of Guise, the Duke leveraged a 1588 victory over a Protestant German and Swiss army, and, against an interdict against it, entered Paris to great popular celebration. Worried and threatened by an uprising Guise coordinated, called, the "Day of Barricades," Henry III fled the city. Under the pretense of a consultation, the King invited the Duke to his palace at Blois, where the king's guards murdered the Duke. It is possible that Guise, himself, went there to murder Henry but the King struck first.

News of the assassination shook Paris, so King Henry realigned himself with the other Henry, of Navarre. The two were attempting to take Paris in 1589 when a Dominican friar secured a private meeting with Henry III and stabbed him. The Pope Sixtus V, who had vacillated in his support for Henry III according to Henry's maneuvering around the religious divisions, lauded the act as "tyrannicide." There was talk, even, of canonizing the friar. Now, with the other two Henrys gone, Henry of Navarre declared himself king. However, the former royalist supporters Henry III turned on Henry of Navarre, and Sixtus excommunicated him. While the renewed royalist alignment with the Sainte Ligue proved unable agree upon a suitable successor, and unable to take Paris, Henry of Navarre renounced his Protestantism under the famous, but apocryphal announcement that,

Paris is well worth a Mass.

Apocryphal or not, that was the effect. The now Catholic Henry IV became the first Bourbon king of France. The next year the Pope lifted the excommunication, and the Sainte Ligue, no longer facing Huguenot threats, faded, morphing into a dynastic fight over the Duchy of Brittany, which Henry IV assumed in 1598 through battle and an arranged marriage. That same year he issued the Edict of Nantes affording religious tolerance to the Huguenots, a nod to his former religion. The moral of the story is that the Sainte Ligue won the fight over the official religion of France, and more fully in 1685 when Henry IV's grandson, Louis XIV, outlawed Protestantism in the Edict of Fontainebleau.

Over time, France would continue its ambiguous and disjointed mission as the "Eldest Daughter of the Church." The French Revolution banned Catholicism, murdered clergy and the faithful, and ransacked churches, but even the most radical secularists could not stifle the nation's faith. Following Napoleon's reproachment with the Vatican -- and the reauthorization of the annual celebrations of Saint Joan at Orléans -- 19th century France was as spiritually active as the 14th and 15th centuries, particularly with Saints John Vianney, Thérèse of Lisieux, Catherine Labouré, Bernadette Soubirous, Eugène de Mazenod. Saint Joan of Arc would have recognized the time period, especially the grandeur of mid-Century France, as well as the duress of the nation in the 1877 Prussian invasion and subsequent German invasions of the Twentieth Century.

Where Joan called for Catholic unity under the French king, in her Letter to the Hussites, she offered no particular political mandate, just Catholic conformity:

But if you would prefer to return to the Catholic faith and the original light, then send me your ambassadors and I will tell them what you need to do; if not however, and if you stubbornly wish to resist the spur. Keep in mind what damages and crimes you have committed and await me, who will mete out suitable repayment with the strongest of forces both human and Divine.

The experience of Europe demonstrated that political coherence alone could contain divisions and schisms, something that Erasmus observed as Lutheranism broke out in 1519. Erasmus wrote to Leo X,

In this matter, indeed, great praise is due to the best of monarchs, who by their authority have calmed this emerging discord: such as Henry VIII of that name among the English, and Francis I among the French. In Germany, because that region is divided among many princes, the same cannot be done; among us, since we have only recently begun to have a prince — and indeed we have one who is both excellent and great, though distant by a vast interval — certain people still cause turmoil with impunity.

Die Gartenlaube (1883) b 291 See Monument à Jeanne d'Arc sur le pont d'Orléans

We may remember that on the first day of fighting at Orléans, as the French seized a fort by the church at Saint Loupe, English priests surrendered to her. Joan's page, Louis de Contes, recalled,

I heard it said that the English ecclesiastics had taken their ornaments, and had thus come before her; that Jeanne had received them without allowing any harm to be done them, and had had them conducted to her lodging; but that the other English had been killed by the people of Orleans.

There was no such mutual respect in the Wars of Religion. When Huguenot rebels in 1562 took over Orléans, where John Calvin had studied law, the "stripping of the altars" that followed all Protestant seizure of churches proceeded as usual, with relics, statues, and shrines destroyed -- including a certain and very prominent statue on the Pont des Tourelles of the liberator of Orléans, Joan of Arc.

Huguenots killing Catholics at Nîmes.1567 (Wikipedia)

Catholics killing Huguenots at Paris, 1572. (Wikipedia)

Here was the wrath of reform that would be repeated in the Revolution of 1789: statues broken and shattered, nuns thrown from convents and ridiculed "to get married," priests chased and murdered, and churches sacked and ruined of all imagery; mindless iconoclasm renewed. While a small portion of entire population, the Huguenots in France presented a formidable challenge to Catholic rule. Ideologically enthused, the greatest opportunity for Huguenot Lords to exercise secular and ecclesiastical powers was the weakness of the Valois monarchy following Henry II and his succession of heirless sons. The geopolitical situation further empowered the movement, especially English support under the strenuously anti-Catholic Elizabeth I.

We can see the Huguenot movement equally political as religious, a continuation of the ongoing process of "de-feudalization" of France. In a sense, the movement was an extension of Gallican conciliarism, in that it sought a French church, albeit Protestant. After Henry III's assassination, Henry of Navarre welcomed Catholic "Royalists" who aligned with him as legitimate heir, regardless of his religion. Things went back and forth from there, as Henry of Navarre was outmanned by the Saint Ligue, until Elizabeth I of England sent troops, which induced defections to the Royalists, but, after a huge setback, the Spanish intervened on behalf of the Ligue, which led to the stalemate that convinced Henry to convert to Catholicism, upon which the Crown was his. It wasn't so much "Paris for a Mass," but a Catholic Bishop for a coronation, even if not a Reims.

It's a messy history there forth, but the House of Bourbon settled into Catholic rule, despite challenges within and without. Louis XIV's Gallican enterprise ultimately yielded to Papal authority through Jesuit intervention against Huguenot remnants and their Catholic forms in Jansenism, which presented an even greater danger to French Catholicism in adoption of Calvinistic predestination and "consistories," or councils of elders, who would render public judgment of sin. In the Jansenist form, while keeping to Catholic forms, Jansenists used public humiliation to enforce their doctrine of moral and sacramental rigorism, which could include refusal to administer the Sacraments of Matrimony, Anointing of the Sick and Last Rites.

Rigorist heresies ever pose a danger to Catholicism, which, while excluding the Sacrament of Holy Communion from non-Catholics, obtain for themselves the judgment of contrition. The matter of "sacramental" versus "perfect contrition," as demanded by Jansenists derived of larger doctrinal divergences stemming from Protestant theories on the operation of God's Grace and human free will. Jansenism arose not from but within the context of both Lutheranism and Calvinism, especially in the Dutch Revolt of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which underwent similar experiences to the French Wars of Religion. Jansen himself developed his ideas at the Catholic University of Louvain, where the "Augustinian revival," was current. Jansen pronounced his theories in Augustinus in 1640, under Louis XIII who in the 1620s crushed Huguenot rebellions and removed by the Edict of Alès of 1629 that isolated Huguenots politically, though allowed their religious practice to continue.

By the time of Louis XIV, the Jesuit order had reascended following the Order's expulsion in 1594 over a Jesuit seminarian's attempted assassination of Henry IV. An "ultramontane," or papal absolutist, the seminarian resented Henry as a former Huguenot and decried his conversion as inauthentic, which certainly represented similar thoughts within the order. In the Jesuits, however, Louis XIV found justifications for his royal absolutism, although at the expense of the Order's own papal absolutism. Though suppressed by Louis XIV, the Jansenist movement persisted within the broader Gallican movement, especially in Parliament and in opposition to the Papacy.

Here we see that from the perspective of Saint Joan of Arc's legacy the danger of Jansenism lay in its conciliarist agenda. Where Huguenot Lords during the Wars of Religion sought as frequently Calvinist practice as the ability to raise private armies and ignore Bishop interference, despite the Calvinist anti-hierarchical model, Jansenism also presented political advantages, especially as against royal and papal authority. Among the nobility, that of "the robe," titled but lesser nobility granted or sold a specific office, controlled the Second Estate in Parliament, and Jansenism served as a useful vehicle, which we see in Parlement's denial of Clement XI's 1713 anti-Jansenism Unigenitus. Louis XIV had requested the Papal Bull to reign in Jansenism, and used his prerogatives to override Parlement's block on it.

The Jansenist priest and mystic François de Pâris in 1720 escalated the rhetoric to Calvinistic extravagance, labelling Unigenitus,

"the work of the Devil."

While under Louis XIV, the Bull was severely enforced, upon his death in 1715, the Regent of the new child King, Louis XV, scaled back its enforcement over the so-called "Appellants” who had rejected Unigenitus, which included bishops, priests, and conciliar Gallicanists, especially at Paris. The movement gained strength through the regency, and into Louis XV's own realm, and despite his push-back, consolidated power in Parlement, especially in opposition Unigenitus in general and Jesuits in particular, as they were framed as papal agents. Jansenism had by then completely wrapped itself around Gallicanism, building towards its highest accomplishment in a second and more severe expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762-64, the result of a Jesuit colonial scandal in the French colony Martinique that gave enough fuel for the anti-Jesuit explosion back in France.

Apparition of the Sacred Heart to Santa Maria Alacoque by Antonio Ciseri, 1880 (Wikipedia)

Two mystics represent the dichotomies of the day. The first, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, whom I will call here, Marguerite, was born in 1647 in Burgundy, several generations from the Wars of Religion and three years into the reign of the child King Louis XIV, but coincidental to the Jansenist rise. Louis' father the XIII, had been childless, with the Queen suffering four stillbirths, until September 5, 1638 when the boy was born. Two months into the Queen's pregnancy, Louis XIII consecrated France to the Virgin Mary, so the child's birth was generally considered miraculous. While he is said to have denied divine intervention, he named the boy "Louis Dieudonné," or "Louis the God-given."

The child Marguerite was also consecrated to the Virgin Mary, during a severe childhood illness that seemed incurable. She recalled that her mother and brothers were helpless to help her:

They could find no cure for my malady till they gave me to the Blessed Virgin. They promised her, if I were cured, I should some day be one of her daughters. I had no sooner made the vow than I was cured.

Maturing into a young lady, though, Marguerite, her mother, and her brothers ignored the vow, and she followed them into a social life, her mother hoping she would find a husband -- living in vanity, and away from the confessional and in shortened prayer. One night, home from a Carnival dance, a scourged and bloody Christ appeared to her, and admonished her for forgetting her vow:

That evening as I was taking off Satan's accursed livery, for thus I term my vain adornments, my Sovereign Master presented Him self before me all disfigured as He was during His flagellation. He reproached me, saying that it was my vanity which had reduced Him to such a state; that I was losing infinitely precious time of which He would demand of me a rigorous account at the hour of death; and that I had betrayed and persecuted Him after He had given me so many proofs of His love. This made so strong an impression upon me and wounded my heart so painfully that I wept bitter tears.

While her mother persisted in trying to marry her, she secretly mortified herself:

To avenge in some manner on myself the injury I had done Him, I bound this miserable, criminal body with knotted cords, which I drew so tightly that I could hardly breathe or eat. I kept them on so long that they ate into my flesh.

Her hometown region of Burgundy remained generally free of conflict or effect of the Wars of Religion, and Jansenism had not taken hold locally. However, its effects show in selection of a local Bishop from the Mimen ("minimal") Franciscan Order who was known for his ascetism. He was replaced by a Bishop, Gabriel de Roquette, who preached austerity and moral rigidity, though he was seen by many, including the Jansenists, who were influential enough to take note of even a provincial Bishop. Still, there was no suppression of society life, and the struggles of Marguerite were purely internal. She began to feed and teach poor children, and she resisted every effort to bind her in marriage, including the offer of a substantial dowry for her to use for marriage. She vacillated, but her visions of Jesus sustained her to keep the vow -- but no longer through the guilt of her worldly betrayals but through the love he would show her and command her to share with the world:

One day when I was lost in astonishment that so many defects and infidelities were not sufficient to repel my Lord, He made me this reply: "It is be cause I am desirous of making of thee a compound of My love and mercy."

And,

"Oh, remember," said He, "if thou dost thus contemn Me, I shall abandon thee forever; but if thou art faithful to Me, I shall never leave thee. I will render thee victorious over all thine enemies. I excuse thy ignorance, because thou dost not yet know Me. But if thou art faithful to Me, I shall teach thee to know Me, and shall manifest Myself to thee."

In 1671, finally, she entered an order, having selected it for not having any privileges or knowing anyone socially. There she was subjected to menial jobs and ridicule for the continued visions she experienced, and there she continued her deprivations, so severe that Saint Francis de Sales himself had to admonish her that,

Ah, what, my daughter, do you think to please God by trespassing the bounds of obedience? Obedience, and not the practice of austerities, sustains this congregation

What defines Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque as against the Jansenist moment was the contrast between her interior penitence and her external message of love. As a child she had been deprived of the Eucharist, and it burned her heart that anyone should be so abandoned without the Lord's presence. In her memoir she wrote of as a child yearning for the "Blessed Sacrament," which was kept from her by her guardians and the religious norms of the time, now heavily influenced by the Jansenists. She wrote,

It was at this time that with all my strength I sought my consolation in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. But being in a country-house far from church, I could not go there without the consent of these same persons; and it so happened that the per mission granted by one was often withheld by the other. When my tears showed the pain I felt, they accused me of having made an appointment with some one, saying that I concealed it under the pretext of going to Mass or Benediction. This was most unjust, for I would have consented rather to see myself cut into a thousand pieces than to entertain such thoughts.

And when she was allowed to church, she was not allowed in the nave:

I was wholly unable to recite vocal prayers before the Blessed Sacrament, and once in its presence I became so absorbed that I knew no weariness. I could have passed days and nights before it without eating or drinking. I do not know exactly how I employed those moments. I only know that, like a burning taper, I was consumed in its presence, rendering Jesus love for love. I could not remain in the lower part of the church, and, despite the confusion it might cause me, I had to draw as near as I could to the altar on which reposed the Blessed Sacrament. And yet I did not think myself happy even there. I envied those that could communicate frequently, and that were free to remain long in the Sacramental Presence. I tried to gain the friendship of such persons, that I might enjoy the privilege of going with them to spend some moments with Jesus Christ in this mystery.

In her Visions, Marguerite received instructions from Christ to promote devotion to his Sacred Heart, and in tones most contrary to the spirit of Jansenism. On June 16, 1675, Jesus instructed her,

Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of love. And what is most painful to Me is that they are hearts consecrated to Me. It is for this reason I ask thee that the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be appropriated to a special feast, to honor My Heart by communicating on that day, and making reparation for the indignity that it has received. And I promise that My Heart shall dilate to pour out abundantly the influences of its love on all that will render it this honor or procure its being rendered.

In 1689, in her final vision, Christ told her to instruct the king Louis XIV to consecrate the nation to Jesus' Sacred Heart, with her original capitalization,

"MAKE KNOWN TO THE ELDEST SON OF MY HEART," SPEAKING OF OUR KING, "THAT AS HIS TEMPORAL BIRTH WAS OBTAINED THROUGH DEVOTION TO THE MERITS OF MY HOLY CHILDHOOD, IN THE SAME MANNER HE WILL OBTAIN HIS BIRTH OF GRACE AND ETERNAL GLORY BY THE CONSECRATION THAT HE WILL MAKE OF HIMSELF TO MY ADORABLE HEART, which wishes to triumph over his heart, and by his mediation over those of the great ones of the world. IT WISHES TO REIGN IN HIS PALACE, TO BE PAINTED ON HIS STANDARDS AND ENGRAVEN ON HIS ARMS, IN ORDER TO RENDER HIM VICTORIOUS OVER ALL HIS ENEMIES."

Louis XIV either ignored or never received the message. Her larger message of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus did take, though as it was embraced first and most fully by the Jesuits ("Society of Jesus"), which means that it's continued propagation followed the Order's own rocky flow in France, especially in the face of Jansenist condemnation of it and leading up to the Jesuit expulsion from France in the 1760s. Meanwhile, in the face of a plague pandemic, in 1720 the Bishop of Marseille had consecrated the city to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the city was spared from the affliction. The Devotion spread, but without formal Church approval. Finally, in 1765, the French Bishops, along with Louis XV appealed to the Pope for a Feast, which the Pope approved, and so affirming Marguerite's visions. To assuage the ultramontane, pro-papal elements, the King supported the request, marking an official anti-Jansenist stance. Consequently, Marguerite's legacy became firmly attached to the papacy and traditional, especially non-urban, Catholic France.

Our contrasting example to Saint Marguerite came a generation after her, in the Jansenist mystic François de Pâris. From a family "of the robe," François de Pâris was the grandson of the mayor of Reims and son of a member of Parliament. His formative childhood experience came from smallpox that left his face scarred in "an affliction for which," writes an historian, "he thanked God." Taking to the Scriptures over law, as his father wanted, he became a deacon and dedicated himself to assisting the poor. He wore sackcloth and lived in poverty, engaging in severe self-flagellation towards his death at age thirty-six in 1727. His tomb at Saint Médard became a pilgrimage destination for miracles reported from it, and more famously was the site of the Convlsionnaires, who were said to levitate and otherwise "convulsed" themselves in ecstatic frenzy, dance and speaking in tongues. Where Saint Marguerite's visions revealed the compassion of Christ and was ultimately adopted by the Universal Church, the movement of François de Pâris ended in heretical fanaticism.

Secular historians argue that Jansenism set the conditions for the French Enlightenment -- a good thing, in their view -- and that Jansenism played a role in the Revolution. Jansenist rigorism not only tied in nicely with the Revolution's insistence on civic virtue and austerity, it affirmed radical purity. It is in Gallicanism, though, that we find a more direct overlap, or outright combination, of Jansenist, Enlightenment, and Revolutionary thought. The most direct connection between them all was hatred of the Jesuits, Rome, the Royal court, and devotional Catholic worship. France would fall into the late18th century radicalism that, like Louis XIV, not only ignored Saint Marguerite's visions, but also the fundamental piety and Catholicity of the French people, which only reemerged after a long, slow internment of the Revolution and fully expressed itself after the final fall of Napoléon.

Subsequently, around the time that Joan of Arc was reappearing in the French psyche, in 1824 Marguerite was declared "venerable" by Pope Leo XII. Although it was not until May of 1920 that Saint Marguerite was canonized-- a week before Saint Joan's canonization, both as Virgo (Virgin), a categorical mark of sanctity for dedication to and trust in God. More than just those dates align, as they both reflect a mindset of French Catholics and of the Church itself that we find in Pius IX's beatification of Marguerite in 1864, his 1869 acceptance of the formal petition for canonization of Joan of Arc by the Bishop of Orléans, Félix Dupanloup, and the commencement of the Church of the Sacred Heart at Paris upon Montmarte.

A third Saint rounds out the story of conciliarism's winding path from Charles VII's cooption of the University of Paris conciliar project, its embrace by Jansenism and its Gallican and rigorist expressions in the French Revolution, to its suppression under mid-19th century Pope Pius IX's ultramontanism. Not long after Saint Marguerite's death, Alphonsus Liguori was born near Naples to a noble but professional-class family. Having become a brilliant lawyer, Alphonsus grew disillusioned with the law and responded to God's call and entered the priesthood. Saint Liguori's story is tremendous, but for our purposes to understand the breadth and impact of Jansenism, we turn to his tremendous work, Theologia Moralis, which, among much, challenged Jansenist rigorism through a concept he called Æquiprobabilism, which moderated the theory of probabilism,

The concept of probabilism was developed in the late 16th century by Bartolomé de Medina, a Spanish Dominican. It's a dense moral theology that attempts to resolve the problem of uncertainty between morally opposing "probable," or credible positions. The implication is one of conscience, as a decision that follows the least rigorist dictates may be understood as moral if those less strict dictates are supported by "opinion," or some authoritative view. Rigorists would argue for the "safest" option, as in the most strict, which was called by the Jansenists Tutiorism, from the word tutus for "safe." Today we would call it "scrupulosity." Jesuits embraced probabilism for its escape from rigorism, but opened themselves up to laxism, which allows default to the less "safe" and less "probable" authority. Along came Alphonsus Liguori who sensibly argued that the default alternative in a moral decision must be the more probable one, but if two probable authorities were equal, the less safe alternative is equally correct.

Such discussions are the stuff of doctors of Theology, and for his overall moral theology Saint Liguori was named a Doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1871. Modern Catholics will more readily find Saint Liguori's legacy in the confessional, where his theological embrace Saint Marguerite's call to embrace God's mercy and pastoral gentleness, qualities that hardly lend themselves to authoritarian theologies and state-controlled church.

If by "the fairest deed in Christendom" Joan meant a unified Catholic Europe to take on the Saracens, as most historians see it, then none of the subsequent history affirms Joan's vision. If she meant, rather, something else that a unified Christendom could achieve, then the possibilities present themselves to us. The alternatives might include a Catholic England. But we need only look at actual events, not only the persistence of a Catholic France but the end of the secular Papacy and its compromised intersections with political Europe. Several events stand large here, all leading to Vatican I: the first, colonial spread of Catholicism, which reshaped Catholic politics and ideology, leading to a more "catholic" Church;. next, loss of the Papal Italian states, which isolated the Holy See to physical space dedicated to theocratic and not direct secular rule.

All this without a unified Catholic Europe. Of all the ironies of our story, one of the most amazing is that when Italian revolutionaries took Rome and forced Pius IX to flee dressed as a common priest, for protection he turned to -- the French.

A Catholic France

1477 France, with Duchy of Burgundy not yet absorbed as a royal possession, which are marked in blue. (Wikipedia)

Joan was not fighting the English Catholics; she was fighting the English who were in violation of God's will in their presence in France. From her Letter to the English:

And do not think in yourselves that you will get possession of the realm of France from God the King of Heaven, Son of the Blessed Mary; for King Charles will gain it, the true heir

Of course she doesn't say "Catholic France," but "the true heir" requires it, as to be king of France he had to be consecrated at Reims, which was Joan's fundamental goal in saving "France." Starting with Charlemagne's son, Louis the Pius, sacramental coronations at Reims asserted a regularity that we find missing when kings of France were crowned elsewhere or without sacramental authority. Though Charlemagne asserted himself as a higher authority by crowning his son himself at his capital of Aachen in 813, a few years later Louis acceded to papal authority with a second coronation by Pope Stephen IV, who personally administered the sacramental rite at Reims.

Luis the Pius' second coronation marked a proportional exchange between dynastic and sacramental authority, investing both monarchy and Church in a mutual balance that, though contested over the centuries, remained a structural necessity for both. Whenever that balance tipped, there was trouble.

Philip I died under a papal interdict, which the Bishop of Reims enforced upon his son, Louis VI, who was coronated in Orléans instead. While the coronation was sacramental under a different bishop, his own successor Louis VII went to Reims for his coronation, a recognition of its import. The English King Henry V understood the significance of sacramental coronation at Reims, but died before he could claim the throne from Charles VI.

The English regime was forced to coronate Henry's son as King of France at Paris, a ceremony that was generally looked upon, even in Burgundian-controlled Paris, as unseemly and illegitimate. Some hundred fifty years later, the French throne claimant Henry of Navarre was kept from Reims by the Catholic League opposition, even after Henry abjured his Protestant heresy and ceremoniously rejoined the Catholic Church in a public display at Saint-Denis. He was sacramentally crowned at Chartres -- using not the traditional Saint Ampoule from Reims, but the "Marmoutier" holy oil from Tours that had been given to Saint Martin of Tours by the Virgin Mary, and that Saint Louis used on his deathbed. The last French monarch to hold a formal coronation outside of Reims was Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously crowned himself at Notre Dame in Paris in front of his "guest," Pope Pius VII, from whose hands the literally self-proclaimed emperor grabbed the crown.

"Joan of Arc Imprisoned in Rouen" by Pierre Henri Revoil, 1819 (Metmuseum.org). The painter created this study in preparation for the final version presented at the the Salon of 1819. This version depicts a Brother with a sympathetic, perhaps, pus stance towards Joan, which would conform to the 1819 revival of Joan of Arc as Catholic icon.

During the latter stages of the French Revolution, the brother of the deposed and beheaded Louis XVI, the Count of Provence, claimed the throne from exile. Upon Napoleon's defeat in 1814, he took the throne as Louis XVIII, but eschewed a sacramental coronation in deference to the new idea of a "constitutional monarchy" as ordered by the Congress of Vienna. Understanding the necessity of a sacramental coronation, his son, Charles X arranged an elaborate and formal sacramental coronation at Reims. His reign, though, ended in the upheavals of 1830 at Paris. No other French monarchs would hold coronations.

"Jeanne d'arc prisonnière à Rouen" by Pierre Révoil (Musée des beaux arts de Lyon, via Wikipedia). Here is Revoil's final version as displayed at the 1819 Salon. Note that the priest is no longer present, and emphasis has been added towards Joan's purity, as she is in white now. Note also the English nobleman to her right who is threatening her.

This seemingly puttering end of the French Catholic monarchy instead dramatically shaped modern Catholicism. Napoleon's Concordat of 1801 legalized but more fully subordinated it to the state, more so, even, than under previously exercised Gallicanism. His Bourbon successor, Louis XVIII, while restoring the Church as the official state religion, maintained the Gallican nature he inherited from Napoleon regarding state control of internal church functions (well short of imprisoning the Pope, as did Napoleon). Charles X, though, normalized relations with the Vatican and invigorated French Catholicism, including restoration of certain banned orders, renewal of Marian devotion, and reenactment of the Church calendar.

French attitudes toward Joan of Arc traced and reinforced the post-Revolution Catholic recalibration, implanting her image more firmly than since the 16th century upon the national psyche and inspiring even anti-clerical republicans such as Jules Michelet to turn to her for French identity. Napoleon had permitted celebrations of Joan at Orlėans, Domrėmy, and, consequently, across France, freeing French clergy to openly embrace her Catholicism along with French nationalism. Her legacy was restored as martyr for both France and the Catholic faith. Once again, the poets celebrated her, this time Philippe‑Alexandre Le Brun de Charmettes who in 1817 issued "Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc" and in 1819 what he conceived to be an epic poem, L’Orléanide, poeme national en vingt-huit chants that explicitly treated her as a champion of the French monarchy.

Becoming France

European monarchy had no borders, as it depended on lineage and marriage, and not geography, which is why the English monarch of World War I was first cousins with both the German and Russian monarchs, and spoke German at home, yet he was as fully King of England as the others were of Germany and Russia. The essence of Divine Right is that the ruler is chosen by birth, which is chosen by God. When competing claims arise, the victor is understood as recipient of God's favor. Thus did the Henry V of England claim his victories in France were sanctioned by God. Or, by contrast, Charles VII may -- may -- have distressed were he born of an extra-marital affair. In practice, as with Charles and his doubts (if any), partisans would not accept military or political outcomes as complete expression of God's will, but the title served effectively to affirm or deny legitimacy.

Overall, the monarchical system is incredibly stable, principally as it establishes succession, or, at a minimum, offers a framework for it. Alternatives to it through to the 20th century were rare. The "Modern Era" has many attributes, among them political identity and union through language, geography, or ideology, but they depend ultimately on force, as we have seen throughout our lifetimes. Standardization also forms and holds unity, especially as exercised through modern forms of exchange. In the Medieval period, the primary standards were common monarchy and Church.

Saint Joan of Arc bequeathed to Charles VII a unified and powerful France that he in turn bequeathed to his successors, his son and grandson Louis XI and Charles VIII, who both consolidated major feudal remnants into the French realm. Louis XI successfully engineered absorption of the Duchy of Burgundy, and by stealing away Anne of Brittany from the King of the Romans, Maximillian, Louis XI's son Charles VIII brought Brittany into the realm. Complicated feudal remnants remained, but the geographic France was now largely a political France.

These annexations mark what some historians have called "de-feudalization." They label Charles VII as a transitional figure between the "Late Middle Ages" and the "Early Modern Period." Perhaps, but the actors of the day had far more elegant expressions for the feudal consolidation, such as from Louis XI's Ordinances regarding the absorption of the Duchy of Burgundy,

And be it so, that, since the death of our late cousin Charles, Duke of Burgundy, we, by the grace of God, exercising our rights, as we lawfully may so do, have taken back, reduced, reunited, and committed [said lands] to our domain and crown...

which is more eloquent in Middle French,

Et il soit ainsi que, depuis le trespas de feu nostre cousin Charles, Duc de Bourgogne, nous, par la grâce de Dieu, en usant de nos droiz, ainsi que licitement le povons faire, ayant reprins, réduit, reuny et appliqué à nostre domaine et couronne...

Such un-feudaling, or however else the moderns wish to label it, was exercised through various means, but a wonderful expression from the day, escheoir, captures it best. From the Latin excadere, it means "falling back," and with a hint of chance in it. Indeed, luck was to the French -- or was it just luck?

Those outcomes were not certain, as Charles VII faced several rebellions, the most dangerous in 1440, called La Praguerie, named for the earlier Bohemian revolts in Prague, which clearly continued to resonate across Europe. The Praguerie was led by the Duke of Bourbon and, not surprisingly, the deposed Georges de la Trémoille. Not expected would be participation in the revolt of Joan's allies the Duc d'Alençon and Jean Dunois, now the Count of Dunois, except that the rebellion was not against France or even against Charles VII, per se. The lords were defending feudal rights they felt were being denied, especially use of private armies of the kind that had saved France in Normandy in the early 1430s. Charles and the Constable de la Richemont were precisely reigning in that brigandry and building a national army, with which de la Richemont put down the rebellion easily.

The Praguerie lords had attempted to usurp Charles with his son, the Dauphin Louis, whom Charles would exile over his penchant for intrigue, and who ultimately found protection in the House of Burgundy. As King, though, Louis XI himself faced a far more serious challenge than that he posed to his father in La Praguerie. The Lords again rose against the monarchy, and again including Dunois and d'Alençon, in the "War of the Public Weal" of 1465. After a bloody, inconclusive battle, in which he personally fought, Louis, who, across his tenure never, ever yielded to dire circumstance, sort of surrendered but under his own terms, and the Lords reassembled under him. It was costly to Louis, but he won. Of course the Dukes of Burgundy were behind both these events, the Praguerie and the War of the Common Weal.

The rebellions were last gasp feudal reactions to state centralization. Certainly, the Burgundian project was the dominant force in both events, but with the Burgundians, too, the particular circumstances revolved around feudal privileges. In La Praguerie, it was over de La Richemont's military reorganization, which marked a modern administrative characteristic in standing armies, which challenged feudal control of armies and captainships, and of which France and the Ottomans alone held at the time. That's Roman Empire stuff, and devastatingly novel to the rest of Europe. The War of the Public Weal, so named in defense of feudal prerogatives that were understood as the foundation of the common good, was a direct rejection of state formation.

These were no small events, for in the War of the Common Weal the Duke of Burgundy tried to bring in England, which wisely stood down, but which would have forced the rebellious Lords to choose another Hundred Years War or not. Louis XI cut deals and made concessions, earning his nickname the "Spider." It would be the last serious challenge from the Burgundians, as the Duke would be killed by the Swiss in 1477 and, as he was heirless, the French portion of the Duchy was absorbed into France.

Entry of Charles VIII to Florence, 1517 (it.wikipedia)

In 1489 Pope Innocent VIII offered the kingdom of Naples to Charles VIII, bringing France back into Italian politics. Innocent's successor, Alexander VI of the Spanish House of Borgia, tried to establish a new papal state in central Italy, so Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (of Machiavellianism fame) turned to Charles VIII for help, and when the King of Naples died, Charles invaded northern Italy with an army of 25,000 under the pretext of affirming his papally supported claim on Naples, which he reached without serious opposition in 1495. However, France was unable to hold Italy, and in 1559 formally relinquished its Italian claims in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Spain got Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, and France affirmed its recapture of Calais from the English in exchange for recognition of the Protestant Elizabeth I, which was no small admission.

Empire of Charles V, 1556 (Wikicommons)

Italy, 1494 (Wikipedia)

This was not the unified Christendom envisioned by Saint Joan, but neither were the kings of France the idealized "gentle" kings Joan praised and honored in the Charles VII. With the Anglo-Norman wars finally extinguished, France quickly entered into a geopolitical and frequently direct military struggle with the Hapsburg empire. In response to these entanglements, across the 16th and 17th centuries, France made various alliances with the Ottomans as well as German and Dutch protestant principalities.

While the Italian Wars lay at the heart of much of the drama, their cause was a combination of feudal power politics through marriage and royal lineage with the power of a unified, militarily-advanced France. The northern Italian city states and principalities were incredibly wealthy, but, like the ancient Greek city-states, were in constant wars that none was strong enough to dominate for long. Amidst it all was the papacy and its hold on central Italy, which prevented total control of the Italian peninsula by any single party. The resultant instability ever invited foreign adventurism, but only for powers that could. After the Hundred Years War, France well could.

The Papacy itself, as ever, was at the hinge of many of these wars. So long as Papal interests intersected with that of one state or the other, the Church was a political instrument. Recognizing that the only difference between Papal and state exercise of religious authority is that the Papacy is universal, whereby that of the state is contained to its territorial authority, the often complicated history of Papal politics did not disappear in Protestant lands, it merely nationalized the new religion without containing its effects, a change in form and not substance. The Holy Roman Empire's "Peace of Augsburg" of 1555 established within the Empire the principle of cuius regio, eius religio -- "whose realm is his religion," which essentially recognized the fusion of prince and church. Rather than settling the issue, it forced Charles V's resignation and division of the Empire into Spanish and German-Austrian lines, and brought on the Thirty Years War that started in 1618, breaking out, of course, in Bohemia, where Protestant lords rebelled against Catholic rule.

We've seen how Charles VII's Pragmatic Sanction was nullified at the Concordat of Bologna in 1516 but Gallican assertions continued. However, the nature of Gallicanism changed from the Pragmatic Sanction's political assertions to a more profound assertion of doctrinal authority residing in the monarchy. In 1682, Louis XIV issued the Declaration of the Clergy of France that claimed royal authority over all things temporal and, more importantly, upheld the decrees of the Council of Constance and its conciliarism. Saint Pope Innocent XI responded by refusing to confirm Louis XIV's bishop appointments. Innocent's successor, Alexander VIII, although annulling the Declaration, reduced the tensions by withholding formal censure or sanctions. Upon Alexander's death, the Conclave of 1691 to replace him went for five months, remaining deadlocked until the French cardinals agreed to vote for the Cardinal, who became Innocent XII on condition that he would confirm the French Bishops in exchange for rescinding the Declaration.

And so France remained "the daughter of the Church."

It was also a tremendously important part of how the Church reclaimed its doctrinal authority while relinquishing its secular rule. The failure of the Gallican church worked, over time, inversely with the gradual separation of Papal from national politics. The foundations for that wall were laid in the 1563 Council of Trent. While not its purpose, the Council ultimately enhanced Papal authority by decoupling doctrine from temporal politics. As the modern states arose, the Church, too, centralized its particular spiritual authority, which Catholics today would recognize as independent of, though still intersected with, national rule. That fuller decoupling was forced upon the Vatican in the late 19th century Italian unification that stripped the Vatican of the Papal States and forced Pius IX's exile into the walls of the Vatican.

Postscript

Conciliarism's modern restoration came in part at Vatican II, which marked the episcopate reclamation of Vatican I's centralization in the papacy. Scholars have noted Vatican II's emphasis on the laity, as well, although it seems to me more acquiescence to modern, post-War democratic sensitivities than any authentic transfer of power to the laity, such as Pope Francis I attempted with his "synodal" program that invited non-clerical voices.

For our purposes, any modern conciliarism found in Vatican II or any modern papacy, exist purely within the framework of the centralized papacy of Pius IX and Vatican I. While William Gladstone erupted against "papal infallibility," a 19th century British politician needed no hard excuse to attack the institution. And neither did the Americans, where anti-Catholic bigotry and political movements well preceded Vatican I. The lesson, instead, is that without Saint Joan of Arc's formulation of Roman authority through the French state, which in the 18th and 19th centuries became ultramontanism, the Catholic Church would have splintered into more than just Anglican, Gallican, and Utrecht and other "Old Catholic" schismatic churches. Conciliarism devolved from Papal to episcopal authority, which was subsumed by the hyper-democratic French Revolution and its associated 19th century outbreaks, marking the inversion of Catholic subsidiarity, which defines hierarchical authority upon its sufficiency, but which in the democratic, revolutionary model removes its base from the parental to the communal.

As Saint Joan saw it, a truly catholic Church is ordered first on God, then on the rock he built it upon.