THE HOLINESS OF SAINT JOAN OF ARC
Etienne Robo
London Catholic Truth Society No. B399
St Joan stands alone in history. Many
women have found sanctity in the cloister, some have shown bravery in
battle, but no other ever trained herself to holiness in a soldier's
camp, and surely no female saint ever died at the stake condemned by an
ecclesiastical tribunal as a witch and a heretic.
Her story is incredible, but true: it rests on the most abundant and
clear evidence.{ This booklet is
based throughout on a critical reading of the original sources, not on
second-hand evidence.} She was a peasant girl of no importance
and before she was eighteen her intervention had already changed the
course of European history for centuries to come. When she died at
nineteen, thanks to her, the French had become conscious of being a
nation, England had lost all hopes of ever being a Continental power,
and Burgundy, the arbiter of the destinies of France, was soon again to
be her vassal.
We cannot explain this by a mere recital of the diplomatic and military
history of the times. The hand of God clearly appeared in these events.
Joan of Arc was the tool He chose to accomplish His work: she is the
explanation of the miraculous reversal of the fortunes of France which
followed her appearance on the stage of history; but she was a saint
first, and, therefore, in this little pamphlet you must expect to find
more about Joan the woman and the saint than about Joan the warrior.
Were it not for her trust and faith in God, and for her inflexible
resolve "to serve God first"
she would in time, like her friends, Mengette and Hauviette, have
married some poor labourer and lived and died in some obscure hamlet of
Lorraine.
Childhood
She was born in January 1412 in the little village of Domremy on the
borders of Lorraine. The house where she spent her childhood, the
church where she made her first communion still exist, not very much
altered. They still show to the visitors, at the back of the
living-room, another one, very small and dark, which is said to have
been hers. Its tiny and deep window opens towards the church across the
road, so that when Joan said her prayers she could almost feel that she
was kneeling before the altar. In the church — still in use after more
than five (nearly six) centuries — is the grey stone baptismal font
over which she was held by half-a-dozen Godparents when Jean Minet, the
parish priest, baptized her. Against one of the columns you see the
statue of St Margaret which she decked often with wreaths of flowers.
Hers was a Christian home. Her father, Jacquot d'Arc, and Isabel his
wife were described by their neighbours at the second trial as "good
Catholics", "true Catholics". He was a small farmer who owned his
house, and forty acres of good land. Joan's three brothers helped their
father on the farm — 24 acres were under the plough — while Joan helped
her mother at home. We cannot exaggerate the influence of that good
woman on the formation of the heart and mind of her daughter, and on
her religious development. "My mother", said Joan to her judges at
Rouen, "taught me Pater Noster, Ave
Maria, Credo and no one besides my mother taught me my beliefs."
Isabel d'Arc could not read or write: neither could St Joan, yet how
well the one taught, how well the other learnt. We have only to read
the minutes of the trial to perceive at once that the religion of our
saint was not one of conventional practices, of interested and almost
superstitious devotions, but one that went down to the essentials:
Obedience to God, horror of sin (I
should be the saddest of women if I thought myself to be in mortal sin),
the practice of prayer, a great love for the Mass, and for our Lord in
the Blessed Sacrament, frequent confession and communion.
The religious teaching given by Isabel to her daughter seems to have
been very thorough. The answers of St Joan to her judges on the subject
of grace or the workings of God's Providence amongst men are
astonishing, not in their wording and conciseness alone, but in the
theological knowledge they imply. The judges asked her: "Are you in a
state of grace, Joan?"
"If I am not, God put me there", she replied; "if I am, please God so
keep me."
To an examiner at Poitiers who suggested that "if God wills to save
France it is not necessary to have soldiers", she answered: "In God's
name the soldiers will fight and God will give the victory". "Act and
God will act, work and He will work" is a saying of hers which
expresses the same idea. Unlettered as she was, Isabel could serve as a
model to many a Catholic mother who boasts of a good education but
cannot teach her children their religion.
She taught Joan to work as well as to pray. In a busy season she would
help in the field with hay-making and harvesting, handling pitchfork
and sickle like everyone else; often she would watch the sheep; when
they heard enemy soldiers were approaching, she would even drive the
cattle to safety; but usually she was to be found working with her
mother at home. She was fond of work and when as a girl of seventeen
she was in the king's service and following the movements of the royal
court from one town to another and lodging with important ladies, she
did not sit there, her hands in her lap, content to listen to their
frivolous conversations. "She was never idle", said one of them later
on. And if nothing else offered, there was always a distaff and spindle
handy for her ready fingers. Did she not boast once to her judges that
as for spinning and sewing she was ready to compete with any woman in
Rouen!
Jacquot, her father, cannot have given the same attention to his
daughter's education as Isabel, but his stern attitude towards evil
must have impressed her deeply. Having dreamt one night that she had
gone away with the king's soldiers as a camp-follower, he spoke next
day very strongly on the subject. "If she ever wanted to do such a
thing, you should drown her first", he said to his sons. "If you did
not, I would drown her myself, with my own hands." And he meant it.
This little episode throws a vivid light on the home in which Joan
spent the first seventeen years of her life.
At her trial, the judges plied her with questions concerning her
childhood and even her amusements, and thanks to this circumstance we
are indebted for some precise details. The little children of Domremy
used to go picnicking in the neighbouring woods and there danced and
sang and made garlands of flowers. St Joan sang willingly but was not
very fond of dancing and often, we are told, leaving the others to
their games, she went aside "to talk to God", as she explained. If she
happened to be in the fields when the church bells rang, then she would
stop work and kneel and pray. Her companions passed remarks about her
frequent visits to the church, and this, said Hauviette, one of her
girl friends, made her bashful. Some thirty years later these boys and
girls who had played with her came forward and recorded their early
impressions of Joan as they had known her, child and young maid at
Domremy. Her youthful piety was no affectation: she was perfectly
natural and acted as she believed. The same witnesses describe her as
being quiet and reserved, almost to the point of shyness. They all
insist that she was simple; by this they meant that she did not give
herself airs, she was unaffected in speech and manners, sincere and
transparent. The French simple
conveys all these meanings. Her prodigious popularity did not change
her in this respect. The Duke of Alencon, her hostess at Bourges and
others repeat the same words when they speak of her: "Except in affairs
of war, she was a very simple young girl". They agree she was cheerful,
but of a silent disposition (moult
simple et peu parlant) and, commenting on this, add that when
she spoke it was always with great sense.
Her kindness, her charity towards the poor were also remarkable. One
Simon Musnier declared: "She liked to take care of the sick. I know
this for certain. When I was a child and I was ill it was she who
nursed me." Another witness tells us that she had known Joan to give
her own bed to some poor homeless woman and to spend the night herself
by the hearth in the next room. This was what Christian charity meant
to her.
The
Voices
She was about thirteen when, for the first time, she heard the Voice
which summoned her to the rescue of France. She tells her judges that
on this occasion she was overcome with fear. The Voice came to her
towards noon. It was summer time; she was in her father's garden. She
heard the Voice on her right, and afterwards she seldom heard it
without a light which came from the same side and was usually very
brilliant. After she had heard the Voice three times, she understood it
came from God and knew it was Michael the Archangel, the protector of
France, who came to her and with him the hosts of heaven. The Voice
admonished her "to govern herself well and to go to church often", and
from the beginning she was told that she must "go to France".{ N.B. — Vaucouleurs (with Domremy) was an
outpost of France deep in enemy territory.}
One year, and yet another, passed, the visions went on: the commands
became more pressing. St Margaret and St Catherine now appeared to her
frequently, their heads richly crowned, their voices gentle, soft and
low. Once or twice a week they urged her to leave her home to go and
seek the king, and tell him of her mission: that God Himself was
sending her to give help to the kingdom and lead the Dauphin to Rheims
for his coronation. Joan, afraid, trembling, dared tell no one for a
time. It was all so strange; it sounded so impossible! How could this
be, she thought, seeing that "she was a poor maid, knowing nothing of
riding or fighting"?
We cannot doubt that to St Joan these visions were intensely real: she
saw, heard, touched, embraced them. "I saw them", she says to her
judges, "with the eyes of my body as plainly as I see you, and when
they left me I cried, for I wanted them to take me with them." {Private examination held in the prison on March
17th, in the afternoon.}
Are we to take this literally? Let us at once say that the visions and
revelations of which we read in the lives of saints can never command
the assent of Catholic faith, and cannot be part of the Christian
revelation. Let us say also that if we believe in a spiritual world
co-existing with the visible one, we cannot affirm that spirits have no
means of communicating with us, either by direct action of mind on
mind, or by causing the brain to originate such pictures, sounds or
sensations as are usually produced by an external cause. We are not for
a moment suggesting that St Margaret or St Michael or St Catherine
assumed in fact a human body in order to manifest themselves to St
Joan; nor do we care very much for the theory that these visions were a
pure figment of her imagination. After all, these visions did change
for many years the course of history for three nations and, in whatever
manner they came, we may be allowed to think they were designed by God
as the means for Him to influence and direct human affairs.
She had reached her sixteenth year when she knew the time had come for
a decision and that she must obey her heavenly counsellors, for they
were God's messengers and their commands His commands. "The great pity
of the kingdom of France" was always present to her mind. All her life
she had heard tales of battles, burnings and lootings. Once she had to
take flight with all the inhabitants of Domremy and on their return
they had found the little village burnt down by the Burgundians. When
in October 1428, the news came that Salisbury with an English army was
under the walls of Orleans, she could not wait any longer: "time was
pressing upon her", she said, "as on a woman when her day is near".
At last, towards the middle of December, {It is generally accepted that Joan left
Domremy and went to Vaucouleurs
twice, in May and in December. This raises endless difficulties. We are
convinced that the notary who translated into Latin the deposition of
Poulengy made a mistake and that the Maid left her home once only and
never returned. It all rests on one word: ascension instead of naissance;} she left her home
never to return and went to her uncle Laxart, ostensibly to attend his
wife in her trouble, but really to be near Vaucouleurs, interview the
governor, Robert de Baudricourt, and obtain from him leave to go to
Chinon. At first she was rudely rebuffed by the captain, but nothing
could discourage her: she knew she was the bearer of God's commands.
After six weeks with her uncle at Little Bury she went to stay with
some friends in the town of Vaucouleurs and, at last, impressed by her
conviction, her persistence, and her personality, as everyone was who
came near her, Baudricourt gave her permission to start and granted her
an escort of two willing young noblemen and their four servants. Before
her final departure, she went to see the Duke of Lorraine at Nancy,
perhaps to obtain a safe conduct out of his lands and through enemy
territory. On her way to Nancy she paid a visit to the celebrated
shrine of St Nicolas du Port, the patron saint of travellers.
The
Mission Fulfilled
We may perhaps, before proceeding any further, review briefly the
desperate situation of France at that moment. For nearly ninety years
an interminable war between France and England had been dragging on,
and since Agincourt (1415) the French had only met with defeat and had
lost heart. Famine, inflation, pestilence, civil war had added to the
misery of their unfortunate country. The King — or rather the Dauphin,
since the coronation had not yet taken place — had no money, no
soldiers, no allies. His own mother had declared him illegitimate and
his kingdom had shrunk to a few provinces south of the Loire.
The English held Normandy, Picardy, Paris in the north, as well as
Guyenne and Aquitaine in the south. Burgundy, their ally, stretched
from Flanders to Savoy, from the Rhine to the Loire. When Orleans was
threatened, the situation of the French king became dangerous in the
extreme, for its capture would have opened the roads to the south.
Fortunately for him, both England and Burgundy, bent as they were on
the dismemberment of France, disagreed about the disposal of the booty:
both wanted Paris, both wanted Orleans. Bear this in mind; it is the
key to the obstinate and futile French diplomacy of appeasement from
1423 onwards, and the key also to the otherwise inexplicable discarding
of Joan, by the Court after the Coronation at Rheims. Joan wanted to
continue fighting. "Peace", she said, "cannot be had but at the point
of the lance." The diplomats wanted to negotiate: they thought it less
expensive and less dangerous.
Joan left Vaucouleurs towards the end of February 1429 with her small
escort. She was dressed as a man, for safety and to attract less
attention on the road. This long ride of eleven days through hostile
country was a test of endurance: they must often sleep in the open,
avoid big towns, be on the lookout for enemies.
When they reached Chinon she had to wait two, perhaps three, days
before she was granted an audience. We can take it for granted that
there had been some correspondence between Baudricourt and the Royal
Council during January and February, for she could not arrive
unexplained and unannounced. The officials, however, kept her under
close observation for reasons of simple prudence and indeed continued
to do so for many weeks after. At last she had word that she would be
received by the king. When she entered the great hall that evening the
three hundred courtiers assembled there scrutinized her by the light of
fifty torches: what they saw was a small but sturdy young girl, about 5
ft. 2 in. in height, of modest appearance, yet not without some dignity
of bearing. She had come in her travelling dress: man's hose and
doublet and over these a short robe of grey woollen material. Her dark
hair was close-cropped but for an unbecoming mop on the top of the
head. She went straight to the king, who was concealing himself among
the courtiers. "I saw her", said a witness, "when she presented herself
before the king's Majesty with great humility and simplicity as a poor
little shepherdess. I heard her say these words: 'Most noble Dauphin, I
am come and am sent to you from God to give help to the kingdom and to
you.'"
The king took her apart and had a long conversation with her. It is
said that "she confided to him a secret which was known to him alone
and to God, which gave him a great confidence in her". What the secret
was, no one knows and St Joan repeatedly refused to reveal it to her
judges. Charles was impressed but would take no final decision yet.
He could not afford to make a mistake: if she were an adventuress, if
she failed, he would cover himself with ridicule. Even if her story was
to be accepted, there were other considerations; what place would she
be given in the army which was being raised and equipped at this very
moment? What part would she play in the decisions to be taken? This had
to be thought out very carefully. For three weeks, Joan was kept in the
castle under close and unobtrusive scrutiny. Some great ladies of the
court were commissioned to visit her and make sure that her boast of
being virgo intacta was
justified. After this, she was sent to Poitiers for another three
weeks, there to be examined by a commission of theologians. She passed
all these tests well and the conclusion of the ecclesiastical court,
enthusiastic yet cautious, without pronouncing on the origin of her
visions, advised the king that "she must not be prevented from going to
Orleans with the men-at-arms", that "to do otherwise would be resisting
the Holy Spirit and making oneself unworthy of the help of God". This
report covered the king and the Royal Council against any accusations
of trickery and credulity if Joan failed to fulfil her promises.
Copies of this report were made and sent to every town in the kingdom.
In this manner they prepared the mind of the public and built up the
fame of St Joan before she had started. There is not much we could
teach these fifteenth-century statesmen in the matter of publicity and
propaganda, for they did their job well.
Things began to move rapidly. In the middle of April, Joan was at
Tours, where her standard was made according to her indications, and
she was fitted with a steel armour like a knight's, a plain suit,
however, and for this reason called white. The king ordered that she
should have her household: a steward, a chaplain, two pages and some
two hundred lances.
By then, the army was ready and started marching towards Orleans but,
unknown to Joan, the main body moved along the right bank of the Loire
while she remained on the left. This makes it clear she was not in
command, as some writers seem to imply. It is equally clear that at
Orleans the captains did not at first inform her of their intentions,
still less did they ask her for advice when they were planning an
attack. How is it that within a few days these seasoned soldiers
revised their opinion, consulted her and meekly bowed to her counsel?
What was her position in the army? What was her share in the victories?
How is it that within a month, not France alone but all Europe was
ringing with the fame of her exploits?
The politicians of the Royal Council, Archbishop Regnault, La Tremoille
and others who had helped to build up the popularity of the Maid,
intended her to remain an obedient tool in their hands, a kind of
mascot and nothing more. They would give her fine horses, dresses of
silk and tabards of gold cloth; such outward signs of importance were
eminently suitable for the role she was to fill; but real authority,
they would give none. Their calculations went wrong. This girl of
seventeen possessed a personality one could hate and resist but which
nobody could ignore. Before many days were over she had inspired
soldiers and captains with a new spirit of offensive and a conviction
of victory: she had become their leader.
Very rightly, she was henceforth looked upon as the saviour of Orleans
and of her country.
How can this be explained? First of all by her unshakeable conviction
that she was sent by God. Her faith was contagious: but for a few
sceptical politicians round the throne, every one who came into contact
with her, be it Baudricourt or the king or the Poitiers theologians or
the common soldiers, shared her belief.
She began by turning the expedition into a religious crusade: the army
started from Blois like a procession, with priests marching ahead
carrying banners and chanting, Veni
Creator Spiritus. [Come, O Creator Spirit Blest.] She put down
swearing, made the men go to confession, and with her own hands turned
away roughly the poor creatures who followed the army for immoral
purposes. She was not at all gentle on these occasions, and once, using
the flat of her sword, broke it on the back of one of them. She acted
as one in authority and the stories of her prophecies soon went round
the camp: her sword was one miraculously found at Fierbois, buried
behind the altar; she had announced she would be wounded at Orleans;
her prayers had caused a change in the wind that had prevented her from
crossing the river; above all she had, in five days, raised a siege
that had been going on for nearly seven months. That was the sign she
had promised as a token that her mission was from God. On these and
many occasions she showed she possessed a foreknowledge of future
events.
And there was also her uncanny knowledge of all the crafts of war. One
of the commanders, the Duke of Alencon, said of her: "She was most
skilful bearing the lance, assembling an army, ordering military
operations, directing artillery. She showed as much wisdom and
foresight as a captain who had fought for twenty or thirty years."
Marshal Foch, in our 20th century days, remarked that "her impulse had
real strategy behind it. It did not engage but with good reason, it did
not slacken but when the end was achieved." Could these seasoned old
soldiers fail to be deeply impressed when they came face to face with a
young girl who seemed to know more of their own craft than they did?
How could the men fail to trust and follow her! She said to them "Go
forward boldly", but she also went first and led where there was
danger. Let us elaborate this as we give a brief account of the
fighting at Orleans and of the campaign that followed.
She had entered the town on April 29th, but nothing much could be done
until the relieving army had arrived. The first real fighting took
place on May 4th for the possession of the fortress of St Loup. The
captains in charge of the operations had not seen fit to inform her of
their intentions. She was actually resting at the time when she woke up
suddenly and arose, saying: "In the name of God, my Counsel has told me
that I should attack the English". In haste, she put on her armour and
mounted her horse. The page passed her the standard through the window
and, says a witness, "her lance at rest, she began to ride so rapidly
that the stones struck fire". She made straight for St Loup and as she
was reaching the bastille, the French soldiers saw her approaching; the
battle almost stopped for a moment while the men began to shout aloud
and to cheer "and the fort of St Loup was taken".
Next day was Ascension Day and there was no fighting. On May 6th they
were attacking the fortress of the Augustines. When Joan arrived in the
company of La Hire they found the French retreating and the enemy in
pursuit. These two had just crossed the river in a barge with their
horses. Jumping into the saddle and lowering their lances, alone they
drove full speed at the English and saved the day, for the French took
heart, returned to the attack and captured the fortress. Joan went home
slightly wounded in the foot, but at dawn next day (May 7th) she was
again with the men, fighting for the possession of the fort of Les
Tourelles which commanded the bridge of Orleans.
Early in the afternoon, Joan was seriously wounded, but after a while
returned to the troops to keep up their courage. The evening came and
Dunois, the commander-in-chief, fearing there was no hope of success,
had already given orders to withdraw. The Maid went to him and asked
him to wait a little while: then, alone in a neighbouring vineyard, she
remained in prayer for a quarter of an hour. Then she came back, took
her standard, and placed herself on the edge of the trench. "The
English seeing the wounded Witch again where she had stood from early
morning", as Andrew Lang puts it, were seized with fear and offered but
little resistance when the final assault was carried out. For the
English this was final disaster, and the next morning Joan had the joy
of seeing them marching away towards Paris, never to return to Orleans.
To finish the campaign, there remained to be taken the towns which
commanded bridges across the Loire - Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency. These
were captured on June 12th, 14th and 16th and the brilliant victory of
Patay cleared the country between Orleans and Paris.
After these victories the Royal Council thought the time was ripe for
fresh negotiations with Burgundy, while the military party was in
favour of prosecuting the war in Normandy. Alone the Maid of Orleans
insisted that her Voices ordered her to lead the king to Rheims for his
coronation. She spoke to Charles with all the authority she could
command and won her point. This was the last time he listened to her.
>From now on, the politicians became her enemies openly and the king
ceased to pay attention to her warnings.
On their way to Rheims, as she had foreseen, the towns in Burgundian or
English obedience surrendered one by one. Rheims itself opened its
gates, and on July 17th the coronation took place.
Joan urged a rapid march to Paris. They could have reached it in seven
days and probably entered it without much difficulty. English
reinforcements were on the way but had not yet arrived and the town was
poorly garrisoned. The king deliberately wasted time, both in Rheims
and on the road, and it took six weeks of senseless wanderings for Joan
and Alencon to arrive under the walls of the capital, and for the king
two weeks longer. It was too late. No support was given and the attack
failed miserably. Joan, wounded, had to be carried away by her
soldiers. A few hours saw the beginning and the end of the "siege" of
Paris. For the first time, the name of Joan of Arc was associated with
failure, as her enemies at the Court had intended it should be, and
from the moment she was no longer invincible, she ceased to count.
>From then on, she followed in the wake of the Court, unwanted,
unoccupied, although she pleaded that her time was short, that she
would last one year and no more. In November they sent her out on two
small, ill-equipped expeditions, one of which failed miserably.
She was needed again — soon. In the spring, Burgundy and England,
having been given all the time they needed to reorganize their forces,
began the battle for Compiegne. This town, the key to Paris from the
north, barred the way to the Burgundian armies from Flanders. Joan knew
its supreme importance and, on March 3rd, 1430, she left the royal
court to join the French forces at Lagny. For two months, the campaign,
one of movement, went on. Late in April she received warning from her
Voices that she would be taken a prisoner before the feast of St John
the Baptist. From that day on she left all decisions to the captains,
accepting beforehand what-ever would befall her. She was captured under
the walls of Compiegne on May 23rd. She was then just over eighteen
years of age.
Captivity
And Death
While she was in the hands of Jean de Luxembourg her captivity was not
intolerable and she was treated with some consideration. She tried to
escape from one of the prisons where she was held and leapt from a
tower some 60 ft. high. That she was not killed but only stunned by her
fall seemed so extraordinary that the judges accused her of having
attempted to commit suicide. In November she was sold by Jean de
Luxembourg to the English, reluctantly it appears, and transferred to
Rouen, which she reached late in December.
She was imprisoned in the castle and put in an iron cage until the
trial began, that is to the end of January. Afterwards she was chained
by the waist, wrists and ankles to a heavy beam. To add to "her
martyrdom" — as her Voices called it — she was watched day and night by
three common soldiers who shared her room and tormented her with
insulting words and rejoiced over her misery.
Instead of burning her or drowning her straightway, the Duke of
Bedford, governor (as Regent of the boy-King of England) of the English
possessions in France, chose the more subtle method of having her
judged and convicted by the ecclesiastical court which was to be held
at Rouen under his eyes, not in the law courts, but in the castle. In
this way, not Joan alone, but those who had employed her, and approved
of her, the French king and the French clergy, would be branded, like
her, with infamy, "heresy and schism".
Bedford had his tools ready. Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, was to be the
presiding judge. He was what, during the last world war, we should have
called a collaborator. He was a Frenchman in the pay of England; so was
his nephew; so were some of the canons of the chapter of Rouen who sat
on the tribunal. Cauchon drew a yearly salary of 1,000 livres tournois as a member
of the (English) Royal Council, not to speak of wages for other
services as occasion offered. The (English) Regent kept him pliable and
dutiful by dangling before his eyes the possibility of a higher reward
still. The See of Rouen was vacant: surely a fitting reward for a
faithful servant of England.
Cauchon was cunning and unscrupulous. He was also an able man; he and
Bedford understood each other. He selected the judges, he planned the
proceedings. It must be "un beau
proces", for all Europe was listening. This is the course they
decided to follow. Joan of Arc claimed that her visions were from God;
to the judges this was unthinkable; if they were, it meant that God was
against England, it meant also that theirs was a tribunal of traitors.
Therefore, either Joan lied or, if she had had the visions, they came
from the devil. In order to prove this, the obvious line was to
discredit her, to show her up as a vain, superstitious, unreligious,
dissolute woman; let them prove also that she was guilty of theft, of
perjury, of murder, of attempted suicide, and it would become clear
that she could not be God's instrument but the devil's. All these
accusations were formulated so as to create a bias in the mind of the
judges: they were never substantiated, but the impression was made and
went deep. A political enemy is always wrong and his defence worthless;
at least Cauchon could claim that they had heard what Joan had to say.
The next step was logical and deadly. Having made up their minds that
the visions and revelations of Joan were from evil spirits, the judges
insisted that Joan should agree with them and declare she had been
deceived by her Voices. They said the Tribunal was the Church and that
every Christian must accept the decisions of the Church: he is
otherwise a heretic. To Joan, the visions were so real that she could
not doubt them; she was too sincere to deny them; she was so unused to
legal subtleties that she could not say "It seems to me" when she meant
"I am certain". And therefore, her own unyielding answers allowed the
Tribunal to send her to the stake as a schismatic and a heretic.
She did not yield easily; the judges themselves complained of her skill
in defending herself during this long trial which lasted from February
to May, with six public sessions and nine private ones in her prison.
She knew she was not facing a tribunal of impartial judges, but one of
enemies. Once she said to Cauchon: "You say you are the Church. What is
the Church? If you say it is yourself, I will not submit to your
judgement, because you are my deadly enemy." Repeatedly she expressed
her submission to the Holy See, asked to be taken to the Holy Father
the Pope and to be judged by him. Her appeals were rejected under the
pretext that Rome was too far away. This alone would have made the
judgement illegal. There were many other irregularities as well. The
judges were her political enemies. They were under English influence
and at times even under coercion; the trial was taking place in the
castle instead of the Law Courts which were available. The French king
was not represented. The accusation produced no names, no documents, no
evidence, no proofs, no witnesses. The prisoner was given no counsel;
no one advised her as to the meaning and import of the subtle and
crafty questions she was asked, nor did she always understand them.
The trial became a mere battle of wits between a young girl deprived of
all the means of defence to which she was entitled and a tribunal whose
only business was to find her guilty. Even the summing-up of the
accusation condensed into twelve articles was often in contradiction
with the answers of Joan as recorded in the minutes and it is on this
unfair presentation of the case that the University of Paris, on being
consulted, condemned Joan without having seen her.
Her condemnation was in any case a foregone conclusion. In the
churchyard of St Ouen Joan had signed a brief recantation which
possibly was no more than a promise "not to bear arms and not to wear
male attire". This did not save her for long. Three days later the
woman's dress was taken from her and she had no option but to put on
again the forbidden hose and doublet: this, in the eyes of the judges,
who came to the prison to verify her guilt, was sufficient to revive
the death sentence. While they were thus occupied, Warwick was waiting
in the courtyard below. He and Cardinal Beaufort had the prisoner in
their charge and he had been heard to declare that he did not intend
her to die a natural death. He was there to make sure that Cauchon
would not forget what was expected from him. It was not the first time
he had intimidated members of the Tribunal, Brother Isambart for
instance. With Cauchon, no threats were needed: he was their man.
Coming out of the tower and catching sight of the earl he called out
across the courtyard, in English: "Fare well, fare well, she's caught,
we have her this time", and he was laughing. Even if we did not know of
his partial conduct of the trial, this despicable joy over his victim's
fate would justify the contempt in which posterity has held his name.
He was busy during the next two days: he must draw up in writing a
judgement that would satisfy his masters and give orders for the
necessary preparations in the old market-place: two platforms for the
ecclesiastical and civil authorities, another for the preacher and
Joan, and a scaffold so designed that the victim could be seen in her
agony by everyone in the marketplace.
St Joan, unaware of these preparations, was waiting in her jail, still
hoping, perhaps, to be transferred to a church prison. On Wednesday,
May 30th, early in the morning, three Dominicans came to her: they were
bringers of bad news and one of them, Martin Ladvenu, had been chosen
as the Tribunal's messenger. He was one of the youngest members of the
Tribunal, being then just over thirty years of age. Awed by the
important people who had sat to consider the case, he was still
perplexed and uncertain as to the guilt of Joan, and gave a timid and
qualified assent to the condemnation. But although he was probably not
capable of rising above the partisan spirit, and of being fair to those
who did not belong to the same political side as himself, he was not
lacking in compassion and kindliness and he did all he could to comfort
Joan during the last hours of her life. When he broke the terrible news
to the poor girl, that this morning she must die and die by fire, she
lost her composure: "Alas," she said, "am I to be so horribly and
cruelly treated that my body which has never been corrupted should
to-day be consumed and burned to ashes? " The bishop, unfeeling and
callous, had the audacity to come in at this juncture, to try and
justify his sentence. "Bishop," she said, "I die through you, for this
I summon you before God." She knew well enough he was not a judge but
an enemy.
By a contradiction which shows how little the Tribunal were convinced
of the justice of their own sentence, they granted her — a declared
schismatic and heretic — the privilege of Holy Communion, which all
these long months had been denied her. She made her last confession to
Ladvenu: the Blessed Sacrament was taken openly to her cell and she
received her Saviour, with what feelings we may guess: He was the one
friend who was not deserting her when she was abandoned by all others,
who did not turn against her when, as it seemed, the Church had
condemned her, the one friend who would stand by her to the last and
welcome her at the end of the terrible day. "God willing," she said
later to Pierre Maurice at the foot of the scaffold, "this evening I
shall be with God in Paradise."
The cart that was to take her to the market-place was waiting for her
in the courtyard. Dressed in a woman's cotte, close-fitting bodice and
long skirt, on her head a linen coif, its front fold let down to hide
her face from prying eyes, she was led to the tumbrel, pushed into it
and the procession started. An escort of some eighty soldiers
surrounded her, Martin Ladvenu walked by her side, and Joan was
weeping. All Rouen had come to see her die; they lined the streets,
appeared at every window, packed the market-place, that is, what space
the English soldiers had left for them.
Standing on a platform facing that of Cauchon, Beaufort and the
Tribunal, she had to listen to a long exhortation by Nicolas Midi, one
of her judges. Since Midi is that same man who was selected six months
later to offer an address of welcome to the English King on the
occasion of his visit to Paris, you are at liberty to think it
contained more insulting remarks than expressions of compassion. St
Joan, they say, listened patiently and quietly throughout.
The sermon ended, Bishop Cauchon had the impudence once more to
approach Joan to exhort her to repentance. Once more, she faced him
with the same reproach: "Alas, I die through you, Bishop". Returning to
his seat, the bishop began to read out the sentence. Here are some
samples of the expressions this traitor used in delivering his
judgement on a saint:
"Having regard to the malice of her diabolical obstinacy" . . . She is
guilty of "unheard-of crimes, damnable malice, perjury and blasphemy".
She is described as "a homicidal viper, a member of Satan . . . they
must watch that the horrible contagion of her pernicious leprosy does
not contaminate the Church." She is "a rotten member that must be cast
out from the unity of the Church". Cauchon meant to earn the gratitude
of his masters as well as his fee.
After the reading of the sentence of excommunication came a long pause,
for a condemned person was not denied time to address the people if
wishing to do so. For half an hour or more Joan spoke, protesting her
faith and trust in God, asking for the prayers of the people as well as
for the intercession of the saints, and her words, "pitiful, devout and
Catholic", were so moving that those who could hear her, even the
Cardinal of England (Beaufort) and many Englishmen, were seen to weep.
The soldiers grew impatient. Two sergeants came and forced her down
from the platform where she stood and led her to the Bailiff who
represented the English authorities. So far she had been excommunicated
but not sentenced to death: yet no judgement was read in the name of
the king, no sentence was pronounced, and the Bailiff, merely waving
his hand, to signify these legal formalities were not worth troubling
about, said: "Menez. Menez" —
that is: "Take her away. Take her away" — and she was straightway taken
to the stake and handed to the executioner. She asked for a cross and a
soldier hastily made one with two pieces of wood tied together — she
kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then her arms were pinioned behind
her back and she was chained to the stake. At her request, Isambart,
who, as well as Ladvenu, was attending her, sent for the cross of a
near-by church and held it before her right to the end of her long
agony. "To the end of her life", affirms Martin Ladvenu, "she
maintained and asserted that her Voices came from God and that what she
had done had been done by God's command. She did not believe that her
Voices had deceived her, and in giving up the ghost, bending her head
she uttered the name of Jesus in a voice that could be heard all over
the market-place by all present, as a sign that she was fervent in the
faith of God." Her heart was unconsumed. By order of Cardinal Beaufort,
the ashes and all that remained of St Joan were put into a sack and
thrown into the Seine "that the world might have no relic of her of
whom the world was not worthy". [Andrew
Lang: The
Maid of France.}
On the scaffold at St Ouen St Joan had appealed to the Holy See. In
1456, twenty-five years after her death, another appeal was made, this
time in the name of her mother and of her brothers who were still
alive. The verdict of 1431 was reversed by Pope Calixtus III on the
grounds of the obvious hostility and unfairness of the judges, of
additions, suppressions and omissions in the summing-up, of the
incompetence of the court, culminating in an illegal sentence and an
irregular execution.
A mere reversal of the iniquitous sentence could not satisfy posterity,
nor did it do full justice to the memory of St Joan, for she was more
than the innocent victim of political and national quarrels, more than
a great patriot: she was a saint, as many of her contemporaries had
indeed believed and proclaimed her to be. On May 13th, 1920, in the
great basilica of St Peter in Rome, Pope Benedict XV solemnly declared
her to be one of God's great servants and declared that she was to be
honoured as Saint Joan, Virgin.
For
Further Reading:
Saint Joan, the Woman and the Saint,
by Etienne Robo (Burns Oates & Washbourne).
The Maid of France. by Andrew
Lang.
A few churches in England —
four, I think — have chosen St Joan as their patron saint. Only in
these few is her feast day observed. May 30th, the anniversary of her
death at the hands of the English, is a vacant day in the Calendar of
most dioceses in this country. Would it not be a gracious gesture of
reparation if her feast were kept in England? The author humbly
commends this suggestion to the notice of the Hierarchy.
The Holiness of
St. JOAN OF ARC,
by Etienne Robo.
Published by the Incorporated
Catholic Truth Society, London.
For more information on this and other Saints why not contact or visit
Eternal Word Television Network
5817 Old Leeds Road
Irondale, AL 35210
<http://www.ewtn.com/>
Their HOME site - <http://www.ewtn.com/index.asp>
EWTNews for Catholic news -
<http://www.ewtn.com/news/index.asp>
FAITH - For important information about the Catholic Faith
<http://www.ewtn.com/faith/index.asp>
TELEVISION A great Catholic Television Channel -
<http://www.ewtn.com/tv/index.asp>
RADIO An Excellent Catholic Radio Station -
<http://www.ewtn.com/wewn/index.htm>
LIBRARY A wonderful source of Catholic information -
<http://www.ewtn.com/new_library/index.asp>
GALLERY A beautiful source of Catholic images -
<http://www.ewtn.com/gallery/index.htm>
CATALOGUE See what Catholic resources you wish to purchase -
<http://www.ewtn.com/catalogue/index.asp>
WHAT'S NEW - At EWTN here's where to find out
<http://www.ewtn.com/whatsnew.asp>
MULTIMEDIA A delightful resources for your audio and video needs -
<http://www.ewtn.com/audiovideo/index.asp>
GENERAL Is there anything else you would like to know about the
Catholic Church? <http://www.ewtn.com/general/index.asp>
For Spanish speakers
ESPAÑOL <http://www.ewtn.com/home.htm>