Jeanne D'Arc (Art by Anato Finnstark)
| “ | One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. | „ |
| ~ Joan of Arc |
Jeanne D'Arc, also known as Joan of Arc or Laeticia, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: La Pucelle d'Orléans), is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic Saint. She was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in northeast France.
Overview[]
Jeanne claimed to have received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. She heard the Lord’s lament that the world changed straight into hell. The Lord wept into sorrow as no one could stop it and people were not even allowed to live simply, and were compelled to become either beasts or food. Conflict never ended, and blood continued to rain incessantly and soak the land. She received a revelation from the Lord, the voice contained no glory or victory, no obligation or sense of purpose but only the Lord laments. She caught his small, feeble murmurs that everyone else failed to hear.
She responded by throwing away her life as a simple villager and the joy of loving someone and being loved back. Furthermore, there would be no compensation. She knew she would surely be scorned by the masses of both enemies and allies alike, considering their beliefs in the church's guidelines for proper behavior in women. It was a very terrifying thing to contemplate. It was made for a mere village girl from the countryside to leap onto the battlefield where people’s killing intent swirled about. She would not turn her back on the Lord's cries. She decided to devote her life to oppose this world’s hell to help stop the Lord’s tears and soothe Him. She clad her Armour on her body, hung a sword on her waist and carried the flag. She fought alongside with Gilles de Rais. Her main blade even if she never used it in life is the blade of Saint Catherine known as La Pucelle.
History[]
Origins[]
Having been born to a peasant family, Jeanne never knew the contents of the many books of prayer. She did try hard to learn them, but it seems she was simply born incapable of reading or writing. The most she ever managed was learning how to sign her name. While she worried about this, in the end, she decided that she needed little more in order to pray to the Lord. As she recalled, one of her comrades who rode beside her, Gilles, once laughed and promised her that this was more than enough.
The unanointed King Charles VII sent Joan to the Siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's consecration at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory. In a private audience at his castle at Chinon, Joan of Arc won the future Charles VII over by supposedly revealing information that only a messenger from God could know; the details of this conversation are unknown.
Siege of Orleans[]
In May 1428, Joan made her way Vaucouleurs, a nearby stronghold of those loyal to Charles. Initially rejected by the local magistrate, Robert de Baudricourt, she persisted, attracting a small band of followers who believed her claims to be the virgin who (according to a popular prophecy) was destined to save France. When Baudricourt relented, Joan cropped her hair and dressed in men’s clothes to make the 11-day journey across enemy territory to Chinon, site of the crown prince’s palace.
Jeanne in battle.
Joan promised Charles she would see him crowned king at Reims, the traditional site of French royal investiture, and asked him to give her an army to lead to Orléans, then under siege from the English. Against the advice of most of his counselors and generals, Charles granted her request, and Joan set off for Orléans in March of 1429 dressed in white armor and riding a white horse. After sending off a defiant letter to the enemy, Joan led several French assaults against them, driving the Anglo-Burgundians from their bastion and forcing their retreat across the Loire River.
Capture and Trial[]
On 23 May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and put on trial by the pro-English bishop Pierre Cauchon on a variety of charges. After Cauchon declared her guilty, she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, dying at about nineteen years of age. It was said that many false charges were given to her though some charges were changed as the demon Satanachia wanted her for himself so he tried to bring her to Hell but it failed as the Archangel Raziel brought her to God Himself away from the demon.
In 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr. In the 16th century she became a symbol of the Catholic League, and in 1803 she was declared a national symbol of France by the decision of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Joan of Arc is one of the nine secondary patron saints of France, along with Saint Denis, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint Louis, Saint Michael, Saint Rémi, Saint Petronilla, Saint Radegund and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. In 1909 Joan of Arc was beatified in the famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris by Pope Pius X. A statue inside the cathedral pays tribute to her legacy.
The procedures of an Inquisitorial trial called for a preliminary investigation into the life of the suspect. This investigation consisted of the collection of any evidence about the character of the subject, including witness testimony. This could then be followed by an interrogation of the accused, in which he or she was compelled to provide testimony which could then be used against them in a subsequent trial.
First Trials of Jeanne D'Arc[]
The first order of business was a preliminary inquiry into Jeanne's character and habits. An examination as to Joan's virginity was conducted some time prior to January 13, overseen by the Duchess of Bedford. The Duchess announced that Jeanne's had been found to be a virgin. At the same time, representatives of the judge were sent to Jeanne's home village of Domrémy and vicinity to inquire further into Joan's life, her habits, and virtue, with several witnesses being interviewed.
The result of these inquiries was that nothing could be found against Joan to support any charges against her. The man who was commissioned to collect testimony, Nicolas Bailly, said that he "had found nothing concerning Joan that he would not have liked to find about his own sister". This angered Cauchon, who was hoping for something he could use against her. He accused Bailly of being "a traitor and a bad man" and refused to pay him his promised salary.
The Vice-Inquisitor of Northern France (Jean Lemaitre) objected to the trial at its outset, and several eyewitnesses later said he was forced to cooperate after the English threatened his life. Some of the other clergy at the trial were also threatened when they refused to cooperate, including a Dominican friar named Isambart de la Pierre. These threats, and the domination of the trial by a secular government, were violations of the Church's rules and undermined the right of the Church to conduct heresy trials without secular interference.
The trial record contains statements from Joan that the eyewitnesses later said astonished the court, since she was an illiterate peasant and yet was able to evade the theological pitfalls the tribunal had set up to entrap her. The transcript's most famous exchange is an exercise in subtlety: "Asked if she knew she was in God's grace, she answered, 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest creature in the world if I knew I were not in His grace.'" The question is a scholarly trap. Church doctrine held that no one could be certain of being in God's grace. If she had answered yes, then she would have been charged with heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. The court notary Boisguillaume later testified that at the moment the court heard her reply, "Those who were interrogating her were stupefied."
Several members of the tribunal later testified that important portions of the transcript were falsified by being altered in her disfavor. Under Inquisitorial guidelines, Joan should have been confined in an ecclesiastical prison under the supervision of female guards (i.e., nuns). Instead, the English kept her in a secular prison guarded by their own soldiers. Bishop Cauchon denied Joan's appeals to the Council of Basel and the Pope, which should have stopped his proceeding. The twelve articles of accusation which summarized the court's findings contradicted the court record, which had already been doctored by the judges. Under threat of immediate execution, the illiterate defendant signed an abjuration document that she did not understand. The court substituted a different abjuration in the official record.
Verdict of Heresy[]
Heresy was a capital crime only for a repeat offense; therefore, a repeat offense of "cross-dressing" was now arranged by the court, according to the eyewitnesses. Joan agreed to wear feminine clothing when she abjured, which created a problem. According to the later descriptions of some of the tribunal members, she had previously been wearing male clothing in prison because it gave her the ability to fasten her pants, boots and tunic together into one piece, which deterred rape by making it difficult to pull her pants off. She was evidently afraid to give up this outfit even temporarily because it was likely to be confiscated by the judge and she would thereby be left without protection. A woman's dress offered no such protection. A few days after her abjuration, when she was forced to wear a dress, she told a tribunal member that "a great English lord had entered her prison and tried to take her by force." She resumed male attire either as a defense against molestation or, in the testimony of Jean Massieu, because her dress had been taken by the guards and she was left with nothing else to wear.
Eyewitnesses described the scene of the execution by burning on 30 May 1431. Tied to a tall pillar at the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, she asked two of the clergy, Fr Martin Ladvenu and Fr Isambart de la Pierre, to hold a crucifix before her. An English soldier also constructed a small cross that she put in the front of her dress. After she died, the English raked back the coals to expose her charred body so that no one could claim she had escaped alive. They then burned the body twice more, to reduce it to ashes and prevent any collection of relics, and cast her remains into the Seine River. The executioner, Geoffroy Thérage, later stated that he "greatly feared to be damned for he had burned a holy woman."
Death[]
Jeanne was put to death at Place du Vieux-Marché in Rouen. Scorned by words of damnation as she was led to the pyre and feeling only slightly pained as she endured it, she had already abandoned emotions such as fear, disappointment, and regret from the outset of her battles, so she was able to walk towards her death without faltering in her steps. As she unconsciously reached for the cross that had been at her chest until they took it from her, she felt some sadness as there was nothing to support her heart. Shortly after, she was given a wooden cross fashioned by an Englishman who revered her, thanking him quietly as he knelt and wept. Her hands were tied to a wooden stake behind her, and the priest present completed the recitation of her final judgement before throwing the torch upon the pyre. As they believed that the loss of the flesh was the greatest of fears, it was the cruelest punishment that could be laid upon her.
Joan's persecution
The flames began to burn her skin, scorch her flesh, and char her bones, all while she spoke the name of the Lord and the Holy Mother against those who denounced her prayers as only a lie. She could only find such thoughts strange, believing that prayers are nothing more than prayers, no matter to whom is prayed, that carry no intrinsic truths or falsehoods. Although she wished to tell them of the thought, she was unable to produce any sound. As she burned, she saw visions of her past, her ordinary family in her rustic village and herself, "the fool who ran away and tossed all of that aside." Having known how her journey would end from the start, she felt that she may have certainly been foolish in her actions, that she may have been able to have lived a regular life, gotten married, and lived together with her husband and child.
Had she simply shut away the voice and abandoned the lamenting soldiers, she could have had that life, but felt that it was not a mistake to have walked her path due to those she had saved. She knew from the moment she chose to take to battle that she would have such an end, and she felt that she would never come to self-derision for her choices. Her past, impossible futures, and the cruel reality before her were meaningless before her prayers, offering herself that even if all other condemn her that she would not betray herself. Rather than continue to look back on her path or crave for another future, she only wished for a silent rest.
Within the savagery, she only kept a single prayer within her heart to the very end, one unblemished by regret and filled with sincerity. As she said her final words, "...O Lord, I give myself to You...", her consciousnesses ended and she was released from her suffering. Although the girl's dream ended there, "the dream of La Pucelle was only just beginning." Her death had caused Gilles de Rais to go insane, turn his back on God to practice black magic, and commit atrocities before he was captured and hanged to death.