Saint Joan of Arc
French heroine
byname The Maid of Orléans, French Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, or La Pucelle
d’Orléans
born c. 1412, Domrémy, Bar, France
died May 30, 1431, Rouen; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30;
French national holiday, second Sunday in May
Main
national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was
acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory
at Orléans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the
Hundred Years’ War. Captured a year afterward, Joan was burned by the
English and their French collaborators as a heretic. She became the
greatest national heroine of her compatriots. Her achievement was a
decisive factor in the later awakening of French national consciousness.
Joan was the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domrémy, on the borders
of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In her mission of expelling the
English and their Burgundian allies from the Valois kingdom of France,
she felt herself to be guided by the “voices” of St. Michael, St.
Catherine, and St. Margaret. She possessed many attributes
characteristic of the female visionaries who were a noted feature of her
time. These qualities included extreme personal piety, a claim to direct
communication with the saints, and a consequent reliance upon individual
experience of God’s presence beyond the ministrations of the priesthood
and the confines of the institutional church. But to these were added
remarkable mental and physical courage, as well as a robust common
sense. Known as La Pucelle, or the Maid of Orléans, Joan became in the
following centuries a focus of unity for the French people, especially
at times of crisis.
Joan’s mission
The crown of France at the time was in dispute between the dauphin
Charles (later Charles VII), son and heir of the Valois king Charles VI,
and the Lancastrian English king Henry VI. Henry’s armies were in
alliance with those of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy (whose father,
John the Fearless, had been assassinated in 1419 by partisans of the
Dauphin), and were occupying much of the northern part of the kingdom.
The apparent hopelessness of the Dauphin’s cause at the end of 1427 was
increased by the fact that, five years after his father’s death, he
still had not been crowned. Reims, the traditional place for the
investiture of French kings, was well within the territory held by his
enemies. As long as the Dauphin remained unconsecrated, the rightfulness
of his claim to be king of France was open to challenge.
Joan’s village of Domrémy was on the frontier between the France of
the Anglo-Burgundians and that of the Dauphin. The villagers had already
had to abandon their homes before Burgundian threats. Led by her voices,
Joan traveled in May 1428 from Domrémy to Vaucouleurs, the nearest
stronghold still loyal to the Dauphin, where she asked the captain of
the garrison, Robert de Baudricourt, for permission to join the Dauphin.
He did not take the 16-year-old girl and her visions seriously, and she
returned home. Joan went to Vaucouleurs again in January 1429. This time
her quiet firmness and piety gained her the respect of the people; and
the captain, persuaded that she was neither a witch nor feebleminded,
allowed her to go to the Dauphin at Chinon. She left Vaucouleurs about
February 13, dressed in men’s clothes and accompanied by six
men-at-arms. Crossing territory held by the enemy, and traveling for 11
days, she reached Chinon.
Joan went at once to the castle occupied by the dauphin Charles. He
was uncertain whether to receive her, and his counselors gave him
conflicting advice; but two days later he granted her an audience.
Charles had hidden himself among his courtiers, but Joan made straight
for him and told him that she wished to go to battle against the English
and that she would have him crowned at Reims. On the Dauphin’s orders
she was immediately interrogated by ecclesiastical authorities in the
presence of Jean, duc d’Alençon, a relative of Charles, who showed
himself well-disposed toward her. For three weeks she was further
questioned at Poitiers by eminent theologians who were allied to the
Dauphin’s cause. These examinations, the record of which has not
survived, were occasioned by the ever-present fear of heresy following
the end of the Great Schism in 1417. Joan told the ecclesiastics that it
was not at Poitiers but at Orléans that she would give proof of her
mission; and forthwith, on March 22, she dictated letters of defiance to
the English. In their report the churchmen suggested that in view of the
desperate situation of Orléans, which had been under English siege for
months, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of her.
Joan returned to Chinon. At Tours, during April, the Dauphin provided
her with a military household of several men; Jean d’Aulon became her
squire, and she was joined by her brothers Jean and Pierre. She had her
standard painted with an image of Christ in Judgment and a banner made
bearing the name of Jesus. When the question of a sword was brought up,
she declared that it would be found in the church of
Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, and one was in fact discovered there.
Joan’s mission » Action at Orléans
Troops numbering several hundred men were mustered at Blois, and on
April 27 they set out for Orléans. The city, besieged since Oct. 12,
1428, was almost totally surrounded by a ring of English strongholds.
When Joan and one of the French commanders, La Hire, entered with
supplies on April 29, she was told that action must be deferred until
further reinforcements could be brought in.
On the evening of May 4, when Joan was resting, she suddenly sprang
up, apparently inspired, and announced that she must go and attack the
English. Having herself armed, she hurried out to the east of the city
toward an English fort where, indeed, an engagement of which she had not
been told was taking place. Her arrival roused the French, and they took
the fort. The next day Joan addressed another of her letters of defiance
to the English. On the morning of May 6 she crossed to the south bank of
the river and advanced toward another fort; the English immediately
evacuated it in order to defend a stronger position nearby, but Joan and
La Hire attacked them there and took it by storm. Very early on May 7
the French advanced against the fort of Les Tourelles. Joan was wounded
but quickly returned to the fight, and it was thanks in part to her
example that the French commanders maintained the attack until the
English capitulated. Next day the English were seen to be retreating,
but, because it was a Sunday, Joan refused to allow any pursuit.
Joan’s mission » Victories and coronation
Joan left Orléans on May 9 and met Charles at Tours. She urged him to
make haste to Reims to be crowned. Though he hesitated because some of
his more prudent counselors were advising him to undertake the conquest
of Normandy, Joan’s importunity ultimately carried the day. It was
decided, however, first to clear the English out of the other towns
along the Loire River. Joan met her friend the Duc d’Alençon, who had
been made lieutenant general of the French armies, and they moved off
together, taking a town and an important bridge. They next attacked
Beaugency, whereupon the English retreated into the castle. Then,
notwithstanding the opposition of the Dauphin and Georges de La
Trémoille, one of his favourites, and despite the reserve of Alençon,
Joan received the Constable de Richemont, who was under suspicion at the
French court. After making him swear fidelity, she accepted his help.
Shortly thereafter the castle of Beaugency was surrendered.
The French and English armies came face to face at Patay on June 18,
1429. Joan promised success to the French, saying that Charles would win
a greater victory that day than any he had won so far. The victory was
indeed complete; the English army was routed and with it, finally, its
reputation for invincibility.
Instead of pressing home their advantage by a bold attack upon Paris,
Joan and the French commanders turned back to rejoin the Dauphin, who
was staying with La Trémoille at Sully-sur-Loire. Again Joan urged upon
Charles the need to go on swiftly to Reims. He vacillated, however; and
as he meandered through the towns along the Loire, Joan accompanied him,
arguing all the while in an attempt to vanquish his hesitancy and
prevail over the counselors who advised delay. She was not unaware of
the dangers and difficulties involved but declared them of no account.
Finally she won Charles to her view.
From Gien, where the army began to assemble, the Dauphin sent out the
customary letters of summons to the coronation. Joan wrote two letters:
one of exhortation to the people of Tournai, always loyal to Charles,
the other a challenge to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. She and the
Dauphin set out on the march to Reims on June 29. Before arriving at
Troyes, Joan wrote to the inhabitants, promising them pardon if they
would submit. They countered by sending a friar, the popular preacher
Brother Richard, to take stock of her; but though he returned full of
enthusiasm for the Maid and her mission, the townsfolk decided after all
to remain loyal to the Anglo-Burgundian regime. The Dauphin held a
council, and Joan proposed that the town be attacked. The next morning
she began the assault, and the citizens at once asked for terms. The
royal army then marched on to Châlons. Despite an earlier decision to
resist, the Count-Bishop handed the keys of the town to Charles. On July
16 the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates. The coronation
took place on July 17, 1429. Joan was present at the consecration,
standing with her banner not far from the altar. After the ceremony she
knelt before Charles, calling him her king for the first time. That same
day she wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, adjuring him to make peace with
the King and to withdraw his garrisons from the royal fortresses.
Joan’s mission » Ambitions for Paris
Charles VII left Reims on July 20, and for a month the army paraded
through Champagne and the Île-de-France. On August 2 the King decided on
a retreat from Provins to the Loire, a move that implied abandoning any
plan to attack Paris. The loyal towns that would thus have been left to
the enemy’s mercy expressed some alarm. Joan, who was opposed to
Charles’s decision, wrote to reassure the citizens of Reims on August 5,
saying that the Duke of Burgundy, then in possession of Paris, had made
a fortnight’s truce, after which it was hoped that he would yield Paris
to the King. In fact, on August 6, English troops prevented the royal
army from crossing the Seine at Bray, much to the delight of Joan and
the commanders, who hoped that Charles would attack Paris. Everywhere
acclaimed, Joan was now, according to a 15th-century chronicler, the
idol of the French. She herself felt that the purpose of her mission had
been achieved.
Near Senlis, on August 14, the French and English armies again
confronted each other. This time only skirmishes took place, neither
side daring to start a battle, though Joan carried her standard up to
the enemy’s earthworks and openly challenged them. Meanwhile Compiègne,
Beauvais, Senlis, and other towns north of Paris surrendered to the
King. Soon afterward, on August 28, a four months’ truce for all the
territory north of the Seine was concluded with the Burgundians.
Joan, however, was becoming more and more impatient; she thought it
essential to take Paris. She and Alençon were at Saint-Denis on the
northern outskirts of Paris on August 26, and the Parisians began to
organize their defenses. Charles arrived on September 7, and an attack
was launched on September 8, directed between the gates of Saint-Honoré
and Saint-Denis. The Parisians could be in no doubt of Joan’s presence
among the besiegers; she stood forward on the earthworks, calling on
them to surrender their city to the King of France. Wounded, she
continued to encourage the soldiers until she had to abandon the attack.
Though the next day she and Alençon sought to renew the assault, they
were ordered by Charles’s council to retreat.
Joan’s mission » Further struggle
Charles VII retired to the Loire, Joan following him. At Gien, which
they reached on September 22, the army was disbanded. Alençon and the
other captains went home; only Joan remained with the King. Later, when
Alençon was planning a campaign in Normandy, he asked the King to let
Joan rejoin him, but La Trémoille and other courtiers dissuaded him.
Joan went with the King to Bourges, where many years later she was to be
remembered for her goodness and her generosity to the poor. In October
she was sent against Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier; through her courageous
assault, with only a few men, the town was taken. Joan’s army then laid
siege to La Charité-sur-Loire; short of munitions, they appealed to
neighbouring towns for help. The supplies arrived too late, and after a
month they had to withdraw.
Joan then rejoined the King, who was spending the winter in towns
along the Loire. Late in December 1429 Charles issued letters patent
ennobling Joan, her parents, and her brothers. Early in 1430 the Duke of
Burgundy began to threaten Brie and Champagne. The inhabitants of Reims
became alarmed, and Joan wrote in March to assure them of the King’s
concern and to promise that she would come to their defense. When the
Duke moved up to attack Compiègne, the townsfolk determined to resist,
and in late March or early April Joan left the King and set out to their
aid, accompanied only by her brother Pierre, her squire Jean d’Aulon,
and a small troop of men-at-arms. She arrived at Melun in the middle of
April, and it was no doubt her presence that prompted the citizens there
to declare themselves for Charles VII.
Joan was at Compiègne by May 14, 1430. There she found Renaud de
Chartres, archbishop of Reims, and Louis I de Bourbon, comte de Vendôme,
a relative of the King. With them she went on to Soissons, where the
townspeople refused them entry. Renaud and Vendôme therefore decided to
return south of the Marne and Seine rivers; but Joan refused to
accompany them, preferring to return to her “good friends” in Compiègne.
Capture, trial, and execution
On her way back Joan heard that John of Luxembourg, the captain of a
Burgundian company, had laid siege to Compiègne. Hurrying on, she
entered Compiègne under cover of darkness. The next afternoon, May 23,
she led a sortie and twice repelled the Burgundians but was eventually
outflanked by English reinforcements and compelled to retreat. Remaining
until the last to protect the rear guard while they crossed the Oise
River, she was unhorsed and could not remount. She gave herself up and,
with her brother Pierre and Jean d’Aulon, was taken to Margny, where the
Duke of Burgundy came to see her. In telling the people of Reims of
Joan’s capture, Renaud de Chartres accused her of rejecting all counsel
and acting willfully. Charles, who was working toward a truce with the
Duke of Burgundy, made no attempts to save her.
John of Luxembourg sent Joan and Jean d’Aulon to his castle in
Vermandois. When she tried to escape in order to return to Compiègne, he
sent her to one of his more distant castles. There, though she was
treated kindly, she became more and more distressed at the predicament
of Compiègne. Her desire to escape became so great that she jumped from
the top of a tower, falling unconscious into the moat. She was not
seriously hurt, and when she had recovered, she was taken to Arras, a
town adhering to the Duke of Burgundy.
News of her capture had reached Paris on May 25. The next day the
theology faculty of the University of Paris, which had taken the English
side, requested the Duke of Burgundy to turn her over for judgment
either to the chief inquisitor or to the bishop of Beauvais, Pierre
Cauchon, in whose diocese she had been seized. The university wrote
also, to the same effect, to John of Luxembourg; and on July 14 the
Bishop of Beauvais presented himself before the Duke of Burgundy asking,
on his own behalf and in the name of the English king, that the Maid be
handed over in return for a payment of 10,000 francs. The Duke passed on
the demand to John of Luxembourg, and by Jan. 3, 1431, she was in the
Bishop’s hands. The trial was fixed to take place at Rouen. Joan was
moved to a tower in the castle of Bouvreuil, which was occupied by the
Earl of Warwick, the English commander at Rouen. Though her offenses
against the Lancastrian monarchy were common knowledge, Joan was brought
to trial before a church court because the theologists at the University
of Paris, as arbiter in matters concerning the faith, insisted that she
be tried as a heretic. Her beliefs were not strictly orthodox, according
to the criteria for orthodoxy laid down by many theologians of the
period. She was no friend of the church militant on Earth (which
perceived itself as in spiritual combat with the forces of evil), and
she threatened its hierarchy through her claim that she communicated
directly with God by means of visions or voices. Further, her trial
might serve to discredit Charles VII by demonstrating that he owed his
coronation to a witch, or at least a heretic. Her two judges were to be
Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, and Jean Lemaître, the vice-inquisitor of
France.
Capture, trial, and execution » The trial
Beginning Jan. 13, 1431, statements taken in Lorraine and elsewhere were
read before the Bishop and his assessors; they were to provide the
framework for Joan’s interrogation. Summoned to appear before her judges
on February 21, Joan asked for permission to attend mass beforehand, but
it was refused on account of the gravity of the crimes with which she
was charged, including attempted suicide in having jumped into the moat.
She was ordered to swear to tell the truth and did so swear, but she
always refused to reveal the things she had said to Charles. Cauchon
forbade her to leave her prison, but Joan insisted that she was morally
free to attempt escape. Guards were then assigned to remain always
inside the cell with her, and she was chained to a wooden block and
sometimes put in irons. Between February 21 and March 24 she was
interrogated nearly a dozen times. On every occasion she was required to
swear anew to tell the truth, but she always made it clear that she
would not necessarily divulge everything to her judges since, although
nearly all of them were Frenchmen, they were enemies of King Charles.
The report of this preliminary questioning was read to her on March 24,
and apart from two points she admitted its accuracy.
When the trial proper began a day or so later, it took two days for
Joan to answer the 70 charges that had been drawn up against her. These
were based mainly on the contention that her whole attitude and
behaviour showed blasphemous presumption: in particular, that she
claimed for her pronouncements the authority of divine revelation;
prophesied the future; endorsed her letters with the names of Jesus and
Mary, thereby identifying herself with the novel and suspect cult of the
Name of Jesus; professed to be assured of salvation; and wore men’s
clothing. Perhaps the most serious charge was of preferring what she
believed to be the direct commands of God to those of the church.
On March 31 she was questioned again on several points about which
she had been evasive, notably on the question of her submission to the
church. In her position, obedience to the court that was trying her was
inevitably made a test of such submission. She did her best to avoid
this trap, saying she knew well that the church militant could not err,
but it was to God and to her saints that she held herself answerable for
her words and actions. The trial continued, and the 70 charges were
reduced to 12, which were sent for consideration to many eminent
theologians in both Rouen and Paris.
Meanwhile, Joan fell sick in prison and was attended by two doctors.
She received a visit on April 18 from Cauchon and his assistants, who
exhorted her to submit to the church. Joan, who was seriously ill and
obviously thought she was dying, begged to be allowed to go to
confession and receive Holy Communion and to be buried in consecrated
ground. But they continued to badger her, receiving only her constant
response “I am relying on our Lord,” “I hold to what I have already
said.” They became more insistent on May 9, threatening her with torture
if she did not clarify certain points. She answered that even if they
tortured her to death she would not reply differently, adding that in
any case she would afterward maintain that any statement she might make
had been extorted from her by force. In face of this commonsense
fortitude her interrogators, by a majority of 10 to three, decided on
May 12 that torture would be useless. Joan was informed on May 23 of the
decision of the University of Paris that if she persisted in her errors
she would be turned over to the secular authorities; only they, and not
the church, could carry out the death sentence of a condemned heretic.
Capture, trial, and execution » Abjuration, relapse, and execution
Apparently nothing further could be done. Joan was taken out of prison
for the first time in four months on May 24 and conducted to the
cemetery of the church of Saint-Ouen, where her sentence was to be read
out. First she was made to listen to a sermon by one of the theologians
in which he violently attacked Charles VII, provoking Joan to interrupt
him because she thought he had no right to attack the King, a “good
Christian,” and should confine his strictures to her. After the sermon
was ended, she asked that all the evidence on her words and deeds be
sent to Rome. But her judges ignored her appeal to the Pope, to whom,
under God, she would be answerable, and began to read out the sentence
abandoning her to the secular power. Hearing this dreadful
pronouncement, Joan quailed and declared she would do all that the
church required of her. She was presented with a form of abjuration,
which must already have been prepared. She hesitated in signing it,
eventually doing so on condition that it was “pleasing to our Lord.” She
was then condemned to perpetual imprisonment or, as some maintain, to
incarceration in a place habitually used as a prison. In any case, the
judges required her to return to her former prison.
The vice-inquisitor had ordered Joan to put on women’s clothes, and
she obeyed. But two or three days later, when the judges and others
visited her and found her again in male attire, she said she had made
the change of her own free will, preferring men’s clothes. They then
pressed other questions, to which she answered that the voices of St.
Catherine and St. Margaret had censured her “treason” in making an
abjuration. These admissions were taken to signify relapse, and on May
29 the judges and 39 assessors agreed unanimously that she must be
handed over to the secular officials.
The next morning, Joan received from Cauchon permission,
unprecedented for a relapsed heretic, to make her confession and receive
Communion. Accompanied by two Dominicans, she was then led to the Place
du Vieux-Marché. There she endured one more sermon, and the sentence
abandoning her to the secular arm—that is, to the English and their
French collaborators—was read out in the presence of her judges and a
great crowd. The executioner seized her, led her to the stake, and lit
the pyre. A Dominican consoled Joan, who asked him to hold high a
crucifix for her to see and to shout out the assurances of salvation so
loudly that she should hear him above the roar of the flames. To the
last she maintained that her voices were sent of God and had not
deceived her. According to the rehabilitation proceedings of 1456, few
witnesses of her death seem to have doubted her salvation, and they
agreed that she died a faithful Christian. A few days later the English
king and the University of Paris formally published the news of Joan’s
execution.
Almost 20 years afterward, on his entry into Rouen in 1450, Charles
VII ordered an inquiry into the trial. Two years later the cardinal
legate Guillaume d’Estouteville made a much more thorough investigation.
Finally, on the order of Pope Calixtus III following a petition from the
d’Arc family, proceedings were instituted in 1455–56 that revoked and
annulled the sentence of 1431. Joan was canonized by Pope Benedict XV on
May 16, 1920; her feast day is May 30. The French parliament, on June
24, 1920, decreed a yearly national festival in her honour; this is held
the second Sunday in May.
Character and importance
Joan of Arc’s place in history is assured. Perhaps her contribution to
the history of human courage is greater than her significance in the
political and military history of France. She was victimized as much by
a French civil conflict as by a war with a foreign power. The relief of
Orléans was undoubtedly a notable victory, which secured the loyalty of
certain regions of northern France to the régime of Charles VII. But the
Hundred Years’ War continued for a further 22 years after her death, and
it was the defection of Philip the Good of Burgundy from his alliance
with the Lancastrians in 1435 that provided the foundation upon which
the recovery of Valois France was to be based. The nature of Joan’s
mission, moreover, is a source of controversy among historians,
theologians, and psychologists. Innumerable points about her campaigns
and about the motives and actions of her supporters and enemies are
subject to dispute: for instance, the number and dates of her visits to
Vaucouleurs, Chinon, and Poitiers; how she was able to win the
confidence of the Dauphin at their first meeting at Chinon; whether
Charles’s perambulations after his coronation at Reims represented
triumphant progress or scandalous indecision; what her judges meant by
“perpetual imprisonment”; whether, after her recantation, Joan resumed
men’s clothes of her own free will and at the bidding of her voices or,
as one later story has it, because they were forced upon her by her
English jailers.
Later generations have tended to distort the significance of Joan’s
mission according to their own political and religious viewpoints rather
than seeking to set it in the troubled context of her time. The effects
of the Great Schism within the Western Church (1378–1417) and the
decline of papal authority during the Conciliar Movement (1409–49) made
it difficult for persons to seek independent arbitration and judgment in
cases relating to the faith. The verdicts of the Inquisition were liable
to be coloured by political and other influences; and Joan was not the
only victim of an essentially unjust procedure, which allowed the
accused no counsel for the defense and which sanctioned interrogation
under duress. Her place among the saints is secured, not perhaps by the
somewhat dubious miracles attributed to her, but by the heroic fortitude
with which she endured the ordeal of her trial and, except for one lapse
toward its end, by her profound conviction of the justice of her cause,
sustained by faith in the divine origin of her voices. In many ways a
victim of internal strife within France, condemned by judges and
assessors who were almost entirely northern French in origin, she has
become a symbol of national consciousness with whom all French people,
of whatever creed or party, can identify.
Yvonne Lanhers
Malcolm G.A. Vale
Encyclopaedia Britannica
