Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

by Donald Spoto

  BY THE AUTUMN of 1429 Joan felt utterly useless. Charles commanded her presence at court, in Gien and elsewhere, and there she resided in comfortable indolence—not without complaining of her inactivity—in quarters provided for herself, her staff and her two brothers. At the home of the king’s finance minister (where she was treated for her leg injury), Joan was often besieged by people who wanted her to bless rosary beads and other pious objects by touching them. “Touch them yourselves,” she said with a laugh. “Your touch will do as much good as mine!” She had no desire to be considered an object of veneration.

  In November, probably at la Trémoïlle’s instigation, the king decided to send Joan to battle in order to avoid her interference in the ongoing but futile negotiations with Burgundy. She was given troops for an assault on Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, southeast of Bourges, where the English swiftly capitulated.

  But at the next offensive, La Charité, a Burgundian town crucial to the king’s protection, Joan’s forces were few. Like all leaders of battle during the Hundred Years’ War, she had to beg for help from neighboring towns and aristocrats. “To my dear and good friends at Riom,” she dictated in a letter,

  You well know how the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier was taken by assault, and with God’s help I intend to clear out the other places which are against the king. But because so much gunpowder, projectiles and other war materials had been expended before this town, and because I and the lords who are here are so poorly supplied for laying siege to La Charité, where we will be going shortly, I pray you, upon whatever love you have for the well-being and honor for the king and also all the others here, that you will immediately send and donate for the siege gunpowder, saltpeter, sulfur, projectiles, arbalests [crossbow catapults] and other materials of war.

  Joan’s signature was obviously her own, for it came from one who was just learning to write: the letters are wobbly, and the initial J of her name resembles the number seven.

  Contributions and reinforcements from Riom never arrived, and Joan had to beg Charles for help. Finally she abandoned the attack “because the king did not raise funds to send her either supplies or money to maintain her company,” wrote one witness. “She had to raise the siege and withdraw in great displeasure.”

  At Christmas the king announced the ennoblement of Joan, her family and their descendants. “We desire to offer thanks,” the decree stated, “for the many remarkable benefits of divine largesse that have been accorded us through the agency of the Maid, Jeanne d’Ay [sic] de Domrémy…[and] we consider also the laudable, graceful, and effective services already rendered by the aforesaid Jeanne in every way, to us and to our kingdom….” On the coat of arms were two gold lilies and between them a sword supporting a crown, the symbolic rendering of what Joan had done for France. It was very much a farewell gesture to a woman, like a gift to a retiring employee. Joan’s rank, of which she never spoke, was essentially that of a comtesse, similar to an English marchioness or countess. Her family received the surname du Lys, from the lilies on their emblem.

  This was a crafty deed. By any measure, the king could not be faulted for a lack of gratitude to one so widely admired. But at the same time, ennoblement had an important effect on Joan. Like Alençon and others, she no longer required the king’s permission to raise troops and wage war, for nobles could do this entirely on their own. But if she did in fact go to battle, she would be completely responsible for its consequences; in effect, Charles was separating himself from her. He did not want her to act or lead in his name or beneath his banner. She had saved Orléans and the monarchy, and now she had the eminence of a noblewoman. Thank you, Joan, and good-bye: that was essentially the king’s mind.

  Thus began a cold and lonely winter, which Joan spent mostly at Sully-sur-Loire, in a castle belonging to la Trémoïlle’s family, who were not warm hosts. In addition to her somber inactivity and her separation from those she loved and trusted in and out of the army, she was also denied the consolation of her voices, which now seemed to fall silent. She prayed and maintained a composed stillness as much as possible, but there was no clear indication of her future. For perhaps the first time, Joan of Arc knew the kind of spiritual darkness that is part of the experience of everyone who seeks God.

  IN THE SPRING of 1430, with the king’s tacit approval, she proceeded north with a company of about three hundred fifty mercenary men-at-arms, prepared to defeat an enemy offensive against the town of Compiègne, fifty miles north of Paris. There resistance to the occupation and loyalty to Charles were strongly entrenched, and so a turning back of the Anglo-Burgundians would provide another opportunity to move forward and seize the capital, thus repeating the success of Orléans.

  On the way she tried to take a Burgundian post at Margny. As so often, Joan outfitted herself colorfully, the better to be seen by her soldiers. “She mounted her horse armed as would a man,” recalled none other than the Burgundian chronicler Chastellain,

  adorned with a doublet of rich cloth-of-gold over her breastplate. She rode a very handsome, proud gray courser and displayed herself in her armor and her bearing as a captain would have done…and in that array, with her standard raised high and fluttering in the wind, and well accompanied by many noble men, she sallied forth from the city, about four hours past midday.

  Her effort failed, for the enemy’s forces comprised about six thousand men.

  On May 14 Joan tried to isolate Philip’s advance to Compiègne by taking a bridge to the town. At first it seemed as if she would succeed, but fresh reinforcements arrived for the Burgundians. Proceeding by another route, Joan led her troops into Compiègne on the morning of May 23. Next day, she and the men successfully took the camp at Margny.

  Enemy soldiers, meanwhile, had virtually surrounded the town—a force quickly augmented by the troops of Jean de Luxembourg, a Burgundian ambassador who was captain of a company and ferociously devoted to Philip of Burgundy. When the French soldiers saw that they were now perilously outnumbered, they retreated to Compiègne—courageously covered at the end of their line by Joan, who always placed herself in the most dangerous positions, at the head of an entry into battle or at the rear guard covering a retreat. Most of her troops entered swiftly and safely into the town precincts.

  Then things happened quickly, as the hunter and the hunted finally met at the foot of the bridge into Compiègne. “During that time,” as a witness recalled, “the captain of [the town], seeing the great multitude of Burgundians and Englishmen ready to get on the bridge…raised the drawbridge of the city and closed the gate. So the Maid was shut outside, and only a few of her men were with her.” Those few included her faithful squire Jean d’Aulon, her brother Pierre, the faithful Louis de Coutes and several others who had been with her since Orléans and whose names are lost to us.

  Even the Burgundian Chastellain admired Joan and seemed to take pity on her predicament: “The Maid performed a great feat and took much pain to save her company from loss, staying behind like a chief and like the most valiant member of the flock.” But an enemy archer named Lyonnel caught up with her, “laid hold of her from the side by her cloth-of-gold doublet, and pulled her from her horse to the ground.” He then handed her over to one of Jean de Luxembourg’s lieutenants, who had hastened to the spot for the ritual of surrender, demanding Joan’s capitulation and her oath of loyalty. She protested loudly that she had sworn her faith to another. From that moment, late in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 23, 1430, Joan was a prisoner, and so she remained for the rest of her life.

  AT FIRST SHE was a war hostage, in captivity to Jean de Luxembourg, an Anglo-Burgundian loyal to his overlord Philip the Good and a counselor to the king of England, whose treasury paid him a monthly stipend. “By the pleasure of our blessed Creator,” wrote Philip triumphantly to the duke of Savoy, “the woman called the Maid has been taken, and from her capture will be recognized the error and mad belief of all those who become sympathetic and favorable to the deeds of this woman.”

&n
bsp; The lawyers and doctors at the University of Paris chimed in too—with a letter to Philip:

  Since all loyal Christian princes and all other true Catholics are held to the duty of extirpating all errors against the faith and the scandal that follows such errors among simple Christian folk, and since it is a matter of common knowledge that diverse errors have been sown and published in many cities, towns and other places by a certain woman named Joan, whom the adversaries of this kingdom call the Maid…we beseech you…that as soon as it can be done safely and conveniently, the aforesaid Joan be brought under our jurisdiction as a prisoner, since she is strongly suspected of various crimes smacking of heresy, so as to appear before us and a procurator of the Holy Inquisition.

  On Wednesday, May 24, the morning after her capture, Joan, along with Jean d’Aulon and her brother, Pierre, were dispatched to a fortress just northeast of Compiègne, at Clairoix. Three days later Jean de Luxembourg decided to secure the prisoners in his own castle at Beaulieu-lès-Fontaines, where he expected to receive immediate offers of a very high ransom.

  Captivity was unpleasant, but the humane customs regarding war prisoners were observed. No one in the group was subjected to harsh treatment, and no immediate threats were made to their lives. In addition, they had every reason to expect imminent freedom: the standard procedure in such cases was to demand from a prestigious captive’s allies a ransom, which, once paid, secured release. For Joan the only potential hazard at Beaulieu was the presence of a small platoon of rough Burgundian mercenaries, who came and went, breathing threats and brandishing weapons.

  On June 6 she was transported for a day to the bishop’s palace at nearby Noyon, where she was presented to two visitors—Philip of Burgundy and his wife, Isabelle. There is no record of the exchange between the duke and the Maid, but it was most likely not an interrogation but merely a chance for Philip to satisfy his curiosity with a glimpse and a brief conversation. His wife liked, admired and sympathized with Joan, and she tried to persuade her husband not to sell her to the English, or at least to guarantee the safety of her captivity by having her moved to their castle at Beaurevoir, a more hospitable place (at least for a captive). During the following weeks the matter was discussed with Jean de Luxembourg, and the transfer was eventually effected.

  However, before that move, drama ensued. Joan’s room at Beaulieu lay in the center of the octagonal castle. Jailers were stationed nearby, but Jean d’Aulon was permitted to attend her, and she was not subjected to molestation or harassment. When she learned that her removal to Beaurevoir would mean her separation from d’Aulon and her brother, she hatched an idea. “Help yourself and God will help you” had always been one of her mottoes; in fact, she used those very words in French.

  One night in early July she noticed that the wooden planks on her floor had been poorly joined. Working quietly, strengthened by battle, she tore away enough of the wood to lower herself to the room beneath, which was near the main entrance. Adjacent to the massive door was a room for sentries, who were sleeping, with the key to their room hanging on the outside of the door. As she tried to lock in the men before making her escape, guards on night patrol saw her and called out, thus thwarting her getaway. She was then placed in a more secure room.

  At the same time, the faculty at the University of Paris repeated its insistence on having Joan within its jurisdiction. The representative of that community was Pierre Cauchon, who regarded Joan as his archenemy for, as bishop of Beauvais, he had been forced into exile when that city proclaimed its loyalty to Charles during the postcoronation tour. Cauchon happened to be in Normandy when Joan was captured, and now he lived in Rouen, England’s French headquarters. But he was not bishop of that city; at that time the post was vacant. Always a devious politician with his eye on both royal and financial favors, he at once conferred with Bedford on the most expeditious way of having Joan delivered to them. If he could successfully manage the trial and have her dispatched, he could anticipate many royal rewards—among them the wealthy bishopric of Rouen.

  Cauchon was a man to reckon with. Former rector of the University of Paris, he was then about sixty years old and had climbed relentlessly—even ruthlessly—up the ladder of parochial and canonical appointments. He had been canon of Reims, Chartres, Châlons and Beauvais and was close to Pope Martin V, whose election he had supported. Cauchon had served the interests of England since 1420, had helped to draft the language of the Treaty of Troyes against France, and was charged with the matter of Joan of Arc.

  An offer was made to Jean de Luxembourg—not for ransom (which would mean her freedom to return to the service of France), but for an outright purchase of the Maid as an object the English desired to possess and would then, of course, have the Church condemn for heresy. There was no such thing as separation of church and state, and anyone could be tried in an Inquisition for a religious crime or public sin and then turned over to the secular arm for execution. In Joan’s case the charge of heresy meant that the ecclesiastical court would act under the aegis of the Inquisition, which worked to uphold the articles of faith and punish those who violated them. The more noteworthy the prisoner, the more necessary it was to deal firmly, and as everyone knew even then, Joan would never have been subjected to a trial if she had been on the side of the English. She was, to put it succinctly, a political pawn destined to die on fabricated charges of religious impropriety—a predicament much like that of Jesus Christ.

  Most important, if Joan were brought to trial and found guilty of heresy, the coronation of Charles would be entirely discredited and his kingship essentially invalidated. The enemy counted on Charles’s vacillation to make this an easy reality.

  Furthermore, the doctors of the university and their affiliated clergy would do more than ingratiate themselves with the English by providing an excuse to get rid of Joan: they would, in the bargain, exercise their power over a famous, influential, and much-admired woman. Joan relied on prayer and her experience of God’s proximity to determine her choices and her vocation, and such an independent spirit was a source of outrage to cherished institutional prerogatives. In this regard Joan of Arc must be regarded as one who, however indeliberately, battled institutional and clerical domination as much as she fought the occupying armies of England.

  THE ANGLO-BURGUNDIAN MEN believed that Joan had to be permanently excised from the world. To that end, Cauchon bid ten thousand gold écus, the maximum paid by a king to buy a prisoner from one of his vassals (in modern terms, about half a million dollars). There was no counteroffer, and thus the long interval between Cauchon’s offer in early July and the conclusion of the sale in December may seem hard to understand. But the wives of Burgundy and Luxembourg were gently and firmly pressuring their husbands not to act hastily in the matter of turning Joan over to the English, no matter the money to be realized.

  At her trial Joan specifically mentioned Luxembourg’s wife as sympathetic during her months at Beaurevoir, where she arrived sometime in late July or early August and where the duke’s aunt and stepdaughter were also friendly toward her—all of them Armagnac loyalists (and all named Jeanne). As for the duke himself, it is reasonable to think that he too liked her and came to believe that she was sent by God; if the latter, then he would have been terrified to seek her destruction. Luxembourg made no reply to Cauchon’s two offers in May and July; instead he waited in vain for the king himself to ransom the young woman who had made the coronation possible.

  But Charles was impervious to the entreaties of those who wished Joan ransomed. Some claimed he had not the money, but that is a specious argument for he could have raised it in a week by letters asking for contributions. More to the point, his troops had captured the Earl of Suffolk, whose freedom could have been exchanged for hers. But the king did nothing.

  Joan’s family could not afford the huge ransom set for her. The freedom of her few companions and of her brothers was purchased for a nominal fee by their comrades-in-arms; they were not, after all, significant
prisoners. That Joan’s troops elsewhere did not act similarly on her behalf was due to the fact that her “army,” such as it had been, was now widely scattered. The ransom also lay far beyond the abilities of Alençon, Dunois and others, who doubtless presumed the king would act properly and promptly on Joan’s behalf. As for the people of Orléans, they were too poor even to ransom their own duke, who had been imprisoned in England for fifteen years.

  The king’s failure to act may have been due at least partly to his mercurial attitude toward friends and supporters, whom he often raised high one week and exiled the next. In addition, Joan and her troops had failed in the siege of Paris: was she a false prophet after all, and if not, would she somehow be rescued by God? It is possible also that Charles feared Joan’s return, for if she engaged in further successful military exploits and her popularity grew accordingly, he might appear even more impotent, with his temporizing truces and ineffectual negotiations.

  The king knew the Maid well enough to know that she did not work for her own glory or advancement, but la Trémoïlle and company did everything they could to poison him against Joan. They knew Charles was careful to cultivate his own eminence; indeed, after the coronation he’d had countless medals struck with his own image and the legend “Charles the Triumphant.” The king may not have regretted seeing the last of the young woman to whom he owed so much.