They had tackled her once more on the subject. At first she demurred, asking if they wanted her to perjure herself? Tackled again, as to whether she had promised Saint Catherine not to reveal the sign, she replied that not only had she sworn and promised not to reveal it, but had done so of her own accord, because she was being too strongly urged to reveal it. Then they heard her muttering to herself that she would never speak of it again to any man.
In spite of this, they persisted, and with their persistence her scruples seem to have left her. Her last effort at honesty beaten down, she threw herself with true Jeannesque recklessness into the whole-hearted elaboration. She had always been very partial to crowns; crowns were almost an obsession with her – a childish and peasant-like obsession with the symbol of royalty and godhead; it is worth noting that however reluctant she was to describe the personal appearance of her saints, she was always ready to insist on the fact that they wore beautiful crowns.
The angel, she said, confinned the rights of her King, bringing him the crown and telling him that the whole kingdom of France should be his entirely by the help of God and through the labours of herself, Jeanne; that he should put her to the task and should give her soldiers, otherwise he would not be so readily crowned and anointed.
After this brave opening she appears to have become a little confused, for she muddles up the fictitious arrival of the angel with the crown, and the actual coronation at Reims. It is rather a pathetic muddle, in so far as it betrays her rustic inexperience of crowns, kings, and coronations. I think that at this point, in the midst of her brave excursion into the wide opportunities of fiction, she got frightened, and tried to come down to earth again, with most confusing results. Having invented, or rather, having taken up the judges’ own inventiou of an angel and a crown, she remembered suddenly that she had in real life seen her King crowned by somebody who was anything but an angel. Therefore, in answer to the question as to how, exactly, the angel had brought the crown, and whether he had set it upon the King’s head, she replied that the crown had been handed to an archbishop, the Archbishop of Reims, as it seems to her, in the King’s presence, and that the Archbishop received it and gave it to the King, she, Jeanne, being present, and that the crown had been put into the King’s treasury.
Now here was an obvious confusion of fact with fiction, and the judges were quick to see it. Where, they asked, was the crown brought?
Jeanne went hurriedly back to her fiction, and it is remarkable how circumstantial her details become after this brief attempt to reconcile fiction with fact.
The crown, she said, was brought into the King’s room at Chinon. She could not remember the exact day; and, as to the hour, she could only remember that it was late.fn38 It was either in April or in March, she thinks; and next month or in the present month (she is speaking on March 13th, 1431), it will be two years ago; and it was after Easter.
The crown itself by now is of pure gold, so rich and opulent that she cannot number or estimate its riches; it signifies that its King will hold the kingdom of France. No jeweller in the world could have made it so beautiful. She is a little cautious in her reply to the question whether it included precious stones: ‘I have already told you what I know about that.’ She had, in fact, told them nothing about that, but had evaded the answer on a previous occasion.
They asked her then whether the angel, bringing the crown, had arrived from on high or by earth, and she immediately became circumstantial again: the angel had arrived from on high, on God’s command, and had entered by the door. He had bowed to the King, and had advanced from the door, walking on the floor on his way towards the King. The distance between the door and the King might be the length of a lance. (This rings curiously true: Jeanne knew the length of a lance, and would very naturally have visualised it as an instrument of measurement, ready to hand.) She followed the angel into the room, and said to the King, ‘Sire, here is your sign; take it.’
She had been well prepared for this manifestation, for the angel had already appeared to her in her lodging at Chinon, before she ever gained audience of the King at all. In fact, they went together to find the King, the angel being accompanied by other angels, who were not seen by other people. She believed, however, that several persons had seen the angel, including the Archbishop of Reims, Charles de Bourbon, and the Dukes of La Trémoïlle and Alençon.fn39 Several people saw the crown who did not see the angel.
Some of the angels accompanying the angel resembled one another, others were different, as she saw them; some were winged, and some wore crowns, others not; Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret came right into the room with the angels.
She wept when the angel left her, and wished he could have taken her soul with him, but he left her neither afraid nor frightened, only sorry for his departure.
The angel, she added, in reply to a further question, had never written her any letters.
This curious story can be explained only if we accept that Jeanne, driven into a comer, was taking refuge in fantasy based on allegory. The allegory is clear enough: she herself was the angel, bringing Charles the crown of France – as indeed she did. That she should have become confused at a given moment is comprehensible, since her intellect was nil though her genius was great. The nullity of her intellect rendered the story unmanageable for a brief and given moment: the flesh-and-blood figure of the Archbishop of Reims intruded, and so did the actual crown, which she had seen at Reims and knew to have been replaced in the royal treasury. They got between the image of the angel – whom, incidentally, she declared to have been Saint Michael – and of the miraculous crown set by the angel at Chinon upon Charles’ head. Chinon and Reims, Archangel and Archbishop, crown symbolical and crown factual, all merged into a story too complicated and ambitious for her loyally ingenious brain. It was claimed that she later made full confession of the red herring she had attempted to draw across the path of the judges’ enquiry. She could not tell the right truth, so she had made up another story. So they claimed; but, as the authenticity of the claim is doubtful, the full account has been relegated to an appendix.fn40
16. THE TRIAL (2)
I
In the foregoing chapter very little has been said about the conduct of the trial itself, and the impression may perhaps have been unintentionally created that the interrogation confmed itself to such major issues as the revelations by the voices, the physical manifestations of the saints, the insistence on Jeanne’s masculine clothes, and the heresy implied in her independence of judgment. Such is not the case. Many other questions were raised, pursued, dropped, and frequently raised again, some of them seemingly insignificant, and only to be understood in their true purport if we bear continually in mind that they reach us out of a world of intellectual darkness in which men, frightened of the powers of evil, were using every scrap of evidence to condemn a girl as a heretic and a witch. Thus the endless questions about the Arbre des Dames and the Bois Chenu at Domremy, about the early employments, about the mandrake she was supposed to have carried in her bosom, about her standard, her sword, her rings, the Jhesus Maria heading to her letters, her prophecies, the death of Franquet d’Arras, and her leap from the tower at Beaurevoir – all had their bearing on the central enquiry, though at times their drift may seem puzzling to the poor ignorant uninstructed Jeanne. The question of her virginity alone might have offered scope for an enquiry all to itself, but that the official investigations negatively forbade pursuit in that direction. The Pucelle was a real pucelle: there could be no doubt about it. The fact had been established several times, at intervals, by witnesses whose authority the court could not dispute. Not to mention the ladies of Chinon and Tours, the Duchess of Bedford herself had more recently been involved in the enquiry, and also a member of their own council, the doctor of medicine, de la Chambre, who had had the opportuuity of examining Jeanne during one of her two illnesses in prison, and who expressed himself some years later with more frankness than delicacy.fn1 It was a pity, from the point
of view of the clerics, that her virtue could not be assailed, for it was a well-known fact that the Devil could exert no power against the protective purity of a maid. Did not the snow-white unicorn, swifter than the swallow, whom no hunter could arrest on its course through the forest, come fawning to the call of a pure virgin and of a pure virgin only? Such facts were commonplaces of belief, and virginity a correspondingly priceless possession. Even William Caxton (her exact contemporary) never attempted to impugn the chastity of ‘this mayde who rode lyke a man and was a vaulyant captayn,’ but could only suggest that she tried to deceive her captors, ‘and then she sayd that she was with chylde, wher by she was respited a whyle; but in conclusyon it was founde that she was not with chylde, and then she was brent in Roen.’fn2
II
It is obviously impossible here to go into all the details of the trial; it is possible only to indicate its chronology and general outline in its various stages, with the inevitable culmination of the tragedy in the market-place.
The first public sitting, then, with the prisoner present for the first time, took place on February 21st in the royal chapel of the castle of Rauen. The court removed itself next day to the salle d’honneur or chambre de parement, near to the King’s apartments. Henry VI and Jeanne were thus in closer proximity than they had ever been before, although there is no record that they ever set eyes upon one another. She was being tried ahnost next door to the room where the little English King, then aged nine, was playing his games or doing his lessons in innocent ignorance of the complications unfolding themselves so close at hand. Westminster and Domremy were very far apart. Day after day, the court assembled in the same place at eight o’clock in the morning, the Bishop of Beauvais always present, though the number and personnel of his colleagues might vary; the prisoner always present since she had no choice. Day after day the proceedings started with the same argument about the oath – arguments which diminished in intensity as the obstinacy of the prisoner became more apparent, until finally they shrank from a set battle to a mere matter of form. After three sittings, the case was interrupted by the illness of the prisoner, so that between February 24th and 27th the proceedings had to be suspended. Jeanne had, in fact, been violently sick (multum vomitum), and the tribunal found itself obliged to look up and down its ranks for a doctor of medicine who could attend to the needs of the body while the needs of the soul remained temporarily in abeyance. They found one in the person of Jean Tiphaine, who had at first been reluctant to attend the trial, but who had finally given way owing to his fear of the English and their resentment. He had a considerable admiration for Jeanne and her spirited replies, and specially recalls a certain day when Jacques de Touraine asked her ifshe had ever been present when Englishmen were killed. ‘En nom Dieu, si ay. Comme vous parlez doucement!fn3 Why did they not leave France and go back to their own country?’ Upon hearing which, an English lord, whose name Tiphaine had forgotten, exclaimed. ‘Really, that is a good woman! If only she were English!’
Tiphaine was taken by d’Estivet to visit her in her cell, when, ill though she was, she accused the Bishop of Beauvais of having sent her a carp which she suspected of being the cause of her trouble. D’Estivet flew into a rage, and accused her of having eaten herrings and other things which she knew would disagree with her. Jeanne answered back, and they then appear to have abused one «nother soundly.fn4
The scene in the cell is vivid enough, Jeanne with her ankles chained, as Tiphaine tells us, and he himself trying to feel her pulse during the altercation, but it seems extremely unlikely that Cauchon could really have wished to poison her or even temporarily put her out of action. The last thing the judges or the English wanted was that she should die by natural means. Another doctor, Guillaume de la Chambre, rec;ords explicitly that the Bishop of Winchester and Lord Warwick sent for him when she fell ill, and that Warwick addressed him, saying, ‘I hear that Jeanne is ill and have sent for you that you may cure her. The King would not have her die a natural death on any account: he holds her dear, having bought her dearly. She must die only at the hands of justice, and must be burnt. Do whatever is necessary, and endeavour to restore her to health.’ Even the doctor’s proposal to bleed the patient alarmed Lord Warwick: ‘Be very cautious of blood-letting. She is sly, and might bring her own death about.’fn5
In spite of carps, herrings, and bleedings, in spite of having a return of her fever as the result of losing her temper with d’Estivet,fn6 she recovered, and the sittings were resumed. By March 3rd the first part of the cross-examination was over, and for the next six days the judges held daily discussions in Cauchon’s magnificent house, going over the evidence in detail, and deciding on what points she should be questioned further. At this point Cauchon, alleging that his other occupations might not allow him always to attend the trial, appointed Jean de la Fontaine as his delegate to conduct the enquiry, all Jeanne’s most determined enemies being present – Beaupère, de Touraine, Nicolas Midi, de Courcelles, and the infamous Loiselleur. From this time onwards the scene of the trial shifts: it is no longer conducted in the castle hall, open to all the assessors who chose to put in an appearance, but in Jeanne’s own prison, where space allowed only a handful of men to attend at a time. The poor timid monk Lemaistre was compelled to take up his role as representative of the Grand Inquisitor, more definitely than before, when he had appeared as the mere associate of his formidable colleague the Bishop, for Cauchon was not now always present, and Lemaistre, with La Fontaine, was obliged to take the lead. Another difference was that they now sometimes met twice a day instead of once; morning and afternoon she had to answer their searching and tricky questions. She was in chains; she was now deprived even of the short walk from her prison to the judgment-hall; she had been ill, and, because the season was Lent, she was fasting. Her spirit never flagged, but it was small wonder that they heard her whispering to herself, when they pursued her with questions about the sign given to the King, ‘I swear I will never speak of it again to any man.’fn7
She had very little respite now. They filled her cell almost daily – on March 10th, twice on the 12th, on the 13th, twice on the 14th, on the 15th, and twice on the 17th – nine sessions in eight days. Nor was it like a trial in which witnesses are called: the only witness was the prisoner. She must be on the alert all the time, through all the weariness and the dread. She was worn out; by March 14th she pleaded that, in the event of her being taken to Paris for a renewed interrogation, she might be allowed to say that she had already been examined at Rouen and that she should no longer be persecuted by so many questions.fn8
III
After Passion Sunday, March 18th, she had a few days’ rest, while the learned doctors assembled once more in Cauchon’s house and deliberated over the register of the examination. Having taken a week to do so, they repaired agam to the prison (March 24th), and read the document, in French, to Jeanne, who, with only minor interruptions, acknowledged it as a true and accurate record of all she had said. A rare hint of weakness escaped her: ‘Give me a woman’s dress to go to my mother’s house, and I will accept it.’ She added that this was in order to be out of prison, when she could take counsel of what she was to do.fn9
The next day was Palm Sunday, and she asked repeatedly to be allowed to hear Mass, both then and on Easter Day. Of course they took advantage of these requests to revive the old vexed question of her clothes. Her distress pierces even through the clerkly formality of the register: ‘We asked her if she would abandon her masculine habit, were we to accord this favour. She replied that she had had no counsel about it, and could not yet take the said dress. And we asked her if she wanted to take counsel of her saints in order to receive a woman’s dress. She answered that she might surely be permitted to hear Mass as she was, which she ardently desired; but that she could not change her dress, for it was not in her to do so. The doctors exhorted her again to adopt the habit suitable to her sex, but she replied that it was not in her to do so, and, if it were in her, she would
do so readily. Then she was told to confer with her voices to know if she might resume woman’s dress in order to receive the Eucharist at Easter, but she replied that, so far as it lay with her, she would not receive the Eucharist by exchanging her clothes for the clothes of a woman, and she asked again that she might be allowed to hear Mass dressed as a man, for, she said, the wearing of that dress did not oppress her soul, neither was it contrary to the Church.’fn10
Imperative as was her desire to hear Mass, especially during that week, which must have represented the Passion to her even more vividly than to the most ardent and imaginative Christian, she refused to give way over this apparently insignificant point. It seems strange that she should have clung to her determination with such assiduity, even to the extent of foregoing the favour she most desired. One can understand her adoption of men’s clothes as a reasonable and indeed necessary precaution for the preservation of her virginity; it is harder to understand her obstinacy at such a cost. Either it must have turned into a matter of principle by then, mixed up with all the other dictates of her voices, or else a very bitter experience must have convinced her that therein lay her only safety in a world of men.
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