According, then, to the verdict expressed with such unanimity by all present, it was enjoined upon them one and all to demand Jeanne’s presence in the old market-place at eight o’clock on the following morning, that she might personally hear herself declared excommunicate and relapsed.fn1
II
Massieu must have been up early on Wednesday, May 30th, for by seven o’clock in the morning he had already written a letter addressed to the Bishop and Lemaistre, informing them that their command had been carried out, and that Jeanne had been formally and personally summoned to appear before them at eight. According to the official register, it was not until nine that the scene in the market-place began. What had been happening at the prison to account for this unpunctuality? Ofsome of the happenings we can speak with certainty; others must remain a matter of controversy and conjecture.fn2 For the moment let us stick to what is sure.
What is sure is that Ladvenu, accompanied by a young monk named Toutmouillé, arrived early at the prison to hear Jeanne’s confession. This, says Toutmouillé, Ladvenu did charitably and with care. Massieu was there, and on Ladvenu’s request went off to find the Bishop of Beauvais for permission to administer the Sacraments to Jeanne. This permission took some little time to obtain, for it entailed calling some of the doctors together for deliberation, but resulted in the request being granted. Massieu was much displeased by the lack of reverence with which the Sacraments were brought by a clerk; on a paten, he says, wrapped in the linen used to cover the chalice, without any candles or any escort, without any surplice or stole. Ladvenu, displeased also, sent the clerk back to fetch light and a stole. Massieu watched her while she received Communion, ‘with great devotion and many tears.’
It was Ladvenu’s painful task to inform her of the manner of her death. She had always had a horror of fire, and now broke down, crying piteously (doloreusement et piteusement), ‘Alas, that I should be treated so horribly and cruelly; that my whole body, never yet corrupted, should today be consumed and burnt to ashes! Ha! ah! I would rather be beheaded seven times, than thus be burnt.’
At that moment, Cauchon came in, when she instantly said to him, ‘Bishop, I die through you.’ He tried to remonstrate with her, pointing out that she had brought her death upon herself by her broken promises, but she could only reproach him, saying that if he had put her into a prison of the Church and into the hands of competent and suitable keepers, this would never have happened (cecy ne fust pas advenu).fn3
Pierre Maurice came also. He had treated her gently once before, and she turned to him now for reassurance: ‘Maitre Pierre, where shall I be tonight?’ And on his asking if she did not trust in God, she replied that she did, and that, God willing, she would be in Paradise.fn4
They took her out. A mob of English soldiers awaited her, armed with swords and sticks and axes, so that no one dared speak to her, except Massieu and Ladvenu, who went with her and kept close,fn5 but were unable to restrain their tears Isambard de la Pierre followed them. The market-place was crowded when they arrived there; one witness says that ten thousand citizens were present, and there seem to have been close on a thousand English soldiers (Manchon; Massieu). Three stands had been erected, one for the judges, one for the priests, and one, silent and sinister, for a stake heaped round with wood.fn6 In front of this one was a board painted with the words: Jehanne who called herself la Pucelle, liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, sorceress, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, disbeliever in the faith of Jesus Christ, boastfol, idolatrous, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic.’fn7
She was led first to the priests, and made to mount the platform where all could see her clearly. She was then solemnly addressed by Nicolas Midi, who took as his text I Corinthians, chapter xii, verse 26: And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. She listened, says Massieu, very quietly until he came to the words, ‘Jeanne, go in peace, the Church can no longer protect you, and delivers you into secular hands.’ Then she knelt and prayed aloud to God, and asked that all mannerofpeople might show her mercy, whetherof her own party, or of the other, and would pray for her, for she forgave them all the harm they had done to her. She went on in this way for about half an hour, till even the judges were in tears and some of the English.fn8 Loiselleur had already taken his departure, weeping, and but for the protection of Warwick would have been set upon as a traitor by a party of the English whom he happened to encounter.fn9 Manchon left the scene, for he could not bear what was to follow; indeed, he says, he could not get over it for a month, and spent some of the money he had received for his services during the trial in buying a little missal, which he kept for years in memory of Jeanne, and which he used in saying prayers for her.fn10 Massieu remained, and handed her the crude little cross made for her out of two pieces of wood by an English soldier, which she first kissed and then put against her breast, between the flesh and her gown. The official report, of course, only says drily that the Bishop of Beauvais then rose and, after advising her to pay heed to the counsel of those who instructed her for her salvation, more especially the two venerable brothers (Ladvenu and de la Pierre) who were near her at that moment, read the final sentence by which she was cast out, cut off, and abandoned.fn11
III
The English were growing impatient, and began calling out, ‘Well, priest, do you mean us to dine here?’
No lay sentence was pronounced; that seems certain. None is officially recorded, and all the witnesses agree that none was delivered. – Manchon says that she was led up to the bailli of Rouen, who simply made a gesture with his hand, saying, ‘Away with her.’fn12 It is true that Manchon was speaking from hearsay, as he had already left, being overcome with his emotion, but the general agreement is such as to dispel any doubt. English hands seized her, and roughly propelled her towards the scaffold where the stake and faggots were waiting, and hoisted her upon it; it was built of plaster, and was very high, so high that the executioner had some trouble in reaching her, and was unable to do his work quickly.fn13 Instead of a crown of thorns, a tall paper cap, like a mitre, was set upon her head, bearing the words: ‘Heretic, relapsed, apostate, idolatress.’fn14 Massieu, Ladvenu, and de la Pierre went with her; de la Pierre, at her request, and sent by Massieu, fetched the crucifix from the neighbouring church of Saint Sauveur, and, mounting the scaffold, held it up before her. She told him to get down when the fire should be lighted, but to continue holding the crucifix up so that she might see it.fn15 Meanwhile, they bound her to the stake, and some of the English laughed as she called with a loud voice upon Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, and Saint Michael, then cried out, ‘Ah, Rouen! j’ay grant paour que tu ayes à souffrir de ma mort.’fn16 Then as the flames crackled and rose, she called loudly and repeatedly upon Jesus; her head sank forward, and it was the last word she was heard to pronounce.
Many wept; John Tressart, secretary to the King of England, exclaimed, ‘We are lost; we have burnt a saint.’fn17 Strange things were seen to happen. The name of Jesus leapt written across the flames.fn18 and an English soldier who had sworn to throw a faggot on to the pyre declared that he saw a white dove fly out of the flames and wing away in the direction of France.fn19 Jean Alespée wished openly and with tears that his soul might be where he believed hers to be.fn20 That no possible doubt could exist that the witch was dead – for the English greatly feared that a rumour of her escape might arise-the executioner was ordered to part the flames and show her charred and naked body hanging on the stake.fn21 Ladvenu and Isambard de la Pierre had a busy afternoon. They had to deal with the Englishman who had seen the dove fly away; he had been so much upset that his comrades had removed him to comfort him with drink in a neighbouring tavern, but, that consolation failing, he sought out an English monk and made his confession in Frère Isambard’s presence. They also had to deal with the executioner in person. He arrived at the house of the Frères Prêcheurs, looking for Ladvenu and de al Pierre, very frightened and contrite, s
aying that he was damned, having burnt a saint, and that God would never forgive him. He told them that, in spite of all the oil, sulphur, and fuel he had used, he could not reduce her entrails or heart to ashes.fn22 He had thrown everything which remained of her into the Seine.
18. AFTERMATH
I
That, then, is the story, told as straightforwardly as possible, but still it leaves us with all its deeper implications unexplained and even unexamined. It arouses many questions, which, if we could answer them, would carry us far along the road towards the solution of many mysteries. That, to me, is the fascination of France’s national saint – not just the subject of a biography, not merely a picturesque figure in armour and a scarlet cloak, but a figure who challenges some of the profoundest tenets of what we do or do not believe. More, perhaps, than any other military figure in history, she forces us to think.
She makes us think, and she makes us question; she uncovers the dark places into which we may fear to look. We read, and, having read, are left with the essential queries: Does God on occasion manifest Himself by direct methods? Is the visible world the only world we have to consider? Is it possible for mortal man to get into touch with beings of another world? Is it possible that unearthly guidance may be vouchsafed to assist our human fallibility? Is it possible that certain beings are born with a sixth sense, a receptivity so far beyond that of their fuller fellows that in order to explain it we take refuge in such words as ‘miraculous’ and ‘supernatural’?
It is best to admit straight away that we can give no satisfactory or comprehensive answer to the general question. So far as Jeanne herself is concerned, we can accept her sincerity without scepticism; and, for the rest, attempt by methods of comparison to arrive at some conclusion – a conclusion which eludes us, and which must in the last resort be left to the individual judgment. By individual judgment I mean really that there are two possible lines of approach: the so-called scientific, and the so-called religious – two lines which may well prove to be not parallel but convergent. I believe that their discrepancies at present puzzle us only in so far as we fail to see far enough down the perspective of which will eventually bring them to the sharp and understandable point of meeting.
It is with reluctance that I intrude my own convictions, but at a given moment it surely becomes imperative for any biographer of Saint Joan to make his own position clear, even at the expense of some declaration of personal faith, if only in order to avoid any suspicion of personal prejudice. The words in which I must clothe that declaration are trite, I know, but the conviction behind them is serious and sincere. I will state, therefore, briefly, that I am not, myself, what is called a ‘religious’ person in the orthodox sense of the phrase, nor yet a practising member of any organised Church. I do, however, confronted with the ultimate enigma, believe, and believe deeply, in some mysterious central originating force which the natural weakness and insufficiency of human nature finds it necessary to symbolise in a name, an amalgam of fear and comfort, which you may call God or Gott or Dieu or Jah or Allah or X, or even ‘a pure mathematician,’ without any reason necessarily to identify that force with our own human conceptions of good and evil. It follows logically that, holding this belief, I share with my fellow-mortals the ancient superstition which no scientific explanation can destroy, but which no scientific explanation has as yet been able to account for: the belief in what we conveniently call the supernatural. I believe in it so profoundly as to quarrel with the expressions super-natural or extra-natural. For me there is only one comprehensive, stupendous unity of which we apprehend but the smallest segment. My readings into Joan of Arc have done nothing but increase my belief in the existence of that unity, and also the belief that certain persons are in touch with, or, shall we say, receptive to the influences of a unity for which we have no adequate name, the greater whole of which our own imagination embraces but a tiny part. Without pretending to explain how or why these persons should be thus favoured, I accept the fact, with the logical corollary that Jeanne must be regarded as prominent among them – a bald and brief conclusion which I fear may be regarded as both unsatisfactory and evasive.
I have, however, already admitted that we are in no position to give anything resembling a satisfactory answer. I have suggested that neither of the two possible lines of approach-the scientific and the religious-is alone sufficient to resolve the mystery. The religious, of course, offers the quicker way out of the difficulty: blind acceptance, to some minds, is more agreeable than the more critical and enquiring attitude. The whole problem is simplified for those who can just believe that God sent three of His Saints to instruct Jeanne; for those who can throw themselves, in short, into the frame of mind of the good, believing Christian. For some of us this attitude is impossible blindly to adopt. I have been painfully tom myself. There are moments when I am not at all sure that the religious line of approach may not, in the end, prove right; when I am not at all sure that instinct may not be proved to have taken the short-cut rejected by reason. They may both arrive at the same point in the end; only, instinct may be found to have got there first. I am in the unfortunate position of anybody tom between an instinctive reliance on instinct, and a reasonable reliance on reason.
In the meantime it seems to me that the only spirit in which to approach the problem of Jeanne’s voices and visions, in the present state of our understanding, is a spirit of complete open-mindedness and acknowledgement of our ignorance. Our ignorance and limitations, indeed, are still such that we may well question the audacity of approaching such a problem at all. We are in the position of a schoolboy who, having attained to some acquaintance with simple or even compound fractions, would aspire to comment on the higher mathematics. The outcome of such an attempt in the eyes of an informed mathematician would be piteous and laughable in the extreme. Just as piteous, in the eyes of succeeding and more enlightened generations, may be the attempts of the twentieth century to fumble towards the explanation of a phenomenon which to the more adult information of the future may offer no difficulties whatsoever. It is possible, conceivable, and indeed probable that with the expansion of our knowledge in the physical, psychological, and psychical worlds such problems may cease to be problems and may become the commonplace of ordinary information. With have hope in view, it would seem, therefore, as though any present effort of a groping understanding were a wasted effort, and as though we of the early twentieth century should be better advised to wait in patience for the coming of a fuller wisdom, a fulfilment of wisdom perhaps too remote ever to benefit our now existent selves, rather than waste our time only to expose ourselves to the antiquarian interest of our posterity as yet another example of commendable inquisitiveness but obsolete ignorance.
II
At the same time, while thus humbly admitting our insufficiencies, we should be well advised to explore the information available from scientific, or pseudo-scientific, sources. The terminology of such sources is unfortunately enough to put the reader against them. The very word ‘psychic’ has a malodour in rational nostrils, and is mixed up with tales of credulous devotees and fraudulent mediums in the popular mind. We have all heard such tales; and probably in a large percentage of cases our mistrust was justifiable.
Certain serious and respect-worthy essays, written with especial reference to Jeanne d’Arc, cannot, however, be ignored. It is impossible for any serious student of Jeanne d’Arc to overlook them, or to omit to search through them in the hope of discovering even one single instructive phrase. It is necessary, indeed, for the student of Jeanne d’Arc, if he wants to get as near to the truth as he can, to examine and compare reports and comments on experiences analogous to her own. For such experiences, one turns obviously to the records in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.fn1
These proceedings contribute two valuable articles: valuable, that is to say, for their bearing on Jeanne. Neither of them relates to any actual ‘sittings,’ and may thus be absolved from any suspicion in th
e mind of the reader. They are merely speculative essays based on authenticated historical events. The first article to which I allude is by Frederic Myers,fn2 on the famous ‘Dæmon of Socrates.’ Socrates, as is well known, was guided in all the affairs of life by a monitory voice – a voice which on certain occasions gave him certain warnings, and on other occasions, by omitting to manifest at all, gave, through silence, approval of his actions. Myers, and rightly, is extremely cautious about attributing any exaggerated importance to the powers of this guiding voice. ‘We cannot,’ he says, ‘be sure that the monitory sign ever warned him of anything which no possible sagacity of the ordinary kind could have led him to discover.’ Throughout his essay he implies, in fact, that Socrates was drawing on what we should now call his subconscious, rather than receiving guidance from any exterior and dissociated force. ‘I believe that it is now possible,’ he says, ‘… to show that the messages which Socrates received were only advanced examples of a process which, if super-normal, is not abnormal, and which characterises that form of intelligence which we describe as genius. For a genius is best defined – not as an unlimited capacity for taking pains,fn3 but rather as a mental constitution which allows a man to draw readily into conscious life the products of unconscious thought’ – a pregnant phrase which grows the richer in suggestion the more one ponders over it. But then, as Myers goes on to observe, the case of Socrates is a marked one, and may be thought too exceptional for his argument. Socrates, after all, was one of the noblest intellects ever produced by Greece. Socrates, as he says, was too strangely above ordinary men to allow us to draw wider inferences from this example. ‘It might be well,’ he continues, ‘if we could add a case not complicated by such towering genius – a case where someone with no great gifts of nature, with no incomprehensible workings of the soul, had, nevertheless, by monitory voices been taught wisdom and raised to honour – and who, if so it might be, had testified to the reality of the inward message by some witness which the world could not gainsay. And such a case there is; there is a figure in history unique and marvellous, but marvellous in this point alone. One there has been who was born with no conspicuous strength of intellect, and in no high or powerful place, but to whom voices came from childhood onwards and brought at length a strange command – one who by mere obedience to that monitory call rose to be the saviour of a great nation – one to whose lot it fell to push that obedience to its limit, and to pledge life for truth; to perish at the stake rather than disown those voices or disobey that inward law.
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