Joan of Arc

by Castor, Helen

  Joan’s dark hair (‘cheveux noirs’) is reported in the detailed description given by the clerk of La Rochelle: see Quicherat, ‘Relation inédite sur Jeanne d’Arc’, p. 336. For her clothes and cropped hair, see also the account of Mathieu Thomassin in Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 304; for her companions, see the testimony of Jean de Metz in Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 290 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, p. 278; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 272).

  4: THE MAID

  For Joan writing to the king from Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, see her own testimony in 1431: Tisset, Condamnation, I, p. 51 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, p. 55; English in Hobbins, Trial, p. 55, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 144).

  For Joan’s first visits to Robert de Baudricourt and to the duke of Lorraine, and her eventual journey to Chinon, see testimony given in 1456: Duparc, Nullité, I, 289–91 (Jean de Metz), 296 (Durand Laxart), 305–7 (Bertrand de Poulengy), 378 (Marguerite La Touroulde) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, pp. 277–8, 283–4, 292–3, and IV, p. 61; for Metz, Laxart and Poulengy in English, see Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 271–4, 276–7). See also Joan’s own testimony in 1431: Tisset, Condamnation, I, pp. 48–51 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, pp. 47–56; English in Hobbins, Trial, pp. 54–5, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 142–40). The timing and precise details of these events are confused because of discrepancies between these various accounts: see Tisset’s discussion in Condamnation, II, pp. 49–52nn.

  For Baudricourt not taking Joan seriously to start with, see also the later reports of Jean Chartier, in Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 52, and the ‘Journal du siège d’Orléans’, in Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 118.

  For Ermine de Reims, the ‘discernment of spirits’ and the referral of her case to Jean Gerson, see Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints and Visionaries, pp. 89–91; D. Elliott, ‘Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc’, American Historical Review, 107 (2002), pp. 27–8, 39–43.

  For Joan’s black and grey outfit, see the clerk of La Rochelle in Quicherat, ‘Relation inédite sur Jeanne d’Arc’, p. 336; for her red dress and help with clothes and equipment from the people of Vaucouleurs, see Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 289–90 (Metz), 296 (Laxart), 298 (Catherine, wife of Henri le Royer), 299 (Henri le Royer), 306 (Poulengy) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, pp. 277–8, 283–7, 293; Metz, Laxart, Catherine le Royer and Poulengy in English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 271–2, 274, 275–6).

  For Colet de Vienne, see Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 290 (Metz) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, p. 278; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 272); Tisset, Condamnation, II, p. 53n.

  The dangers of the route: Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy said that they sometimes travelled at night for fear of meeting English or Burgundian soldiers. See Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 190, 306 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, pp. 278, 293; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 272, 276).

  For the likely role of René of Anjou and Yolande in facilitating Joan’s arrival at court, see Vale, Charles VII, pp. 49–51; Taylor, Virgin Warrior, pp. 34–5.

  For Joan’s arrival, her meeting with the king (there are conflicting reports of how soon, but Joan herself said it was the day of her coming to Chinon), and the nature of her mission, see Joan’s own testimony in 1431, in Tisset, Condamnation, I, pp. 51–3 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, pp. 55–6; English in Hobbins, Trial, pp. 55–6, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 144), and evidence given in 1456, in Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 317 (Bastard of Orléans), 326 (Raoul de Gaucourt), 329 (Guillaume de Ricarville), 330 (Regnauld Thierry), 362 (Louis de Coutes) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 2–3, 11, 14, 15, 46–7, and the Bastard and Coutes in English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 277–8, 294); also the testimony, recorded in French, of Jean d’Aulon in Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 475 (trans. English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 339). In 1456 Jean Pasquerel and Simon Charles both gave more extensive accounts of Joan’s meeting with the king – Pasquerel saying that the king declared that she had told him secrets no one else knew, and Simon Charles that she had recognised the king despite his attempts to conceal himself among other members of the court. However, neither Pasquerel nor Simon Charles was present at Chinon to witness this encounter. It is clear both that they were keen to echo Joan herself in suggesting that her arrival had a miraculous quality – in 1431, she said that ‘when she entered her king’s chamber, she recognised him among the others by the counsel of her voice, which revealed him to her’ – and that they may have conflated her first encounter with the king with a later, more public presentation at court, for which see below, pp. 99, 270. See Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 389–90 (Pasquerel), 399–400 (Charles) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 71–2, 81–2; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 311–12, 317–18); for Joan’s testimony, see Tisset, Condamnation, I, pp. 51–2 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, p. 56; English in Hobbins, Trial, p. 55, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 144).

  For Joan addressing the king as ‘Dauphin’ because he was not yet crowned, see the testimony in 1456 of François Garivel: Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 328 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, p. 13; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 286). In other testimony she is sometimes said to have called him ‘dauphin’ and sometimes ‘king’; in her letters, she always referred to him as king: see pp. 98, 122.

  Her mission: note that no one who knew Joan in Domrémy or Vaucouleurs said that she talked of relieving the siege at Orléans. Instead, they remembered her saying that she would save France from the English and take the king to be crowned at Reims. Those witnesses in 1456 who had been inside the besieged town in the spring of 1429 remembered hearing that she was coming to save them, but it makes psychological sense, given their own overwhelming need, that that might have been their conclusion at the time and their memory after the fact. What seems more likely is that the specific task of relieving Orléans was added to the general ones of repelling the English and securing the king’s coronation once Joan had access to more detailed information at Chinon about the progress of the war. This was not how she herself presented the evolution of her mission during her trial in 1431, but her evidence on the subject was neither internally consistent nor wholly plausible. See, for witnesses from Domrémy and Vaucouleurs, Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 278 (Jean Waterin), 290–1 (Metz), 293 (Michel le Buin), 296 (Laxart), 298 (Catherine le Royer), 305 (Poulengy) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, pp. 265, 277–8, 280, 283, 285, 292–3; Metz, Laxart, Catherine le Royer and Poulengy in English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 271–6); for Joan’s testimony in 1431, below, chs 9 and 10; and see below, pp. 269–70, for evidence suggesting that the relief of Orléans was adopted as a test of her mission during her interrogation at Poitiers.

  For de Baudricourt suggesting that Joan’s family should give her a few slaps, see the testimony in 1456 of Durand Laxart: Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 296 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, III, p. 283; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 274). Deborah Fraioli and Larissa Juliet Taylor both suggest that Joan was also met with derision by those around the king at Chinon, but the sources they cite refer to her initial reception at Vaucouleurs; by the time she arrived at court – perhaps thanks to Yolande’s intervention – the message she brought was already being considered seriously: see D. Fraioli, Joan of Arc: The Early Debate (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 7, and the chronicle of Jean Chartier in Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 52; Taylor, Virgin Warrior, p. 42, and Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 377–8 (La Touroulde) (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, p. 61).

  ‘excessive, overeager …’: from Jean Gerson’s On the Proving of Spirits (De probatione spirituum) in Fraioli, Early Debate, p. 18n.

  For Joan’s clothes, see R. Wirth (ed.), Primary Sources and Context concerning Joan of Arc’s Male Clothing, Historical Academy (Association) for Joan of Arc Studies (2006), p. 1 and note 1.

  For the Old Testament prohibition on cross-dressing, see Deuteronomy 22:5 – ‘A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, n
either shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the Lord thy God’.

  For arguments between Gerson and Cauchon at Constance, see above, p. 26.

  For Armagnac scholars from the university of Paris reconvening at Poitiers in the kingdom of Bourges, see R. G. Little, The Parlement of Poitiers: War, Government and Politics in France, 1418–1436 (London, 1984), pp. 104–5.

  For Gerson’s exile and settlement at Lyon, see B. P. McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation (Pennsylvania State University, 2005), ch. 10; and for his principles for the discernment of spirits as laid out in On Distinguishing True from False Revelations (1401), On the Proving of Spirits (1415) and On the Examination of Doctrine (1423), see Elliott, ‘Seeing Double’, pp. 28–9, 42–3.

  For Joan’s physical examination by ladies of the court, see the testimony of Jean Pasquerel in Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 389 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, p. 71; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 311). This is hearsay, since Pasquerel was not at Chinon when Joan arrived, but is entirely plausible as a first step before any further spiritual examination, and the identity of the ladies he names supports his story, since their husbands were both at Chinon with the king. Pasquerel also says that Joan was examined twice. For what seems to have been the second occasion, at Poitiers, see pp. 97, 270.

  For the correspondence with Jacques Gélu, which exists now only in seventeenth-century summaries, see M. Forcellin, Histoire générale des Alpes Maritimes ou Cottiènes, II (Paris, 1890) pp. 313–16; and discussion in Fraioli, Early Debate, pp. 16–23.

  For Joan’s lodgings at Chinon, see the testimony of Louis de Coutes in Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 362 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, p. 47; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 90).

  For the investigations at Poitiers, see Fraioli, Early Debate, ch. 3; Little, Parlement of Poitiers, pp. 94–108 (though note that he sees the process as political rather than theological); C. T. Wood, ‘Joan of Arc’s mission and the lost record of her interrogation at Poitiers’, in B. Wheeler and C. T. Wood (eds), Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc (New York, 1996), pp. 19–28 (though note that he reaches the opposite conclusion to the one I propose here about the nature of Joan’s mission: he suggests that the relief of Orléans, but not the coronation at Reims, was part of Joan’s mission from the beginning).

  No transcript of the inquiry at Poitiers survives. Instead, we have a short summary, which was widely publicised, of the conclusions reached by the clerics. For its text (quoted here and below: ‘in two ways …’, ‘She has conversed …’, ‘For to doubt or discard …’, ‘The king … should not prevent …’, and calling Joan ‘the Maid’), see Quicherat, Procès, III, pp. 391–2, and various English translations in Fraioli, Early Debate, pp. 206–7; Hobbins, Trial, pp. 217–18; Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 72–4.

  For the unlikelihood that the raising of the siege of Orléans, which was more than 250 miles away from Domrémy, formed part of Joan’s mission from the beginning, see above, pp. 267–8. For the argument that it emerged as her ‘sign’ during the investigation at Poitiers, see Fraioli, Early Debate, p. 33, citing the account of Pope Pius II, written probably in 1459 – evidence that is supported by the testimony given in 1456 by the captain of Chinon, Raoul de Gaucourt, and Joan’s squire, Jean d’Aulon: Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 326, 475–6 (Gaucourt trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 11–12; d’Aulon trans. English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 339–40). Note, however, that other testimony gives other versions. Joan’s own account of her sign in 1431 is full of discrepancies and grows under pressure into something much more elaborate: see below, chs 9 and 10.

  For Archbishop Gélu’s worries about ridicule, see Forcellin, Histoire générale, p. 314.

  For the second check on Joan’s virginity under the supervision of Yolande, see the testimony of Jean d’Aulon in Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 476 (trans. English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 339–40).

  For the text of Joan’s letter to the English, see Tisset, Condamnation, I, pp. 221–2, or Quicherat, Procès, I, pp. 240–1, and various English translations in Hobbins, Trial, pp. 134–5; Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 74–6; Fraioli, Early Debate, p. 208. See also discussion in Fraioli, Early Debate, ch. 5.

  For the story given by the clerk of La Rochelle of Joan’s public presentation to the king, see Quicherat, ‘Relation inédite sur Jeanne d’Arc’, pp. 336–7. He, like Jean Pasquerel and Simon Charles in 1456, believed this to be Joan’s first meeting with the king, before her interrogation at Poitiers, but it seems more likely, following the testimony of other witnesses (see above, pp. 266–7), that the first meeting took place in private, and that this public encounter happened only once the decision had been made to test Joan’s mission at Orléans: cf. Taylor, Virgin Warrior, pp. 46–7.

  Copies of the Poitiers Conclusions reached as far afield as Scotland and Germany, and may have been dispatched as an ‘official circular’: see Little, Parlement of Poitiers, pp. 108–11.

  For the chronogram and prophecies, and the Latin poem Virgo puellares (which also reached Germany and Scotland), see Fraioli, Early Debate, pp. 61–6; Taylor, Virgin Warrior, pp. 47–8; Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 77–8 (comment and translation); Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 305.

  The story of Joan’s sword also comes in different versions. Joan herself said in 1431 that she thought it was buried not very deep in the ground near the altar (in front or behind, she was not sure), and that when the clerics rubbed it, the rust immediately fell off it – though of course she was not there to witness its unearthing. She said she knew from her voices that it was there; her voices are not mentioned in sources before the trial, so the clerk of La Rochelle and the ‘Journal du siège d’Orléans’, for example, report simply that she knew it would be found there. I quote the clerk of La Rochelle because his account suggests a non-miraculous means by which that might have been possible: if the sword was kept in a coffer that had been opened within living memory, Joan could have heard of it when she stopped at the church on her way to Chinon. But in fact that is also possible if the sword were buried. Legend had it that the great warrior Charles Martel had given his sword to the church at Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois after his eighth-century victory against the invading Moors, and other soldiers had left weapons there as offerings, so it may well have been a church full of swords with stories attached to them. As Joan’s myth developed, it would eventually be said that the sword she carried was that of Charles Martel himself. See the clerk of La Rochelle in Quicherat, ‘Relation inédite sur Jeanne d’Arc’, pp. 331, 337–8; Joan’s testimony in Tisset, Condamnation, I, pp. 76–7 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, pp. 75–6; English in Hobbins, Trial, pp. 67–8, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 155–6); for the ‘Journal du siège’, see Quicherat, Procès, IV, p. 129; and for discussion see Taylor, Virgin Warrior, pp. 51–2, and B. Wheeler, ‘Joan of Arc’s Sword in the Stone’, in Wheeler and Wood (eds), Fresh Verdicts, pp. xi–xv.

  For St Catherine – who was also usually depicted with the wheel that failed to kill her – and her cult in France and specifically at Fierbois, see Beaune, Birth of an Ideology, pp. 127–32.

  For Joan’s armour, which cost the large sum of a hundred livres tournois, and the painting of her banners, see the extract from the accounts of the king’s treasurer for his wars in Quicherat, Procès, V, p. 258. The painter is named as ‘Hauves Polvoir’, which is probably the Scots name ‘Hamish Power’: see discussion in Beaucourt, Charles VII, VI, p. 415.

  Contemporary descriptions of Joan’s banners vary in detail, but all agree on the white ground and the fleurs-de-lis. For Joan’s version, see her testimony in 1431 in Tisset, Condamnation, I, p. 78 (trans. French in Tisset, Condamnation, II, p. 77; English in Hobbins, Trial, p. 69, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 157); for that of Jean Pasquerel, see Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 390 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 72–3; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 312).

  For Joan moving to Tours, and her squire, pages and ch
aplain, see Duparc, Nullité, I, 362–3 (Coutes), 388–9 (Pasquerel), 476–7 (d’Aulon) (Coutes and Pasquerel trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 46–7, 70–1; all three trans. English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 294–5, 310–11, 340).

  For the likelihood of Joan’s military training during these weeks, see, for example, Taylor, Virgin Warrior, pp. 49–50.

  For the duke of Alençon, see his testimony in Duparc, Nullité, I, pp. 381–2 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, pp. 64–5; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 304–5).

  For the involvement of La Hire and de Rais as well as Yolande and de Loré in gathering supplies and troops, see the testimony of the Bastard of Orléans: Duparc, Nullité, I, p. 318 (trans. French in Duparc, Nullité, IV, p. 3; English in Taylor, Joan of Arc, p. 278).

  Gerson’s treatise: this is the Latin text known as De quadam puella, for which see Quicherat, Procès, III, pp. 411–21, and English translations in Fraioli, Early Debate, pp. 199–205, and Taylor, Joan of Arc, pp. 112–18. The authorship, timing and intention of this work have all been the subject of debate. For the argument that it is the work of Gerson, see Fraioli, Early Debate, pp. 25, 41–3, and note that it was included in the first ever printed edition of Gerson’s writings in 1484. The argument that that attribution was erroneous rests to a large extent on the suggestion that it does not ‘sound’ like Gerson, and that its cautious argument differs from the support for Joan expressed in De mirabili victoria, another treatise believed to have been written by Gerson (for which, see pp. 112–3, 275–6). In considering variations in the style of argument, it may be important to remember both that Gerson characteristically wrote at great speed, and that these were the very last months of his life (see McGuire, Jean Gerson, pp. 251, 253, 318–19). The differences between De quadam puella and De mirabili victoria may also be explicable in terms of their dating. The date of De quadam puella is uncertain, but it talks of Joan riding in armour and carrying a standard, which suggests that it was written after the interrogation at Poitiers, during the period when she was preparing for military action. Fraioli argues that it should be located before the Poitiers inquiry (Early Debate, pp. 24–5), largely on the basis that it appears to be a contribution to a theological debate that is not yet settled; but, given that Orléans was to be Joan’s test, the theological debate was very much alive in the weeks between Poitiers and Orléans, when the Poitiers Conclusions were being circulated and Joan was being equipped for war, but the outcome of her mission was not yet known. The absence from the text of any reference, implicit or explicit, to victory at Orléans means that it seems plausible to suggest that Gerson, having heard at Lyon of Joan’s arrival at Chinon, the inquiry at Poitiers and the preparations for her intervention at Orléans, did indeed write the even-handed De quadam puella during these weeks in late March and April – and that he might subsequently have reached a more positive judgement on her mission in De mirabili victoria once her test at Orléans had vindicated her claims in May. (Note, however, that there remains the difficulty of a sentence in De quadam puella remarking that towns and castles submit to the king because of Joan; again, this makes a date before Poitiers much less likely, and Craig Taylor argues (Joan of Arc, p. 112) that it must indicate instead that the text was written later, in the summer of 1429. However, the equivocal position adopted in De quadam puella would not easily fit with a summer date in terms of the evolution of theological responses to Joan over these months; such a date is also especially hard to reconcile with Gerson’s authorship, if the latter is accepted, since it is likely that he wrote the much more positive De mirabili victoria in May, and died on 12 July.)