Joan of Arc

by Helen Castor

  Joan herself had arrived in Rouen under close guard by Christmas Eve. She had been thirteen months a soldier, and seven months a captive. Now her trial was about to begin.

  9

  A simple maid

  Just after sunrise on 21 February 1431, Bishop Pierre Cauchon took his place in the chapel of Rouen’s royal fortress. Assembled around him were some of the finest theological and legal minds in English France: forty-two clerics of the utmost probity and scholarly distinction, most of them trained at the university of Paris, the greatest seat of learning in the most Christian kingdom. They were here, in the half-light of a grey morning, faces taut with anticipation, for the first public session of a case that encompassed the weightiest matter of heresy upon which they had ever been called to adjudicate.

  Today, the accused would make her first appearance before the judges and their advisers, but the inquiry itself had opened weeks earlier, on 9 January, when the bishop and eight of his distinguished colleagues had met in the royal council chamber near the castle to decide on the precise form the proceedings should take. Under canon law, the process of inquisition was initiated by the perception of guilt, by public notoriety so well established that it served as an accusation in itself. And in this case, of course, the infamy of the prisoner could hardly have been greater. As the opening of the trial record noted, ‘the report has now become well known in many places that this woman, utterly disregarding what is honourable in the female sex, breaking the bounds of modesty, and forgetting all feminine decency, has disgracefully put on the clothing of the male sex, a shocking and vile monstrosity. And what is more, her presumption went so far that she dared to do, say and disseminate many things beyond and contrary to the Catholic faith and injurious to the articles of its orthodox belief.’ The bishop was duty bound, it was clear, to investigate these apparent crimes, and to expose them to the scrutiny of theologians and canon lawyers for definitive judgement.

  Scrupulous care was required in any inquisition into suspected heresy, but never more so than in this case, given that the accused had had the temerity to suggest that God had sent her to wrest the kingdom from its rightful sovereign. That claim had been noised across Europe; the demonstration that it was false had therefore to be conducted and recorded with unimpeachable propriety and rigour, so that the judges’ conclusions could be published equally widely. And a great deal hung on the hearing, personally as well as politically – principally, of course, the fate of the prisoner herself. If her guilt were established, and she remained unrepentant, the Church would have no choice but to abandon her to the secular arm, which would sentence her to die in purifying flames. It was a mark of the singularity of her situation that, if she were not convicted, she would not be freed but handed back to the jurisdiction of the crown, her future to be decided by the king. But that outcome was hardly likely, and a greater preoccupation for Bishop Cauchon was the possibility that she might be drawn to confess her guilt and abjure her heresy. Then she would be spared the fire, to spend the rest of her days behind bars in penitent contemplation of her sin. This trial, the bishop knew, was a chance to save a soul and a life, as well as vindicate the kingdom to which he had devoted his career. And, in doing God’s work, he might also win himself an archbishop’s mitre; the see of Rouen was vacant, and over the next weeks and months he would publicly demonstrate his credentials as a man of God before the members of the king’s council and the canons of Rouen’s cathedral chapter.

  There was much to be done, and Cauchon set about fulfilling his responsibilities with single-minded determination. On 9 January, he and his eight advisers reviewed the evidence they had already compiled, and decided that more was needed, including some to be sought in the prisoner’s home village – not an easy matter, given that Domrémy lay on the border between Armagnac and Burgundian territory, but necessary, the committee agreed. Then there were officials to appoint: Jean d’Estivet, a canon of Beauvais, to act for the prosecution as promoter of the trial; Jean de La Fontaine, a specialist in canon law, to oversee the interrogation as examiner; Jean Massieu, a dean of Rouen, to carry out the judges’ instructions as executor; and two experienced clerks, Guillaume Colles and Guillaume Manchon, as notaries. Over the next six weeks, under Cauchon’s direction, the case was summarised into articles and a series of questions drafted. On 19 February, a meeting of twelve scholars under the bishop’s supervision confirmed that the evidence was sufficient to justify summoning the prisoner for preliminary questioning. The inquisitor of the faith in France, Jean Graverent, was busy, it emerged, with another hearing in Coutances, and his deputy in the diocese of Rouen, a friar named Jean le Maistre, was therefore summoned to act in his place as a judge at the bishop’s side. Le Maistre seemed reluctant – or, at least, keen to argue about the technicalities of his appointment – but he agreed that the hearing could proceed while the details of his participation were resolved.

  At last, on 20 February, Bishop Cauchon was ready. He gave the order that the accused should appear before him at eight the following morning, ‘to answer truly to the articles and questions and to other matters upon which we hold her in suspicion’. Jean Massieu, who delivered this summons, returned to report that she was willing to appear; she asked only to be allowed to hear mass beforehand, and that the bishop should assemble around him ‘as many men of the Church from France as from England’. The bishop consulted his advisers, but the response needed little discussion: there could be no question of the woman attending divine service, given the crimes of which she was accused and the fact that she still insisted on the perversion of wearing men’s clothing; and, of course, all the holy men gathering in the gloom of the royal chapel were French, even if they recognised a different king from the one to whom the prisoner had offered her allegiance.

  Silence fell, and suddenly she was there: a girl, dressed as a boy, with her dark hair cut short. The silks and furs to which she had grown accustomed since Orléans were gone, and she was pale from long months without sight of the sun. But her face was composed, her eyes steady. Within this large and solemn assembly, she was the only woman, and the youngest by years, but, after her adventures since leaving Domrémy, that was no longer such a novel experience. She had faced interrogation before, at Poitiers, where another august company of scholars had sought to investigate the truth of her mission. That had not been an inquisition of the hostility she now faced, but still there was much that was familiar. Once again, the questioning with which she would be confronted today had been prefaced by an examination to confirm that she was a virgin, conducted this time under the aegis of the duchess of Bedford. Her physical wholeness had been proved; now it was time for her spiritual integrity to be tested. The Maid’s judges were ready, but so was she.

  The first formality was a sacred oath that she would tell the truth, to be taken, Bishop Cauchon explained, with her hand touching the gospels. And, for the first time, the girl spoke. ‘I don’t know what you want to question me about. Perhaps you might ask me things that I will not tell you.’ She was required to tell the truth about matters of faith, and other things that she knew, she was told, and again she demurred. She would gladly talk about her parents and all that she had done after she left home, but her revelations from God were a different matter; those, she had only told her king, and she did not believe she was permitted by heaven to speak of them, even if her head were to be cut off – though she would know more, she said, within eight days. This was a hurdle the bishop had not anticipated. He asked again, and again, and each time she gave the same response, until at last, kneeling before him with her hands on the holy book, she swore to tell the truth about matters concerning the Catholic faith. For now, her revelations would have to wait.

  In any case, there were the basics to be established, her light voice following question with answer as the notaries’ quills scratched on the parchment before them. Her name was Joan, she said, and she knew nothing of a surname. Her father was Jacques d’Arc, and her mother, Isabelle. She wa
s nineteen years old, she thought, and she had been baptised in the church at Domrémy, the village where she was born. At the judges’ prompting, she named her godparents, and the priest who had baptised her; she confirmed that she knew the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Creed, all of which she had learned from her mother. But here again the bishop encountered the prisoner’s will, which, it was already becoming clear, might prove to be a formidable obstacle. Asked to repeat the Lord’s Prayer for the court, she said she would gladly say it, but only to one who would hear her confession. Cauchon pressed her time and again, but she would not concede, until he was left with no choice but to move on.

  Still, at least the day’s business was almost complete. Before the girl was taken back to her cell in another part of the castle, Cauchon warned her not to attempt to escape, on pain of conviction for heresy. But this too roused her resistance. She would be breaking no oath if she fled, she protested, since she had never given her word that she would not; she complained, too, of the iron chains with which she had been bound. But the shackles were necessary, the bishop reminded her, because she had tried to escape before. That last was true, and she admitted as much, but wanting to escape, she declared, was the right of any captive. In the circumstances, it seemed wise for her jailers to swear on the gospels that they would guard her well and allow no one to speak to her without Bishop Cauchon’s permission. And with that, the court was adjourned.

  The next morning at eight, the crowd of scholars packed into the robing room at one end of the castle’s great hall was even larger: forty-eight men of the Church were there to assist Bishop Cauchon and his officers in the administration of their duty. If the newcomers had decided to attend in the hope of witnessing the girl’s defiance, they did not have long to wait. Once again the proceedings opened with the requirement that she should swear to tell the truth, and once again she objected. ‘I took an oath for you yesterday; that should be quite enough for you.’ And when she was pressed: ‘You burden me too much.’ In the end she swore as she had done the day before, to tell the truth in matters concerning the faith; but when the theologian Jean Beaupère, whom Cauchon had nominated to conduct the day’s interrogation, began to speak, she fixed him with a look. ‘If you were well informed about me, you would wish that I were out of your hands. I have done nothing except through revelation.’

  Beaupère started slowly, carefully, with her life at home in Domrémy – no one could best her at sewing and spinning, she told him proudly – and her journey to Vaucouleurs. The questions coiled and probed, forwards and backwards through her story: her meeting with the captain Robert de Baudricourt, her letter of defiance to the English at Orléans, then back to her arrival at Chinon, and on to her assault on Paris. Often she answered, but sometimes, from one question to the next, Beaupère met blank refusal. (Had it been right to attack the capital on a holy feast day? ‘Move on.’) But as they talked, there were moments when those listening found they had forgotten to exhale; because, despite her protests, Joan had begun to speak about her voice from God.

  She had first heard it at the height of a summer day in her father’s garden when she was thirteen years old. On her right side, towards the church, there came a light, and a voice, and she was afraid, but she heard it a second time, and then a third, and then she understood that it was the voice of an angel, sent to her by God. It told her to be a good girl, and to go to church; then it told her of her mission, even though she was a poor girl who knew nothing of war. When she had arrived at Chinon, her voice had revealed her king to her, among all the lords of his court. Her king and his lords saw and knew that she heard a voice from God, she said, and by now, as the exchanges went back and forth, she was speaking sometimes of a voice, and sometimes of ‘voices’. But when Beaupère asked who had told her to wear men’s clothes, she refused to say. She blamed no one else, she said, and, besides, she had to do it; ‘and she changed her answer often’, observed the notaries.

  It was enough for one day. When the next session was called to order, two days later, a still greater number of distinguished clerics – sixty-two in all – struggled to find a seat in the robing room to hear the lengthiest argument yet about the swearing of the oath. ‘You can leave the matter. I’ve sworn twice; that’s enough,’ Joan said. She would not give in, no matter how Bishop Cauchon pressed her, and it was her own provisional oath she swore before turning to face Beaupère, and his questions about her voice. When had she last heard it? Today, and yesterday three times, once in the morning, once at vespers, and again when the bell rang for the Hail Mary at night. In the morning, the voice had woken her from sleep but (this in response to Beaupère’s query) without touching her physically. It had told her to answer boldly and God would help her; at that, she turned to the bishop. ‘You say that you are my judge. Take care what you do, for in truth I am sent by God, and you put yourself in great danger.’

  The self-possession was utterly remarkable, but Beaupère scarcely had time to notice. His work was complex and subtle: how to unravel, step by step, the information required for this most challenging case of the discernment of spirits. The great Jean Gerson, in his last days, had been deceived by the Maid’s claims, but his method still provided the template for this court’s attempts to reach the truth. Already it was apparent that Joan did not display the necessary humility, the awareness that she, an unlettered girl, required the authoritative judgement of the Church to decide on the nature of her revelations. Instead, she believed – dared to declare, even – that her revelations gave her the authority to resist the Church’s judgement. The court would therefore have to rely on Beaupère’s skill in eliciting evidence from her reluctant testimony in order to conclude whether she truly heard messages from heaven, or whether they came to her from hell.

  Was the voice, he asked, that of an angel, or a saint, or did it come directly from God? ‘The voice comes from God,’ she said; but as the questions continued she resisted, hesitated, demurred. Could she ask her voice to take a message to her king? She did not know if it would obey, unless it was God’s will. Did her voice tell her she would escape from prison? ‘Do I have to tell you?’ Had the light appeared with the voice in recent days, and did she see anything else when it spoke? The light came before the voice; but ‘I will not tell you all; I don’t have leave to, and my oath does not cover this. The voice is good and worthy, and I’m not bound to answer about it.’ Could the voice see, did it have eyes? ‘You won’t learn that yet.’ Did she know she was in the grace of God? That question, at least, was straightforward for any devout parishioner who had listened to the sermon in church on Sundays. ‘If I’m not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God keep me in it. I would be the most wretched person in the world if I knew I was not in the grace of God.’

  The day was drawing in, and the session almost over. Beaupère turned to his dossier of evidence from the girl’s village – an Armagnac place, she confirmed, even though the neighbouring village was Burgundian. (Had the voice told her to hate Burgundians? She did not love them once she understood that her voices supported the king of France.) But Beaupère’s interest in her life in Domrémy focused on the village, not the state of the kingdom: on stories, gathered by the bishop’s investigators, of a great beech tree near a spring. Local people called it the tree of the fairies, and believed the waters there had healing properties. Sometimes young girls made garlands to hang in the tree, and danced at its foot. Beaupère knew well that fairies did not exist, and that if there were spirits in the tree they could only be demons, so if Joan shared the old folk’s beliefs about the fairies, if she danced around the tree and offered them garlands, it would demonstrate her erroneous thinking and her failure to distinguish a diabolic presence for what it truly was. But Joan showed little interest in his questions. She had made garlands for the image of the blessed Virgin in the village, she said, and danced near the tree, but she never saw fairies, nor heard her voices there. Her answer was hardly correct in its grasp of doctrine – she did
not know, it appeared, that fairies, unlike angels and demons, were not real – but neither, the judges knew, was it damning. She seemed weary. One last question: did she want a woman’s dress? ‘If you will let me, give me one, and I’ll take it and go. Otherwise, not. I’m content with this, since it pleases God that I wear it.’

  This time she had two full days to wait in her cell before she was brought back to the robing chamber. The assembly was slightly smaller – fifty-four ecclesiastics, not counting the officials of the court – but the day began, as always, with the familiar argument about the oath: ‘You should be content. I’ve sworn enough.’ Beaupère stepped forward. How had she been doing? ‘You see very well how I’ve been doing. As best I can.’ The voice that spoke to her was the subject to which he wanted to return, and again her answers looped and swerved, stopping in their tracks, then starting the dance anew. His questions were variations on a theme already played: what had the voice told her? Did it forbid her to say what she knew? Was it the voice of an angel, or a saint, or did it come directly from God?