Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  Since 1449, the see of Le Mans had been held by Messire Martin Berruyer of Touraine. In his youth he had been professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the University of Paris. Later he had devoted himself to theology and had become one of the directors of the College of Navarre. Although he was infirm with age, his learning was such that he was consulted by the commissioners for the rehabilitation trial, whereupon he drew up a memorandum touching the Maid. Herein he believes her to have been verily sent of God because she was abject and very poor and appeared well nigh imbecile in everything that did not concern her mission. Messire Martin argues that it was by reason of the King’s virtues that God had vouchsafed to him the help of the Maid. Such an idea found favour with the theologians of the French party.

  The Lord Bishop, Martin Berruyer, heard Jeanne la Férone in confession, renewed her baptism, confirmed her in the faith and gave her the name of Marie, in gratitude for the abounding grace which the most Holy Virgin, Mother of God, had granted to his servant.

  This maid was subject to the violent attacks of evil spirits. Many a time did my Lord of Mans behold her covered with bleeding wounds, struggling in the grasp of the enemy, and on several occasions he delivered her by means of exorcisms. Greatly was he edified by this holy damsel, who made known unto him marvellous secrets, who abounded in pious revelations and noble Christian utterances. Wherefore in praise of La Férone he wrote many letters to princes and communities of the realm.

  The Queen of France, who was then very old and whose husband had long ago deserted her, heard tell of the Maid of Le Mans, and wrote to Messire Martin Berruyer, requesting him to make the damsel known unto her.

  Thus there befel, what we have seen happening over and over again in this history, that when a devout person, leading a contemplative life uttered prophecies, those in places of authority grew curious concerning her and desired to submit her to the judgment of the Church that they might know whether the goodness that appeared in her were true or false. Certain officers of the King visited La Férone at Le Mans.

  As revelations touching the realm of France had been vouchsafed to her, she spoke to them the following words:

  “Commend me very humbly to the King and bid him recognise the grace which God granteth unto him, and lighten the burdens of his people.”

  In the December of 1460, she was summoned before the Royal Council, which was then sitting at Tours, while the King, who was sick of an ulcer in the leg, was residing in the Château of Les Montils. The Maid of Le Mans was examined in like manner as the Maid Jeanne had been, but the result was unfavourable; she was found wanting in everything. Brought before the ecclesiastical court she was convicted of imposture. It appeared that she was no maid, but was living in concubinage with a cleric, that certain persons in the service of my Lord of Le Mans instructed her in what she was to say, and that such was the origin of the revelations she made to the Reverend Father in God, Messire Martin Berruyer, under the seal of the confession. Convicted of being a hypocrite, an idolatress, an invoker of demons, a witch, a magician, lascivious, dissolute, an enchantress, a mine of falsehood, she was condemned to have a fool’s cap put on her head and to be preached at in public, in the towns of Le Mans, Tours and Laval. On the 2nd of May, 1461, she was exhibited to the folk at Tours, wearing a paper cap and over her head a scroll on which her deeds were set forth in lines of Latin and of French. Maître Guillaume de Châteaufort, Grand Master of the Royal College of Navarre, preached to her. Then she was cast into close confinement in a prison, there to weep over her sins for the space of seven years, eating the bread of sorrow and drinking the water of affliction; at the end of which time she rented a house of ill fame.

  On Wednesday, the 22nd of July, 1461, covered with ulcers internal and external, believing himself poisoned and perhaps not without reason, Charles VII died, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, in his Château of Mehun-sur-Yèvre.

  On Thursday, the 6th of August, his body was borne to the Church of Saint-Denys in France and placed in a chapel hung with velvet; the nave was draped with black satin, the vault was covered with blue cloth embroidered with flowers-de-luce. During the ceremony, which took place on the following day, a funeral oration was delivered on Charles VII. The preacher was no less a personage than the most highly renowned professor at the University of Paris, the doctor, who according to the Princes of the Roman Church was ever aimable and modest, he who had been the stoutest defender of the liberties of the Gallican Church, the ecclesiastic who, having declined a Cardinal’s hat, bore to the threshold of an illustrious old age none other title than that of Dean of the Canons of Notre Dame de Paris, Maître Thomas de Courcelles. Thus it befell that the assessor of Rouen, who had been the most bitterly bent on procuring Jeanne’s cruel condemnation, celebrated the memory of the victorious King whom the Maid had conducted to his solemn coronation.

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX I

  LETTER FROM DOCTOR G. DUMAS

  MY DEAR MASTER, — You ask for my medical opinion in the case of Jeanne d’Arc. Had I been able to examine it at my leisure with the Doctors Tiphaine and Delachambre, who were summoned before the tribunal at Rouen, I might have found it difficult to come to any definite conclusion. And even more difficult do I find it now, when my diagnosis must necessarily be retrospective and based upon examinations conducted by persons who never dreamed of attempting to discover the existence of any nervous disease. However since they ascribed what we now call disease to the influence of the devil, their questions are not without significance for us. Therefore with many reservations I will endeavour to answer your question.

  Of Jeanne’s inherited constitution we know nothing; and of her personal antecedents we are almost entirely ignorant. Our only information concerning such matters comes from Jean d’Aulon, who, on the evidence of several women, states that she was never fully developed, a condition which frequently occurs in neurotic subjects.

  We should, however, be unable to arrive at any conclusion concerning Jeanne’s nervous constitution had not her judges, and in particular Maître Jean Beaupère, in the numerous examinations to which they subjected her, elicited certain significant details on the subject of her hallucinations.

  Maître Beaupère begins by inquiring very judiciously whether Jeanne had fasted the day before she first heard her voices. Whence we infer that the interdependence of inanition and hallucinations was recognised by this illustrious professor of theology. Before condemning Jeanne as a witch he wanted to make sure that she was not merely suffering from weakness. Some time later we find Saint Theresa suspecting that the visions said to have been seen by a certain nun were merely the result of long fasting. Saint Theresa insisted on the nun’s partaking of food, and the visions ceased.

  Jeanne replies that she had only fasted since the morning, and Maître Beaupère proceeds to ask:

  Q. “In what direction did you hear the voice?”

  A. “I heard it on the right, towards the church.”

  Q. “Was the voice accompanied by any light?”

  A. “I seldom heard it without there being a light. This light appeared in the direction whence the voice came.”

  We might wonder whether by the expression “à droite” (a latere dextro) Jeanne meant her own right side or the position of the church in relation to her; and in the latter case, the information would have no clinical significance; but the context leaves no doubt as to the veritable meaning of her words.

  “How can you,” urges Jean Beaupère, “see this light which you say appears to you, if it is on your right?”

  If it had been merely a question of the situation of the church and not of Jeanne’s own right side, she would only have had to turn her face to see the light in front of her, and Jean Beaupère’s objection would have been pointless.

  Consequently at about the age of thirteen, at the period of puberty, which for her never came, Jeanne would appear to have been subject on her right side to unilateral hallucinations of sight and hearing. Now Charcot c
onsidered unilateral hallucinations of sight to be common in cases of hysteria. He even thought that in hysterical subjects they are allied to a hemianæsthesia situated on the same side of the body, and which in Jeanne would be on the right side. Jeanne’s trial might have proved the existence of this hemianæsthesia, an extremely significant symptom in the diagnosis of hysteria, if the judges had applied torture or merely had examined the skin of the subject in order to discover anæsthesia patches which were called marks of the devil. But from the merely oral examination which took place we can only draw inferences concerning Jeanne’s general physical condition. In case excessive importance should be attached to such inferences I should add that in the diagnosis of hysteria contemporary neurologists pay less attention than did Charcot to unilateral hallucinations of sight.

  The other characteristics of Jeanne’s hallucinations revealed by her examinations during the trial are no less interesting than these, although they do not lead to any more certain conclusions.

  Those visions and voices, which the subject refers to an external source and which are so characteristic of hysterical hallucinations, proceed suddenly from the subconscious self. Jeanne’s conscious self was so far from being prepared for her voices that she declares she was very much afraid when she first heard them: “I was thirteen when I heard a voice coming from God telling me to lead a good life. And the first time I was very much afraid. This voice came to me about noon; it was in the summer, in my father’s garden.”

  And then straightway the voice becomes imperative. It demands an obedience which is not refused: “It said to me: ‘Go forth into France,’ and I could no longer stay where I was.”

  Her visions all occur in the same manner. They appeal to the senses in exactly the same way and are received by the Maid with equal credulity.

  Finally, these hallucinations of hearing and of sight are soon associated with similar hallucinations of smell and touch, which serve to confirm Jeanne’s belief in their reality.

  Q. “Which part of Saint Catherine did you touch?”

  A. “You will hear nothing more.”

  Q. “Did you kiss or embrace Saint Catherine or Saint Margaret?”

  A. “I embraced them both.”

  Q. “In embracing them did you feel heat or anything?”

  A. “I could not embrace them without feeling and touching them.”

  Because they thus appeal to the senses and seem to possess a certain material reality, hysterical hallucinations make a profound and ineffaceable impression on those who experience them. The subjects speak of them as being actual and very striking facts. When they become accusers, as so many women do who claim to have been the victims of imaginary assaults, they support their assertions in the most energetic fashion.

  Not only does Jeanne see, hear, smell and touch her saints, she joins the procession of angels they bring in their train. With them she performs actual deeds, as if there were perfect unity between her life and her hallucinations.

  “I was in my lodging, in the house of a good woman, near the château of Chinon, when the angel came. And then he and I went together to the King.”

  Q. “Was this angel alone?”

  A. “This angel was with a goodly company of other angels. They were with him, but not every one saw them.... Some were very much alike; others were not, or at any rate not as I saw them. Some had wings. Certain even wore crowns, and in their company were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. With the angel aforesaid and with the other angels they went right into the King’s chamber.”

  Q. “Tell us how the angel left you.”

  A. “He left me in a little chapel, and at his departure I was very sorrowful, and I even wept. Willingly would I have gone away with him; I mean my soul would have gone.”

  In all these hallucinations there is the same objective clearness, the same subjective certitude as in toxic hallucinations; and this clearness, this certitude, may in Jeanne’s case suggest hysteria.

  But if in certain respects Jeanne resembles hysterical subjects, in others she differs from them. She seems early to have acquired an independence of her visions and an authority over them.

  Without ever doubting their reality, she resists them and sometimes disobeys them, when, for example, in defiance of Saint Catherine, she leaps from her prison of Beaurevoir: “Well nigh every day Saint Catherine told me not to leap and that God would come to my aid, and also would succour those of Compiègne. And I said to Saint Catherine: ‘Since God is to help those of Compiègne, I want to be with them.’”

  On another occasion she assumes such authority over her visions that she can make the two saints come at her bidding when they do not come of themselves.

  Q. “Do you call these saints, or do they come without being called?”

  A. “They often come without being called, and sometimes when they did not come I asked God to send them speedily.”

  All this is not in the accepted manner of the hysterical, who are usually somewhat passive with regard to their nervous fits and hallucinations. But Jeanne’s dominance over her visions is a characteristic I have noted in many of the higher mystics and in those who have attained notoriety. This kind of subject, after having at first passively submitted to his hysteria, afterwards uses it rather than submits to it, and finally by means of it attains in his ecstasy to that divine union after which he strives.

  If Jeanne were hysterical, such a characteristic would help us to determine the part played by the neurotic side of her nature in the development of her character and in her life.

  If there were any hysterical strain in her nature, then it was by means of this hysterical strain that the most secret sentiments of her heart took shape in the form of visions and celestial voices. Her hysteria became the open door by which the divine — or what Jeanne deemed the divine — entered into her life. It strengthened her faith and consecrated her mission; but in her intellect and in her will Jeanne remains healthy and normal. Nervous pathology can therefore cast but a feeble light on Jeanne’s nature. It can reveal only one part of that spirit which your book resuscitates in its entirety. With the expression of my respectful admiration, believe me, my dear master,

  Doctor G. Dumas.

  APPENDIX II

  THE FARRIER OF SALON

  TOWARDS the end of the seventeenth century, there lived at Salon-en-Crau, near Aix, a farrier, one François Michel. He came of a respectable family. He himself had served in the cavalry regiment of the Chevalier de Grignan. He was held to be a sensible man, honest and devout. He was close on forty when, in February, 1697, he had a vision.

  Returning to his home one evening, he beheld a spectre, holding a torch in its hand. This spectre said to him:

  “Fear nothing. Go to Paris and speak to the King. If thou dost not obey this command thou shalt die. When thou shalt approach to within a league of Versailles, I will not fail to make known unto thee what things thou shalt say to his Majesty. Go to the Governor of thy province, who will order all that is necessary for thy journey.”

  The figure which thus addressed him was in the form of a woman. She wore a royal crown and a mantle embroidered with flowers-de-luce of gold, like the late Queen, Marie-Thérèse, who had died a holy death full fourteen years before.

  The poor farrier was greatly afraid. He fell down at the foot of a tree, knowing not whether he dreamed or was awake. Then he went back to his house, and told no man of what he had seen.

  Two days afterwards he passed the same spot. There again he beheld the same spectre, who repeated the same orders and the same threats. The farrier could no longer doubt the reality of what he saw; but as yet he could not make up his mind what to do.

  A third apparition, more imperious and more importunate than the first, reduced him to obedience. He went to Aix, to the Governor of the province; he saw him and told him how he had been given a mission to speak to the King. The Governor at first paid no great heed to him. But the visionary’s patient persistence could not fail to impress him. Moreov
er, since the King was personally concerned in the matter, it ought not to be entirely neglected. These considerations led the Governor to inquire from the magistrates of Salon touching the farrier’s family and manner of life. The result of these inquiries was very favourable. Accordingly the Governor deemed it fitting to proceed forthwith to action. In those days no one was quite sure whether advice, very useful to the most Christian of Kings, might not be sent by some member of the Church Triumphant through the medium of a common artisan. Still less were they sure that some plot in which the welfare of the State was concerned might not be hatched under colour of an apparition. In both contingencies, the second of which was quite probable, it would be advisable to send François Michel to Versailles. And this was the decision arrived at by the Governor.

  For the transport of François Michel he adopted measures at once sure and inexpensive. He confided him to an officer who was taking recruits in that direction. After having received the communion in the church of the Franciscans, who were edified by his pious bearing, the farrier set out on February 25 with his Majesty’s young soldiers, with whom he travelled as far as La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. On his arrival at Versailles, he asked to see the King or at least one of his Ministers of State. He was directed to M. de Barbezieux, who, when he was still very young, had succeeded his father, M. de Louvois, and in that position had displayed some talent. But the good farrier declined to tell him anything, because he was not a Minister of State.

  And it was true that Barbezieux, although a Minister, was not a Minister of State. But that a farrier from Provence should be capable of drawing such a distinction occasioned considerable surprise.

  M. de Barbezieux doubtless did not evince such scorn for this compatriot of Nostradamus as would have been shown in his place by a man of broader mind. For he, like his father, was addicted to the practice of astrology, and he was always inquiring concerning his horoscope of a certain Franciscan friar who had predicted the hour of his death.