Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint Page 15

  Joan: By the voice, without being touched.

  Cauchon never admitted that Joan was confined to a cell:

  Questioner: Is the voice still in your room?

  Joan: I think not, but perhaps somewhere in the castle….

  Questioner: What did the voice tell you?

  Joan: To ask for counsel and assistance from Our Lord.

  Questioner: Is it the voice of an angel or a saint?

  Joan’s reply was shrewd:

  Joan: The voice came from God. And a light comes before the voice.

  Then, as if inspired at that same moment, she said to Cauchon:

  Joan: You say that you are my judge. Take care about what you are doing, for indeed, I have been sent by God, and you are putting yourself in great spiritual danger…. And as for me, I know that people are sometimes hanged for telling the truth.

  Then followed one of the most famous exchanges, preserved identically in all manuscript sources and much repeated in literary works about her through the centuries:

  Questioner: Do you consider yourself in a state of grace?

  This was a question with hooks. It meant, “Do you consider yourself in God’s favor?” If Joan answered yes, she would be accused at once of presumption and condemned as a heretic, since it was taught that no person can be certain of his own spiritual condition. But if Joan replied no, she would be admitting that she was in serious sin and she would be condemned on the spot. And so she spoke her profound and canny answer, which dealt with every angle of the challenge:

  Joan: If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there—and if I am, may He keep me there.

  The court, according to the notary Boisguillaume, was multum stupefacti, “much astonished,” at the wisdom of her reply. Hence Cauchon at once changed the subject, trying to throw Joan off course.

  Questioner: In your childhood, did the voice tell you to hate the Burgundians?

  Joan: The Burgundians will always have war if they do not do as they ought to do; this I know from my voices.

  Questioner: In your childhood, did the voices tell you that the English would come into France?

  Joan: They were already here when they first spoke to me!

  Questioner: When you were young, did you have a great desire to fight the Burgundians?

  Her reply dealt neatly with that provocation:

  Joan: I had a great desire that our king should have his kingdom.

  The judges then encouraged Joan to admit to some kind of witchcraft or at least a belief in it. In a meadow near Domrémy was a beautiful tree, sometimes called the Fairy Tree by children who played there in the summer and by engaged couples and families who often ate picnic lunches in the cool shade under its ample branches.

  Questioner: Isn’t it true that there was a spring near the tree, where people suffering from fever took a drink and were cured?

  Joan: I heard about that, but I do not know if it is true. The tree itself was a large beech tree, and some of the girls hung garlands on its branches. But as soon as I learned that I must come to the aid of the dauphin, I played very little—the least I could.

  Questioner: Is there not a prophecy that says that a girl would com from a forest near your home and perform wonderful acts?

  Joan: I put no faith in that sort of thing.

  Questioner: Do you want to wear a woman’s dress?

  Joan: If you give me one, I will take it and go. Otherwise, I am content with what I am wearing, since it is God’s will that I wear it.

  The issue of Joan wearing male clothing was of supreme importance to Pierre Cauchon, who finally prepared his case with this as the single issue charged against her. It was a specious matter, of course.

  The twenty-second chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, invoked as the sanction against her male garments, prohibited cross-dressing: “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.” This was proscribed in ancient times in order to prevent the Israelites from imitating or being associated with the cultic rites of their pagan neighbors, who worshipped the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar in wild sexual rites that were characterized by transvestism and orgies.

  But any reading of the ancient legal restrictions in Deuteronomy that tries to impose them on every subsequent era of history is bound to trip on itself. The same chapter of that book also prescribes that clothes may not be made of a combination of wool and linen; that adultery is to be punished by instant execution; and that a disobedient and intemperate son is to be stoned to death. Israelite law itself modified and even abrogated many of the sanctions set in ancient contexts that were no longer applicable. The genius of the later rabbinic movement was in fact the belief that laws, cultic practices and moral restrictions must take into account the continuing presence and revelation of God to His people. In any case, Cauchon was fishing, and in the matter of Joan’s male attire he claimed more and more to have caught something big.

  More to the point, medieval moral theologians always permitted cross-dressing for good reasons, as no less an authority than Thomas Aquinas observed in the thirteenth century: “Apparel should be consistent with the estate of the person, according to the general custom. For a woman to wear a man’s clothes, or vice versa…is expressly forbidden in the Law because the Gentiles used to practice this change of attire for the purpose of idolatrous superstition. Nevertheless this may be done sometimes on account of some necessity, either in order to hide oneself from enemies, or through lack of other clothes, or for some similar motive.”

  Even before Aquinas, another influential remark on the subject was made by Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century: “A man should never put on feminine dress, or a woman male attire, unless a man’s life or a woman’s chastity is in danger; at such times, a man may change his clothes for a woman’s, and a woman for a man’s.” Indeed, the Church routinely permitted cross-dressing for purposes of safety: Bedford’s own sister-in-law disguised herself as a soldier in order to escape from Philip of Burgundy. She was not put on trial for heresy.

  Manchon testified to the practical reasons for Joan’s insistence on wearing male garb in prison:

  She repeatedly said she needed it, for at night her guards tried to violate her…[and] it was only the tightly laced pants that discouraged her jailers. At least once, that almost happened, when she cried out and the Earl [Warwick] himself ran to her aid—if he had not, she would have been assaulted…. She was not safe in a woman’s garb among those guards, [and] she insisted that if her judges would consign her to a safe place [a Church prison, where she would be guarded by nuns], where she would not have to fear attack, then she would gladly put on a woman’s dress.

  In fact, Joan had her defenders in this matter even during her lifetime. At the time of her victory at Orléans, the theologian Jean Gerson indicated that her military situation indeed required her to wear male garb; and Jacques Gelu, the archbishop of Embrun, remarked that such apparel was fitting. Sometimes theologians display remarkable common sense.

  Fourth Session: Tuesday, February 27

  Jean Beaupère opened the following Tuesday with ostensible benignity:

  Questioner: How have you been since last Saturday?

  Joan: As well as I can be, given my circumstances.

  In this reply we hear both her calm humility and her refusal either to seek pity or to dramatize the dreadfulness of her condition. In addition to the physical pain of her confinement, the constant terror of attack, and the injuries to her skin and joints from the chains, she was deprived of light and air, denied the rituals of her faith, mocked, threatened, and given just enough meager food and drink to survive. The once-daily meal handed to an imprisoned heretic normally consisted of a bowl of water (sometimes mixed with ashes as a symbol of penance) and a bit of thin soup or a few animal bones—something left over from the lavish plates of the judges’ meals.

  In response to further questions, Joan then identifi
ed her voices.

  Joan: I have told you often enough about them. Believe me if you will.

  Questioner: Was there an angel over your king’s head when you first saw him?

  Joan: If there were any, I did not know, nor did I see one.

  Pressed to repeat earlier information, she then told again of her first meeting with the king, her journey to Poitiers, and her outfitting for battle. The notaries observed her pallor, and there may have been some apprehension that Joan would faint. To forestall the sympathy that might evoke from some of those present, Cauchon ended the session.

  A Dress for a Mass

  (March 1431)

  The trial resumed the following Thursday.

  Fifth Trial Session: Thursday, March 1

  Cauchon began by asking Joan yet again to take an oath that she would answer every question; again, she refused—and, rightly following Jewish and Christian custom, she said that multiple oaths were both unnecessary and offensive.

  An important matter arose early that day:

  Questioner: Did you usually have the names of Jesus and Mary, with a cross, placed on the letters you dictated?

  Joan: On some I put them, and on others not. I put a cross as a sign that anyone who was French to whom I was writing should not believe the contents or do as I asked in the letter.

  The cross, then, was a code: a letter with a cross, if intercepted by an enemy, would deliberately contain false and deceptive information; if sent to an ally aware of the code, the letter was simply not believed. Joan was then asked her opinions about the earlier claims of three men to the papacy during the Great Schism.

  Joan: I never wrote or dictated anything concerning the three popes, and I will swear to that.

  There followed a lengthy exchange during which Cauchon tried to reduce Joan’s visions and voices to the level of absurdity.

  Questioner: Do your saints always wear the same dress?…What part of them do you see?…Do they have hair?…Is their hair worn long?…Do they have arms and legs?…What language do they speak?

  The judges clearly hoped that Joan would be too descriptive, too literal in her details, thus turning her visions and voices into either illusions or idols; again, they were disappointed:

  Joan: I know nothing of their clothing…. I see their faces…. Of their hair or their arms I can say nothing…. Of their language, why should they speak English? They are not on the side of the English!

  Questioner: Does Saint Michael appear naked?

  Joan: Don’t you think that Our Lord has the ability to clothe him?

  The judges then interrogated Joan concerning details of the court of Charles VII, his plans, his strategies, his faith. To everything asked of her about her king, Joan’s reply was invariable:

  Joan: You will not drag any of that out of me. I have told you earlier that I have nothing to say about the king.

  It seemed preposterous to this court that an uneducated young woman would speak with such blunt confidence. The trial was becoming a match of wits; it was also a contest of pure faith against an institution.

  But on its deepest level, this was also a trial concerning the absolute freedom of God Himself. Against that freedom, it is always tempting to maintain that God will certainly act in such-and-such a way; that a Church must be structured in such-and-such a way, with an essential male power elite and a clear line of command that guarantees the survival of orthodoxy. This has always been the most dangerous presumption of organized religion: ignoring the centrality of God while slavishly preserving a merely human representation or expression of Him. But God does not conform to human presumptions, nor is His freedom limited. There is no reason why God cannot summon an illiterate provincial girl to a task we would see better suited for a trained general. There is no reason why God must conform to the lowest common denominator of human expectation.

  Sixth Session: Saturday, March 3

  During the following session two days later, Jean Beaupère tried to goad Joan into speaking impatiently and inaccurately, contradicting herself on the matter of her voices; this he did by repeated questions about the wings, arms and legs of the figures in her visions. This brief exchange is typical of the entire morning interrogation:

  Questioner: Do you believe that God made your saints with heads just as you see them?

  Joan: I saw them with my own eyes; that is all I will say. Questioner: Do your voices tell you that you will escape?

  Joan: I place everything in the hands of Our Lord, who will do as he pleases.

  It was becoming clear to Cauchon’s court that there was no foundation for charges of witchcraft, sorcery, magic or immorality. And so the bishop began to exploit his unequivocal prohibition against wearing male garb and to link this to the issue of submission to the Church (that is, to him). It was a resourceful but astonishingly arrogant move. By wearing pants, it was charged, Joan had riven the firm line separating women from male status and prerogatives. Her clothing, her deeds in battle, her skill in dealing with princes, knights, soldiers and common folk—all this was seen as proper to men, and for her to claim male prerogatives was (to Cauchon) abominable.

  At the same time, Joan set up her own spiritual experience as her primary authority even if it was challenged by mere institutional command. She was therefore defying male supremacy by wearing men’s clothes and entering into the world of men as a woman who considered her communication with God inviolable.

  Questioner: Do you believe you would do wrong in taking a woman’s dress?

  Joan: It is better to obey my sovereign Lord God rather than men.

  Her words went to the heart of the trial. For Joan, the will of Cauchon or the court or indeed any man was superseded by her experience of God, by her conviction about the will of God for her. It was better to refer to God than to men.

  Joan: I know for certain that my God has always been the master of my actions, that I have never done anything but what I knew to be His will for me, and that no evil spirit has had any control over me. My words and deeds have been and are always in the hands of God.

  A recess was declared, after which Cauchon continued:

  Questioner: Do you know whether your countrymen [those loyal to Charles VII] firmly believe that you were sent by God?

  Joan: I don’t know if they believe that—but even if they do not believe it, I am still sent by God.

  Questioner: If they do believe it, are they right?

  Joan: If they believe that I am sent by God, they are not wrong.

  Trying to level a charge of idolatry, or at least pride, he asked:

  Questioner: What about the people who came to you, kissing your hands and clothing and feet?

  Joan: Many people came to see me, and I always tried to prevent such gestures from them. But the poor often came to me because I was kind to them and did as much as I could for them.

  DURING THE FOLLOWING week Cauchon and the assessors began to compile a list of articles against Joan. Before they could complete that task, however, they had to put further questions to her. At the same time Cauchon ordered that all future interrogations would be conducted only by himself and a few colleagues and that they would be held not in an open court but in Joan’s cell. She would remain bound and isolated but for their visits, which became increasingly menacing.

  A process of additional psychological torture was now designed to eradicate her confidence while further restricting her mobility: at each moment, she would be in the physical position of a chained supplicant. And only Cauchon and his handpicked cronies were there to hear her brave and prudent replies and rejoinders; even the notaries were now working at Cauchon’s nod.

  His stratagem had the desired effect. Joan was soon worn down, confused and exhausted; although she remained adamant on the essential points of her life, her work, and her visions, she was no longer the calm and confident girl of the open court. Her replies were now frequently vague, often contradictory, sometimes extravagant—as if she was giving Cauchon what he wanted, to have done
with him. Malnourishment, lack of sleep, constant anxiety and physical confinement were taking a dreadful toll on her stamina.

  Seventh Session: Saturday, March 10

  At the next session a week later, after answering questions about the battle at Compiègne, about her coat of arms and her conduct in battle, Joan did not help herself by making an ingenuous remark:

  Joan: I always thanked Our Lord for freeing me from the trouble caused by some clergymen in France, who argued against me. I prayed very much about that.

  Eighth Session: Monday Morning, March 12

  Questioner: We are commanded to honor our fathers and mothers. Do you think it was right to leave home without your parents’ permission?

  Joan: In everything else, all my life, I was obedient to them, except for my departure. But later I wrote to them, and they forgave me this incident.

  Questioner: So when you left them, you committed a sin!

  Joan: What I did is what God had commanded, and so I had to obey. If I had a hundred fathers and mothers and if I had been the daughter of a king, I would still have gone.

  There followed one of the most important moments of Joan’s trial, in which she spoke a basic tenet of universal spirituality:

  Questioner: Do your voices and spirits stay with you for a long time?

  Joan: They often come to Christians who do not see them, and I have often been aware of them among Christian folk.

  It is axiomatic that God does not play favorites. Joan of Arc is only one among many, one of the celebrated in history among those who made an enormous impact on the world and whose actions were predicated on an experience of God. Every true mystic, everyone who has known a fleeting experience of the eternal, knows that this world is interpenetrated with that of the spirit. God is not distant; those who have died are in God and are therefore not distant. The world of angels, spirits and saints is but one sort of hierophantic language to describe the real presence of another world, beyond but in the midst of our own.