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Joan of Arc, also Jeanne d'Arc (1412 – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Saint of the Catholic Church. Many believed she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland. In early 1429 she convinced the uncrowned king Charles VII to give her a suit of armor and permission to relieve the siege at Orléans. At first treated as a figurehead by veteran commanders, she gained prominence when she lifted the siege in only nine days.

After several other engagements and an important victory at Patay she led a bloodless expedition to Rheims for Charles VII's coronation. This settled the disputed royal succession and recovered important territory. The renewed French confidence outlasted her own brief career. Wounded during an unsuccessful attempt to recover Paris, she participated in minor actions until her capture outside Compiègne the following spring.

Her Burgundian captors delivered her to the English, who selected clergymen to convict her of heresy. John, Duke of Bedford had her burnt at the stake in Rouen. She had been the heroine of her country at the age of seventeen. She died at just nineteen.

Some twenty-four years later Pope Callixtus III reopened the case. The new finding overturned the original conviction.Template:Fn Her piety to the end impressed the retrial court. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 16 May, 1920.

Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in the collective imagination of Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who created works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Schiller, Verdi, Tchaikovski, Twain, Shaw, and Brecht. Depictions of her continue in film, television, and song.

Context

This was the lowest era in French history until the Nazi occupation. The French king at the time of Joan's birth, Charles VI, suffered bouts of insanity and was unable to rule. A quarrel between his cousins duke John the Fearless of Burgundy and the duke of Orléans over the regency of France and the guardianship of the royal children finally led John the Fearless to order the assassination of the duke of Orléans in 1407. The factions loyal to these two men became known as the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. English king Henry V took advantage of the turmoil. He invaded France and won a dramatic victory at Agincourt in 1415, then proceeded to capture northern French towns. The future French king Charles VII assumed the title of dauphin as heir to the throne at the age of fourteen after all four of his older brothers had died. Almost his first official act was to conclude a peace treaty with John the Fearless in 1419. This ended in disaster when Armagnac partisans murdered John the Fearless during a meeting under Charles's guarantee of protection. The new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, blamed Charles and entered an alliance with the English. Large sections of France fell to conquest. Charles's mother Isabeau of Bavaria concluded the 1420 Treaty of Troyes granting the royal succession to Henry V and his heirs, disinheriting Charles. Henry V and Charles VI died within two months of each other in 1422, leaving an infant Henry VI of England the nominal monarch of both kingdoms. Henry V's brother John, Duke of Bedford acted as regent.

File:180px-Maison J d Arc.jpg

Joan of Arc's birthplace is now a museum. The village church where she worshipped is at the right behind several trees.

By the beginning of 1429 nearly all of the north and some parts of the southwest were under foreign control. The English ruled Paris and the Burgundians ruled Rheims. The latter was important as the traditional site of French coronations. Neither claimant to the throne of France had been crowned. The English had laid siege to Orléans, the only remaining loyal French city north of the Loire. Its strategic location along the river made this the last obstacle to an assault on the remaining French heartland. No one was optimistic about the city's chances to resist the siege for long.

Biography

Early life

Joan of Arc was born circa 1412 in the village of Domrémy in the province of Lorraine. Her parents Jacques D'Arc and Isabelle Romee owned a modest farm. The region was part of the duchy of Burgundy during that era. Joan's own village and a few surrounding communities formed an isolated patch of territory that remained loyal to the French crown.

Jules Bastien-Lepage's portrayal of Joan of Arc's first vision. Note St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine in the background. Oil on canvas in two joined vertical panels. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 1879.

Joan later said she had her first vision around 1424. She reported that St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret told her to drive out the English and bring the Dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. At the age of sixteen she asked a kinsman, Durand Lassois, to bring her to nearby Vaucouleurs. She petitioned garrison commander count Robert de Baudricourt for permission to visit the royal French court at Chinon. Baudricourt's sarcastic response did not deter her. She returned the following January and found supporters in two men of standing: Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulegny. With their support she gained a second interview where she made an apparently miraculous prediction about a military reversal near Orléans.

Career

Baudricourt granted her an escort to visit Chinon after news from the front confirmed her prediction. She made the journey through hostile Burgundian territory in male disguise. Upon arriving at the royal court she won Charles's confidence in a private conference. He verified her morality with background inquiries and a theological examination at Poitiers. Charles's mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon was financing a relief expedition to Orléans. Joan of Arc received permission to travel with the army. Her armor, horse, sword, equipment, and entourage were all donations. She had no funds of her own.

File:Joan of Arc on horseback (1505 manuscript).png

Joan of Arc on horseback from an illustration in a 1505 manuscript.

She arrived at the Orléans on 29 April 1429. Jean d'Orléans, the acting head of the Orléans ducal family, excluded Joan from war councils. She appealed to the town's population and the common soldiers, often disregarding war council decisions. The extent of her military leadership is a subject of historical debate. Traditional analysis cites her condemnation trial testimony to conclude that she was a standard bearer whose primary effect was on morale. Recent scholarship that focuses on rehabilitation trial testimony asserts that her fellow officers esteemed her as a skilled tactician and a successful strategist. In either case, the army enjoyed remarkable success during her brief career.Template:Fn

French forces began aggressive actions against siege fortifications at Joan's urging. After several skirmishes the English abandoned peripheral structures and concentrated their forces at the stone fortress controlling the bridge, les Tourelles. This fell to French assault on 7 May. Contemporaries acknowledged Joan as the hero of the engagement after she pulled an arrow from her own shoulder and returned wounded to lead the final charge.Template:Fn

The sudden victory at Orléans led to many proposals for offensive action. Surviving documents show the English expected a direct assault on Paris. French counterintelligence may have contributed to that perception. During Joan's later trial she described a mark the French command used in letters for disinformation. Joan of Arc persuaded Charles VII to approve her plan and grant her co-command of the army with duke John II of Alençon. They would recapture nearby bridges along the Loire then advance on Rheims. This was a daring proposal because Rheims was roughly twice as distant as Paris. Rheims held political importance as the traditional site of French coronations. Detractors have pointed to shortcomings in the army's supply lines to assert that Joan was more lucky than skilled.

File:Chas vii.jpg

Charles VII enjoyed a long reign, finally winning the Hundred Years War. Detail from a portrait by Jean Fouquet, tempera on wood, Louvre Museum, Paris, c. 1445.

The army recovered Jargeau on 12 June, Meung-sur-Loire on 15 June, then Beaugency on 17 June. Alençon credited Joan with saving his life at Jargeau by warning him of an impending artillery attack. She withstood a stone cannonball blow to her helmet while climbing a scaling ladder. An expected English relief force arrived in the area on 18 June under the command of sir John Fastolf. The battle at Patay might be compared to Agincourt in reverse. The French vanguard attacked before the English archers finished defensive preparations. A rout ensued that decimated the main body of the English army. The French had minimal losses. A disgraced Fastolf escaped with a small band of soldiers.

The French army set out from Gien-sur-Loire on 29 June, accepting the conditional surrender of the Burgundian-held city of Auxerre on 3 July. Every other town in their path returned to French allegiance without resistance. Troyes, the site of the treaty that had tried to disinherit Charles VII, capitulated after a bloodless four-day siege. Rheims opened its gates on 16 July. The coronation took place the following morning.

Although Joan and the Duke of Alençon urged a prompt march on Paris, the royal court pursued a negotiated truce with the duke of Burgundy. Duke Philip the Good broke the agreement, using it as a stalling tactic to reinforce the defense of Paris. The French army marched through towns near Paris during the interim, accepting peaceful surrenders. The Duke of Bedford confronted Joan with an English force in a standoff on 15 August. The French assault on Paris ensued on 8 September. Despite a crossbow bolt wound to the leg, Joan continued directing the troops until the day's fighting ended. The following morning she received a royal order to withdraw. Most historians blame French grand chamberlain Georges de la Trémoille for the political blunders following the coronation.

Capture, trial, and execution

After minor action at La-Charité-sur-Loire in November and December, Joan went to Compiègne the following March to defend against an English and Burgundian siege. A skirmish on 23 May 1430 led to her capture. When she ordered a retreat she assumed the place of honor as the last to leave the field. Burgundians surrounded the rear guard.

It was customary for a war captive's family to raise a ransom. Joan's relatives lacked financial resources. Many historians condemn Charles VII for failing to intervene. She attempted several escapes, on one occasion leaping from a seventy foot tower to the soft earth of a dry moat. The English government eventually purchased her from duke Philip of Burgundy. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, an English partisan, assumed a prominent role in these negotiations and her later trial.

Joan's trial for heresy was political. The Duke of Bedford claimed the throne of France for his nephew Henry VI. She was responsible for the rival coronation. Condemning her was an attempt to discredit her king. Legal proceedings commenced on 9 January 1431Template:Fn at Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. The procedure was irregular on a number of points.

To summarize some major problems, the jurisdiction of promoter bishop Cauchon was a legal fiction.Template:Fn He owed his appointment to his partisanship. The entire trial was financed by the English government. Clerical notary Nicolas Bailly, commissioned to collect testimony against her, could find no adverse evidence.Template:Fn Without this the court lacked grounds to initiate a trial. Opening one anyway, it denied her right to a legal advisor.

Nonetheless, her testimony could be brilliant. The transcript's most famous exchange is an exercise in subtlety. "Asked if she knew she was in God's grace, she answered: 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.'"Template:Fn The question is a scholarly trap. Church doctrine held that no one could be certain of being in God's grace. If she had answered yes, then she would have convicted herself of heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. Her response was not only perfect but poetic.

Several court functionaries later testified that significant portions of the transcript were altered in her disfavor. Many clerics served under compulsion, including the inquisitor, and a few even received death threats from the English. Joan should have been confined to an ecclesiastical prison with female guards. Instead the English kept her in a secular prison guarded by their own soldiers. Bishop Cauchon denied Jeanne's appeals to the Council of Basel and the Pope, which should have stopped his proceeding.Template:Fn

The twelve articles of accusation that summarize the court's finding contradict the already doctored court record.Template:Fn Illiterate Joan signed an abjuration document she did not understand under threat of immediate execution. The court substituted a different abjuration in the official record.Template:Fn

Heresy was a capital crime only for a repeat offense. Joan agreed to wear women's clothes when she abjured. Shortly afterward she was subject to a sexual assault in prison, possibly by an English lord. This does not appear to have been rape. She resumed male attire either as a defense against molestation or, in the testimony of Jean Massieu, because her dress had been stolen and she was left with nothing else to wear.Template:Fn

Eyewitnesses described the scene of the execution on 30 May 1431. Tied to a tall pillar, she asked two of the clergy, Martin Ladvenu and Isambart de la Pierre, to hold a crucifix before her. She repeatedly called out "...in a loud voice the holy name of Jesus, and implored and invoked without ceasing the aid of the saints of Paradise." After she expired the English raked back the coals to expose her charred body so that no one could claim she had escaped alive, then reduced the body to ashes to prevent any collection of relics. They cast her remains into the Seine. The executioner, Geoffroy Therage, confessed to having "...a great fear of being damned, [as] he had burned a saint." Template:Fn

Retrial

After Charles VII regained Rouen in November 1449, the investigation began with an inquest by clergyman Guillaume Bouille. Inquisitor-General Jean Brehal conducted an investigation in 1452. The formal appeal was initiated in November 1455. Pope Callixtus III authorized this appeal, known today as the "Rehabilitation Trial," at the request of Brehal and surviving members of Joan's family. The appellate process included clergy from throughout Europe and observed proper court procedure. After collecting testimony from 115 witnesses, theologians gave opinions. Brehal drew up his final summary of the case in June 1456. This describes Joan as a martyr and her judges as heretics for having convicted an innocent woman in the pursuit of a secular vendetta. The court declared her innocence on 7 July 1456.

Clothing

Joan wore men's clothing between her departure from Vaucouleurs and her abjuration at Rouen. This raised theological questions in her own era and raised other speculation in the twentieth century. Her assumption of male clothing had no sexual overtones. The technical reason for her execution was a Biblical clothing law.Template:Fn Medieval theology recognized exceptions to the stricture.Template:Fn

Doctrinally speaking, she was safe to disguise herself as a page during a journey through enemy territory, and she was safe to wear armor during battle. The Chronique de la Pucelle claims it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. These defenses leave other occasions open to challenge. She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter during her condemnation trial . That record no longer survives. Circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics approved her practice. In other words, she had a mission to do a man's work so it was fitting that she dress the part.Template:Fn

A number of clergy who testified at her rehabilitation trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape.Template:Fn The garments she chose would slow an assailant.Template:Fn In the end, as cited above, she probably had no choice at all.

Visions

Joan of Arc's religious visions have interested many people, and all seem to agree that her faith was sincere. Devout Catholics regard her visions as divine revelation, and she lived in a society that accepted this possibility. Secular explanations that assert hallucination and mental illness encounter an apparent paradox: Joan won the trust of leading statesmen, soldiers, and clergy. Most scholars who propose psychiatric explanations such as schizophrenia consider Joan a figurehead rather than an active leader. Among other hypotheses are a handful of neurological conditions that can cause complex hallucinations in otherwise sane and healthy people. Temporal lobe epilepsy is one example. Limited evidence hampers speculation. The only surviving account of her visions is the transcript of her condemnation trial where she resisted the court's curiosity. The lost Poitiers inquiry, if it ever surfaces, may shed important light on the subject.

Legacy

Several impostors arose in the years following Joan of Arc's death. The most successful of these, Jeanne de Armoises, won the support of two of Joan's brothers and carried on the charade for four years until she met the king.

The Hundred Years' War continued for 22 years after Joan's death. Most modern historians consider the Treaty of Arras in 1435 and the weak rulership of England's Henry VI to be greater factors in ending the conflict. Kelly deVries argues that Joan's aggressive use of artillery and frontal assaults influenced French tactics for the remainder of the war.Template:Fn All agree that Joan of Arc had a profound effect on French patriotism. She is among the earliest successful proponents of nationalism to emerge from the feudal era.

The Church declared that a religious play in her honor at Orléans was a pilgrimage meriting an indulgence. Joan of Arc became a symbol of the Catholic League during the 16th century. Félix Dupanloup, bishop of Orléans from 1849 to 1878, led the effort for Joan's eventual beatification in 1909. Her canonization followed on 16 May 1920. Her feast day is 30 May.

Joan of Arc was not a feminist in the modern sense. She operated within a religious tradition that believed an exceptional person from any level of society might receive a divine calling. Joan expelled women from the French army and may have struck one stubborn camp follower with the flat of her sword. Nonetheless, some of her most significant aid came from women. Charles VII's mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon confirmed Joan's virginity and financed her departure to Orléans. Joan of Luxembourg, aunt to the count of Luxembourg who held Joan of Arc after Compiegne, alleviated Joan of Arc's conditions of captivity and may have delayed her sale to the English. Finally, Anne of Burgundy the duchess of Bedford declared Joan a virgin during pretrial inquiries. For technical reasons this prevented the court from charging Joan with witchcraft. Ultimately this provided part of the basis for Joan's vindication and sainthood. From Christine de Pizan to the present, women have looked to Joan of Arc as a positive example of a brave and active female.

File:Flag of Free France 1940-1944.gif

Flag of Charles de Gaulle's government in exile during World War II. The French Resistance used the cross of Lorraine as a symbolic reference to Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc has been a political symbol in France since the time of Napoleon. Liberals emphasized her humble origins. Early conservatives stressed her support of the monarchy. Later conservatives recalled her nationalism. During World War II, both the Vichy Regime and the French resistance used her image: Vichy propaganda remembered her campaign against the English with posters that showed British warplanes bombing Rouen with the ominous caption: "They Always Return to the Scene of Their Crimes". The resistance emphasized her fight against foreign occupation and her origins in the province of Lorraine, which had fallen under Nazi control. Three separate vessels of the French Navy have been named after Joan of Arc, including a helicopter carrier currently in active service.

At present the controversial French political party Front National holds rallies at her statues, reproduces her likeness in party publications, and uses a tricolor flame partly symbolic of her martyrdom as its emblem. This party's opponents sometimes satirize its appropriation of her image.

File:RPR old logo.gif

An early logo of Rally for the Republic, a French political party from 1976 to 2002 founded by Jacques Chirac.

Notes

Template:Fnb An Itribunal led by Inquisitor-General Brehal retried her case after the French won the war. The new verdict overturned the original conviction and Brehal described Joan of Arc as a martyr.

Template:Fnb See Joan of Arc: A Military Leader by Kelly DeVries and Joan of Arc: The Warrior Saint by Stephen W. Richey

Template:Fnb Devout Catholics regard this remarkable act as proof of her divine mission. At Chinon and Poitiers she had declared that she would give a sign at Orléans. The lifting of the siege gained her the support of prominent clergy such as the Archbishop of Embrun and the prominent theologian Jean Gerson, who both wrote supportive treatises immediately following this event.

Template:Fnb Judges' investigations January 9 - March 26, ordinary trial March 26 - May 24, recantation May 24, relapse trial May 28-29.

Template:Fnb The retrial verdict later affirmed that Cauchon had no right to try the case. Also see Joan of Arc: Her Story by Regine Pernoud and Marie-Veronique Clin, p. 108. The vice-inquisitor of France objected to the trial on jurisdictional grounds at its outset.

Template:Fnb Quoted from his testimony at her retrial. [1]

Template:Fnb Condemnation trial, p. 52 [2]

Template:Fnb [3] See especially the testimony of court clerk Guillaume de Manchon.

Template:Fnb See note 7.

Template:Fnb See note 8.

Template:Fnb Ibid.

Template:Fnb Deuteronomy 22:5. [4]

Template:Fnb Most notably Thomas Aquinas, Outward apparel should be consistent with the state of the person according to general custom. Hence it is in itself sinful for a woman to wear man’s clothes, or vice-versa; especially since this may be the cause of sensuous pleasure; and it is expressly forbidden in the Law (Deut 22) …. Nevertheless this may be done at times on account of some necessity, either in order to hide oneself from enemies, or through lack of other clothes, or for some other such reason. (Summa Theologiae II, II, question 169, article 2, reply to objection 3).