Joan of Arc

WORKS CITED: Bridget of Sweden. Sancta Birgitta revelaciones, Lib. IV. Ed. Hans Aili. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftällskapet. 2nd ser., Latinska Skrifter, vol. 7. Göteborg, 1992. Caratini, Roger. Jeanne d’Arc: De Domrémy à Orléans et du bûcher à la légende. Paris: l’Archipel, 1999. Crane, Susan. “Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc.” In Denise N. Baker, ed. Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures, 195-219. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000. Fraioli, Deborah A. Joan of Arc: The Early Debate. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000. Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1998. Jean d’Arras. Mélusine. Ed. Louis Stouff. Dijon: Bernigaud & Privat, 1932; repr. Geneva: Slatkine, 1974. Margolis, Nadia. Joan of Arc in History, Literature and Film: A Select, Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1990. Monstrelet. The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet. Ed. and trans. Thomas Johnes. London: 1840; repr. 1849. Pernoud, Régine, and Marie-Véronique Clin. Jeanne d’Arc. Paris: Fayard, 1986. ———. Joan of Arc: Her Story. Revised and trans. Jeremy DuQ. Adams]. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998. Sackville-West, Victoria. Saint Joan of Arc. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1936 [available in various later editions and reprints]. Wood, Charles T. Joan of Arc & Richard III: Sex, Saints and Government in the Middle Ages. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. FURTHER READING: Baker, Denise N., ed. Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures. Albany: SUNY Press, 2000. De Vries, Kelly. Joan of Arc: A Military Leader. Phoenix Mill: Sutton, UK, 1999. Gordon, Mary. Joan of Arc. Penguin Lives. New York: Lipper Viking, 2000. Goy-Blanquet, Dominique. “Shakespeare et Voltaire mettent le feu à l’histoire.” In eadem, ed. Jeanne d’Arc en garde à vue, 9-53. Brussels: Le Cri, 1999. Krumeich, Gerd. Jeanne d’Arc à travers l’histoire. Trans. Josie Mély et al. [from 1989 orig. German]. Paris: Albin Michel, 1993. Margolis, Nadia. “Myths in Progress: A Literary-Typological Comparison of Mélusine and Joan of Arc.” In Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds., Melusine of Lusignan: Founding Fiction in Late Medieval France, 249-66. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Sullivan, Karen. The Interrogation of Joan of Arc. Medieval Cultures, 20. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Voaden, Rosalynn. God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000. Wheeler, Bonnie, and Charles T. Wood, eds. Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc. New York & London: Garland, 1996. Websites: http://www.stjoan-center.com [greatest variety, mixed quality] http://dc.smu.edu/IJAS [more academic, rigorous]

Nadia Margolis JOAN OF ARC Joan of Arc, or Joan the Maid (Jeanne la Pucelle), as she called herself, exemplifies three powerful female types for the Middle Ages—prophet, virgin martyr, and androgyne—all culminating in one persona, as expressed in her writings: her letters and trial testimony. Given the form and context of her writings, her “readers” almost inevitably began as her doubters, and often adversaries, in some way. A cult figure even during her brief lifetime, she understood early on, with uncanny insight for a minimally educated person, the essential reciprocity between myth and truth while formulating her mission. For each and every extraordinary attribute she claimed to possess, she could provide some kind of authentication. Such was the recurrent cycle of dialogue between past and present, prophecy and proof, governing her career as controversial savior of France. Whether one perceives her as cipher or seer, Joan’s entire life (1412-1431) was shaped by the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, begun in 1337 and eventually ending, partly thanks to her achievements, in 1453. By Joan’s time, and despite such hopeful interludes as the reign of Charles V (1368-80), this inter-dynastic struggle between violently self-determining national identities had resulted in two crushing English military victories over the French: Crécy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415. Strife from within, among the French noble families, also weakened the kingdom, the gravest being the assassination of Louis, duke of Orléans, by John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy’s men in 1407. Suffering repeated bouts of insanity, King Charles could do little to avenge his brother’s murder and maintain unity within his kingdom. France was now divided between Armagnacs and Burgundians. The Armagnacs, controlled by Charles’s son, the Dauphin (crown prince), took it upon themselves finally to avenge Orléans’s murder by killing Burgundy (1419), and thus reinforcing the alliance between the new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and Henry V of England. The Dauphin’s revenge also backfired by casting doubt upon his legitimacy, since, in avenging Orléans’s death so recklessly, he behaved more as the son of Orléans—rumored lover of his mother, Queen Isabel—than as the son of his legal father, Charles VI, thus jeopardizing his claim to the throne. However, it was Agincourt in 1415 that resounded as the single greatest demoralizer of the French (Armagnac) cause. This “miracle of St. Crispin’s Day” (Oct. 25th) for the English, led by Henry V, saw a vastly larger French army demolished by nature’s seeming complicity with Henry’s bowmen. Together with France’s internal woes, this defeat underscored the English claim as God’s chosen heirs to William the Conqueror’s legacy. Thus, with the approval of the aging, mad Charles VI in 1420, the Treaty of Troyes disinherited the Dauphin and named Henry V, hero of Agincourt, the rightful king of France and England. Henry further guaranteed this inheritance by marrying the Dauphin’s sister, Catherine of Valois. Himself dispossessed, the Dauphin fled southward, out of Anglo-Burgundian-controlled Paris, to the town of Bourges, to be sardonically named “King of Bourges” and later to Chinon. Nor was there a chance for the would-be Charles VII when Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422. The duke of Bedford, chief power behind the English throne, ensured that his nephew, Henry’s infant son, inherited both French and English crowns as Henry VI. Bedford and the new king’s other uncle, Gloucester, with the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, continued to conquer more of France with their Burgundian allies. Taking their cue from French monarchic theory, Bedford’s propagandists took pains to show the Lancasters too were descended from St. Louis, and thus under the fleurs-de-lis—the white lilies associated with Christ and bestowed by King Clovis (ca. 496) as a symbol of France’s dynastic purity. Such cultivation of ancient symbolism reinforced England’s ideal of kingship as one based not only on military might and political strategy but also on divine benefaction. Conversely, France needed, to preserve her sovereignty—that is, all that made her an independent kingdom under God—a military miracle to redress the ravages of Agincourt. Such was the “grant pitié” (“great pity”) of the French kingdom, to cite Joan’s own words. Less overtly felt among the masses, but arguably affecting Joan’s standing with the Church, the Great Schism of the Church (1378-1417) spawned two (or even three) popes: mainly one in Avignon, in southern France, an “antipope” to the one in Rome. When the Council of Constance (1415-18) finally ended the Schism by naming Martin V in Rome the sole legitimate pope, the French lost their pope. French theologians, largely affiliated with the Sorbonne, or University of Paris, thus relinquished much prestige and influence in Church affairs, which sorely disgruntled them. The pro-Armagnac among them, including some of France’s finest intellectuals, were massacred by the opposing faction in 1418. This left the pro-Anglo-Burgundian, reactionary and corrupt “Sorbonnards” to serve as Joan’s judges at the Rouen trial 13 years later. Set against this complex political turmoil of which she and her people understood little, even the most banal and basic facts of Joan’s life would acquire new meaning during her trial testimony, at which she became her own first biographer. The fourth child of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée, Joan was born circa 1412, probably on or around January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, and was baptized in the church at Domrémy, a village in the province of Lorraine, near the German border. Because of their Armagnac loyalty, Domrémy and neighboring towns suffered raids by Burgundian soldiers. Jacques d’Arc, a native of Champagne, was a peasant farmer, neither poor nor wealthy, and influential in local affairs. Her highly devout mother also provided her only schooling, as was usual for women of Joan’s class. Isabelle taught her the basic prayers and such womanly arts as sewing and spinning, at which Joan excelled, but scarcely any reading and writing. The persistent, affectionate image of Joan the gentle shepherdess—and Shakespeare’s negative account of her being sired by a shepherd out of wedlock (Henry VI, v.4.37-38)—surprisingly enough, is disputed by her in the trial records. Scholars have offered various explanations ranging from Joan’s class consciousness to trial-record tinkering by notaries. It nonetheless seems likely, given the prevailing pâturage system (shared pastures with communal tending by village children) that she did tend cattle and sheep, though to a lesser extent than domestic duties. Another legendary quality, Joan’s extreme piety, would be more pointedly distorted during the trial as evidence of her heresy. In reality, while respecting orthodox Catholicism, she also participated in the mixed Christian-folkloric rituals involving lords and peasants around certain local fountains and trees in celebration of springtime and the autumn harvest, merged with saints’ feast days. At the age of twelve or thirteen, Joan tells us, in her father’s garden that summer at noon after having fasted the day before, she heard her voices for the first time, accompanied by a light. Her first vision was of St. Michael, who heralded later visions of Saints Margaret and Catherine. All were extremely popular saints for Joan’s patriotic, devout milieu; she need not have read such learned hagiographical sources as the Legenda aurea (Golden Legend) to learn of them. These visions initially advised her simply to be a good girl, then gradually revealed that she was the chosen defender of France, despite her youth, humble origins and gender. The three saints, each in separate fashion, also served as models for Joan’s sense of self and future mission. Michael the archangel, slayer of satanic dragons, had become the official protective saint of France. Her two female saints’ legends offer insight into the difficult question of Joan’s alleged cross-dressing, a major accusation at her trial, and also her rhetorical prowess. St. Margaret of Antioch, a beautiful girl of noble family, so prized her virginity that she eluded marriage by disguising herself as a monk and fleeing home to spend the rest of her life running a monastery in this same disguise. By other accounts she debated with her suitor, then suffered imprisonment and even beheading by him. Like Margaret, Joan too would secretly flee her parents’ house at Domrémy to avoid marriage, and don male attire to fulfill her destiny as a virgin, though as an overt sign of divine designation and obedience to her saints rather than a merely protective, practical disguise. Nor did wearing men’s clothes respond to an inner desire for masculinity or to be a man. Cf. the currently very influential book by Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998) and Susan Crane, “Clothing and Gender Definition: Joan of Arc.” In Denise N. Baker, ed. Inscribing the Hundred Years’ War in French and English Cultures (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000), 195-219. Therefore, recent scholarly opinions to the contrary, Joan did not cross-dress in the sense most often understood now. St. Catherine of Alexandria would herald Joan’s courageous eloquence at her trials. Catherine’s transvestism consisted in dialectical expertise, rather than in an actual change of clothing, to equal and surpass men. She defended her village by successfully debating with the pagan emperor’s 50 most eminent philosophers and converting them to Christianity, though she eventually met with a martyr’s death, a virgin to the end. After Joan’s eloquence finally won over (February 1429) the originally dismissive captain Baudricourt, at nearby Vaucouleurs, by correctly predicting the outcome of the Battle of Rouvroy well before any messenger could have conveyed the news, Joan obtained the necessary aid and equipment for her journey across France to interview the Dauphin at Chinon, where more tests awaited her. She identified Charles despite his attempts to hide in the crowd at court, then, in private conversation, managed to win his confidence via the famous, oft-disputed “secret”—either by revealing a sign signifying shared royal parentage; or by a special prayer or prophecy—confirming his legitimacy as King Charles VII. The gift of prophecy particularly characterized female mystics, whether Christian or pagan. Joan’s uniqueness lay in that she could not only prophesize but was herself prophesied, as her self-fashioning merged with such famous pre-existing pronouncements as one of the so-called Merlin prophecies, recounted circa 1135 in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain): Ex nemore canuto puella eliminabitur ut medelae curam adhibeat (“A maiden will come out from the oak forest to give care to healing”), and others from mixed Christian-Pagan, historical-mythological traditions. Joan capitalized on the fact that she, a maiden, had often played in Domrémy’s Bois chenu (“Oak Forest”), to validate herself through this. Another wave of prophecy declared that France would be lost by a woman and saved by a warrior maiden. To Joan’s public, the woman who lost France was Isabel of Bavaria, queen of France, unfaithful wife of Charles VI, who therefore imperiled their son’s succession. Joan’s virginity would also link her to another prophecy invoking the Virgin Mary, savior of the human race by herself and through Jesus. Joan would likewise restore the Dauphin’s claim to the throne, as she states in her testimony and letters. In this same vein she would head her letters and adorn her banners with the inscription, “Jhesu Maria” (“Jesus Mary”). Charles, ever cautious and calculating, nonetheless ordered her prophetic claims questioned and verified by his leading theologians, notably Jean Gerson, at Poitiers, in March 1429. This examination tested for visionary falsehood on two levels: the reality of their outcome and, especially if correct, their source, given the deceptive nature of Satan. It was thus not enough for Joan to be able to predict events and her role in them; her “enthusiasm” must come from God and not the Devil. Once they determined her to be an instrument of God, then all aberrations—especially her male clothing—were deemed justifiable accouterments. Gerson’s involvement was crucial to furthering Joan’s mission because he was the leading authority on discretio spirituum, the art of discerning false prophecies. He had also presided over St. Bridget of Sweden’s canonization deliberations. Since he wrote the most positive opinion on Joan, citing Biblical heroines as precedents, the other examiners concurred, though cautiously. Gerson’s support, in light of his prestige, facilitated the favorable judgment despite the absence of the validating miracle normally required of visionaries. On the secular, folkloric side, popular acceptance of Joan may owe something to other female mythical figures like Mélusine, recently appropriated as guardian of Poitiers against the English by Charles VI’s powerful uncle, the Duke of Berry. An early snake-goddess figure of multinational origins, Melusine was transformed into Mélusine, a 1393 chronicle romance by Jean d’Arras, at the behest of the Duke of Berry to disconcert English invaders in Poitou. Having won the approval of the Poitiers examiners, Joan was then allowed to ride with the French army. Delivering Orléans from the lengthy English siege (8 May 1429) provided the missing miracle from Poitiers while redressing the loss at Agincourt. Her writing would play a major part in this, now that the Poitiers verdict permitted, indeed privileged, her to write officially as what she claimed to be: the virgin defender of France sent by God against the English. This image would attract further affirmation among a great variety of contemporary authors, most notably Christine de Pizan, who saw in Joan the fulfillment of her feminist, patriotic dreams, as celebrated in her polemical poem, the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (Tale of Joan of Arc) of 31 July 1429. Joan’s Anglo-Burgundian detractors, like the Bourgeois de Paris, Monstrelet’s chronicles and the duke of Bedford’s letters, would brand her a false saint defending a false king, a harlot, yet mannish, and a bloodthirsty witch. Thus was launched an anti-Joan tradition extending through Caxton, Fabyan, Hall and Holinshed—the latter two major sources for Shakespeare’s Henry VI—which still persists among some English historians. For summaries and bibliography to English authors on Joan, not all of whom were hostile, see Nadia Margolis, Joan of Arc in History, Literature and Film: A Select, Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1990), 64-77, 154-56. Her earliest letters, of which we have only fragments and allusions, are addressed to family and potential allies: (1) to her parents (late February 1429) asking forgiveness for her abrupt departure; (2) to the Dauphin announcing her imminent arrival to aid him (early March 1429); and (3) to the monks at Sainte-Catherine de Fierbois (sent from Chinon, 6 March 1429), requesting them to find and send her the old sword she knew to be hidden in their church. This last represents one of her more mysteriously clairvoyant moments, since she had reportedly never been to Sainte-Catherine. The archives of the town of Compiègne contain references to other lost letters; Joan probably dictated about seventeen in all. Wary of interception by unwanted eyes, Joan devised a code for her captains and royal notaries: an encircled “X” at the end of a message meant that the order was not to be followed. In all six of her surviving intact letters, Joan’s words speak as loudly as the actions that buttressed them. She usually begins by speaking in the third person singular, then shifts into the first person singular, or official “we,” toward the end. First and most important among these, the famous Lettre aux Anglais (Letter to the English), introduced her, “La Pucelle” (The Maid) to the English as a real person and not mere rumor. She emphasizes her virginity both as part of her savior persona and also to dispel straightaway any suspicion of her being a soldiers’ harlot or “camp follower.” Likewise, her imperious tone purports to reflect the infallible will of God and not herself, a humble messenger—an effective ploy. Dictated in March 1429 from Poitiers and later sent from Blois, this letter, addressed to the king of England and “you, Duke of Bedford”—the real power—, contains both a summons, or declaration of war, and a peace proposal, the latter contingent on English withdrawal. In denying the English right to the French throne accorded by the Treaty of Troyes, she also faces head on the quandary of one Christian nation fighting the other, hoping for victory as God’s will. The English had tried to resolve this by simply conquering; Joan, in this letter, appeals to the English as fellow Christians and co-crusaders for the Church against the Infidel, to perform “the most beautiful deed ever done for Christianity.” Whether the English followed this or not (they understandably accepted neither this arguably specious invitation nor her lopsided terms of peace), Charles VII was the legitimate king of France by divine right, and she hoped that Bedford would see reason to avert God’s wrath: “The Maid begs and beseeches you not to cause yourself to be destroyed.” All quotations from Joan’s letters are from the texts and notes in Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin, Jeanne d’Arc (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 377-90, which also provides a concordance to earlier editions. For English translations, see Pernoud and Clin, Joan of Arc: Her Story, revised and trans. Jeremy DuQ. Adams (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 247-64. Like her grasp of politics and military strategy, her keen command of current prophecy, especially for an adolescent only semi-literate at best, impresses us here, since she seems conversant with the main points of, while refuting, the fourteenth-century St. Bridget of Sweden’s Revelations in favor of the English. Demonstrated in Deborah Fraioli, Joan of Arc: The Early Debate (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000), 69-86, citing from Sancta Birgitta revelaciones, Lib. IV, ed. Hans Aili, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftällskapet, 2nd ser., Latinska Skrifter, vol. 7 (Göteborg, 1992), bk. 4, chs. 104-5. Joan’s first letter disconcerts all who see it by its fiercely confident language, including Bedford, despite his mockery of her as “that abandoned woman.” By the tone and substantive detail of his reply, For the text of Bedford’s reply, see Monstrelet, The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, ed. and trans. Thomas Johnes (London: 1840; repr. 1849), 1: 558. he obviously suspects Joan to be no ordinary religious zealot. The extant letters coming after the Lettre aux Anglais equal it in forcefulness but are far narrower in scope and intent. Most of these sought not only safe passage but also supplies for her troops on the way to the Reims coronation (17 July 1429) and for her later campaigns. Her missive to the “Loyal Frenchmen of Tournai,” in what is now Belgium, dated 25 June, was copied 36 times for distribution throughout the 36 wards of the city. She appeals to their loyalty to the dauphin while attempting to intimidate pro-English citizens by reporting the deaths or imprisonment of many eminent English knights like Suffolk, Talbot, Fastolf and Glasdale—and then requests the Tournai citizens’ presence at the Dauphin’s upcoming coronation at Reims, along with their welcoming support for her troops when they pass through, “to keep up the good fight (bonne querelle) for the French kingdom.” Her letter to the burghers of Troyes (4 July 1429) demands the same submission to the Dauphin as king of France by God’s command. Though not as bloodthirsty as in letters to other cities on the coronation route to Reims, Joan’s language is nonetheless firm: their refusal to obey could cost them their lives. Her second letter to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, unlike the first, unanswered by him, exists intact. Dated 17 July 1429, it seeks to make peace between Duke Philip and the Dauphin Charles in rather uncompromising fashion. Omitting any conciliatory mention of Charles’ role in Philip’s father’s murder ten years earlier, the chief source of their rift, she instead justifies their proposed truce entirely as God’s will, like Charles’s right to the throne. While portraying herself on the one hand as supplicant, pleading with Philip to make peace, on the other she threatens bloodshed and misery if he refuses to accede. In her letter to the people of Reims (5 August 1429), Joan reprises the “good fight” theme, linking it to her defense of the sanctity of the blood royal, i.e., Charles VII, not Henry VI—necessary despite Charles’s recent coronation there. She also alludes to the new truce between Charles and Philip of Burgundy, and announces her passage through the town on the way to Paris to safeguard the king. Because she senses this to be an uneasy peace, she requests the Reims citizens’ vigilance in case of any traitors, whom she vows to eradicate. Later letters to this city (16 and 28 March 1430), both bearing her actual signature, repeat these themes to reassure the people that she will repay their loyalty by her protection. Letters to the cities of Clermont (7 November 1429) and more threateningly, Riom (9 November), ask specifically for munitions (gunpowder) in preparation for the attack on La Charité, which would fail for lack of reinforcements from Charles. Her letter of 22 August 1429 to the count of Armagnac stands alone as the only extant letter by her dealing with religious matters, here, the Great Schism. Jean d’Armagnac has asked her, so exceptional in God’s grace, for counsel on which of the (now three) popes (Martin V in Rome, Benedict XIV in Avignon, and Clement VIII in Peñiscola) he should revere. Joan replies that she is too pressed at the moment with waging war to answer, and advises him to contact her later, in Paris, whereupon she will consult with God and give him the right answer. For an analysis and translations of Armagnac’s and Joan’s letters, see Charles T. Wood, Joan of Arc & Richard III: Sex, Saints and Government in the Middle Ages (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 126-28. Another letter (20 November 1429), now lost, relates to Charles VII her meetings with the mystic Catherine de la Rochelle, whom Joan deems a fraud. A third letter on religious matters, the so-called Letter to the Hussites (“Sent from Sully to the heretics of Bohemia”) is no longer thought to be hers, despite its heading, but rather by her confessor at Orléans, Jean Pasquerel, who signed it. This spurious letter affords intriguing evidence of how Church officials tried to exploit Joan’s quasi-divine aura to combat heresy. Once she was captured, however, by the Duke of Luxembourg’s men at Compiègne (23 May 1430), this aura would work against her. Luxembourg sold her to Burgundy. After an arduous prison itinerary (14 prisons, like Christ’s 14 Stations of the Cross), she was turned over to the Sorbonne inquisitors, and brought to trial at Rouen in January 1431. Jealous of her popularity, convinced by scheming courtiers that she had outgrown her usefulness to him, Charles neither offered ransom nor sent a rescue party for her, claiming himself too destitute. Her trial (9 January-29 May 1431) was an outwardly proper trial, yet conducted by the chief magistrate, pro-English bishop of Rouen, Pierre Cauchon, in bad faith, as we might expect from Bedford and Warwick, its true promoters. Outdoing St. Catherine, Joan faced 164 ecclesiastical judges and advisers, and yet without a single advocate of her own. Consequently Joan fueled the case against her with every utterance—whether written or oral. Even earlier positive testimony, like the Poitiers record and the treatise by Gerson (now dead) were transformed into manuals for her condemnation at Rouen. Her truculent refusal to answer certain questions pertaining to her voices did not help either. Repetition, recurrent cycles of questioning, hammering on the same points (her voices and visions; God’s favoring the French over the English; her clothing) dominated those months of interrogation, with 70 articles read to her, then compressed into twelve. In gentler moments like the “Charitable exhortation” (18 April), the judges feigned concern for her soul, in the manner of priestly confessors, to deceive her into renouncing her voices or admitting her heresy; but more often they snidely insinuated or bullied, with threats of torture, to achieve the same ends. Joan’s most dangerous aspect was her refusal to submit to them, the Church Militant (Church on Earth), by claiming to speak directly to the Church Triumphant (Church in Heaven) as represented by her saintly voices and visions. Convicting her as a witch would also help the English cause by nullifying the divine favor confirmed by Orléans and other French victories. Though successful at parrying their attempts to entrap her into admitting witchcraft, Joan was convicted of heresy and blasphemy, plus related charges. At one point, the interrogators almost broke her, in a phase known as the Abjuration (24 May), during which the exhausted heroine signed a paper recanting belief in her voices and by promising to wear a dress to avoid burning. But she quickly renounced this recantation (28 May), so that she who had “lapsed” in the eyes of her judges had now relapsed by reversing her abjuration of her voices. She was then surrendered to the secular authorities and publicly burned at Rouen on 30 May 1431. But there, even more than for other martyrs, Joan’s story only begins, despite the best efforts of Cauchon and his colleagues. Having conveniently lost the full Poitiers record from 1429, they also destroyed the original French transcript of the Rouen trial, after translating it into official Latin. All that remains of the authentic French testimony is the so-called d’Urfé fragment, containing the minutes of the trial. By circulating only the official Latin version, Cauchon’s clever notarial “translators” again weighted the trial against Joan and the Armagnacs. Nevertheless, once Burgundy rejoined Charles and the English had been essentially expelled from France (per Joan’s prophecy) in 1450, Charles initiated the so-called Rehabilitation trial. After five years of royal and papal inquests, the Nullification of Condemnation proceedings took place, rediscovered the d’Urfé fragment and similar documents, re-interviewed witnesses, noted all the procedural errors in Cauchon’s trial and overturned the verdict on 7 July 1456. Though purporting to restore Joan’s good name, the Rehabilitation more immediately fulfilled its real intention to improve Charles’s image, as he went on to rule as Charles the Victorious. The Church was slower to recover from its malaise in the affair. It took patriotic visionary historians like Michelet and Quicherat in the early 19th century—motivated by a culture war with German scholars inspired by Schiller’s 1802 play, Die Jungfrau von Orleans—to unearth Joan’s trial records and other documents from various archives and properly edit them in printed form as part of France’s cultural patrimony. Quicherat’s epic 1849 edition and translation of all known documents on Joan unveiled the heroine’s story for all to see. So captivating was this medieval courtroom drama combined with a martyr’s passion that readers ranging from Mark Twain to Vita Sackville-West devoured the five erudite volumes to create their own portraits of her. Joan became an international cultural hero representing a multitude of causes, from suffragettes to female gymnasts. In France, Catholic leaders took notice, merging with rightist politicians to promote her canonization beginning in the 1850s. Many French republican (anti-Church, centrist) nationalists and socialists also favored Joan, minus her appropriation by the right-wing Catholics. Alarmed at her veneration (1896), then beatification (1909), certain modern skeptics in the tradition begun by Voltaire (18C), like Anatole France and later, George Bernard Shaw, tried to debunk her myth while becoming intrigued with her. After World War I, when French soldiers reported having visions of Joan in the trenches, the Church finally canonized her in 1920. Immune to the Church’s hold in France, and other reactionary régimes like Japan, for whom Joan represented ideal female subservience, pioneering English and American feminists embraced her as a symbol. Quicherat’s work would be repeatedly updated and supplemented in the 20th century by Champion, Doncoeur, Scott and Tisset, Lanhers and Duparc, furnishing more raw material for some 50 films and thousands of poems, plays, essays and novels, in addition to an equal profusion of scholarly works on Joan, Full references for all authors and scholars mentioned here but not cited in the accompanying bibliography may be found in appropriately-labeled sections of Margolis, Joan of Arc in History, Literature and Film, op. cit. both favorable and unfavorable, with no end in sight. Doubters still persist, the most recent being Caratini. However, regardless of their opinions after reading her, few readers of Joan have emerged untransformed in some way. 15 PAGE 16 Joan of Arc / Margolis