Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc

Bonnie Wheeler, Charles T. Wood, Bonnie Wheeler, Charles T. Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317731146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Joan of Arc has long piqued the historical imagination, for it seems impossible that a peasant-maid couldhave led the French army, crowned her king, and then been burned as a heretic, only later to be found a saint. This volume of original essays seeks to shed light on these mysteries, but also to explain why, even in the 20th century, Joan of Arc remains such a potent symbol. Scholars here employ the latest tools of historical analysis, literary criticism, and feminist inquiry to reveal why verterans of her military campaigns found her to have been a remarkable commander; why so many of her contemporaries and near-contemporaries, churchman and poets alike, found it possible to accept the validity of her mission and her voices; why modern politicians and literary and cinematic artists have used her as the symbolic vehicle for their own visions; and why the Catholic Church finally decided to canonize her in 1920. The essays are heavily cross-referenced, and are capped off with a reflective epilogue by R gine Pernoud, long the dean of Joan scholars and former director of the Centre Jeanne d'Arc at Orleans. Also includes maps.

Joan of Arc’s Last Trial: The Attack of the Devil’s Advocates

Henry Ansgar Kelly

In Joan of Arc's s canonization trial, the Devil's Advocates made serious charges against her modesty, temperance, humility, fortitude, perseverance, and military mission. In spite of fierce rebuttals by the defense team, the jury of Consultors found much merit in the accusations, but the judges (the cardinals and pope) gave her a resounding acquittal.

Joan of Arc has been subjected to many contradictory judgments over the ages, some of which must be characterized by unprejudiced observers (like you and me) as rash, being dictated by political, religious, or ideological biases. But in this paper I will uncover clashing opinions in a forum where we would expect most of the intellectual presuppositions and leanings to be fairly uniform, namely, the papal curia, in Joan's canonization trial. Of course, the accusatory format of the trial guaranteed basic differences of opinion, and the raw material for these opinions derived from the records of similar earlier trials.

Joan was a defendant in six ecclesiastical trials. The first occurred some time after she had made her vow of virginity at the age of thirteen: she was accused in the consistory court of her local bishop of having contracted marriage with a young man and then refusing to acknowledge It.¹ Her second trial was the examination by the dauphins allies that took place in Poitiers.² Then came the trials of condemnation and relapse, and next the rehabilitation or nullification trial, ending in 1456. Finally, the canonization process for Joan began in 1869 and concluded in 1920, a period of over fifty years.³

In our consideration of this last trial, we will begin and end in mediis rebus, starting with the earliest Roman phase, dealing with Joan's reputation for sanctity, which opened in 1892, and ending with the sessions debating her actual practice of saintly virtues, concluding in 1903. But first a word on the preliminaries. As noted, the formal procedures began in 1869: with a petition to Rome from Felix Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans, on May 8.⁴ Far from being inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, the process was in fact delayed by it, and the first local inquisition, held in Orleans, did not open until 1874.⁵ The documents that resulted during the course of the process, both in France and in Rome, are remarkable for their lack of any reference to the military and political situations of the day. We must remember that the French garrison that had been preserving Rome from the Italian Republicans for a decade was forced to withdraw on the outbreak of the war in France, leaving Pius IX the "prisoner of the Vatican." His successor, Leo XIII, elected in 1878, continued his political aims of regaining the papal states. After 1887, he tried with mixed results to make an ally of France against the Alliance powers of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Pius X, elected on August 4, 1903, took a sterner line, which led to a break in diplomatic relations with France on July 30, 1904.⁶ But the combatants in the spiritual battle over Joan's fate remained above the earthly fray.

The inquisition that opened in Orleans in November 1874 lasted for thirty-three sessions, ending in January 1876. Two further inquisitions were required under Dupanloup's successor, Bishop Coullié, the first in 1885, lasting also for thirty-three sessions (June to November), and the second in 1887-88, comprising twenty-five sessions (December to February),⁷ after which the cause was admitted to the tribunal of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.

First Devil’s Advocate: Augustine Caprara

In 1892, then, the Devil's Advocate, or, as he was officially known, the Promotor of the Faith, began his assault upon Joan by saying:

The history of the fifteenth century has consecrated two names especially for praise, for remembrance, and for perennial attention: Christopher Columbus and Joan d'Arc, or Joan Romée, called also the Maid of Orleans. Columbus is famous because of the New World that he sought and found, and Joan because of the recovered fortunes of her native land and its restored freedom and glory. Moreover, just as Columbus did not hesitate to conquer the "dark sea" and to thrust himself into every kind of vicissitude in order to acquire new shores for the Gospel and enter into their possession "in the name of Jesus Christ," so, too, the Virgin of Arc did not fear to take up arms and commit herself to the perils and hardships of war in order to restore the kingdom of France, at that time almost destroyed, and to consecrate it "through the hands of the dauphin to the king of heaven, who is the king of France."⁸

The Promotor, a priest named Augustine Caprara,⁹ elaborates on the problems that Columbus had and the far worse troubles of Joan, who fell into the hands of her enemies and died a relapsed heretic's death at the stake.¹⁰ His final conclusion, however, is that she was no saint and that even her admirable human virtues did not survive her last ordeal: "It seems then that two stages are to be discerned in the life of our Maid. The first was glorious and full of admiration, up to her captivity.... But when she was captured and subjected to judicial questions, that greatness of soul gave out, that splendor of divine revelations vanished, and grave faults are seen to have obscured the aforesaid virtues, whatever, finally, they were."¹¹

In the beginning of his discourse, the Promotor admits that Joan's execution as a heretic was the result of calumnies, but he refrains at this point from condemning the church authorities who were responsible for it; rather, he gives credit to the church for setting about the process of rehabilitating her: for hardly had Pope Calixtus III ascended the Roman see when, at the request of Joan's parents and kin, he appointed apostolic judges to consider the case anew and to declare what was just. It was entirely right for the church to protect the honor of such a virgin, for, as the present Holy Father, Leo XIII, wisely wrote in his recent letter on Christopher Columbus, the church willingly approves of whatever seems honorable and praiseworthy, and, while keeping its greatest honors for those virtues that pertain to eternal salvation, it does not for this reason disdain the other kind of virtues, "for the signs of divine power also appear in those in whom there shines forth a certain excellent forcefulness of spirit and mind."¹²

Not content with these "rather narrow limits," however, Joan's modern devotees have pressed for even greater honors, those reserved for the most outstanding virtues in the realm of morals. The Promotor says:

I would not dare to say whether any more outstanding or more difficult case, ever existed in previous times. I know, certainly, that in this preliminary seat of judgment it is only a question of the fame, or the "fume," of sanctity; that is, it must be decided whether or not it flourished in the past and still flourishes. But the documents that are submitted seem to prove this very clearly: that no age has been silent about Joan's political virtues, joined certainly to piety and religion, indeed also to a prophetic spirit. But it is only in our own times that one has begun to think about her possession of true and heroic virtues befitting to saints.¹³

He refers to the great work on canonization produced by a Promotor of the Faith from the previous century, Prosper Lambertini, who later became Pope Benedict XIV: he used the example of Joan of Arc to demonstrate that the gift of prophecy could exist apart from sanctity, since in Joan's case there never had been any discussion or judgment concerning her sanctity and heroic virtues.¹⁴

By speaking of Joan in conjunction with Columbus, and saying that he could hardly think of a more celebrated or more difficult case for canonization than hers, the Promotor was clearly inviting comparison with the recent elaborate attempts to have Columbus considered for sainthood. The formal process had begun in 1873, when Archbishop Donnet of Bordeaux officially requested the admirals beatification; the petition was declined by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in October 1877, on grounds that the proofs for Columbus's marriage to Beatrice Enríquez de Arana, mother of his son Ferdinand, were insufficient.¹⁵ The effort continued under Giuseppe Baldi, who was named Vice-Postulator of the cause, and he published three volumes of supporting petitions from nearly eight hundred bishops and archbishops, including even a prayer for Columbus's beatification by Pope Leo XIII himself,¹⁶ but the cause never prospered, presumably because the opposition of the Devil's Advocate prevailed.

A similar number of episcopal testimonials had been gathered for Joan, including one from Cardinal Newman¹⁷ (whose own cause for beatification was completed in 1991, except for a requisite miracle).¹⁸ Promotor Caprara makes no reference to these postulatory letters, except indirectly, in alluding to the assertions of her sanctity that had only recently been forthcoming; these assertions, he adds, do not come from "probable causes."¹⁹ That is, they are not based on historical evidence or on acceptable spiritual evidence (for instance, miracles attributed to her intercession).

Caprara proceeds to base his attack on the historical documents that the supporters for her canonization were using, namely, the full records of her trial of condemnation and her later posthumous trial of rehabilitation or nullification. He puts more faith in the records of the trials of condemnation and relapse, without, however, fully adverting to their questionable aspects. Specifically, he wants to establish that the redaction of Joan's responses into seventy articles by the judges' promo tor was accurate: that is, that it corresponded truthfully to what Joan actually answered to the questions.²⁰

This position was indignantly repudiated by the responding Defender, Hilary Alibrandi, an Advocate of the Congregation of Rites.²¹ He rightly demonstrates that the seventy articles were not drawn primarily from her responses but were based largely on the unsubstantiated charges compiled against her before her interrogation began. Moreover, they were addressed not to her but to her judges.²²

The portions of the records giving the responses that Joan allegedly made to interrogations, both before and after the presentation of the articles, have been generally accepted by historians with cautious confidence as accurately reflecting her words, and Promotor Caprara follows suit; he uses them to cast aspersions on her character. He shows himself critical of the inquisition begun in Orleans in 1874 and transferred to Paris without obtaining jurisdiction from the local archbishop, and he maintains that the deposition received there from De Wallon, the minister of public instruction, was invalid and should be thrown out. But h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Joan of Arc's Sword in the Stone
• A WOMAN AS LEADER OF MEN: JOAN OF ARC'S MILITARY CAREER
• JOAN OF ARC'S MISSION AND THE LOST RECORD OF HER INTERROGATION AT POITIERS
• TRUE LIES: TRANSVESTISM AND IDOLATRY IN THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC
• WAS JOAN OF ARC A "SIGN" OF CHARLES VII'S INNOCENCE?
• TRANSCRIPTION ERRORS IN TEXTS OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY
• "I DO NOT NAME TO YOU THE VOICE OF ST. MICHAEL": THE IDENTIFICATION OF JOAN OF ARC'S VOICES
• READERS OF THE LOST ARC: SECRECY, SPECULARITY, AND SPECULATION IN THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC
• JOAN OF ARC AND CHRISTINE DE PIZAN: THE SYMBIOSIS OF TWO WARRIORS IN THE Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc
• PR PAS PC: CHRISTINE DE PIZAN'S PRO-JOAN PROPAGANDA
• SPEAKING OF ANGELS: A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY BISHOP IN DEFENSE OF JOAN OF ARC'S MYSTICAL VOICES
• MARTIN LE FRANC'S COMMENTARY ON JEAN GERSON'S TREATISE ON JOAN OF ARC
• WHY JOAN OF ARC NEVER BECAME AN AMAZON
• JOAN OF ARC'S LAST TRIAL: THE ATTACK OF THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATES
• JEANNE AU CINÉMA
• THE "JOAN PHENOMENON" AND THE FRENCH RIGHT
• EPILOGUE: JOAN OF ARC OR THE SURVIVAL OF A PEOPLE
• APPENDICES
• Contributors