.
Louis
Kossuth, a great Hungarian revolutionary hero and champion of liberty in the
19th century said this about Joan of Arc.
"Consider this unique and imposing
distinction. Since the writing of human
history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who has ever held
supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the age of seventeen."
Let
me give you a brief overview of her life.
Most
of us have heard the story of Joan of Arc, the French girl born January 6,
1412, who had visions and heard voices from St. Michael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch.
The voices started at age 13½, the summer of 1425.
By
May 1428, she no longer doubted the source of the voices and their insistence
she must help the king of France. She was to lead the French army against the
English and stop the English from conquering France. When her voices told her to see the king's
commander, she made the trip in June and faced disrespect by the rude and
dissolute soldier.
On
October 12, 1428, English troops surrounded the town of Orlѐans, and laid siege, a truly tragic turn
of events. As the ever more insistent voices
demanded she see the king, she went again in January 1429 and got to the king
on March 8.
Upon
convincing the king of her sincerity and determination, Joan became supreme commander
of the French army, and on April 30, Joan led the previously demoralized French
army into Orlѐans. By May 8, Joan had
captured all the surrounding English forts and raised the siege.
On
July 29, 1429, Charles VII, with Joan at his side, was crowned King in the city
of Reims.
Joan
continued her ferocious assault on the English and on May 24, 1430, an
overwhelming Burgundian force, loyal to the English, captured Joan after the
battle of Compiègne.
Sold
to the English, Joan went to prison where her hands, feet, and neck where
locked in chains, while being held for an Ecclesiastical court trial, where she
was charged with witchcraft and heresy.
The
trial started February 21, 1431, convicted Joan of being a heretic on May 29,
1431, and burnt her at the stake May 30, 1431.
She died at nineteen years of age.
Consider
the brief career of one of the most beloved heroes in French history and
successful military commanders in the history of warfare. By age 13, Joan began hearing voices. These voices convinced her to go to the king
by age 17 with her plan to save France.
She
spent one year, until age 18, leading her troops in driving the English from Northern provinces of France. Once captured, she spent her final year as a
prisoner of the English before her death at the stake, at just 19½ years old.
In
the end, the king she installed and the country she saved had abandoned Joan,
as had her beloved Roman Catholic Church.
Joan of Arc, God's warrior, and French martyr, disappeared and seemed forgotten.
So
how did this convicted heretic become one of the most popular and least
understood saints in the church?
That,
my friends, is the rest of the story and what a story Joan has to tell.
To
discover the truth about Joan of Arc we must journey through a story with all
the elements of an Academy Award winning movie.
Her story was set against a backdrop of the previous millennium, when France
earned recognition as "God's special country" for Roman Catholics,
with her people dedicated to faith and the church.
Timeline - All Dates Anno Domini A.D. the year of our Lord
33 Death
of Jesus
305 Death of Saint Catherine of Alexandria
306 Death of Saint Margaret of Antioch
324 Constantine
calls the Council of Nicea
1291 Crusades end
1347 Black Death Plague hits Europe
1336 Hundred Years War between England, Scotland,
and France
begins
1412 Joan of Arc born in Domremy, Lorraine
Province
1425 Joan first hears voices & saw visions
1428 June - Joan tries to reach French King
1428 October - English lay siege to Orlѐans
1429 March 8 - Joan finally meets French king
1429 April 30 - Joan, Supreme Commander of French
army, enters Orlѐans
1429 May 8 - English abandon siege of Orlѐans
1429 July 29 - Charles VII, with Joan at his
side, is crowned King in Reims
1430 May 24 - Joan is captured at Compiѐgne &
sold to English
1431 February 21 - Joan's trial begins for
witchcraft & heresy
1431 May 29 - Joan convicted of being heretic
1431 May 30 - Joan burnt at the stake
1455 King & Pope seek revision of her trial
results
Appellate Court reverses and annuls
verdict
1776 Lorraine
Province (Domremy) joins French Kingdom
1787 French Revolution begins
1793 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette put to death
1803 Napoleon begins rehabilitating Joan's reputation
1869 Bishop of Orlѐans requests investigation for
beautification
1896 Mark Twain anomalously publishes Joan of Arc
1909 April 11 - Pope Pius X issues beatification
decree
1920 Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan a Saint
Early
in the millennium, Europe had just completed
the crusades (1095 until 1291).
During
the one hundred years before Joan lived, from 1347-1352 the Black Death plague
killed 20 million Europeans, (forty to fifty percent of the entire European
population), and up to one hundred million people would die worldwide before it
was through.
From
1336 to 1443, the Hundred Years War raged between France,
England, and Scotland. By the time Joan was born, France was nearly devastated, England was prepared to appoint the next king of
France, the French had lost
most of the populous Northern
provinces, and the French army was a disgrace.
Such
was the world as we enter the age of Joan in 1412.
How
often do biographies of Saints talk about a childhood raised in an environment
that finds a blending of ancient magic, mystery, and fairies with modern
Christianity, at least modern in 1412?
Most
people do not know that Joan, the patron saint of France,
was not a native of France
and did not live in France when
told she must save France.
On
several occasions, her voices shared prophecy with Joan, which she passed on to
authorities at a time the Inquisition was suspicious of any metaphysical or
mystical activities including seers and prophets.
The
total disregard for law, morality, respect, and justice played out between the
French, the English, the church, and Joan's accusers during the Ecclesiastical
court trial and her death by burning at the stake, is among the most malicious,
evil, and heinous acts in history.
During
her one year as a prisoner of the English in Rouen, Joan received the most disgusting,
degrading, humiliating, and demeaning treatment humanly possible from extreme
mental to physical abuse.
No
one of authority in the church or France made any effort to help Joan
in her defense or attempt to ransom her.
Why
did it take the church 489 years, nearly one-half a century, to complete the
canonization of St. Joan?
From
the time Joan was born in 1412 until her canonization in 1920, there were 53
popes and 3 antipopes including two who ignored her direct appeal for
help.
Why
did English writers and historians in the 17th century, and then Scottish
writers in the 19th century become the first to champion her cause for
sainthood?
Perhaps
most unusual of all, why did beloved American storyteller Mark Twain write a
most extraordinary and thoroughly documented biography about Joan of Arc, a
book he considered his best work, which took Samuel Clemens 12 years to
research and two more years to write?
Mark
Twain's story, Joan of Arc, appeared
in serial form in 1896 and book form in 1899, just a decade before Pope Pius X
issued her beautification decree April 11, 1909, and two decades before her
canonization in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.
As
you can see, I have a lot to cover to do justice to the reputation and stature
of one of my favorite saints.
As
Mark Twain noted, the details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography,
which is unique among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only
story of a human life, which comes to us under oath, the only one that comes to
us from the witness stand.
The
official records of the Great Trial of 1431, and of the Process of
Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, remain preserved in the
National Archives of France, and they furnish with remarkable fullness the
facts of her life.
Joan
was born in the village of Domremy, in the east of France. It was part of the independent Duchy of Bar,
itself part of Lorraine,
the last province to join the French kingdom in 1776. Joan was not even a citizen of France although
Domremy was loyal to the French King Charles VII.
Just
outside the village lay an ancient and magical forest, and for over 500 years,
the Fairies of the forest watched over the village children. To honor their protectors, on summer days the
children gathered in the forest around a magnificent beech tree, to sing and
dance for hours together.
Here
they made wreathes of flowers and placed them on the tree and in the spring
beside the tree, to please the fairies that lived there. For hundreds of years, the kids of Domremy were
the Children of the Tree. Joan was one
of these children according to the court transcripts.
When
she was 13, Joan began hearing voices she identified as Saint Michael, Saint
Catherine of Alexandria, and Saint Margaret of Antioch. Catherine and Margaret were among the
Fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of ancient Catholic martyrs and saints called
upon to help Europe overcome the Black Death
Plague just 50 years earlier.
Ironically,
both Saints were beautiful, humble, strong, and defiant and died teenage
virgins, killed because they refused to marry prominent Roman officials. Saint Margaret was 15 years old when she died
in 306 AD and Saint Catherine was 18 in 305 AD when she died. They shared many attributes with Joan.
On
several occasions, her voices told her prophecies to pass on to others, in
order to overcome roadblocks. For
example, she was able to convince the French commander to help her see the king
with the help of her voices. The second
time she saw the commander, in February, she told him the French suffered a
great defeat in the Battle of Herring, which proved to be true.
When
she finally met the king, she went straight to the disguised monarch and bowed,
stunning the room full of the king's court and the king. When she told the king his secret that no one
else knew, it convinced the skeptical king to let her proceed. Her voices guided her through all the traps
.
Joan
prepared to take command of the army, and her voices told her to create a
standard, bearing the words Jesus and Maria,
with a picture of God the Father, and kneeling angels presenting a fleur-de-lis.
"I had a banner, the field of which was sown
with lilies. On it the world was represented [the image of God holding the
world] and two angels at the sides. It was of linen or white boucassin. There
was written upon it, as it seems to me, these words: Jesus Maria, and it was fringed with
silk."
Joan
of Arc's description of her banner at her trial in Rouen
Joan of Arc carried a special banner (battle standard) made by a Scottish
painter (Hauves Poulvoir) while she was at Tours
preparing to lead the army of France.
Joan testified at her trial that she created
her Banner by the command of God. Saint
Catherine and Saint Margaret gave her instructions about the design and told
her to take it and bear it boldly.
The
king offered her a sword to carry when leading the army but she begged to
search for an ancient sword buried behind the alter in the chyapel of Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois.
In
the very spot her voices indicated, they found the sword.
Perhaps
the most interesting fact connected with her voices at this early stage of her
mission is a letter Sire de Rotslaer wrote from Lyons on April 22, 1429, delivered at Brussels and duly registered, as the manuscript to this day attests, before any
of the events occurred.
The
Maid, he reports, said
"that she
would save Orléans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orléans
would be wounded by a shaft, but would not die of it, and that the King, in the
course of the coming summer, would be crowned at Reims, together with other things which the King keeps
secret."
All
came true.
The
accuracy of the prophecies of Joan, her use of men's white armor to hide her
beauty and protect her virginity, the strict discipline and morality she
demanded of her army, and her fearless tendency to lead her troops into battle
brandishing only her Banner, won over the king and the military.
Make
no mistake, in a few short years our poor, illiterate village girl who knew
nothing about commanding armies and could not even ride a horse, was Supreme
Commander of the French army leading her worn out troops into battle on her
magnificent stallion, against one of the world superpowers, England.
Calling
upon faith stronger than most can ever imagine, she stopped a siege, drove the
English into retreat, and brought to an inglorious end the Hundred Years War England fought against France and Scotland. Her brilliant military strategy enabled France to beat the odds and in time drive the
English out of France.
When
they captured Joan under mysterious circumstances, she already knew from her
voices she would live for just one more year, and it would be the most
difficult year of her life. Her freedom
was still possible through ransom or a prisoner exchange by the French or the
church but no one tried, so her captures sold her to English supporters.
Politics,
greed, deceit, fear, humiliation, all drove those in power to want her to go
away, vanish from the history books. There
can be no doubt that the English feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, and were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, so they were
determined at all costs to take her life.
An Ecclesiastical
court trial of Joan began in the English-held city of Rouen.
Her attitude was always fearless, and March 1 while being interrogated,
Joan boldly announced that, "within seven years' space the English would have to forfeit a bigger prize than Orléans."
In fact,Paris was lost to Henry VI on November 12, 1437 — six years and eight months
afterwards.
There
is no time to explain the outrageous manipulation of the government, church,
and rules of law as she was continually tortured, interrogated, and humiliated
before the courts. On March 17, 1431,
Joan stood accused of 70 counts of witchcraft and being a heretic, the number
of charges then reduced to 12.
Torture
and techniques to break her spirit continued until May 9 when it was clear she
would not break. In the end, they
dropped the witchcraft charges and convicted her of being a heretic, with the
most prominent charge being she wore the clothes of a male.
Threatened
and exhausted, at one point she signed a retraction witnesses said was just
eight lines long, that took over a half hour to read, which included a
provision if her life was spared she could never wear male clothes again. The jailers and prosecutors then conspired to
threaten to rape her and within a few days of her agreement, she returned to
wearing male clothing to discourage rape.
On
May 29, a court of thirty-seven judges decided unanimously that the Maid was a
relapsed heretic, thus sentencing her to death at
the stake, a sentence actually carried out the next day, May 30, 1431.
The
morning of the execution Joan made her confession and received Communion.
Witnesses to her death said her demeanor at the stake was such as to
move even her bitter enemies to tears.
She
asked for a cross, which she embraced, and then held
before her while she called continuously upon the name of Jesus, as the flames engulfed her. After her death, soldiers took her heart,
which failed to burn, and her ashes, and unceremoniously threw them into the Seine River
to make sure no relics emerged.
Indeed,
they almost succeeded in making her vanish for there was no protest, riots, or
pilgrimages over Joan's conviction or burning at the stake. The fact the English controlled
In
yet another peculiar twist to the Joan story, her brothers embraced another
young girl and for the next 20 years declared that Joan had escaped the fire
and was alive. As a result, her family
continued to receive financial assistance from the province and the brothers
made many appearances with the fake Joan receiving gifts and money.
About
twenty-four years after her death, Charles VII, concerned that his monarchy was
achieved thanks to a convicted heretic, and it might jeopardize hereditary
claims to the throne in the future, sought a revision of her trial, the procès de réhabilitation.
This
time the French monarchy and Pope were deeply involved as both wanted to
correct a major failure to defend Joan during the first trial. Now an appellate court constituted by the pope,
after long inquiry and examination of witnesses,
reversed and annulled the sentence pronounced by a local tribunal
under Cauchon's presidency.
The
illegality of the former proceedings was clear, and it speaks well for the
sincerity of this new inquiry. With the
rejection of the original sentence, there was some degree of reproach upon both
the King of France and the Church at large, seeing that so great an injustice existed for such a long time.
Still
little came of the action in terms of Joan and her standing in the church and
history books. English writers beginning
in the seventeenth century began writing favorably about the Maid and by the
nineteenth century De Quincey, in particular, showed more respect for her than
those in her own land.
As
for France, the St. Joan of Arc Center
in Albuquerque, New Mexico
describes the political and secular issues in France during the ensuing years as
follows.
The powers in charge
during the French Revolution (1787 -1799) were very cruel to Joan of Arc's
memory. They canceled the May 8th
procession that had been held at Orleans
continuously since two years after Joan's death. They also destroyed statues and crosses that
were set up to honor Joan of Arc and they burned her relics, consisting of her
hat that she gave to Charlotte, her standard and a sword that had belonged to
her.
For the next ten years
Joan's memory was relegated to the shadows of French life as on July 14, 1789, the Parisian
crowd seized the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny. On June 20–21, 1791, Louis XVI
tried to flee the country, but was captured at Varennes, and brought back to Paris.
Believing they were
betrayed by the king and the aristocrats, the Paris
revolutionaries rose on August 10, 1792, occupied Tuileries Palace, where Louis XVI was
living, and imprisoned the royal family in the Temple.
At the beginning of September, the Parisian crowd broke into the prisons
and massacred the nobles and clergy held there.
Meanwhile, the National
Convention was divided between the Girondins, who wanted to organize a
bourgeois republic in France and to spread the Revolution over the whole of
Europe, and the Montagnards (“Mountain Men”), who, with Robespierre, wanted to give the lower
classes a greater share in political and economic power
In spite of efforts by the Girondins to save him, judgment on Louis XVI was
passed by the National Convention of revolutionaries, he was condemned to death
for treason, and executed on January 21, 1793; the queen, Marie-Antoinette, was guillotined nine
months later.
It was not until 1803,
when Napoleon once more made it 'politically correct' to honor Joan of Arc, by
giving his permission for the May 8th ceremonies at Orleans to be resumed. Because Joan had fought the English, Napoleon
made use of her to further his own campaign against them. He made her an official symbol of French
patriotism and a national heroine.
Therefore, her
popularity among the people grew. All
during the first half of the nineteenth century France was struggling against
England in one way or another and during this time many 'histories' were
written about her.
It took Jules Quicherat,
a French historian, five years from 1841-1845 to compile all the documents
concerning Joan of Arc into five volumes. Not only did he publish the complete texts of
the trial of Condemnation and Nullification but he also gathered excerpts from
chronicles, literary works, letters, public documents and the accounting
ledgers from the city of Orleans
into his scholarly work.
Single handedly
Quicherat sparked a renaissance of interest in Joan of Arc among the scholars
who in turn translated the Latin and Old French into modern French. By doing this the general public could finally
read for themselves Joan's own words and at last she became for them a real
historical figure.
With this development,
the whole spectrum of political ideologies began to claim her. Joan became the champion for many causes from
the atheistic anticlerical Freemasons, the Socialist Nationalists and
Communists to the conservative Catholic Monarchists. From the 1850's on France was shaken by a savage
anticlerical movement. Those who
supported the Church decried the rapid spread of atheistic secular-humanism and
the growing immorality of the nation and they used Joan of Arc as a symbol to
reclaim these souls.
The Church was not blind
to the upsurge in popularity that Joan of Arc had achieved and on May 8, 1869,
Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans with the support of
eleven other French Bishops petitioned Rome
to begin the process of Canonization. Bishop
Dupanloup declared, "Not only Orleans and France but also
the whole world venerate God's actions through Joan of Arc, the piety and
enthusiasm of this young girl, her purity and selflessness with which she
always carried out the will of God.
"We wish that Your
Holiness would now honor and exalt her memory. This would be a just tribute to Joan of Arc,
who in freeing her country also saved it from the heresy which might have
become a danger. It would also
constitute a title of honor to the French people."
Unfortunately, with the
coming of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and France's ensuing defeat, Bishop
Dupanloup's request was put on hold. During
this war, France lost the
provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans and the French
politicians used Joan of Arc as a symbol for a crusade to regain these
territories.
In 1893, the French
people overwhelmingly elected a Socialist government into power. Eight months later on January 27, 1894, Pope
Leo XIII, in hopes of improving relations between the Vatican and the
French government, extended an olive branch to them by officially beginning the
process of Joan's Beatification. In
doing so he proclaimed the Maid to have been the venerable handmaiden of God.
As
I mentioned earlier, Mark Twain's magnificent story, Joan of Arc, appeared in serial form in 1896 and book form in 1899,
just a decade before Pope Pius X issued her beatification decree April 11,
1909, and two decades before her canonization in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. Her sainthood was again delayed, this time by
the outbreak of World War I.
Today
it has been 603 years since the birth of this French heroine, but only 95 years
since her canonization as a saint. We
are just beginning to understand the amazing story of faith Joan lived and her
place in history as a military genius, a visionary and prophet, a sanctified
virgin, and a soldier of God.
Joan's
story is far too vast to give justice to and far too meaningful to interpret in
such a short presentation as this but I hope she understands, and I urge all of
you to learn more about Jehanne la
Pucelle, Joan the Maid, our beloved Jeanne
d'Arc, Joan of Arc.
In
his book, Mark Twain wrote the following closing paragraphs about Joan of Arc. Since Mark is my favorite American author and
humorist - satirist, and about the most unlikely person on Earth to write about
a Saint, I take his observations very seriously. This is what he said about Joan the Maid.
"We know what Joan of Arc was like, without
asking -- merely by what she did. The
artist should paint her spirit -- then he could not fail to paint her body
aright. She would rise before us, then,
a vision to win us, not repel: a lithe young slender figure, instinct with
"the unbought grace of youth," dear and bonny and lovable, the face
beautiful, and transfigured with the light of that lustrous intellect and the
fires of that unquenchable spirit.
"Taking into account, as I have suggested
before, all the circumstances -- her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early
environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high
gifts and made her conquests in the field and before the courts that tried her
for her life -- she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the
human race has ever produced."
Thank you for sharing a few
moments with me, thank Joan of Arc, and dieu vous bénisse.
.
