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St. Joan of Arc
SAINT JOAN OF ARC, VIRGIN—1412-1431
Feast: May 8
Savior
of France and the national heroine of that country, Joan of Arc lives on in the
imagination of the world as a symbol of that integrity of purpose that makes one
die for what one believes. Jeanne la Pucelle, the Maid, is the shining example
of what a brave spirit can accomplish in the world of men and events. The saint
was born on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1412, at Domremy, a village in
the rich province of Champagne, on the Meuse River in northeast France. She came
of sound peasant stock. Her father, Jacques d'Arc, was a good man, though rather
morose; his wife was a gentle, affectionate mother to their five children. From
her the two daughters of the family received careful training in all household
duties. "In sewing and spinning," Joan declared towards the end of her
short life, "I fear no woman." She whose destiny it was to save France
was a well-brought-up country girl who, in common with most people of the time,
never had an opportunity to learn to read or write. The little we know of her
childhood is contained in the impressive and often touching testimony to her
piety and dutiful conduct in the depositions presented during the process for
her rehabilitation in I456, twenty-five years after her death. Priests and
former playmates then recalled her love of prayer and faithful attendance at
church, her frequent use of the Sacraments, kindness to sick people, and
sympathy for poor wayfarers, to whom she sometimes gave up her own bed.
"She was so good," the neighbors said, "that all the village
loved her."
Joan's early life, however, must have been disturbed by the confusion of the
period and the disasters befalling her beloved land. The Hundred Years War
between England and France was still running its dismal course. Whole provinces
were being lost to the English and the Burgundians, while the weak and
irresolute government of France offered no real resistance. A frontier village
like Domremy, bordering on Lorraine, was especially exposed to the invaders. On
one occasion, at least, Joan fled with her parents to Neufchatel, eight miles
distant, to escape a raid of Burgundians who sacked Domremy and set fire to the
church, which was near Joan's home.
The child had been three years old when in 1415 King Henry V of England had
started the latest chain of troubles by invading Normandy and claiming the crown
of the insane king, Charles VI. France, already in the throes of civil war
between the supporters of the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans, had been in no
condition to resist, and when the Duke of Burgundy was treacherously killed by
the Dauphin's servants, most of his faction joined the British forces. King
Henry and King Charles both died in 1422, but the war continued. The Duke of
Bedford, as regent for the infant king of England, pushed the campaign
vigorously, one town after another falling to him or to his Burgundian allies.
Most of the country north of the Loire was in English hands. Charles VII, the
Dauphin, as he was still called, considered his position hopeless, for the enemy
even occupied the city of Rheims, where he should have been crowned. He spent
his time away from the fighting lines in frivolous pastimes with his court.
Joan was in her fourteenth year when she heard the first of the unearthly
voices, which, she felt sure, brought her messages from God. One day while she
was at work in the garden, she heard a voice, accompanied by a blaze of light;
after this, she vowed to remain a virgin and to lead a godly life. Afterwards,
for a period of two years, the voices increased in number, and she was able to
see her heavenly visitors, whom she identified as St. Michael, St. Catherine of
Alexandria, and St. Margaret, the three saints whose ages stood in the church at
Domremy. Gradually they revealed to her the purpose of their visits: she, an
ignorant peasant girl, was given the high mission of saving her country; she was
to take Charles to Rheims to be crowned, and then drive out the English! We do
not know just when Joan decided to obey the voices; she spoke little of them at
home, fearing her stern father's disapproval. But by May, 1428, the voices had
become insistent and explicit. Joan, now sixteen, must first go quickly to
Robert de Baudricourt, who commanded the Dauphin's forces in the neighboring
town of Vaucouleurs and say that she was appointed to lead the Dauphin to his
crowning. An uncle accompanied Joan, but the errand proved fruitless;
Baudricourt laughed and said that her father should give her a whipping. Thus
rebuffed, Joan went back to Domremy, but the voices gave her no rest. When she
protested that she was a poor girl who could neither ride nor fight, they
answered, "It is God who commands it."
At last, she was impelled to return secretly to Baudricourt, whose skepticism
was shaken, for news had reached him of just the sort of serious French defeat
that Joan had predicted. The military position was now desperate, for Orleans,
the last remaining French stronghold on the Loire, was invested by the English
and seemed likely to fall. Baudricourt now agreed to send Joan to the Dauphin,
and gave her an escort of three soldiers. It was her own idea to put on male
attire, as a protection. On March 6, 1429, the party reached Chinon, where the
Dauphin was staying, and two days later Joan was admitted to the royal presence.
To test her, Charles had disguised himself as one of his courtiers, but she
identified him without hesitation and, by a sign which only she and he
understood, convinced him that her mission was authentic.
The ministers were less easy to convince. When Joan asked for soldiers to
lead to the relief of Orleans, she was opposed by La Tremouille, one of Charles'
favorites, and by others, who regarded the girl either as a crazy visionary or a
scheming impostor. To settle the question, they sent her to Poitiers, to be
questioned by a commission of theologians. After an exhaustive examination
lasting for three weeks, the learned ecclesiastics pronounced Joan honest, good,
and virtuous; they counseled Charles to make prudent use of her services. Thus
vindicated, Joan returned full of courage of Chinon, and plans went forward to
equip her with a small force, A banner was made, bearing at her request, the
words, "Jesus Maria," along with a figure of God the Father, to whom
two kneeling angels were presenting a fleur-de-lis, the royal emblem of France.
On April 27 the army left Blois with Joan, now known to her troops as "La
Pucelle," the Maid, clad in dazzling white armor Joan was a handsome,
healthy, well-built girl, with a smiling face, and dark hair which had been cut
short. She had now learned to ride well, but, naturally, she had no knowledge of
military tactics. Yet her gallantry and valor kindled the soldiers and with them
she broke through the English line and entered Orleans on April 29. Her presence
in the city greatly heartened the French garrison. By May 8 the English fort
outside Orleans had been captured and the siege raised. Conspicuous in her white
armor, Joan had led the attack and had been slightly wounded in the shoulder by
an arrow.
Her desire was to follow up these first successes with even more daring
assaults, for the voices had told her that she would not live long, but La
Tremouille and the archbishop of Rheims were in favor of negotiating. However,
the Maid was allowed to join in a short campaign along the Loire with the Duc
d'Alencon, one of her devoted supporters. It ended with a victory at Patay, in
which the English forces under Sir John Falstolf suffered a crushing defeat. She
now urged the immediate coronation of the Dauphin, since the road to Rheims had
been practically cleared. The French leaders argued and dallied, and finally
consented to follow her to Rheims. There, on July 17, 1429, Charles VII was duly
crowned, Joan standing proudly behind him with her banner.
The mission entrusted to her by the heavenly voices was now only half
fulfilled, for the English were still in France. Charles, weak and irresolute,
did not follow up these auspicious happenings, and an attack on Paris failed,
mainly for lack of his promised support and presence. During the action Joan was
again wounded and had to be dragged to safety by the Duc d'Alencon. There
followed winter's truce, which Joan spent for the most part in the company of
the court, where she was regarded with ill-concealed suspicion. When hostilities
were renewed in the spring, she hurried off to the relief of Compiegne, which
was besieged by the Burgundians. Entering the city at sunrise on May 23, 1430,
she led against the enemy later in the day. It failed, and through
miscalculation on the part of the governor, the drawbridge over which her forces
were retiring was lifted too soon, leaving her and a number of soldiers outside,
at the mercy of the enemy. Joan was dragged from her horse and led to the
quarters of John of Luxembourg, one of whose soldiers had been her captor. From
then until the late autumn she remained the prisoner of the Duke of Burgundy,
incarcerated in a high tower of the castle of the Luxembourgs. In a desperate
attempt to escape, the girl leapt from the tower, landing on soft turf, stunned
and bruised. It was thought a miracle that she had not been killed.
Never, during that period or afterwards, was any effort made to secure Joan's
release by King Charles or his ministers. She had been a strange and disturbing
ally, and they seemed content to leave her to her fate. But the English were to
have her, and on November 21, the Burgundians accepted a large indemnity and
gave her into English hands. They could not take her life for defeating them in
war, but they could have her condemned as a sorceress and a heretic. Had she not
been able to inspire the French with the Devil's own courage? In an age when
belief in witchcraft and demons was general, the charge did not seem too
preposterous. Already the English and Burgundian soldiers had been attributing
their reverses to her spells.
In a cell in the castle of Rouen to which Joan was moved two days before
Christmas, she was chained to a plank bed, and watched over night and day. On
February 21, 1431, she appeared for the first time before a court of the
Inquisition. It was presided over by Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, a
ruthless, ambitious man who apparently hoped through English influence to become
archbishop of Rouen. The other judges were lawyers and theologians who had been
carefully selected by Cauchon. In the course of six public and nine private
sessions, covering a period of ten weeks, the prisoner was cross-examined as to
her visions and voices, her assumption of male attire, her faith, and her
willingness to submit to the Church. Alone and undefended, the nineteen-year-old
girl bore herself fearlessly, her shrewd answers, honesty, piety, and accurate
memory often proving embarrassing to these severe inquisitors. Through her
ignorance of theological terms, on a few occasions she was betrayed into making
damaging statements. At the end of the hearings, a set of articles was drawn up
by the clerks and submitted to the judges, who thereupon pronounced her
revelations the work of the Devil and Joan herself a heretic. The theological
faculty of the University of Paris approved the court's verdict.
In final deliberations the tribunal voted to hand Joan over to the secular
arm for burning if she still refused to confess she had been a witch and had
lied about hearing voices. This she steadfastly refused to do, though physically
exhausted and threatened with torture. Only when she was led out into the
churchyard of St. Ouen before a great crowd, to hear the sentence committing her
to the flames, did she kneel down and admit she had testified falsely. She was
then taken back to prison. Under pressure from her jailers, she had some time
earlier put off the male attire, which her accusers seemed to find particularly
objectionable. Now, either by her own choice or as the result of a trick played
upon her by those who wanted her death, she resumed it. When Bishop Cauchon,
with some witnesses, visited her in her cell to question her further, she had
recovered from her weakness, and once more she claimed that God had truly sent
her and that the voices had come from Him. Cauchon was well pleased with this
turn of events.
On Tuesday, May 29, 1431, the judges, after hearing Cauchon's report,
condemned Joan as a relapsed heretic and delivered her to the English. The next
morning at eight o'clock she was led out into the market place of Rouen to be
burned at the stake. As the faggots were lighted, a Dominican friar, at her
request, held up a cross before her eyes and, while the flames leapt higher and
higher, she was heard to call on the name of Jesus. John Tressart, one of King
Henry's secretaries, viewed the scene with horror and was probably joined in
spirit by others when he exclaimed remorsefully, "We are lost! We have
burned a saint!" Joan's ashes were cast into the Seine.
Twenty-five years later, when the English had been driven out, the Pope at
Avignon ordered a rehearing of the case. By that time Joan was being hailed as
the savior of France. Witnesses were heard and depositions made, and in
consequence the trial was pronounced irregular. She was formally rehabilitated
as a true and faithful daughter of the Church. From a short time after her death
up to the French Revolution, a local festival in honor of the Maid was held at
Orleans on May 8, commemorating the day the siege was raised. The festival was
reestablished by Napoleon I. In 1920 the French Republic declared May 8 a day of
national celebration. Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized by Benedict XV in
1919.
<Excerpts from the Trial of Jeanne d'Arc>
Thursday, February 22, Second Session
. . . "<Then she declared that at the age of thirteen she had a>
voice from God to help her and guide her. And the first time she was much
afraid. And this voice came towards noon, in summer, in her father's garden; and
the said Jeanne had not fasted on the preceding day. She heard the voice on her
right, in the direction of the Church; and she seldom heard it without a light.
The light came from the same side as the voice, and generally was a great light.
When she came to France, she often heard the voice.
Asked how she could see the light of which she spoke, since it was at the
side, she made no reply, and went on to other things. She said that if she was
in a wood, she easily heard the voices come to her. It seemed to her a worthy
voice and she believed it was sent from God; when she heard the voice a third
time, she knew that it was the voice of an angel. She said also that this voice
always protected her well and that she understood it well.
Asked what instruction this voice gave her for the salvation of her soul, she
said it taught her to be good and to go to church often; and it told her she
must come to France.... She further said that this voice told her once or twice
a week that she should leave and come to France, and that her father should know
nothing of her leaving. She said that the voice told her to come, and she could
no longer stay where she was; and the voice told her again that she should raise
the siege of the city of Orleans....
After this the said Jeanne told that she went without hindrance to him whom
she calls her king. And when she had arrived at Ste. Catherine de Fierbois, then
she went first to Chinon, where he whom she calls her king was. She reached
Chinon towards noon and lodged at an inn; and after dinner she went to him whom
she calls king. She said that when she entered her king's room she recognized
him among many others by the counsel of her voice, which revealed him to her.
She told him she wanted to make war on the English....
Then Jeanne said that there is not a day when she does not hear this voice;
and she has much need of it. She said she never asked of it any final reward but
the salvation of her soul. The voice told her to remain at St. Denis in France,
and the said Jeanne had to remain; but against her will the lords took her away.
Saturday, February 24, Third Session
. . . Asked if she knows she is in God's grace, she answered: "If I am
not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the
saddest creature in the world if I knew I were not in His grace." She added
that if she were in a state of sin, she did not think that the voice would come
to her; and she wished everyone could hear the voice as well as she did....
Tuesday, February 27, Fourth Session
. . . Asked whether the voice which spoke to her was that of an angel, or of
a saint, male or female, or straight from God, she answered that the voice was
the voice of St. Catherine and of St. Margaret. And their heads were crowned in
a rich and precious fashion with beautiful crowns. "And to tell this,"
she said, "I have God's permission. If you doubt it, send to Poitiers where
I was examined before."
Asked how she knew one from the other, she answered she knew them by the
greeting they gave her. She said further that a good seven years have passed
since they undertook to guide her. She said also she knew the saints because
they tell her their names.
. . She added that she had received comfort from St. Michael. Asked which of
the apparitions came to her first, she answered that St. Michael came first....
Asked which was the first voice which came to her when she was about
thirteen, she answered that it was St. Michael whom she saw before her eyes; and
he was not alone, but accompanied by many angels from heaven. She said also that
she came into France only by the instruction of God.
Asked if she saw St. Michael and these angels corporeally and in reality, she
answered: "I saw them with my bodily eyes as well as I see you; and when
they left me, I wept; and I fain would have had them take me with them
too."
Saturday, March 17, In Prison
. . . Asked if she would submit (her deeds and words) to the decision of the
Church, she answered: "I commit myself to Our Lord Who sent me, to Our
Lady, and to all the Blessed Saints of Paradise." And she thought that our
Lord and the Church were all one, and therein they ought not to make
difficulties for her. "Why do you make difficulties when it is all
one?"
Then she was told that there is the Church Triumphant, where God is with the
saints and the souls who are already saved; and also the Church Militant, that
is, our Holy Father the Pope, vicar of God on earth, the Cardinals, the prelates
of the Church, and the clergy and all the good Christians and Catholics: and the
Church in good assembly cannot err and is governed by the Holy Spirit. Therefore
she was asked if she would submit to the Church Militant, namely the Church on
earth which is so called. She answered that she came to the King of France in
God's name, and in the names of the Blessed Virgin and of all the Blessed Saints
of Paradise, and of the Church Victorious above, and at their command; to that
Church she submitted all her good deeds and all she had done or should do. And
concerning her submission to the Church Militant she would answer nothing
more....
The Trial For Relapse, Monday, May 28
. . . As we her judges had heard from certain people that she had not yet cut
herself off from her illusions and pretended revelations, which she had
previously renounced, we asked her whether she had since Thursday (the day of
her abjuration) heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. She answered
yes.
Asked what they told her, she answered that they told her God had sent her
word through St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity of this treason,
by which she had consented to abjure and recant in order to save her life; that
she had damned herself to save her life.... She said that if she declared God
had not sent her she would damn herself, for in truth she was sent from God. She
said that her voices had since told her that she had done very wrong to say what
she did. She said that what she had recanted on Thursday she had done only for
fear of the fire.... She said she did not deny or intend to deny her visions,
that is, that they were St. Catherine and St. Margaret; all that she said she
said for fear of the fire.
(<Trial of Jeanne d'Arc>, translated by W. P. Barrett. 1932.)
Saint Joan of Arc, Virgin. Celebration of Feast Day is May 8. Taken from
"Lives of Saints", Published by John J. Crawley & Co., Inc.
Provided Courtesy of:
Eternal Word Television Network
5817 Old Leeds Road
Irondale, AL 35210
www.ewtn.com
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