Joan of Arc (13 page)

The incident of the tower is one of the areas where Joan was a bit slippery about her relationship to her voices. She admitted that she jumped against the advice of her voices, although she tried to wiggle out of admitting that she disobeyed them. Then she said she obtained forgiveness from her voices and was saved from injury and death because of their intervention. Her assertion that she was forgiven by them directly, without her having needed to receive absolution by sacramental means, through the authority of a priest, was an example of the kind of heretical presumption that maddened Joan's judges, that they rightly saw as an assault on the primacy of ecclesiastical authority.

She was unclear about whether or not she thought a leap from a sixty-foot-high tower might result in her death. At one point she said she knew it might but that death would be preferable to being a prisoner of the English. Like many adolescents, the notion of her own mortality seemed not particularly real to her. Her focus was on escaping and getting back to battle. Other people might die when they fell sixty feet, but she would get to Compiègne and, more importantly, get away.

By the time her trial actually began, Joan had been kept a prisoner for eight months. Part of the reason for this is the complications that arose from several groups' vying for the chance to determine Joan's fate. The duke of Burgundy's interests were represented by John of Luxembourg, and his ambivalence about giving Joan up to the English rather than keeping her in Burgundian custody might account for the relatively long time it took the Burgundians to hand her over. He probably thought that he was in a good position to drive a hard bargain, playing the English off against Charles and the French. It would have been expected that an offer would be made for her ransom, for this was the most common course when important prisoners were taken. But the dauphin, whom she made king, didn't lift a finger to help her. Eventually, she was sold to the English for ten thousand pounds, with no counteroffers.

Another group that had a stake in Joan's fate was the officials of the University of Paris. These men were strongly Anglo-Burgundian in sympathy. Two days after Joan's capture, they wrote to the duke of Burgundy demanding that she be given over to them for trial. The man who was chosen by the university to press its claim was Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, who has gone down in history as the villain who engineered Joan's destruction.

Cauchon's scrupulosity was another reason why it took so long for Joan's trial to begin. He insisted that the structure of the trial be impeccable; he said to one of the notaries that he wanted to make a beautiful trial of this: “
unum pulchrum processum.
” Despite his claims, the trial, from the beginning, had an important irregularity. Cauchon would be conducting both the initial interrogation and the trial, and there would be no secular hearing.

Joan was unlucky in her opponent; he was intelligent, well connected, and convinced that he was doing God's work. His type is not unknown: W. H. Auden describes him in his poem “Horae Canonicae.” He speaks of such a judge who

He goes on to say that

Cauchon's zeal in prosecuting Joan has, from the beginning, a whiff of the phobic about it. One of the assessors at the trial who was sympathetic to Joan reports that after Cauchon had been sent to fetch Joan from the duke of Luxembourg, he reported the details of his encounter to the duke of Warwick, who represented the British in Rouen, “with joy and exultation.” He was not the natural first choice to be in charge of her case; he had to ask for the job. One reason for his ardor is that he lost his see at Rheims to the dauphinists. Bedford tried to make this up to him by having him transferred to Rouen, but the Rouen chapter rejected him because of his high-handedness. He had a reputation for being brilliant but immoderate, as the tone of his letter insisting that the dukes of Burgundy and Luxembourg give her up and his insistence on delivering the letter personally indicate. He would trust the final removal of Joan from Arras to Rouen to no one else—an unnecessary vigilance that hints at a zeal motivated by something other than a mere sense of duty.

He asserted that it was his responsibility to try Joan, since she had been captured in his diocese, but canonically speaking, this was stretching things. Canon law said that Joan could be tried for heresy only in the diocese where she was born or had committed the crime. His prejudice and the irregularities that this prejudice allowed, or encouraged, in him served as the bases for the overturning of his decision at the time of the rehabilitation trial twenty-five years after Joan's death.

The man who was to be in charge of Joan's judicial fate was prejudiced against her on many grounds. He had always been Anglo-Burgundian in sympathy: He had lost his power base as a result of the dauphin's coronation in the city over which he had jurisdiction. He was a favorite of the University of Paris, which was set against Joan not only because of her loyalty to the king but because of her model of authority—mystical, individualistic, female—that was in radical opposition to everything they stood for.

Joan was tried not as a political prisoner or as a traitor but as a heretic. The terms were always religious, and the form of the trial was that of an Inquisition. No specific charges were brought against her in the beginning. Rather, she was questioned in the hope that she might, in the process of the questioning, be brought to admit to some offense, the same method that the Communists used in their show trials. Then the replies would be formulated into articles, which she could refute.

Cauchon's bullying nature asserted itself when he had to include a representative of the Inquisition. The vice inquisitor, Jean LeMaitre, questioned his own competence to serve. But he fell victim to Cauchon's pressure and asserted at the rehabilitation trial that he had been only a reluctant participant and had acted out of fear. Some other clerics were more courageous, and they were punished for their independent stands. Nicholas de Houppeviulle, a theologian, opposed Cauchon, questioned his authority to serve as judge; imprisoned for his importunity, he was released only through the intervention of an archbishop. Another feared for his safety and took off for Rome, where he spent the rest of his life. A third pretended he was drunk when he objected; he was let off with verbal censure.

Cauchon was a formalist; he loved the form and took pride in his adherence to its lineaments, his obedience to its demands. It was necessary that he appoint the required officials, the most important of whom was called “the promoter.” In our terms he was the prosecutor. Cauchon named Jean d'Estivet, who had served as his canon at Beauvais. D'Estivet was especially noted for his ferocity and partisanship. He was notorious in his dislike of Joan and for his foul mouth, which was so offensive that even Warwick was shocked. At one point, he disguised himself as a friendly priest and visited her in her cell. It was he, even more than Cauchon, who baited and taunted Joan, and even more than Cauchon, he felt the edge of her sharp tongue.

By the time he was ready to begin, Cauchon had assembled one cardinal, six bishops, thirty-two doctors of theology, sixteen bachelors of theology, seven doctors of medicine, and one hundred other clerical associates. Joan had no one on her side but herself.

It would appear that the procedure was proper, but there was never any possible outcome for the trial except the one that happened. Cauchon would see to that.

Before the trial could take place, the prosecution had to examine witnesses from the prisoner's past life. Cauchon sent representatives to Domrémy, but their replies were so uniformly noncondemnatory (to the point of boredom) that they were not introduced into the trial hearing.

During the eight months that she was a prisoner, Joan was guarded by English soldiers, who delighted in taunting her and threatening her chastity. She was chained to her bed. She was refused the sacraments.

From the first day, she entered the courtroom bravely, the youngest, the only female. For all she knew they were, to a man, her enemies; she could not have known which faces might conceal a friendly demeanor. Yet she was fearless, and considering her devoutness, her lack of concern about defying the power of the Church is astonishing. She was defying not only the king of England but the King of Heaven. That, however, was defining things on their terms. On her terms, despite the judges' insistence that she understand the difference between the Church triumphant (the church in heaven) and the Church militant (the church on earth), she believed they did not represent either. They represented the English, the Burgundians. They were just another group of godons. She repeatedly told them that if they brought her case before the pope, she would tell him everything. Cases of smaller import than hers had been brought before the pope, but she was told this was impossible; the pope was too far away. In fact, the assessors knew that the pope would not respond to Joan for fear of alienating the English and their allies. She continued to interpret the body before which she was tried, therefore, not as the Church but as her enemies.

Each day she was escorted from her cell, where she was fettered to her bed, restrained by leg irons. She objected to such treatment; she was told that since she had a record of escape, she couldn't be trusted without fetters. They had, of course, a point.

But how torturing it must have been for this young, healthy animal, who loved movement above all things, to be confined to a dark cell and to a bed within it. Her spirits seemed, however, extraordinarily undampened. She appeared to enjoy the game of question-and-answer and the spectacle of confounding the judges. Although we have many references to Joan's crying, no one reports a single tear shed either in her cell or under the pressure of the interrogation. Her plainspoken, tenacious even-mindedness, her verbal and physical assertion of health, and the fact that self-pity never seemed to occur to her make her a touching victim. She is young and inexperienced; her ardor checkmates their power, and her simplicity confounds their subtlety.

Joan's conflict with her judges began right away, when she refused to take an oath in terms that were satisfactory to them. They adjured her to “tell the truth concerning the things which would be asked her, as much for the shortening of her trial as for the unburdening of her conscience, without subterfuge or craft,” and that she should “swear on the holy Gospels to tell the truth concerning everything she should be asked.” To this Joan replied: “I do not know on what you may wish to question me. Perhaps you may ask such things as I will not answer.” About the secrets she revealed to Charles the king, she at first said they could “cut her head off, she will not reveal them.” Then she temporized: In eight days she would know if she ought to reveal them.
⁴

Joan was always clear that she was being tried by her enemies, and she believed that because of this she had no responsibility to tell them the truth. From the very beginningof the trial she acted in a way that short-circuited the very assumptions that make trials possible: She would not swear to tell the truth. How can we imagine what she must have imagined the outcome of such resistance might be? Did she think Cauchon and his examiners would say, “Well, of course, we understand very well that you will not tell us everything. Nevertheless, we will proceed along the lines you will lay out”? Or did she think she would be rescued, by the dauphin, by the duke of Orléans, by some of her comrades-at-arms, and the whole trial would be meaningless, therefore nothing to be taken seriously? From the beginning she said she would not speak to the court about her voices, that she would tell the truth in all matters asked her concerning the faith, that she would tell her parents' name and her place of birth. When told to say the Pater Noster, she refused unless Cauchon agreed to hear her confession. He refused. Cauchon was checkmated: He appeared to be withholding the condition—the lawful administration of the sacrament—that would allow things to proceed.

Her refusal to take the oath led to a procedural debate among the judges as to whether she was, in effect, in contempt of court and should therefore be condemned immediately or whether her refusal to take the oath was a tacit admission of guilt on all the charges. What could have been more frustrating to the man who wanted “a beautiful trial” than a girl who refused to take the first step so that the dance might properly begin?

Joan was tried by an ecclesiastical court, and so the charges made against her were all religious in their nature. One way of thinking of Joan's hearing is that it was the first of the great witchcraft trials. The fear of witches was entering the European air at the end of the fourteenth century, and it was connected to anxieties about class and particularly gender mobility. By connecting Joan's military victories with witchcraft, the English were able to justify their losses—all the more humiliating, since they were losses to a woman.

This explains the judges' emphasis on the details of folk customs around Domrémy that could be connected to witchcraft. They asked her over and over about the fairy tree and the oak wood, reported to be enchanted, named in the prophecy of Merlin. Joan responded to them offhandedly, as if they were bringing up an old memory, a dim one. She brushed off the prophecy of Merlin, which she referred to when she was trying to convince Baudricourt and the king: something she'd heard of, but that hasn't much to do with her. “I put no faith in it,” she said.
⁵
When the charges were condensed from seventy to twelve, the ones involving sorcery disappeared.