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Authors: Timothy Wilson-Smith

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BOOK: Joan of Arc
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Acknowledgements

R
esearch for this book was facilitated by the use of libraries at Eton College and above all by the resources of Cambridge University Library. That research has involved reading texts in English, French and Latin, but not alas in German. Anyone hoping for an adequate literary discussion of the styles of Schiller and Brecht must look elsewhere, as too must anyone in search of a subtle analysis of the relevance of Joan of Arc to Franco-German tensions over Alsace-Lorraine after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Like all English writers on French history, I have pursued an inconsistent policy in the forms I have given to French names. Names of prominent people, such as kings, dukes and counts, are usually anglicised; it would be pedantic to say ‘Bourgogne’ instead of Burgundy, but in an age when Reims is familiar as a centre of the manufacture of champagne rather than as home to a certain jackdaw, I have spelt the city without an ‘h’. In a household where Franglais is common, I have kept the acute accent in Orléans, but not in Domremy (as in the latter the word was originally spelt without one). In some cases it seems natural to write ‘Jean’, in others ‘John’, and my protagonist is not Jehanne, nor Jeanne, but Joan – I am sure somebody will disagree with me.

It is a pleasure to recall the genesis of a book. Thanks to my late parents a family holiday in 1957 ended with a meal in the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, the square where Joan was burnt to death; and I found and still have a picture book,
Dans les pas de Jeanne d’Arc
, by the late Régine Pernoud, later doyenne of Johannic studies. Forty years on I began to revisit Rouen in my imagination. A generous grant by the Authors’ Foundation, through the good offices of the Society of Authors, has helped me to trace some of Joan’s footsteps as Régine Pernoud recommended. I thank Ben Glazebrook and Christopher Foley of Lane Fine Art for their helpfulness respectively at the beginning and the end of this project. One or two key pieces of information I owe to the tireless Virginia Frohlick. In technical matters concerning Joan’s various ‘trials’ I have relied on articles by Emeritus Professor Andy Kelly of the University of California, and little of this book could have been written without the labours of many other distinguished scholars. Among these people I must single out people at the Centre Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans both for help in the centre and for help received by e-mail. My special contribution has been my references to the ideas of certain Catholic philosophers and theologians, especially when their works have not been translated into English. For technical expertise in the art of computing I have relied on Nick Kulkarni of Home & Business Computing and I owe a continuing debt to the perceptiveness and encouragement of Laura Longrigg, my agent, and to the incisive comments of Jaqueline Mitchell, my editor at Sutton Publishing, and Anne Bennett. I thank Bow Watkinson, too, who has drawn the maps. Navigating in the unfamiliar world of picture research has been much facilitated by Jane Entrican at Sutton and several friendly voices at various picture libraries. All mistakes, naturally, are my own.

Looking through my late mother-in-law’s possessions after her death, I discovered pages of a liturgy of Joan of Arc that must date from the early 1920s. To my late mother-in-law, Odette Starrett, and my wife Pam a mere Englishman owes insights into France and Anglo-French relations he would not otherwise have. I dedicate this book to them both.

Timothy Wilson-Smith

Chronology
BEFORE 1429: FRANCE AND ENGLAND
496
Clovis, King of the Franks, baptised by St Remigius
800
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo II
1066
William, Duke of Normandy, becomes King of England
1154
Henry II, Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy and (by his wife) Duke of Aquitaine, becomes King of England
1200–4
Philip II Augustus, King of France, conquers Angevin and Norman lands
1258
Louis IX (St Louis) becomes suzerain of Henry III as Duke of Guyenne
1309
In the reign of Philip IV, Pope Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon
1328
Failure of direct line royal line: Philip, Count of Valois, chosen as king; he becomes King Philip VI (1328–50)
1327–77
Reign of Edward III, son of Isabella of France, in England
1337
Edward III claims throne of France
1346
English victory at Crécy
1347
The English capture Calais
1350–64
Reign of John II, King of France
1356
English victory at Poitiers
1361
Treaty of Brétigny: France surrenders sovereignty of Aquitaine to England
1369
Charles V (1364–80) reclaims Aquitaine
1377–99
Richard II, King of England, marries Isabella (1396), eldest daughter of Charles VI, King of France (1380–1422)
1407
Louis, Duke of Orléans murdered by men loyal to John, Duke of Burgundy
1413
Joan of Arc born at Domremy; death of Henry IV, King of England
1415
Henry V wins battle of Agincourt and captures Charles, Duke of Orléans
1417–19
Henry V conquers Normandy
1420
Treaty of Troyes: the Dauphin Charles disinherited in favour of Henry V (soon married to Charles’s sister Catherine) and of Henry’s heirs
1422
Deaths of Henry V and Charles VI: Henry VI, as King of England, and Henry II, as King of France, succeeds his father and grandfather
1428
Joan of Arc’s first journey to Vaucouleurs; the Earl of Salisbury in command at Orléans
1429–31: THE PUBLIC CAREER OF JOAN OF ARC
1429
Joan returns to Vaucouleurs
 
6 February:
Joan visits Nancy and meets Charles II of Lorraine
 
12 February:
battle of Rouvray (‘Battle of the Herrings’)
 
23 February:
Joan leaves for Chinon
 
4–5 March:
Joan at Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois
 
6 March:
Joan arrives at Chinon
 
c. 9 March:
Joan meets Charles VII
 
21 March:
Joan in Poitiers
 
29 April:
Joan enters Orléans
 
4 May:
Bastard of Orléans returns to Orléans; fall of St-Loup
 
6 May:
the French capture Les Augustins
 
7 May:
the French capture Les Tourelles
 
8 May:
the English fall back on Meung
 
11–12 June:
the French capture Jargeau
 
15 June:
Joan at Meung-sur-Loire
 
16–17 June:
the French capture Beaugency
 
18 June:
battle of Patay
 
30 June:
Joan travels towards Reims
 
Early July:
Joan near Auxerre
 
5–11 July:
Joan near Troyes
 
17 July:
coronation of Charles VII at Reims
 
8 September:
Joan leads attack on Paris
 
10–13 September:
Joan at St-Denis
 
October and early November:
Joan at St-Pierre-le-Moûtier
 
24 November:
Joan leads attack on La Charité-sur-Loire
 
29 December:
Joan and her family are ennobled
1430
23 May:
Joan is captured at Compiègne
 
Late May–July:
Joan held prisoner at Beaulieu
 
Mid-July–mid-November:
Joan at Beaurevoir
1431
3 January:
Joan transferred to the custody of Bishop Cauchon
 
9 January:
beginning of the first trial
 
21 February:
first public session of the trial
 
10–17 March:
closed sessions of the trial
 
18 April:
Joan admonished to recant
 
19 May:
reading of the condemnation of the University of Paris
 
30 May:
Joan executed
AFTER 1431: THE CAUSE OF JOAN OF ARC
1435
Treaty of Arras between Charles VII and Philip, Duke of Burgundy
1436
Paris surrenders to the French
1440
Release of Charles, Duke of Orléans, from prison in England
1449
French invasion of Normandy; capture of Rouen
1450
Charles VII authorises investigation into trial of Joan of Arc
1452
Pope Nicholas V authorises Joan of Arc’s retrial process; Cardinal d’Estouteville and the Inquisitor Jean Bréhal preside
1453
English finally driven out of Guyenne
1455
Pope Calixtus III authorises Joan’s mother, Isabelle, to appeal;
7 November
: opening session of the retrial held at Notre-Dame, Paris
1456
7 July:
public announcement of the judgment of the court: the original verdict is nullified
1589
End of the Valois line: Henry IV becomes first Bourbon King of France by reason of the Salic Law of inheritance
1789
Outbreak of the French Revolution
1793
Suspension of the feast of Joan of Arc in Orléans
1801
Napoleon concludes the Concordat with Pope Pius VII
1803
Napoleon allows revival of festival of Joan in Orléans
1804
Napoleon crowned Emperor of the French in Notre-Dame
1825
Charles X consecrated and crowned at Reims: the last king of France to be so
1869
Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans, begins process of canonising Joan
1870–1
Franco-Prussian War leads to loss of part of Lorraine and creation of the Third Republic
1878–1903
Papacy of Leo XII
1894
Joan declared Venerable; Alfred Dreyfus court-martialled for forgery
1898
Founding of Action Française
1903
Formal proposal for canonisation of Joan
1909
11 April:
Joan beatified by Pius X (Pope 1903–14)
1920
16 May:
Joan canonised by Pope Benedict XV; Joan given a national feast day
1922–39
Papacy of Pius XI
1926
Action Française placed on the Index
1931
30 May:
five hundredth anniversary of the death of Joan
1939
Pius XII (1939–58) lifts ban on Action Française
1940–4
Vichy France and Free French dispute devotion to Joan
1945
6 February:
execution of Robert Brasillach
 
8 May:
Feast of St Joan of Arc; VE Day
1959
As First President of the Fifth Republic, de Gaulle presides over the ceremonies at Orléans
1974
The Centre Jeanne d’Arc in Orléans founded by Régine Pernoud, with the encouragement of de Gaulle’s former minister of culture, André Malraux
1980
1 May:
the first meeting of the Front National to celebrate its feast of St Joan
1989
In the bicentenary year of the French Revolution, President Mitterrand presides over the ceremonies at Orléans for the second time.
Prologue: The Limits of History

I
n the Middle Ages the principal sources of abnormal psychology are found in the archives of the Catholic Church. The Church maintained that in and through Christ it revealed God to man, but the Church was also a human institution, with all the faults that institutions have, and above all a concern with self-preservation and self-aggrandisement. Its rulers were ordained clerics, who by accidents of history were at one stage almost the only educated people in Western Europe, conscious that few kings, dukes and counts could read any language, let alone the Latin in which the clergy thought, wrote and prayed. Literacy spread slowly, but as it did so a spirit of criticism and independent thought evolved. There also emerged professional lay lawyers, lay merchants and eventually a large element of the lay upper class, all of whom felt that their voices should be heard. But most of the population, even in northern Italy or the Netherlands, homes to many prosperous towns, were peasants whose only education came from local folk customs and Latin prayers learnt by rote and whose acquaintance with the world hardly reached beyond the next village. A sophisticated celibate male cleric found such people virtually incomprehensible, especially if the person were a woman and one who claimed to have had unusual religious experiences beyond their ken.

Joan first heard a voice, she said, while aged thirteen as she was running with her friends in the fields near her home in Domremy. In the next few years she came to hear voices several times a day and slowly she came to identify them. One was St Margaret of Antioch and one St Catherine of Alexandria, both revered as virgin martyrs, and the third St Michael, archangel patron of France, whose famous shrine
au péril de la mer
, better known now as Mont-St-Michel, lay off the country’s northern coast.

BOOK: Joan of Arc
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