PART III The Prophecies
Joan of Arc: Truth &
Consequences
Incredibly,
she repeated this youthful whim again later, with better results, finally leaving
her home and friends and mother and father, as it turns out forever, without
even saying good-bye. From the git-go,
we have to ask if God would require someone to strain if not break two of His
Commandments in order to do His bidding. Never-the-less, destiny and her
country were beckoning.
What followed was a series of
miracles and unexplained historic reversals that aided the French in expelling
the English after one hundred years of war. Wearing a man’s clothes, a sword at her side, she
boldly rode to the un-crowned king to tell him his deepest fears and secrets,
earning his confidence and then gathering up an army that would change the
course of history. She seemed to be blessed with serendipity, even aided by the
forces of nature, as she became a master military strategist, inspiring her
country, leading her loyal army with a religious banner in her hands, learning
to argue with generals, distribute misinformation, surprise the enemy, and take
them against all odds.
An avowed virgin, she would call
herself Jehanne the Maid, as she personally led the French to decimate the English and their French
allies. She was instrumental in restoring their young king to his rightful
place, in a matter of months, which eventually led to the re-establishment of
the borders of France which would stand for the next 600 years. But the virgin
was ultimately captured and tried for heresy among other things. Tried by the same church which, at the request
of her beloved King, had previously investigated her and given her high praises
and more controversially, the blessing to serve her country, and do so in a
man’s clothes.
Offered by
Burgundian mercenaries to the highest bidder, she had no hope of being saved,
as the newly crowned King had limited resources and could not or would not
ransom her. Her army, led by several generals who had spent their fortunes on
their own ransoms, could not rescue her either, and after due process, she was
purchased by the English Crown and under his orders her own church judged her
as a heretic and burned her at the stake. Since that day there has been a
serious controversy between historians about what happened, and why.
Significantly, during the Maid’s
trial, she defended herself valiantly, but after months of
tortuous inquisitions, she was eventually broken down physically and
emotionally and confessed to having made up some of her stories about the
angels and saints who spoke to her, and other fabrications she had told during
her trial. Some who believe her to be a
Saint, find reasonable excuses for her fabrications and confessions. Others
perceive her as a religious lunatic who brought her demise upon herself.
No one has
ever been able to explain
how such an enigmatic young woman, seemingly gifted and yet supposedly steeped
in superstition, if not deception, could have made so many clear prophecies
that came true, and all the while her leadership to have been associated with
so many victories which restored her country. How could a teen ager so rock her world, in
any age? And in the process, Jehanne not only laid some astounding political eggs,
but she scrambled up one of the biggest doctrinal quagmires in the Christian
world.
It has been
a half-millennium enigma, the epic glories and travesties of this phenomenal
virgin, Jehanne la Pucelle, whom we know as Joan of Arc…
I The Template
I have
learned to play the cynic, after years of facing the unforgiving
realities of history, and acknowledging how often I have been
disillusioned by my heroes. Still, I believe in truth and justice and role
models; but most of the time we only see glimpses of these things and we are
easily fooled by their counterfeits. And
just as often we fail to recognize the real deal when it comes along; Case in
point, my study of Joan of Arc.
Why am I
reluctant to accept the novels and commentaries that reduce her to
either a fairy tale or a bizarre curiosity of psychological warfare? I am totally infatuated, in love and in hate, obsessed, with mysteries that defy consensus…
when there are so many curious pieces of the puzzle lying around.
It is the
artist’s natural attraction to put the pieces together; sometimes to see how
they fit to make large portions of the picture, when nobody else has been able
to quite figure it out. And sometimes the
image we discover was better left to mystery.
Joan was the
real deal. That is still
what I want to believe, but no one can prove it. But in my rationale, it would
have been impossible for any person or powers or principalities to have
contrived her success or the many paranormal circumstances and incidents which
delivered her to the miraculous fruition of her goals. There are tantalizing explanations,
also unproven, but still, they in no way wash away her uniqueness and
unparalleled claims of Divine guidance. And these claims are supported by the
facts of history, upon which no one can argue. Luckily she operated within the
era of literacy and the printed word, and thus recorded history. On the
basis of so-called “available evidence,” her accomplishments are even more irrefutable than those of Jesus.
“Joan of
Arc” was a real person, with stunning claims and victories, who left her
generation in a stupor of near worship or irrational dread, and none of the
people in her lifetime ever suggested that she was a charlatan. The
only argument at the time was which Cosmic force she was serving. And In
the end, even many of her enemies agreed that she was a simple, admirable, Christian
virgin. After being grilled during several lengthy inquisitions by her allies
as well as her enemies, her virginity and motives were never in question. And her
military successes were the stuff of Bible history; Directed by Heavenly
voices, she established a line of kings, changed the map of Europe and even the
strategies of warfare forever.
But most importantly, Jehanne claimed to have a direct
line to Heaven, so to speak, and most of her
prophecies literally came true. Most of the rest came true eventually, in
more general terms. Some of her prophecies and accomplishments had far reaching
consequences, as if ordained by a higher power. But with all her success, even
this legendary warrior made some bad calls. And it was these “bad calls” which
birthed the enigmas we still struggle with today.
I wrote a
separate blog outlining all the various theories of her possible bloodlines and
backgrounds, her controversial execution and her ill-fated copy-cats. But these
things fall from importance when compared to Jehanne, the prophet of God; specifically, when Joan and her words
are screened through church doctrine and
compared to her Lord, Jesus Christ, and his Word and Testament. Her life
and her methods, in many ways, became a perfect template for the follower
Christ. When I study the aggregate of her
words and actions and their results, I see in them the very character of God.
Like most
prophets of the Old Testament, Jehanne was a predictable mixture of spiritual obedience
and human willfulness. When we begin to look at her obedience to her “voices” and
her faith and her personal power, in every way Jehanne of Domremy, whether 17
or 23 years of age, whether a bastard of the Queen or a farm girl, redhead or
brunette, beautifully demonstrated to us
HOW GOD, through personal piety, WORKS in our lives. And like King David, or
Moses, even her mistakes are instructive, on how God will not work.
Establishing
this impeccable record of spiritual behavior would have been tough for a fake
or a witch to do… and even tough for a very smart manipulator of men and
circumstances. Let me show you just how amazing this template was. And as I do,
never forget this amazing template was laid down by someone who was then, and has
since been called an arrogant, extremely lucky fanatic, or witch, whose main
asset was the fortuitous timing she happened upon…
You can help
me decide.
The enigmas
around Jehanne are more
bewildering than the miracles of her success, but they come hand in hand. We have to set aside one to focus on the
other. The first of these enigmas were her mental faculties. Her illiteracy, youth and provincial
intellect, undeniable ignorance if you will, were the brain trust for a
powerful vision, guided as it appeared by Godly wisdom and purpose, which so
efficiently beat the English and temporarily stabilized France. They are
incongruous, unless we consider most of Christ’s disciples who were cut from
the same cloth. God, if we accede with
the Bible’s lessons for a moment, has always taken care to use “the foolish to
confound the wise.” Jehanne said as much
during her trial, when asked “Why you?”; “It
pleased God to do so through a simple maiden, to humble the King’s enemies.”
As for the weak and lowly, rising to worldwide prominence, Jehanne would be
their Patron Saint.
Not only was
she relatively ignorant, even dangerously foolhardy it would seem, but she was
perceived at first as simple-minded by many of her associates; The English have
besieged Orleans- go chase them away;
the French soldiers are barbarous and profane - so require them Mass every day;
The French army was followed by a trail of whores - so banish all the women;
The Dauphin is a cowardly elite- then win his kingdom back for him and orchestrate
his crowning…
And as simple as her solutions were, they
usually worked, in record time. They not only worked, they had unforeseen immediate
and positive consequences (but perhaps even greater negative consequences! ); She
ended the six-month siege at Orleans in only three actual days of fighting, all
the while arguing and struggling with her more experienced generals, disrupting
their strategies, and challenging their concepts of chivalry. There was no
doubt then or now that she was the catalyst of history. Everyone has heard
of her, few outside of France have ever heard of her brothers in arms.
Yet in the
beginning, she had to have been received as a small-town dreamer or worse, a
delusional lunatic. Unexplainably, even with her “simple” way of seeing her
country, her king and her faith, she
became a sensation even before she had ever been brought before the Dauphin. The leading dukes and generals were anxious
to meet and follow her, at the mere
suggestion of her existence. What had prepared their minds for this national
savior? Seemingly supernatural forces
had prepared a way for her. Jehanne was
an enigmatic star, a human magnet that attracted people and power before she
even took the stage. She was truly enigmagnetic!
Psychics and
poets had already tilled her bi-polar field of dreams.
French
historians can answer to this phenomenon better than me, but here are a few
elements that helped make Jehanne’s arrival the national sensation it became;
There was Merlin the magician’s ancient “prophecy.” Jehanne was almost a
perfect match for it. But more recently Marie, “la Gasque” of Avignon, a local psychic, had made her
own predictions after recurring visions of French prostration and of multitudes
of empty suits of armor; that a maid would come on the scene who would
utilize that armor and bring freedom back to France.
Such was the
anticipation, that a decade before the poet Alain Chartier composed Hope,
a prosaic introduction to “this Lady Hope,” with a face smiling with joy, head
erect, who would restore the kingdom. It was as if there was a screenplay under
production… and news of the protagonist was leaking out. There were no
franchises to market royalties to, but it appears there was a fertile political
garden waiting for Jehanne.
There is
also evidence of clerical high-jinks. Whoever Jehanne was or wasn’t, they seemed to
have a propensity for identifying and recruiting motivational talent. There was
almost an unspoken doctrine or tradition of rallying around a popular
personality, who could distract the people from the corrupt upper class and
motivate themselves as a popular movement. Later, when Jehanne was captured,
they went right to work to find a replacement, as if it was just a formality. Regnault of Chartres, Archbishop of Rheims,
seemed to be the talent scout for such military mascots. He had felt and seen
the power of one little shepherdess at the recent Sacring of Charles VII. After accompanying her to the circumstances
of her capture, and then condescendingly dismissing Jehanne as headstrong and
full of pride and acting out of her own will, he was very quick to prop up the
new national savior; “Neither more nor less than the Maid,” a shepherd boy
named Guillaume, similarly inspired to lead the French struggle for liberty.
(Poor Guillaume was quickly captured, paraded down the street at little King Henry’s
coronation in Paris, and then stitched inside a leather bag and thrown into the
Seine.)
And there
was a more powerful and effective talent scout who may well have had a great
deal to do with Jehanne’s rise to prominence. Yolande of Aragon, the mother of Rene, Duke of Bar, and King
Charles’ mother-in-law, was known to have an impressive underground network of
informants, many of them attractive women who used their womanly skills to get
near to the most powerful men in France - and beyond. Her seamless role, all
behind the scenes, is the most under-estimated in European history.
Outraged at
the scandals and improprieties in the “House of Valois,” Yolande had personally
wrenched Charles from his own mother’s clutches, defying her to take him back.
When the national poet, Charles, Duke of of Orleans was captured and taken to
England, she personally guaranteed that his whole library, another national
treasure, was rescued and protected. It
was her son, later a king himself, and
his father-in-law the Duke of Lorraine who gave Jehanne an unexpected
“grubstake” and turned the luck for her early on. Then Yolande would pressure
Charles to meet Jehanne, as if she knew what would happen if they did. Then she
would finance the French army under Jehanne’s command, when all the purses of
the most powerful men in France were empty…
If it was a screenplay, Yolande was writing
it.
The French people needed, pined for,
for better or for worse, a sort of cheerleader, a rallying point, a person who
captured their imagination and inspired them. Jehanne was the best fit for their
national psyche that they have ever seen.
The Duke of Alencon, soon to become the Maid’s favorite
general, one day abandoned his quail hunt when he caught wind of her, and made
a beeline for the Dauphin Charles’ residence at Chinon. Yet supposedly he had
never met her before. His wife’s uncle,
the “bastard” (leave it to the French!) of Orleans, under siege in that city,
sent envoys to meet and assess her before she ever arrived at the king-to-be’s gathering.
We can only guess how the word travelled
so fast, or so completely convinced these jaded warriors. All of the world watched in wonder as a powerful unseen hand led
Jehanne to the Dauphin and to victory, and simultaneously led France to rally
behind her.
Was it some
kind of political orchestration? Was it the God of Abraham and Moses calling
the children of Clovis to preserve their legacy as His people? Was she the
“Maid of Lorraine,” as predicted by Merlin the Magician? Or was it more
complicated and sinister, as her enemies suggested, even the manipulations of
the Devil?
At first Dauphin
Charles stalled her, and
played hard to get, then chose to make a spectacle of their first meeting. He invited hundreds of the country’s elite
and powerful to be there when they met. Powerful
forces within France and within his family had insisted that he entertain her.
Perhaps Charles just saw a way to save face and use the moment as a slice of
harmless entertainment for his court. He was known to be impetuous, and
devious, but surely he must have realized that he might be trapping himself.
And it seems
everyone RSVP’d and they came from all around, lavishly dressed in their
polished armor and finery. It was, by medieval standards a grand pageant, fit
for Spielberg, designed for either an epic reception or the epitome of Court
amusement. And all this was arranged
spontaneously in a time when messages took days by horseback to arrive; Still,
within days it was as if the whole of French nobility had been anticipating her
arrival. But in the end only Jehanne
seemed to know why they were all there, mystifying the guests and taking
control of the crowd, and her beleaguered France, almost immediately.
The
skeptical authors, proponents of the Joan of bizarre- mass hysteria- chance serendipity
theories, such as Vita Sackville-West, don’t even try to explain these
fortuitous alignments. They just shrug and call it the peculiarities of history;
Coincidence. But when it comes to Jehanne’s prophecies, even they humbly bow to
the mystery of the unknown… they are beyond mathematical probabilities and
rational explanation.
These agnostic writers expectedly
fall short of describing Jehanne’s prophetic utterances as functions of a
Higher Power. The prophecies are like creation itself, you either give God the
credit or you don’t. And for many
writers, who are barely religious, giving God credit by default is their only
out. They are accustomed to shrugging and saying that we can never know. They
therefore can never bother themselves with the same arguments over Jehanne which
Fifteenth Century France found itself embroiled in.
I have found
most writers of “Joan of Arc” in one of two camps; She was either a Holy Messenger of God, a true Saint; or she was
not some kind of saint, as that is obviously superstition, but more likely a
nut, the greatest amalgamation of
coincidences and unexplainable
phenomena in the history of mankind, making her more than worthy as a
subject. The two camps take to extremes, either seeing her as proof of God, or
proof only of the bizarre. But this fragile podium makes the Saint fans fear
and avoid the inconvenient questions around her short life, and the curiosity
fans want to inflame them, to enlarge the sideshow. Each has an axe to grind, a
world view which cannot tolerate the other.
But there
was just one Jehanne.
And her prophecies stand there omnipotent, while the authors argue, and pontificate,
and hypothesize, and their books fall apart in moldy libraries and are tossed
back to the dust from which they came. It was her prophecies, supposedly
conveyed by “voices” that set her apart and won her instant authority then, and
it is those same prophecies today which boggle our minds and challenge our
imaginations.
I propose a third possibility, rarely
argued, that Jehanne and her prophecies and her victories were no random
concoction but a combination of Providential support for an agenda, partly inspired from above and
partly written in the flesh. In other
words, it is complicated, but no more compromised than the prophecies of Moses.
It is probably significant that when
one tries to wrap their mind around Jehanne, they must eventually compare her
to the Patriarchs of the Faith!
Like a story out of the Bible,
it all started with a prophetic dream. Not in Jehanne’s sleep, but in her
father’s. Jacques Day (that’s right, NOT d ‘Arc!) dreamed that he saw his
little Jeannette being taken away by soldiers. He of course interpreted this as
a frightening omen, the only thing he could have conceived, that these soldiers
in his dream meant her harm. He told her
brothers, if this fate ever appeared to be imminent, not to allow it, in fact
do him a service and drown her to prevent such a horror. He said if he had to,
he would do it himself. We can only
wonder if his nightmare somehow played a role in prompting Jehanne’s trajectory
and subsequent actions, which fulfilled and completed his dream. All we know is
that he would live to regret those words, and to understand that dream better,
and in the end probably be confused by the whole bloody mess.
Meanwhile,
Jehanne did not need dreams, as she was talking to angels in broad daylight. It seems Jehanne had wandering feet between
chores, often off to a chapel or secluded spot, and known to frequent the
church next door, to be lost in prayer… First it was Michael the Archangel, tall and beautiful, who approached her, who
later sent Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret to instruct her. Both of
these popular, ancient saints were virgins from very early church history,
thinly documented, who had been martyred by ruthless rulers, rather than
compromise their purity and faith. These two immortals double-teamed her
imagination and established in her a life-pattern that would mirror their
legends. At around age thirteen they began to secretly fill her head with her
mission. This kind of claim is usually a red flag to theologians, but I will
explain that later.
“… there lives a maid between Coussey and Vaucouleurs who, before the year is out, will have
the king crowned.”
So told
Jehanne to her friend Michel Lebuin on
the eve of St. John’s Baptist Day. Before she ever left her home for that last
time, a mere teenager, she told her friends and confidants that the popular old
extra-Biblical prophecy of Merlin’s would soon be fulfilled; That France had been lost by a woman (
thought to be the former Queen, Isabeau of Bavaria ) and would be regained by a virgin from the borders of Lorraine;
that the Dauphin Charles would be
crowned king, and even more immediately, the siege at Orleans would be lifted. No matter that Jehanne was
technically in Champagne. That could be fixed with a short trip. Most people
thought she was a devout yet silly lass who needed better supervision from her
elders. As time passed, she explained
she had gotten the information from a host of angels… No one would have been
blamed for dismissing her and her story. But she was not easily discouraged. When she met rejection, she just prayed and
regrouped.
Jehanne made
many more precise predictions that were to come true, some of which I will recount, but she also
enjoyed a ride on something I like to call the “magic carpet of God.” Jehanne was able to have her way with the
most powerful men in the land. And then events uncannily went her way. They
not only went her way, they sucked everybody into her jet stream. Some would
argue this was nothing less than the power of God. Or something!
In the midst of trying to obtain a horse and safe
escort to Chinon, where the “Dauphin” (crown prince) Charles lived in royal
ease and decay, in a fairly short time Jehanne managed to amass the support of
several wanna-be knights, the Captain of Vaucouleurs, and even the Duke of
Lorraine who was known to be collaborating with her enemies. His son in law,
Rene, Duke of Bar, would soon shift the family loyalties and fight beside her. His mother, Yolande of Aragon, would exercise
her influence in many ways on her behalf.
But even before Jehanne left Lorraine, she was given clothes, horses, spurs,
weapons and money, by men on both sides of this Civil War!
Jehanne was
provided “safe conduct”
as they called it, to Chinon. There awaited a castle, once again owned by, you
guessed it, Yolande of Aragon. The Maid was escorted out of the city by de
Baudricourt himself, and was bid adieu along with five armed guards, one an
expert crossbowman, and a sixth man, in
the beginning of a string of unexplained coincidences, a messenger of the Dauphin’s
who happened to have been sent for her.
This fortuitous rendezvous fell so
nicely together, even though Robert de Baudricourt, the knight who was the
Captain of Vaucouleurs, thought she was something of a joke, and just previously
had threatened to throw her to his soldiers so they could feast upon her. But de
Baudricourt, his own castle nearly under siege, soon changed his mind about
Jehanne after her mysterious bedside
joust with the Duke of Lorraine.
The ailing
duke, known to have been allied with the Burgundians, had summoned her to his
castle in Nancy, desiring prayer, even a healing, but Jehanne was brutally
honest with him and offered little solace. It is curious that this duke would
send for a young, relatively unknown and common-born farm girl, when she had
done very little to establish herself as a spiritual minister of any kind.
Still, when the meeting was over, she had obtained their support, money and
even a horse as well as “safe conduct” from them. I believe that either the
Duke or his son- in-law Rene, Duke of Bar may have used their influence to
soften de Baudricourt, and even sent word to Charles about her. Somehow, unexplainably, De Baudricourt
suddenly reversed himself. A brother in arms with Rene, he respectfully gave
her his blessing after an obligatory, precautionary exorcism, then sent a
messenger to the Dauphin himself, announcing her mission. The rude and blustery
knight ended up giving Jehanne a sword and releasing two of his best men and sent
her on her way. Not a bad turn of luck,
in a matter of a few weeks, for a “simple-minded” teen.
They
travelled on the backroads for eleven days to Chinon, fairly unmolested, even
though Hollywood and Mark Twain could not resist making the journey more violent
and entertaining. Crossing rivers, dodging enemy patrols, hiding during the
days and riding at nights, all of these men were aware of her prophecies and her
potential importance by the time they arrived, and later confessed they
believed in them and her.
The leader
of this party was Jean de Metz: “I had great confidence in the Maid’s sayings,”
he once recounted, “and I was fired by
her sayings and with love for her, divine as I believe…” Not yet a knight,
it was de Metz who first listened to Jehanne and pledged his help. He may have
played a part in convincing de Baudricourt to cooperate with “la Pucelle” and he
stayed with her till many of those prophecies became realities.
What a start for a shepherd girl from a border town,
and what a catastrophe for all if she was a nut-job. And this was what was presumed by the Court
at Chinon. His lazy arm twisted by unseen influences, the reluctant Dauphin and
his counselors came up with an entertaining and telltale test for the girl.
Even if she was a fake or merely a sweet misguided patriot, they would have a
bit of fun. Charles shed his finery and put another, a decoy prince, one most
impressively clad, in his stead. Jehanne
had never seen any of them. She would no doubt foolishly bow and beseech “the
king,” a mere noble, while the Dauphin watched her humiliation, and then
officially exposed her as a pitiful farce...
But if there
was a farce, it was the other way around. When Jehanne arrived in Chinon, a
profane Court soldier saw her as they entered and treated her like he would any
attractive young woman of common birth; he cat –called and abused her verbally,
invoking God’s name in his lustful proclamation. This was his last mistake.
Jehanne was never one to take abuse, from anyone. “Alas, thou deniest Him and art so near thy death!” Legend
has it that just a moment later, as she passed, he fell into the river and
drowned. This kind of sharp judgment and hostile aura is difficult to
reconcile with the Carpenter from Nazereth, who taught Jehanne to turn the other
cheek, but I will not take the pulpit just yet.
“In God’s name, noble prince, it is you and no other.”
Perturbed by
unnecessary delays, Jehanne
walked into a grand room filled with three hundred knights and ladies… according
to her recollection, illuminated by fifty torches, and quickly read the
deception, searched the crowd of hundreds of faces, and without hesitating
found the Dauphin skulking in the background and went to him, bowed and greeted
him. Charles was not accustomed to his
subjects not playing along with his games.
“What if I am not the king?” He teased and lied and shooed her way, and
pointed at the throne- “There is the King!” He had not yet had even a bit of
fun. But the teen stood her ground, not phased in the slightest.
She gently corrected
him, and insisted he was the one. She
could not be deceived by the best and brightest of France. This alone was
extraordinary, a kid from Domremy facing down a skeptical Dauphin and his court
of worldly nobles. Without those voices,
how did she know which man was the Dauphin?
Before they
could even ponder this surprise, she began to tell the dubious Dauphin with all
urgency, that she had been sent by God, and she wanted an army to break the
siege at Orleans and then she wanted to see that he was properly crowned,
according to French tradition, as the King of France. She proceeded to unload
and tell him that she knew what he was
afraid of, and that she knew his secret prayers and thoughts… and she
proved this to his amazement. She reminded him that on the last All Saints Day
he had requested three things from God. And she named them.
Jehanne
unexplainably knew of his prayers, his deepest fears; that he was not of legitimate birth, as
his own mother Queen Isabeau had inferred when she signed a treaty and gave his
crown to the English. Jehanne not only told him, and proved to him how she knew
of his fears and prayers, but assured him that he was indeed the right heir to
the French throne, the son of the King. It was a message from God’s mouth to
his hears. This may have been what Charles wanted to hear, but nobody before
had convinced him of it. The party went from being a hilarious expose on a
hapless youth to a revelation and a mandate from God above.
Not since
David came to face Goliath had a common-born child turned the tide of history
in such a short time, with a simple appeal to the king.
In pondering
Jehanne’s possible supernatural knowledge, it is here where I should remind the
reader of Jehanne’s rendezvous at Nancy with the Duke of Lorraine and his
son-in-law Rene, Duke of Bar. These were well-connected men, and it is easy to
imagine that Rene had gotten this kind of information about what was on his
brother-in-law’s mind directly, if not
from his mother, Yolande of Aragon, the Dauphin’s mentor and mother-in-law. Might these two have given Jehanne these and
other words which would have made her presentation quite convincing? We cannot
know from this one meeting recorded in history. But there were probably others
which dodged the pens of French history..
Jehanne
suddenly became the Dauphin’s mystic, and he wanted to know more. They met
privately, and there she shared secrets, unknown to anyone else, that bonded
their destinies. There has been great and wild speculation about these secrets,
and the English later exhausted considerable effort to extract them during her
trial at Rouen. But that was all a waste of time. According to Jehanne, they
were words from God and meant only for his ears. She would take them to the burning stake, and
they would be lost in her ashes. Believers and skeptics alike have never known
for sure what the secret might have been. Whatever it was, depressed, lethargic
Charles became buoyant and pro-active, even mildly ambitious. That may have
been her first public miracle.
It should be
noted, here at the very
beginning of this amazing saga, were several traits of Christian character that cannot be faked. Assuming that the voices were for real, Jehanne
had been entrusted with wisdom and
knowledge beyond her years or her place in the world. And she proved to be
quite trustworthy with this
intelligence. And that took a level of obedience to her mission far beyond the
character of most individuals, no matter their intelligence or religious
faith. And as with the Christians thrown
to the lions in Rome, it has always been argued that people will never agree to
be tortured and killed for a mere lie. Jehanne had that kind of confidence and resolve. The truths she brought to the
king that day she was willing to risk everything and even die for, if need be,
and she later proved it. Her loyalty
to God’s purpose was unshakable. Her fearlessness
in the execution of her duty to God was super human. Her willingness to self-sacrifice was paramount. Of course to the non-believer, it was
fanaticism and delusion. Godliness, and God-given wisdom, the Bible teaches,
appears as foolishness to the world. And
on the surface that is what we seem to see.
Once Jehanne
had convinced the Dauphin of her cause and legitimacy, they began to prepare her
for battle. She seemed to be more than ready for this next phase, and sent for
an antique sword, her “voice” had
instructed, lying at the Church of St. Catherine at Fierbois. They
would find the worthy blade someplace near the altar.
All
through Jehanne’s narrative, one gets the feeling that sometimes she might have
been dead serious about those “voices,” and yet other times they might have
been a convenient euphemism to avoid divulging too much, and at the same time buy
her another layer of mystery and authority. Amazingly, symbolically, as this church had been built by the
grandfather of Charlemagne, it was suggested that the sword might have been
his. And now it would be hers.
Sure enough
a sword was unearthed, a
public relations windfall, with five crosses on it, and covered in rust. Its iron
oxidation and hiding place seemed to preclude her ever having seen it. This sword and its recovery were immediately
perceived as proof of her authenticity and heavenly gifts. She WAS the “Maid of
Lorraine” spoken of in Merlin’s prophecy!
Lovely, impractical scabbards of velvet and gold cloth were produced
from different well-wishers from Tours, to provide her and it protection, after
it was cleaned up and sharpened. But
Jehanne chose to have her own made, from plain but suitable leather. This sword
was not for show. She was expecting action.
“I shall last one year,
hardly longer”
Jehanne knew
and was heard saying she had limited time, less than a year, to do God’s bidding, and because of this
there was an urgency to her mission. She told her men this and explained that
because of her limited window, it was “necessary for them to toil mightily.”
And she also knew that what she
accomplished in France would not be reversed in a thousand years.
“I am writing to you for the third
and last time. I shall not write anymore..”
Character is
never challenged or tested better than on the battlefield. Author Sackville-West
chastised Jehanne, because several times she seemed to have made terrible
choices as a battle strategist. But Sackville-West was ignoring Jehanne’s
higher calling. God rarely ever wiped out anybody before He first warned them
profusely. And seemingly to her
disadvantage, Jehanne always tried to
send warnings to her enemies, killing all elements of surprise. Far from
wanting a slaughter, she struggled to make God’s will, as she understood it,
absolutely clear.
“Read, here is news”
Jehanne sent
letters carried by messengers, shot by arrows, and even personally begged her adversaries
to yield and leave France for their own good. She took ridiculous chances, ignoring
their insolence and insults, and risking her own safety to approach their gates
and publicly warn them. She seemed to have known precisely their fate. The
English called back at her, calling her a camp follower, a cowgirl, or bitch,
or worse. She had made at least four of
these attempts at mercy towards her enemies before the blood was spilled at her
first battle at Orleans. When it was,
she cried uncontrollably over her slain men, and especially her fallen enemies,
worried about their souls.
It sounds crazy, but this burden over
lost souls, trumping her own political agendas, was an illustration of the Heart
of Christ, and was the most Christ-like thing to do.
Also,
Jehanne sometimes, if she could, refused
to fight on Sunday, the Holy day for Christians. Staring them down across
the battlefield, she let the English walk away one Sunday at Orleans rather
than annihilate them, and because of that merciful gesture allowed them time to
gather their strength. Sparing them because of the Sabbath meant she would have
to face that powerful, reinforced army later at Patay. But Jehanne
was a servant of God first, a soldier second. In her estimation she was no
good as a soldier without the other. She knew that it was GOD WHO PROVIDED THE
VICTORY. Provoked by priests who
questioned her for Charles, demanding proof concerning her claims about being a soldier for God, she
explained her simple strategy:
“In God’s name, the soldiers will
give battle and God will give the victory.”
Here again,
this kind of thinking is foolishness to the world. She had learned, just a
couple of months since she left home, to choose to do things God’s way. Now
God’s Law had equal footing with the urgings of her voices. The combination of
the two gave us the most sterling examples of Christian behavior, in times of
war, ever documented.
Jehanne was
always accompanied by a priest who carried a cross before her procession, and who provided her Mass,
sometimes a couple of times a day. Her huge
banner became a signpost for any soldier who needed prayer, confession or
wanted to observe the Sacraments. She used this convenience more than anybody. One
overlooked factor in her success is this simple function, the encouragement to
pray, to keep a godly outlook. Suddenly Jehanne not only had an army, but a
legion of prayer warriors. And there was
power in that.
Jehanne understood the power in both prayer and the Living
Word. She actively
called on both for her success. We have never seen anyone of credible status
claim Divine instruction or power to the degree she did. For a Twenty-first
Century Protestant like me, it seems impossible. But her methods and actions
were impeccable, making her claims all the more irrefutable.
Whatever words
she knew and shared with the Dauphin were of Eternal value as well, words worth
dying for, fit only for God’s chosen few.
And as we shall see, whether the hearers deserve it, in our estimation,
or not. In this story, it was not only Jehanne who was that “David,” facing a
Goliath, but she was the prophet
called to anoint and instruct a flawed king, who would often disappoint. And Charles was that reluctant hero, with
lackluster expectations and weak character, who would by Grand Design be used
by God to restore the country. And Jehanne seemed to be comfortable with
this. So this is my insurmountable (Protestant) enigma:
Why would
God, who was soon to inspire the Protestant
Reformation, not have let the English prevail? Half of France was already under English
authority. The Dauphin’s cousin, the Duke of Burgundy was an English ally and
able leader and was the Father of French Chivalry. Burgundy later demonstrated his own
infatuation with Jehanne, even though his loyalties demanded him to broker her
to the English. Why would God lead
Jehanne to go against the grain of a two hundred year war which could have
freed France from her corrupt royal family, and thus prevented France from extended injustices and wars in the future, and
even more importantly, from fully
partaking in the Reformation? If you
are a Catholic, the answer is obvious. I’ll leave that question with you for
now, and return to it later.
I must
continue with the prophecies. We can never know all of them, only those
recorded. What is amazing, truly amazing, is how well her words and behavior
stand up to Biblical standards, and even our own standards of veracity and
spirituality. Easily over 90% of her prophecies were accurate and completed.
They were not hidden in allegory or vague abstraction. For instance, she knew
and predicted she would be injured
during the assaults on the English strongholds at Orleans, but that she would not be killed. This was the legend. But Michelet told the details, which become more problematic. Speaking to one of her captains, she instructed: "Come tomorrow at break of day and quit me not; I shall have much to do.... blood will go out of my body; I shall be wounded below my bosom." This is amazing, still it is quite inaccurate. Jehanne was wounded, but in the shoulder. Another curious bit of misinformation from her voices... and a red flag for theologians. We will ignore the red flags for now...
In fact an
English arrow struck
into her little shoulder several inches deep. Pulled kicking and protesting
away from the carnage, she pulled the arrow out herself and staunched the
bleeding. After telling her exhausted generals to get a drink and eat, she went
to pray in a nearby ditch and try to shake it off. While doing so, someone
fought with her to carry her flag. In the tugging over it, dizzy and bleeding,
she would not let go, probably needing it as a crutch. Still the wild waving of her banner inadvertently inspired the French watching
for a sign from her. Seeing her standing again, violently shaking her
beloved flag was all the encouragement they needed. They turned and launched
one final and victorious assault!Instead of prophecy, it seems Jehanne spoke freely and had a chronic sense of her mortality. When and if she was to ever perish, she would have just predicted it. Her personal priest, friar Pasquerel said she often told him "If I must die soon, tell the King our lord, from me, to found chapels for the offering up of prayers for the salvation of such as have died in defence of the Kingdom.." This muddies the clarity of other predictions she had later. She must have offered many possible outcomes to her brothers in arms, and eventually some came true.
But more curiously, the Maid
knew of things and players not even on the playing board, whom she could not
have known. After her historic conference with Dauphin Charles, and the subsequent
interrogation by his priests, Jehanne made as part of her four pronged
prophetic agenda a seemingly personal, humanitarian goal, to free the Duke of Orleans, another cousin
of the Dauphin’s, held captive in England. As far as anyone knows, she had
never met him and did not know him. This was a very ambitious goal and a
problem way out of her sphere of influence. Had the Dauphin made this request?
Why would she have elevated the Duke’s situation, not exactly a matter of
national security or military strategy, to a matter of highest priority? But
she did… and even that would come in time.
She had
already predicted the liberations of the
cities of Orleans and Paris and the Sacring
( crowning) of Charles VII. These were obvious, basic cornerstones to the
restoration of France.
We have to
wonder if there were not unseen factors that made the Duke and his captivity
seem so important to this illiterate seventeen-year old, who could scarcely have
even heard of him, much less have made his return a pivotal object of prophecy.
Jehanne saw only two of these, her main goals, met in her lifetime. Even more
intriguing, the not-forgotten Duke somehow, even while kept away in England without
ransom, made possible the crafting of her “livery,” and had it emblazoned with
the Orleans coat of arms. What was this strange, unexplainable devotion between
them? Strange that the voices in her head would care so much for this Duke, and
he for her. And even before this prophecy of his rescue had been made public, his
half-brother, Jean Dunois, the “bastard” of Orleans, was poised to be one of
her most loyal Captains.
It was the bastard of Orleans who was the
first to report her miraculous flair. He had operated on his own volition and
placed Jehanne in a less-than-strategic position when she arrived at Orleans,
her first battle, probably for her protection. After she scolded him, she
learned things were even worse than they appeared, that all of her men and the
supplies arriving to relieve the City were on the wrong side of the river, and
everything would be unnecessarily delayed for days. The well-meaning bastard
had boats lined up to transport the supplies across, but they could not handle transporting
her sizeable army. And the winds pinned the few boats Dunois had commandeered against
the docks and would not even allow them to cross. He begged her to allow him to
take her into the city via a rowboat, where an enthusiastic reception awaited
her… the rest of the provisions and her army would come in time.
Jehanne was furious with all of these manmade delays and complications.
She told Dunois, in so many words, he had no idea who or what he was
messing with. He must not have
understood who was the boss here; not him, not even her, but GOD. Dunois loved
to recall this time of their first meeting, as it was capped when the wind suddenly kicked up, as if obeying
her sheer force of will, from the opposite direction, and the relief boats
were able to cross with them. The people inside the City would eat and drink
that night! He never doubted her again.
Her personal
friar, Jean Pasquerel, recounted later that Jehanne was seemingly in complete
command of events as they happened, and seemed to always know what was coming
next. But strict attention had to be paid to her vision of corporate righteousness.
After the
battle to raise the siege at Orleans was in full swing, and they had enjoyed some small
victories, she told Pasquerel to instruct her men to be thankful to God, and
they should take some rest, as it was the eve of the Ascension of the Lord’s
Day, and even take the next day to pray and have Mass. And she forbade any
further activity of her army without first going to confession, and furthermore
they were to evict all the prostitutes,
as it was because of these sins that God allowed a war to be lost.
Then Jehanne
mildly prophesied that within five days
the siege would be raised and no more English would linger near the city.
And Pasquerel did as she commanded, and all went as she said.
On that
fifth day, she promised her scribe Jean d’ Aulon “In God’s name, we shall this day enter the town by the bridge.” Jehanne was shot, and many more Frenchmen fell, and this
prediction of course would have required complete decimation of the English,
which is exactly what happened, in spite of her injury. She had begged Glasdale the commander to abandon
the siege, or live shortly to regret it. Legend has it that Glasdale
scoffed at her and called her a ribald woman and a whore. Jehanne retorted that they were all about to depart swiftly,
despite themselves, but Glasdale would
not live to see it. Sure enough he and many others fell into the river
and drowned while trying to cross a makeshift bridge after being taken hostage.
Still, Jehanne was stricken with grief over the death of these enemies, which
she had predicted, and who just moments before had taunted her.
Fulfilling
her prophecies, the towns fell like dominoes, the English always retreating to
wait for reinforcements. Finally the day came when the English could not
escape, and a battle was inevitable, if Jehanne and her forces could just catch
up with them. It promised to be a pivotal showdown. On every French mind was
the last such battle, at Agincourt, where they were demolished and humiliated
and died in the thousands. Her young Commander, d’ Alencon looked to her for
the best wisdom from “her voices”… before they met the English at Patay.
“Have, all of you, good spurs.”
Jehanne told
them flatly, all they would need were good spurs that day… to speed up their
horses so as to catch and defeat the English in their desperate retreat. She
said confidently that Charles would have
his greatest victory on that day. And so it was. In a historic confusion of
the enemy of Biblical proportions, the English position was inadvertently given
away when a stag galloped into their
ranks and the surprised Englishmen, who were hiding and waiting to ambush,
could not help from a spontaneous uproar… Once spotted, they were surrounded
and decimated.
The exchange
was very one-sided… an estimated two thousand English lay dead after the rout,
and with only a few French casualties.
“By my martin, I will
lead the gentile King Charles and his company safely and
he will be crowned at Rheims.”
Soon Charles
was out of excuses, and
it was time to go to Rheims, the traditional place of sacring, French
coronation, where kings could receive their sacred honors and be crowned. But the Dauphin Charles was always a pill,
lethargic, cynical, a prince of procrastination. He had no money to pay his
army, and they followed not him but Jehanne. It was embarrassing. They had
never seen such patriotism or success. Many Frenchmen had paid the ultimate
price. He was ashamed to ask for more.
So Jehanne
provided the ambition and courage enough for both of them. When they neared the
French Holy city, Charles began to whine. He had no war machines, and the
people within its walls might not receive him, what then? Jehanne had told him
to approach the city with boldness, “Doubt not, for the burgesses of Rheims will come out to meet you” she predicted with confidence.
Somehow she knew his kingdom was his for the taking. He acted like a child
being brought to his first day of school. The Burgesses were there just as she
predicted, like doting schoolmarms.
It was the Sacring
of the king which was Jehanne’s number one goal, and she believed that this was
the cornerstone to the restoration of France. And she was right; once Charles
VII was crowned, the country came out of its coma.
Jehanne not
only spoke prophecies, but she seemed to be blessed in her designs.
There was a yen and a yang so -to -speak
to Jehanne’s methods. Naïve but effective; fighting hard, while giving God His
every due, while asking for His blessing in battle, thanking Him afterwards,
asking for direction, fearlessly obeying. The fighting and the worshipping were
interdependent.
It was, as
one witness wrote, “Like another Saint
Catherine had come down to Earth.” Yet already the clerks at the University
of Paris were drawing up indictments of her as a heretic, because they were
offended; she could foresee the future and she dared to expect people to
believe her. But the popular poets and a
former Chancellor of the University released their own opinions, defending her.
The brain trust of the Church was turned on itself, at its highest institution
of learning.
Friar Pasquerel
explained all the fuss simply to his young illiterate charge, who could not
read either side of the controversy; “Never
have been seen such things as you have been seen to do; in no book are to be
read of deeds like them.”
Excepting of
course, THE BIBLE.
Even in the
heat of battle, Jehanne remained in touch with the Voices that first instructed
her in Domremy. Otherwise we cannot explain her near omniscience. Even Yolande
of Aragon could not help her now. After
Charles had tentatively agreed to go to Rheims for his coronation, he made this
concession on the condition that the cities along the way would be militarily
subdued. For Jehanne this was a
reasonable request, and that was all she needed to hear. She had God on her
side, who could be against her? She already had a life-pattern of prayer and
seeking God’s direction. God was going before her and preparing the way. When
her men were not up to the task, even nature pitched-in to tip the scales.
Once at
Orleans the wind had aided Jehanne, and later a tug-of-war with one of her well-meaning aides
over her flag, then a collapsing bridge, and at Patay a wild stag led the French
to their enemies. Wild reverses in French fortunes were won with minimum casualties.
Yet the English were punished mercilessly.
Again, multiple miracles seemed to provide Jehanne remarkable proofs of
authenticity.
No other
general came know and love Jehanne as well as the Duke of Alencon, who had
rushed to meet her at the very beginning. When later she went and fetched him
for war, she promised his wife, (remember, this is a seventeen year old ) “Madam, fear nothing, I will bring him back to you safe
and well as he is now, or even better.” She managed to save his life at one point at Jargeau when
she warned him to remove himself from a
spot she somehow knew to be dangerous, where artillery was soon to take out
some of her men. Right after this she was hit herself, by a stone
projectile exploding on her helmet, which knocked her to the ground, but she
kept her promise.
Knocked off of a siege ladder,
Jehanne jumped up and yelled; “Friends, friends, up, our Lord has condemned the English, in this hour they are ours, be of good heart!” Every army should have such a fearless cheerleader. The
French left over a thousand of their enemies dead on the field on that day.
There at the
battle of Jargueau, Jehanne had shared her logic with the Duke of Alencon, explaining they should fear no multitude, and
make no difficulty attacking the English, for God guided their business. In fact if she were not sure that God was
directing this business, she would rather keep the sheep [back home] than
expose herself to such perils. “Doubt
not, the time is come when it pleases God… Act
and God will act!”
One might
imagine that such a
woman as this, literally a man-killer with the courage of a lion, might well
have been man-eater as well. The pressures and the strain and horrors of war
are often known to break down the best of men, and women, their morals often
becoming a casualty along with their innocence. Not so Jehanne.
All of the men who
ever dealt with Jehanne spoke of a similar reverence for her. She was
attractive, intelligent, athletic, tender-hearted, sometimes high strung and
feisty, the kind of woman any knight would desire. They camped with her and
fought with her and died for her. They saw her bleed on the battlefield, cry over
the dead, prayed with her often at Mass, and watched her sleeping in her armor.
They saw her in glory, and even saw her partly naked. But they never seemed to
have seen her as … a woman.
This is most
unexplainable. It is a kind of platonic blindness unknown in that period, when
women were sought and used and misused like possessions, and primarily for sex.
After all, we are talking about medieval FRANCE! Yet everyone was a gentleman
and she, an angel. One of the witnesses
explained thus:
“… sometimes they had the carnal desire for
her, however never dared give way to it, and they believed that it was not
possible to try it. And often, when talking among themselves, about the sin of
the flesh and spoke words which might excite lust, when they saw her and drew
nigh her they could no longer talk of such things and abruptly ceased their
carnal transports.”
Marguerite la Touroulde had the opportunity to know Jehanne
and her closest entourage. They stayed with her as a hostess for weeks. Jehanne
kept many of the same men as bodyguards who first escorted her to Chinon,
during the following campaigns. Touroulde was a bit of a gossip and was gifted
at prying. And she had a unique perspective on this phenomenon… “They said that in the beginning they wanted
to require her to lie with them carnally. But when the moment came to speak
to her of this they were so much ashamed that they dared not speak of it to her
nor say a word of it.” Touruolde added that Joan was “all innocent excepting in
arms” and claimed she could ride and use a lance as well as the best of men at
arms, who marveled at her abilities.
One of these
trusted wanna-be knights, Bertrand de
Poulengy, testified: “… every night she lay down with Jean de Metz and me,
keeping upon her, her surcoat and hose, tied and tight. I was young then and
yet I had neither desire nor carnal
movement to touch woman, and I should not have dared to ask such a thing of
Joan, because of the abundance of good
which I saw in her.”
Even her
“Beau Duc” the Duke of Alecnon confessed the daily struggle within… “Sometimes
in the army I lay down to sleep with Joan and the soldiers, all in the straw
together (he paints quite a picture, doesn’t he?) and sometimes, I saw Joan
prepare for the night and sometimes I looked at her breasts which were
beautiful, (ah, the French!) and yet, I
never had carnal desire for her…”
Even her
captors had begrudging
admiration for her. Haimond de Macy, a Burgundian knight, testified many years
after her execution that he had tried to take advantage of her. Stationed at
Beaurevoir in service to John of Luxembourg, he saw and taunted Jehanne often,
and apparently never missed an opportunity to humiliate her... “I
tried several times, playfully, to touch her breasts, trying to put my
hand on her chest, the which Joan wouldn’t suffer but repulsed me with all her
strength. Joan was, indeed, of decent conduct both in speech and act.”
Wasn’t his
mother proud.
Sure they
were men, and men talk, and they fantasized about her… but these temptations
never went any further. It would seem
that Jehanne was too good for THAT, too noble, too special. Anecdotes from those days tell us of men who
thought differently and met with swift demise, purely by fate of course. And we cannot doubt her purity, as her
virginity was constantly challenged and proven for the satisfaction of three
different inquisitions. NO VIRGIN HAS EVER BEEN SO WELL DOCUMENTED in all of
history!
Marguerite
la Touroulde, the gossip who slept with Jehanne for several weeks, and saw
her in the bath and whatever, later testified that “… I neither saw in her nor
perceived anything of any kind of ‘unquietness’…” In other words, Jehanne
was seemingly unconcerned about her sexuality, and lacked even a hint of what we
would call today as “horniness.” She was
in Southern terms, “a lady.” If we are to believe it, this had to be the result
of religious conviction… a virgin preserved for a holy mission, a special thing
for sure, and a simultaneous miracle of mass suspension of male aggression, the
likes of which have never been seen before or since.
True, it
might have been a whole army in love with the same virgin, and willing to
protect her like their own sister. But who better to judge her, and the
plausibility of this kind of purity, than the men who daily followed her gladly
into battle? And every mother’s son believed it was her purity, her virginity
that gave her this special power of prophecy and military victory. Since they
believed it, and it worked so well, we cannot question it from our positions
six hundred years later. They liberated Orleans. They crowned Charles. They won dozens of battles, against the odds,
and often with minimum losses. And through it all, Jehanne was kept as pure, at
least sexually, as her Savior.
Here is
where the fairy tale
ends. Even worse, here is where the doctrinal issues and spiritual doubts start
to unravel Jehanne’s wonderful magic carpet ride. We cannot pinpoint when it
turned sour, but it was sometime right after the Sacring of Charles VII.
Immediately after this she confessed to confidants the only thing she feared
was treason. She wanted to go home and take up her simple life again.
Newly
emboldened Charles VII would not hear of it. He still needed her. There was
still a great deal to be done. But Jehanne knew instinctively that it would all
be very different once he had been crowned. She could not have imagined how
different. Her instincts to go home prove that she knew the party was over. But
her sense of patriotism overruled. Young and impressionable, and proud of these
greatest victories in French history, she gave in. She should have gone home.
From the
moment when Charles was officially King, Jehanne had already sent the Duke of
Burgundy a conciliatory letter. But so had Charles, and his terms were better.
Charles would agree to a fifteen day truce, no strings attached. Jehanne’s approach was in her own forceful
way; do or die. She invoked the name of God and begged the Duke to make up
with Charles and forsake the English and give up his claims. She told him
flatly that if he did not, it would be
his last mistake, that they would never win any more battles and that she would
bring God’s vengeance down on them and the English.
But things
had changed. The King was ruling like a king. His army now obeyed him. And Jehanne, having become a bit over-confident
was no longer waiting upon her voices for direction.
Here Jehanne put into writing two
prophecies, in the name of God, that
were way off, in fact opposite of what transpired. She made threats and
predictions that would appear empty and grossly uninspired as events marched
on. [ I have to
interject, as awful as this sounds, the Bible has examples of God’s prophets in
the Old Testament doing similar things. The most memorable was when Moses hit a
rock with his staff instead of speak to it, to draw out water, and for this
rebellion, he was never allowed to see the Promised Land.]
Fearing
treachery, but still yielding to her unpredictable King, Jehanne apparently panicked
and lost touch with her voices and began to act outside of the Holy Spirit. If
Jehanne had any doubts about her future frustrations, it soon became obvious
that Charles just wanted her to rattle cages, and hopefully force the
Burgundians to yield without conflict. It was good cop- bad cop, and she did
her job too well.
TWLEVE
THOUSAND Frenchmen strong, Jehanne swaggered at the moat which protected Paris,
and barked at the Parisians like a hound from hell… “Yield to us quickly, for Jesus sake, for if you yield not before
night, we shall enter by force whether you will or no, and you will be put to
death without mercy.”
Jehanne
seemed to always know
who or what could butter her bread. But Paris, which she attempted to “free,”
was her great defeat, and this is significant because she admitted she had acted without any prompting from her voices.
The Parisians defended their city as if Englishmen, as they were reluctant to
give up their English associations, but it was Jehanne’s own king who burned
her bridges across to Paris to end the conflict, as it complicated his
negotiations with his cousin the Duke of Burgundy. Even without the King’s
fickle blessings, Paris would still fulfill her expectations in a few more
years, when the Duke of Burgundy switched his allegiance again.
Somewhere
along the bloody way, the
Maid of Lorraine had evolved into someone more similar in method to Mohammed. Do as I say, immediately, or die. There was a fine line between the prayerful,
reluctant warrior, warning her enemies and grieving their deaths, and the jaded
Attilla bombarding Paris. But she had crossed the line. She was misguided in
her letter the Duke of Burgundy, and she was wrong there at the moat, and was proven
to be speaking from her own frustrations, threatening death and destruction,
and yet presumptuously claiming the mantle of Christ. Whatever Grace she had
enjoyed before was withdrawn.
Then a
Parisian defender shot her in the thigh. Her fair-weathered soldiers dragged
her off the field, and with them hopes of victory and many of her objectives.
When she
attacked Paris, it was really without the King’s blessings, as he was still
locked in his fruitless negotiations with his cousin. She scoffed at him and
his treaties as nonsense. She was right, but now she had to learn to practice
another Christian virtue; obedience to the king. (Many popular generals have had to go through
this) She was expected to step back and allow the two cousins to work things
out, in excruciating, peaceful solutions which always require compromise and time-consuming
negotiations. It was going to be a test of everyone’s patience.
They were in
such a stand-off and the cowardly King blinked. He found it easier to stand up
to Jehanne. After she was badly wounded,
he saw his opportunity to neutralize her and sent his henchmen in the night to
burn Jehanne’s bridges, ones she had built to facilitate her next attack. In her mind, she was still in the heat of the
battle for the liberation of Paris and ultimate victory the next morning. Instead they were all called home.
The Maid knew
that Charles was reluctant, but she and her army had always had to move on and
fight in spite of his trepidation. They were all accustomed to doing what they
thought was right… or at least what Jehanne wanted to do, given direction from
those voices… She had felt it was obvious and inevitable, and wanted to take
advantage of the gathered army, which was eager to follow her into the gates of
Hell, or Paris, whichever came first. The voices were silent and thus had been
left behind.
Jehanne was
learning things about her God and her faith, about acting in obedience to His
Will as opposed to acting out of human reason. And to her great peril she was
learning after the fact. This always spells disaster for any believer.
For most
young people, this kind of lesson has minor consequences. It is easy to run off
and leave God. And thank goodness it is just as easy to search Him out. But
Jehanne was leading a whole country.
Even a single week of bad miscalculations or judgments had life-changing
repercussions. Her mistakes turned out to be the signal for the end of her
magic carpet ride.
Suddenly her
letter to the Duke of Burgundy became evidence of several things which, with her precious King Charles’
treachery, would embolden the other side. Jehanne
could be wrong. Jehanne could fail. Her letters had become empty threats;
her barkings at the moat were a hollow bluff. God was not really on her side. Jehanne
was not invulnerable. All of these combined mixed signals from Charles, Jehanne
and her presumptuous letters all added up to the appearance of confusion and
weakness.
Soon the
Duke of Burgundy strengthened his bets with the English. His negotiations with
Charles had just given him time to strengthen his hold on Paris, and now they
had embarrassed Jehanne. And the Burgundians were no longer afraid of her. Even
Charles did not back her anymore. Paris was safe.
The tides,
at least temporarily had turned. Charles was obviously a fool and could be easily strung along to avoid
conflict. The Burgundians began to seduce the unscrupulous little king and
convince him to send his army home and to release his attack dog to her own
devices. And they would take care of the rest.
Unfortunately,
the implications concerning these false prophecies, so quickly revealed, were
far more significant than a military general making a forgivable error. Jehanne depended mostly on her Faith and
God’s power to maintain success. It was obvious, at least for the time being,
that these elements were missing.
But a true prophet of God cannot be wrong. Jehanne, out of youth and fear and maybe a
little arrogance, had become a false prophet and the enemy had read her mail
and knew it.
When Jehanne
got through threatening her adversaries, she even began to write problem sects
outside of France! One letter she dictated to her friar was sent to the cult
known as the “Hussites” in Bohemia. She pronounced them heretics and accused
them of destroying true religion and worship. Her solution? She would come
herself if necessary to “remove their madness and foul superstition,” either
taking away their heresy or their lives. Jehanne was on a tear. Little could
she have known that others were also working on this spiritual sect. A special English force gathered specifically
to put down the Hussites had been ironically diverted and re-enforced Paris
during her historic defeat. It is safe to assume that they went on to do just
that, after quelling her attacks. But she had presumed herself as the sword of
the Lord and was taking on evil-doers everywhere, probably on the
recommendation of her well-meaning priest. This kind of assumption of marshal authority
was bound to create problems for all kingdoms and churches in Europe, if she
had been allowed to continue her own private, Holy War. We can forgive her zeal
because of her youth, but we can also understand why she had lost “IT.”
One of the
last correct instructions Jehanne supposedly received from her
saints Catherine and Margaret had to have been an emotional blow to an eighteen
year old girl. She had fought bravely,
effectively, super humanly for her country for a year, most of the time knowing
that one year was all the time she would have. Then they appeared to her and
told her she was soon to be apprehended.
She was not to take it hard, and she was to keep the faith. Each day she
went out into battle, with less and less support, knowing it might be her last. She told her men, right before her attempt to fend of the Burgundians at Compiegne: "My good friends and my dear children, I tell you of a surety, there is a man who has sold me; I am betrayed, and shall soon be given up to death. Pray to God for me I beseach you; For I shall no longer be able to serve my King or the noble realm of France."
Jehanne later told her inquisitors she had asked to know when this was to
happen, as she would know not to go out on that day! Finally she was
cornered and captured. Her time was up. Historians have never been particularly
intrigued by the itineraries of Regnault Chartres, the Archbishop of Rheims, her probable betrayer, or of the man who captured her, John of
Luxembourg. He was the Burgundian captain, who had recently been in conference with the Archbishiop. Luxembourg was in charge
of the men who tore her off of her horse and ripped her flag out of her hands,
after being almost abandoned in the field, the drawbridge to Compiegne raised,
sealing her fate. If this turn of events was not suspicious enough, Luxembourg
had been in conference with Charles VII just days before, making inroads for a
truce and assuring promises to keep the peace. And nothing would shut down the
French resistance better than capturing the Maid. Receiving no opposition, Luxembourg, in many ways took over custody of Jehanne for the rest of her natural life. It appears that Valois family interests had begun to supersede the
civil war, French unity or sovereignty, as the two sides worked together to
cage Jehanne.
The very
Archbishop of Rheims, Regnault de
Chartres, who accommodated Jehanne by a swift and seamless Sacring of
Charles, had immediately gone into those clandestine peace talks with the Duke
of Burgundy, which effectively had pulled the rug out from under the Maid,
which ultimately made her threats null and void. And yet he was also one of those who advised
her to engage in the area crawling with Burgundian patrols, led by Luxembourg.
As soon as she was captured, Chartres sent out swift disclaimers, Jehanne was a
fallen miscreant; “God had suffered that Joan the Maid be taken because she had puffed herself up with
pride, and because of the rich garments which she had adopted, and because
she had not done what God had commanded her, but had done her own will.”
How amazing,
this archbishop, to suddenly know the spiritual or moral failures of someone of
such personal power and ability, whose mission or soul he could never have
known or understood, and to speak for God as to her fall from Grace. But he was spot on! Or did Chartres know a
great deal about Jehanne that we could not imagine? Had he seen some private
script? Was everything, from the manipulations of the Burgundians to her
ultimate capture going according to some incredible plan? Was it God, or the
Church running this show?
But it was Jehanne
who had brought the leadership of France together! Right? In a few more years
it would be official and forever. But
Jehanne’s usefulness had come to its seemingly premature end. And the
archbishop was ready with a shameless reversal and a condemning explanation.
Jehanne spent
over six months incarcerated in various places in Burgundy, sometimes trying to escape, and ended up
being kept in the top of a stone tower at John of Luxembourg’s castle, known as
Beaurevoir, until her sale to the English could be completed. Bored and
restless, she begged her voices to help her escape, but they insisted she would not be delivered until she had been
brought before the King of England himself. But Jehanne had heard that the
citizens of Compiegne were about to be ravaged, and decided she would try to
jump from the tower and take her chances. If she lived, she would go to their
aid.
Her voices forbid it. She argued for awhile and then went
ahead anyway, anything to avoid being taken away by the English. Miraculously,
Jehanne survived the fall, estimated to be at least fifty feet, but she was
badly hurt and knocked unconscious. When she awoke, she was mortified to still
find herself there, ALIVE and ashamed and depressed, she refused to eat. Later
she said Saint Catherine instructed her to pray for forgiveness, and comforted
her that Compiegne would be spared by
St. Martin’s Day, and the people there would be safe, so she relaxed and
once again began to take nourishment.
And in
another spiritual enigma, when Jehanne suffered a concussion, it seems her
voices were a little dizzy as well…
One wonders
why the voices, who knew her passions, had not told her about the relief for
Compiegne beforehand.
And even more inconsistent is the idea that Saint Catherine would be
misinformed, or not omniscient, as she told Jehanne a lie. Jehanne would never knowingly
see the King of England, as far as we know from all the records. It is true that the King was just a child, and
his Regent did make an appearance at the trial. If details are not important,
and generalities acceptable, then the “Voices” were close enough. But if
Jehanne’s rebellion against the voices had caused her grief, it only got worse.
By making so
many extraordinary attempts to escape, Jehanne established herself as “a
runner,” forcing her captors to utilize harsh chains and shackles to restrain
her. That jump from the tower cost her many days of discomfort, dragging
chains, tied to a timber in the secular prison in Rouen.
But the jump
also proved that she was no longer obeying her voices, whoever they were. At
Paris she acted without their guidance and failed. Now she had acted in
disobedience to them. We have to wonder if her letter to the Duke of Burgundy,
which seemed to expose her as a phony, had been written in what Christians call
“the flesh.” Jehanne was too young and
impetuous to realize she had stepped outside of God’s protective Grace, and
become a free agent on her own, and was about to learn the hard way. This too, is the way God works.
Other than
these threats in her letter to the Duke of Burgundy, I have only been able to
ferret out a few possible “failed” prophesies made by Jehanne. Most of these were
after her capture and where she was under interrogation and her life was being
threatened daily, and she said things that she may have believed, but had not
been spoken to her by any authority other than her own human desires. And some
things were obviously just intentional nonsense to frustrate her enemies.
The one word
from her voices that haunts me most is her assurance to the clerics at her
trial that they had promised her that God
would come to her aid… and later she claimed that they reassured her and
promised she would somehow be rescued.
The word they actually used was DELIVERED. What might that have meant?
By the time
these statements had been made, she had been chained, half-starved, roughed up,
and accused of terrible crimes repeatedly for weeks upon end. The interrogators
were determined to break her spirit and get confessions out of her, to justify
the end that was predetermined for her.
I do not think it would be fair to compare the statements she made under
these circumstances to the ones made when she was free and still on that “magic
carpet ride” across France. She was
hammered by six dozen of the most educated, powerful men in northern France, the
brightest minds of the day from The University of Paris, the most desperate
politicians trying to appease the angry English throne. And Jehanne was appropriately
coy, belligerent, mentally combative, and sometimes she made things up to
please them, or to drive them crazy. Determined not to ever tell them her
deepest secrets, she played mind games with the Bishop and his henchmen. It was
a mouse pulling the cat’s whisker. She was just nineteen years old. It was terrible
judgment, albeit a show of monumental faith, but it was no shame for her to
misspeak under such pressure.
And yet, we
do not know, since we cannot imagine those voices or their intent, what exactly
“aid” and “deliverance” might have meant. When it came to her decorum and how
it has stood up over the centuries, they came through up until the very end. Still, being burned at the stake seems a
flat contradiction to the promises she clung to.
Certainly
history has placed Jehanne at the top of a short list of historic, valiant, noble
defendants; denied counsel, representing herself, arguing her merits before a
trial judged by her mortal enemies. It was never intended to be justice. The
rotten King of France, the treacherous Burgundians, the vindictive clerics, by
now we are accustomed to their unconscionable behavior… but Saints? One cannot
help but feel that at the very least her voices not only lied to her, they gave
her false comfort, or cruelly let her down. Everybody, even Celestial Spirits used and then lied to Jehanne.
This is enough to make a person give up on the Universe!
Instead, I
must backtrack, and find the real culprit, or change my belief system.
Click below to go to Part IV
http://russellcushman.blogspot.com/p/part-iv-untangling-web-viii-never-blame.html
Click below to go to Part IV
http://russellcushman.blogspot.com/p/part-iv-untangling-web-viii-never-blame.html
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