Joan of Arc and her commentatorsJoan of Arc is one of the great figures of France, that stands in history as a huge problem, and at the same time as a living voice against disbelief. It is worth noting that in this time of skepticism, it is the most obstinate adversaries of the marvelous who strive to exalt the memory of this almost legendary heroine; obliged to investigate this life full of mysteries, they are forced to recognize the existence of facts that the sole laws of matter cannot explain, because if we remove these facts, Joan of Arc is no more than a courageous woman, as we see many. It is probably not without a reason of convenience that public attention is being drawn to this subject at this time; it is a means, like any other, to pave the way for new ideas.
Joan of Arc is neither a problem nor a mystery to the Spiritists; it is an eminent model of almost all mediumistic faculties, whose effects, like a host of other phenomena, are explained by the principles of the doctrine, without any need to seek the cause in the supernatural. She is the brilliant confirmation of Spiritism, of which she was one of the most eminent precursors, not by her teachings, but by the facts, as much as by her virtues that denote in her a superior Spirit.
We propose to do a special study on this subject, as soon as our work allows us; in the meantime, it is useful to know the way in which her faculties are considered by her commentators. The following article is taken from the Propagateur de Lille, August 17th, 1867:
Our readers will undoubtedly remember that this year, on the celebration of the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Orleans, Father Freppel asked, with a humble and generous subtleness, for the canonization of our Joan of Arc. We are reading today, in the Library of the École des Chartes, an excellent article by Mr. Natalis de Wailly, member of the Académie des Inscriptions, about Joan of Arc, giving his conclusions and those of true science, on the supernatural history of the one who was, at the same time, a heroine of the Church and of France. Mr. de Wailly's arguments are well suited to encourage the hopes of Father Freppel and ours. Léon GAUTIER (Monde)."
There aren’t many historical figures that were, more than Joan of Arc, exposed to the contradiction of contemporaries and posterity; there is none, however, whose life is simpler or better known.
Suddenly emerging from obscurity, she appears on the stage only to fulfill a marvelous role that immediately attracts everyone's attention. She is a young girl, skilled only at weaving and sewing, who claims to be sent from God to defeat the enemies of France. At first, she only has a small number of devoted followers who believe her word; the skillful are suspicious and stand in the way: they finally give in, and Joan of Arc can win the victories she had predicted. Soon she drags to Reims an incredulous and ungrateful king, who betrays her when she is preparing to take Paris, who abandons her when she falls prisoner in the hands of the English, who does not even try to protest or proclaim her innocent when she will expire for him. On the day of her death, therefore, there weren’t only enemies that declared her apostate, idolatrous, shameless, or faithful friends that venerated her as a saint; there were also ungrateful people that forgot her, not to mention the indifferent who did not care about her, and clever people who boasted of never having believed in her mission or of having half believed only.
All these contradictions, amid which Joan of Arc had to live and die, survived her, and accompanied her through the centuries. Between the shameful poem of Voltaire and the eloquent history of Mr. Wallon, the most diverse opinions were produced; and if everyone agrees today to respect this great memory, we can say that under the common admiration there are still deep disagreements. Anyone who reads or writes the story of Joan of Arc sees a problem standing in front of him, that modern criticism does not like to handle, but that imposes itself as a necessity. The problem is the supernatural character that manifests itself in the whole of this extraordinary life, and more especially in certain particular facts.
Yes, the question of the miracle inevitably comes up in the life of Joan of Arc; it has embarrassed more than one writer and often elicited strange responses. Mr. Wallon rightly thought that the first duty of a historian of Joan of Arc was not to elude this difficulty: he tackles it head on and explains it by the miraculous intervention of God. I will try to show that this solution is perfectly in accordance with the rules of historical criticism.
The metaphysical proofs on which the possibility of a miracle can be based, escape or displease certain minds; but history does not have to make these proofs. Its mission is not to establish theories; it is to attest facts, and to register all those that seem to be true. That a miraculous or inexplicable fact must be verified with more attention, no one will dispute it; therefore, also this same fact, more carefully verified than the others, in a way acquires a greater degree of certainty. To reason otherwise is to violate all the rules of criticism, and inappropriately transport the prejudices of metaphysics into history. There is no argument against the possibility of the miracle that dismisses the examination of the historical proofs of a miraculous fact, and admitting them, when they are such to produce conviction in a man of good sense and good faith. Later we will have the right to seek an explanation for this fact that satisfies this or that scientific system; but first of all, and whatever happens, the existence of the fact must be recognized, when it rests on proofs that satisfy the rules of historical criticism.
Are there, or are there not, facts of this nature, in the story of Joan of Arc? This question was discussed and discussed by a scholar who preceded Mr. Wallon, and who has acquired undeniable authority in this matter. If I am quoting here Mr. Quicherat, in preference to M. Wallon, it is not only because one has established the facts, that I wish to recall, before the other; it is also because he set out to establish them without claiming to explain them, so that his criticism, independent of any preconceived system, was limited to laying down premises of which he did not even want to foresee the conclusions.
“It is clear,” he said, “that the curious will want to go further, and reason about a cause whose effects it will not be enough for them to admire. Theologians, psychologists, physiologists, I have no solution to indicate to them. May they find, if they can, each one from their point of view, the elements of an appreciation that defies any contradictor. The only thing that I feel capable of doing, in the direction in which such research will be carried out, is to present, in their most precise form, the peculiarities of Joan of Arc's life, that seem to be outside the circle of human faculties.
The most important particularity, the one that dominates all the others, is the fact of the voices that she heard several times a day, that called out to her or answered her, whose pitches she distinguished, relating them especially to Saint Michael, to Saint Catherine and to Saint Marguerite. At the same time a bright light appeared, in which she saw the faces of her interlocutors: "I see them with the eyes of my body," she said to her judges, "as well as I see you." Yes, she maintained with unwavering firmness that God was advising her through saints and angels. For a moment, she contradicted herself, she weakened before the fear of torture; but she wept for her weakness and publicly confessed; her last cry in the flames was that her voices had not deceived her and that her revelations were from God. We must, therefore, conclude with Mr. Quicherat that “on this point, the most severe criticism has no suspicion to raise against her good faith." The fact once noted, how did certain scientists explain it? In two ways: either by madness, or by simple hallucination. What does Mr. Quicherat say about it? That he foresees great dangers for those who will want to classify the fact of the Maid among pathological cases.
But, he adds, whether science finds its account or not, it will nevertheless be necessary to admit the visions, and, as I will show it, strange perceptions of mind resulting from these visions.
What are these strange perceptions of mind? These are revelations that enabled Joan sometimes to know the most secret thoughts of certain people, sometimes to perceive objects beyond the reach of her senses, sometimes to discern and announce the future.
Mr. Quicherat cites, for each of these three kinds of revelations, an example based on such solid foundations that one cannot, he says, reject it without rejecting the very foundation of history.
In the first place, Joan reveals to Charles VII a secret known to God and to him, the only way she had to force the belief of that suspicious prince.
Then, being in Tours, she discerned that there was, between Loches and Chinon, in the church of Saint-Catherine of Fierbois, sunk to a certain depth near the altar, a rusty sword marked with five crosses. The sword was found, and her accusers later charged her that she had heard from hearsay that the weapon was there or had it put there herself.
“I feel," said Mr. Quicherat on this subject, "how strong such an interpretation will appear, in a time like ours; how weak, on the contrary, are the fragments of interrogation that I put in opposition; but when you have the whole process in front of you, and you can see how the accused exposed her conscience, then it is her testimony that is strong, and the interpretation of the reasoners that is weak.”
I finally let Mr. Quicherat himself tell one of Joan of Arc's predictions:
In one of her first conversations with Charles VII, she announced to him that by operating the liberation of Orleans, she would be injured, but without being incapacitated to act; her two saints had told her so, and the event proved to her that they had not deceived her. She confesses this in her fourth interrogation. We would be reduced to this testimony, that skepticism, without questioning its good faith, could attribute its saying to an illusion of memory. But what shows that she truly predicted her injury is that she got it on May 7th, 1429, and that on April 12th, a Flemish ambassador who was in France, wrote a letter to the Brabant government in which it was reported, not only the prophecy, but the way it would be fulfilled. Joan had her shoulder pierced with a crossbow when attacking Fort des Tourelles, and the Flemish envoy had written: She must be wounded in a single stroke in a fight in front of Orleans, but she will not die. The passage of his letter was logged in the registers of the Brussels Chamber of Accounts.
One of the scholars whose opinion I recalled earlier, the one who makes Joan of Arc a hallucinated rather than a madwoman, does not dispute her predictions, and he attributes them "to a kind of sensitive impressionability, to a radiation of the nervous force whose laws are not yet known.”
Are we certain that these laws exist, and that they should never be known? While they are not, isn’t that better to frankly admit his ignorance than to offer such explanations? Is every hypothesis good when it comes to denying the action of Providence, and does disbelief dismisses any reasoning? Should we not say to ourselves that, since the beginning of time, the vast majority of men have agreed to believe that there is a personal God who, after having created the world, directs it and manifests himself when he pleases by extraordinary signs? If we silenced our pride for a moment, wouldn't we hear this concert of all races and all generations? The marvelous thing is that one can have such a strong faith in oneself, when speaking on behalf of a science, that is the most uncertain and the most variable of all, of a science whose champions do not cease to contradict each other, whose systems are dying and reborn like fashion, without experience ever having been able to ruin or permanently establish a single one. I would gladly say to these doctors in pathology: If you encounter illnesses like that of Joan of Arc, be careful not to cure them; rather, try to get them to become contagious.
Better inspired, Mr. Wallon did not claim to know Joan of Arc better than she knew herself. Placed in front of the sincerest of the witnesses, he lent her an attentive ear and granted her complete confidence. This mixture of good sense and elevation, of simplicity and grandeur, this superhuman courage, heightened still further by the short failings of nature, appeared to him not as symptoms of madness or hallucination, but as striking signs of heroism and holiness. There, and not elsewhere, was the right review; it follows that, in seeking the truth, he also found eloquence, and surpassed all those that had preceded him in this path. He deserves to be placed ahead of those writers of whom Mr. Quicherat has said excellently: “They restored Joan as whole as they could, and the more they were concerned with reproducing her originality, the more they found the secret of her greatness.”
Mr. Quicherat will find it quite natural that I borrow his words to characterize a success to which he has contributed more than anyone; for if he did not agree to write the story of Joan of Arc himself, from now on it is impossible to undertake it without resourcing to his works. Mr. Wallon, in particular, derived immense benefit from it, almost never having anything to modify either in the texts collected by the publisher, or in its conclusions. However, he did not accept them without control. That is how he points out to an involuntary omission that has been used by a writer who leans more towards hallucination than the inspiration of Joan of Arc. We read on page 216 of the Trial (volume I) that Joan of Arc was fasting the day she heard the angel's voice for the first time, but that she had not fasted the previous day. On page 52, on the contrary, Mr. Quicherat had printed: “et ipsa Johanna jejunaverat die præcedenti.” By deleting on page 216 the negation that is missing on page 52, we had two consecutive fasting that seemed a sufficient cause of hallucination. The manuscript does not lend itself to this hypothesis; Mr. Wallon noted that Mr. Quicherat's usual accuracy is lacking here, and that we should read, on page 52, no jejunaverat.
The only slightly serious disagreement that I see between the two authors is when they assess the formal errors reported at the trial. Mr. Quicherat maintains that Pierre Cauchon was too clever to commit illegalities, and Mr. Wallon believes him to be too passionate to have been able to defend himself against them. I am not able to resolve this question; I will only point out that it is basically of little importance, since both sides agree on the iniquity of the judge and the innocence of the victim.
I find Mr. Wallon affirming with Mr. Quicherat, contrary to an already old opinion and that still has partisans, that once Charles VII was crowned in Reims, Joan of Arc had not yet accomplished her whole mission; for she had announced her commitment to expel the English. I deliberately leave aside the freedom of the Duke of Orleans because it is a point on which his declarations are not so explicit. But with regard to the expulsion of the English, we have the very letter that she addressed to them on March 22nd, 1429: "I came from God, the king of heaven, body for body, to kick you out of France.” Her short failings can do nothing against this authentic text, that she has moreover confirmed on many occasions, until she sanctifies it at the stake, with a supreme protest. I cannot, therefore, understand that a doubt may exist, especially in the minds of those who believe in the inspiration of Joan of Arc. How can they know her mission, if not through her? And why deny her here the credit they grant her elsewhere?
She failed, it will be said, therefore she had no mission from God to undertake it. Such was, in fact, the sad thought that crossed the minds when she was found to be the prisoner of the English. But the pious Gerson, a few months before his death and the day after the freedom of Orleans, had in a way foreseen the setbacks after the victory, not as a reproach to Joan of Arc, but as a punishment for the ungrateful people who she came to defend. He wrote on May 14th, 1529:
“Even if (God forbid!) she would be deceived in her hope and in ours, it should not be concluded that what she did came from the evil spirit and not from God; but rather to attack our ingratitude and the righteous judgment of God, although secret ... because God, without changing his counsel, changes the judgment according to the merits.
Here again, Mr. Wallon has made good criticism: he does not divide Joan of Arc's testimonies, he accepts them all and declares them sincere, even when they no longer seem to be prophetic. I add that he fully justifies them by showing that if she had a mission to drive out the English, she did not promise to carry out everything by herself, but that she began the work and predicted its outcome. Mr. Wallon felt it well; to glorify her in her triumphs to deny her in her passion is not to understand Joan of Arc.
We, especially, who know the outcome of this marvelous drama, we who know that the English were indeed driven from the kingdom and the crown of Reims strengthened on Charles VII’s head, we must believe, with Mr. Wallon, that God never ceased to inspire the one whose greatness it pleased him to bless by trial and whose holiness it pleased him to bless by martyrdom.
N. de Wailly.”
Our correspondent in Antwerp, who kindly sent us the above article, has attached the following note, from his personal research, on the trial of Joan of Arc:
“Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, and an inquisitor named Lemaire, followed by sixty assistants, were the judges of Joan. Her trial was instructed by the mysterious and barbaric forms of the Inquisition, that had sworn her downfall. She wanted to submit to the judgment of the Pope and the Council of Basel, but the bishop opposed it. A priest, L'Oyseleur, deceived her by abusing confession, and gave her fatal advices. Following intrigues of all kinds, she was condemned in 1431, to be burnt alive, "as a liar, pernicious, abuser of the people, diviner, blasphemer of God, unbeliever in the faith of Jesus Christ, boast, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invocator of the devils, systematic and heretic.
Pope Callistus III, in 1456, ordered the rehabilitation of Joan by an ecclesiastical commission, and it was declared, by a solemn decree, that Joan had died a martyr for the defense of her religion, her country and her King. The Pope would have liked to canonize her, but his courage did not go so far.
Pierre Cauchon died suddenly in 1443, shaving his beard; he was excommunicated; his body was dug up and dumped in the street."
