Part 3

However, Jeanne was put on her trial for witchcraft, and after a long and apparently hesitating process--for there had been grave doubts raised as to the legality of the whole thing--she was condemned to death. Just before the Bishop had finished his reading of the sentence she burst into tears and recanted, when she really understood that they were even then preparing the cart to take her to the stake. She said herself, in words which cannot possibly be misunderstood, that she recanted “for fear of the fire.”

The sentence of the court was then amended; instead of being burned she was to be held in prison on bread and water and to wear woman’s clothes. She herself thought that she was to be put into an ecclesiastical prison and be kept in the charge of women, but there is nothing to be found of this in the official report of the first trial. As she had been wearing men’s clothes by direct command of God her sin in recanting began to loom enormous before her during the night; she had forsaken her God even as Peter had forsaken Jesus Christ in the hour of his need, and hell-fire would be her portion--a fire ten thousand times worse than anything that the executioner could devise for her. She got up in the morning and threw aside the pretty dress which the Duchess of Bedford had procured for her--all women loved Jeanne d’Arc--and put on her war-worn suit of male clothing. The English soldiers who guarded her immediately spread abroad the bruit that Jeanne had relapsed, and she was brought to trial for this contumacious offence against the Holy Church. The second trial was short and to the point; she tried to show that her jailers had not kept faith with her, but her pleadings were brushed aside, and finally she gave the _responsio mortifera_--the fatal answer--which legalized the long attempts to murder her. Thus spoke she: “God hath sent me word by St. Catherine and St. Margaret of the great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented to abjure and save my life! I have damned myself to save my life! Before last Thursday my Voices did indeed tell me what I should do and what I did then on that day. When I was on the scaffold on Thursday my Voices said to me: ‘Answer him boldly, this preacher!’ And in truth he is a false preacher; he reproached me with many things I never did. If I said that God had not sent me I should damn myself, for it is true that God has sent me; my Voices have said to me since Thursday: ‘Thou hast done great evil in declaring that what thou hast done was wrong.’ All I said and revoked I said for fear of the fire.”

To me this is the most poignant thing in the whole trial, which I have read with a frightful interest many times. It seems to bring home the pathos of the poor struggling child, and her blind faith in things which could not help her in her hour of sore distress.

Jules Quicherat published a very complete edition of the Trial in 1840, which has been the basis for all the accounts of Jeanne d’Arc that have appeared since. An English translation was published some years ago which professed to be complete and to omit nothing of importance. But this work was edited in a fashion so vehemently on Jeanne’s side, with no apparent attempt to ascertain the exact truth of the judgments, that I ventured to compare it with Quicherat, and I have found some omissions which to the translator, as a layman, may have seemed unimportant, but which, to a doctor, seem of absolutely vital importance in considering the truth about the Maid. These omissions are marked in the English by a row of three dots, which might be considered to mark an omission,--but on the other hand might not. Probably the translator considered them too indecent, too earthly, too physiological, to be introduced in connexion with the Maid of God. But Jeanne had a body, which was subject to the same peculiarities and abnormalities as the bodies of other people; and upon the peculiarities of her physiology depended the peculiarities of her mind.

Jean d’Aulon, her steward and loyal admirer, said definitely in the Rehabilitation Trial, in 1456:--

“Qu’il oy dire a plusiers femmes, qui ladicte Pucelle ont veue par plusiers foiz nues, et sceue de ses secretz, que oncques n’avoit eu la secret maladie de femmes et que jamais nul n’en peut rien cognoistre ou appercevoir par ses habillements, ne aultrement.”

I leave this unpleasantly frank statement in the original Old French, merely remarking that it means that Jeanne never menstruated. D’Aulon must have had plenty of opportunities for knowing this, in his position as steward of her household in the field. He guards himself from innuendo by saying that several women had told him. Jeanne’s failing to become mature must have been the topic of amazed conversation among all the women of her neighbourhood, and no doubt she herself took it as a sign from God that she was to remain virgin. It is especially significant that she first heard her Voices when she was about thirteen years of age, at the very time that she should have begun to menstruate; and that at first they did not come regularly, but came at intervals, just as menstruation itself often begins. Some months later she was informed by the Voices that she was to remain virgin, and thereby would she save France, in accordance with a prophecy that a woman should ruin France, and a virgin should save it. Is it not probable that the idea of virginity must have been growing in her mind from the time when she first realized that she was not to be as other women? Probably the delusion as to the Voices first began as a sort of vicarious menstruation; probably it recurred when menstruation should have reappeared; we can put the idea of virginity into the jargon of psycho-analysis by saying that Jeanne had well-marked “repression of the sex-complex.” The mighty forces which should have manifested themselves in normal menstruation manifested themselves in her furious religious zeal and her Voices. Repression of the sex-complex is like locking up a giant in a cellar; sooner or later he may destroy the whole house. He ended by driving Jeanne d’Arc to the stake. That was a nobler fate than befalls some girls, whom the same giant drives to the streets; nobler, because Jeanne the peasant was of essentially noble stock. Her mother was Isabel Romée--the “Romed woman”--the woman who had had sufficient religious fervour to make the long and dangerous pilgrimage to Rome that she might acquire the merit of seeing the Holy Father; Jeanne herself made a still more dangerous pilgrimage, which has won for her the love of mankind at the cost of her bodily anguish. Madame her mother saved her own soul by her pilgrimage, and bore an heroic daughter; Jeanne saved France by her courage and devotion to her idea of God. And this would have been impossible had she not suffered from repression of the sex-complex and seen visions therefore.

Another remarkable piece of evidence has been omitted from the English translation. It was given by the Demoiselle Marguerite la Thoroulde, who had taken Jeanne to the baths and seen her unclothed. Madame la Thoroulde said, in the Latin translation of the Rehabilitation Trial which has survived: “Quod cum pluries vidit in balneo et stuphis [sweating-bath] et, ut percipere potuit, credit ipse fore virginem.”

That is to say, she saw her naked in the baths and could see that she was a virgin! What on earth did the good lady think that a virgin would look like? Did she think that because Jeanne did not look like a stout French matron she must therefore be a virgin? Or did she see a strong and boyish form, with little development of hips and bust, which she thought must be nothing else but that of a virgin? That is the explanation that occurs to me; and probably it also explains Jeanne’s idea that by wearing men’s clothes she would render herself less attractive to the mediæval soldiery among whom her lot was to be cast. An ordinary buxom young woman would certainly not be less attractive because she displayed her figure in doublet and hose; Rosalind is none the less winsome when she acts the boy; and I should have thought that Jeanne, by wearing men’s clothes, would simply have proclaimed to her male companions that she was a very woman. But if the idea be correct that she was shaped like a boy, with little feminine development, the whole mystery is at once solved. It is to be remembered that we know absolutely nothing about Jeanne’s appearance[4]; the only credible hint we have is that she had a gentle voice.

In the Rehabilitation Trial several of her companions in arms swore that she had had no sexual attraction for them. It is quaint to read the evidence of these respectable middle-aged gentlemen that in their hot and lusty youth they had once upon a time met at least one young girl after whom they had not lusted; they seem to consider that the fact proved that she must have come from God. Anatole France makes great play with them, but it would appear that his ingenuity is in this direction misplaced. Is it not possible that Jeanne was unattractive to men because she was immature--that she never became more than a child in mind and body? Even mediæval soldiery would not lust after a child, especially a child whom they firmly believed to have come straight from God! It must be remembered that to half of her world Jeanne was unspeakably sacred; to the other half she was undeniably a most frightful witch. Even the executioner would not imperil his immortal soul by touching her. It was the custom to spare a woman the anguish of the fire, by smothering her, or rendering her unconscious by suddenly compressing her carotids with a rope before the flames leaped around her. But Jeanne was far too wicked for anybody to touch in this merciful office; they had to let her die unaided; and afterwards, so wicked was her heart, they had to rescue it from the ashes and throw it into the Seine. Is it conceivable that men who thought thus would have ventured hell-fire by making love to her? Yet more--it is quite possible that she had no bodily charms whatever; we know nothing of her appearance. The story that she was charming and beautiful is simply sentimental legend. Indeed, it is difficult not to become sentimental over Jeanne d’Arc.

A noteworthy feature in her character was her Puritanism. She prohibited her soldiers from consorting with the prostitutes that followed the army; sometimes she even forced them to marry these women. Naturally the soldiers objected most strongly, and in the end this was one of the causes that led to her downfall. Jeanne used to run after the prohibited girls and strike them with the flat of her sword; in one case the girl was killed. In another the sword broke, and King Charles asked, very sensibly, “Would not a stick have done quite as well?” This is believed by some people to have been the very sword of Charles Martel which the priests had found for her at St. Catherine’s command, and naturally the soldiers, deprived of their female companions, wondered what sort of a holy sword could it have been which could not even stand the smiting of a prostitute? When people suffer from repression of the sex-complex the trouble may show itself either by constant indirect attempts to find favour in the eyes of individuals of the opposite sex, or sometimes by actually forbidding all sexual matters; Puritanism in sexual affairs is often an indication that all is not quite well with a woman’s subconscious mind; nor can one confine this generalization to one sex. It is not for one moment to be thought that Jeanne ever had the slightest idea of what was the matter with her; the whole of her delusions and Puritanism were to her quite conscious and real; the only thing that she did not know was that her delusions were entirely subjective--that her Voices had no existence outside her own mind. Her frantic belief in them led her to an heroic career and to the stake. She did not consciously repress her sex; Nature did that for her.

Women who never menstruate are not uncommon; most gynæcologists see a few. Though they are sometimes normal in their sexual feelings--sometimes indeed they are even nymphomaniacs or very nearly so--yet they seldom marry, for they know themselves to be sterile, and, after all, most women seem to know at the bottom of their hearts that the purpose of women is to produce children.

But there is still more of psychological interest to be gained from a careful reading of the first trial. It is possible to see how Jeanne’s unstable nervous system reacted to the long agony. We had better, in order to be fair, make quite certain why she was burned. These are the words uttered by the good Bishop of Beauvais as he sentenced her for the last time:--

“Thou hast been on the subject of thy pretended divine revelations and apparitions lying, seducing, pernicious, presumptuous, lightly believing, rash, superstitious, a divineress and blasphemer towards God and the Saints, a despiser of God Himself in His sacraments; a prevaricator of the Divine Law, of sacred doctrine and of ecclesiastical sanctions; seditious, cruel, apostate, schismatic, erring on many points of our Faith, and by these means rashly guilty towards God and Holy Church.”

This appalling fulmination, summed up, appears to mean--if it means anything--that she believed that she was under the direct command of God to wear man’s clothes. To this she could only answer that what she had done she had done by His direct orders.

Theologians have said that her answers at the trial were so clever that they must have been directly inspired; but it is difficult to see any sign of such cleverness. To me her character stands out absolutely clearly defined from the very beginning of the six weeks’ agony; she is a very simple, direct, and superstitious child struggling vainly in the meshes of a net spread for her by ecclesiastical politicians who were determined to sacrifice her to serve the ends of brutal masters. She had all a child’s simple cunning; when the Bishop asked her to repeat her Paternoster she answered that she would gladly do so if he himself would confess her. She thought that if he confessed her he might have pity on her, or, at least, that he would be bound to send her to Heaven, because she knew how great was the influence wielded by a Bishop; she thought that she might tempt him to hear her in the secrets of the confessional if she promised to repeat her Paternoster to him! Poor child--she little knew what was at the bottom of the trial.

She sometimes childishly boasted. When she was asked if she could sew, she answered that she feared no woman in Rouen at the sewing; just so might answer any immature girl of her years to-day. She sometimes childishly threatened; she told the Bishop that he was running a great risk in charging her. She had delusions of sight, smell, touch, and hearing. She said that the faces of Saints Catherine and Margaret were adorned with beautiful crowns, very rich and precious, that the saints smelled with a sweet savour, that she had kissed them, that they spoke to her.

There was a touch of epigram about the girl, too. In speaking of her banner at Rheims, she said: “It had been through the hardships--it were well that it should share the glory.” And again, when the judges asked her to what she attributed her success, she answered, “I said to my followers: ‘Go ye in boldly against the English,’ _and I went myself_.” The girl who said that could hardly have been a mere military _mascotte_. Yet, in admitting so much, one does not admit that she may have been a sort of Amazon. As the desperation of her position grew upon her she began to suffer more and more from her delusions; while she lay in her dungeon waiting for the fatal cart she told a young friar, Brother Martin Ladvenu, that her spirits came to her in great numbers and of the smallest size. When despair finally seized upon her she told “the venerable and discreet Maître Pierre Maurice, Professor of Theology,” that the angels really had appeared to her--good or bad, they really had appeared--in the form of very minute things[5]; that she now knew that they had deceived her. Her brain wearied by her long trial of strength with the Bishop, common sense re-asserted its sway, and she realized--the truth! Too late! When she was listening to her sermon on the scaffold in front of the fuel destined to consume her, she broke down and knelt at the preacher’s knees, weeping and praying until the English soldiers called out to ask if she meant to keep them there for their dinner; it is pleasing to know that one of them broke his lance into two pieces, which he tied into the form of a cross and held it up to her in the smoke that was already beginning to arise about her.

Her last thoughts we can never know; her last word was the blessed name of Jesus, which she repeated several times. In public--though she had told Pierre Maurice in private that she had “learned to know that her spirits had deceived her”--she always maintained that she had both seen and believed them because they came from God; her courage was amazing, both physical and moral. She was twice wounded, but she said that she always carried her standard so that she would never have to kill anybody--and that in truth she had never killed anybody.

Her extraordinary accomplishment was due to the unbounded superstition of the French common people, who at first believed in her implicitly; it was Napoleon, a French general, who said that in war the moral is to the spiritual as three is to one; our Lord said, “By faith ye shall move mountains”; and it must not be forgotten that she went to Orleans with powerful reinforcements which she herself estimated at about ten to twelve thousand men. This superstition of the French was more than equalled by the superstition of the English, who looked upon her as a most terrifying witch: one witness at the Rehabilitation Trial said that the English were a very superstitious nation, so they must have been pretty bad. Indeed, most of the witnesses at that trial seem to have been very superstitious; one must examine their evidence with care lest one suddenly finds that one is assisting at a miracle.

She seems to have been hot-tempered and emphatic in her speech, with a certain tang of rough humour such as would be natural in a peasant girl. A notary once questioned the truth of something she said at her trial; on inquiry it was found that she had been perfectly accurate; Jeanne “rejoiced, saying to Boisguillaume that if he made mistakes again she would pull his ears.” Once during the trial she was taken ill with vomiting, apparently caused by fish-poisoning, that followed after she had eaten of some carp sent her by the Bishop. Maître d’Estivet, the promoter of the trial, said to her, ‘Thou _paillarde_!’ (an abusive term), ‘thou hast been eating sprats and other unwholesomeness!’ She answered that she had not; and then she and d’Estivet exchanged many abusive words. The two doctors of medicine who treated her for this illness gave evidence, and it is pleasing to see that they seem to have been able to rationalize a trifle more about her than most of her contemporaries. But, taken all through, her evidence gives the impression of being exceedingly simple and straightforward--just the sort of thing to be expected from a child.

It is noteworthy that a great many witnesses at the Rehabilitation Trial swore that she was “simple.” Did they mean that she was half-witted? Probably not. More probably it was true that she always wanted to spare her enemies, when, in accordance with the custom of the Hundred Years’ War, she should rather have held them for ransom if they had been noble or slain them if they had been poor men. To the ordinary brutal mediæval soldiery such conduct would appear insane. Possibly, of course, the term “simple” might have been used in opposition to the term “gentle.”

May I be allowed to give a vignette of Jeanne going to the burning, compiled from the evidence of many onlookers given at the Rehabilitation Trial? She assumed no martyresque imperturbability; she did not hold her head high in the haughty belief that she was right and the rest of the world wrong, as a martyr should properly do. She wept bitterly as she walked to the fatal cart from the prison-doors; her head was shaven; she wore woman’s dress; her face was swollen and distorted, her eyes ran tears, her sobs shook her body, her wails moved the hearts of the onlookers. The French wept for sympathy, the English laughed for joy. It was a very human child who went to her death on May 30th, 1431. She was nineteen years of age--according to some accounts, twenty-one--and, unknown to herself, she had changed the face of history.

The Empress Theodora

This famous woman has been the subject of one of the bitterest controversies in history; and, while it is impossible to speak fully about her, it is certain that she was a woman of remarkable beauty, character, and historical position. For nearly a thousand years after her death she was looked upon as an ordinary--if unusually able--Byzantine princess, wife of Justinian the lawgiver, who was one of the ablest of the later Roman Emperors; but in 1623 the manuscript was discovered in the Vatican of a secret history, purporting to have been written by Procopius, which threw a new and amazing light on her career.

Procopius--or whoever wrote this most scurrilous history--states that the great Empress in early youth was an actress, daughter of a bear-keeper, and that she had sold tickets in the theatre; her youth had been disgustingly profligate: he narrates a series of stories concerning her which cannot be printed in modern English. The worst of these go to show that she was an ordinary type of Oriental prostitute, to whom the word “unnatural,” as applied to vice, had no meaning. The least discreditable is that the girl who was to be Empress had danced nearly naked on the stage--she is not the only girl who has done this, and not on the stage either. She had not even the distinction of being a good dancer, but acquired fame through the wild abandon and indecency with which she performed. At about the age of twenty she married--when she had already had a son--the grave and stately Justinian: “the man who had never been young,” who was so great and learned that it was well known that he could be seen of nights walking about the streets carrying his head in a tray like John the Baptist. When he fell a victim to Theodora’s wiles he was about forty years of age. The marriage was bitterly opposed by his mother and aunts, but they are said to have relented when they met her, and even had a special law passed to legalize the marriage of the heir to the throne with a woman of ignoble birth; and, after the death of Justin, Theodora duly succeeded to the leadership of the proudest court in Europe. This may be true; but it does not sound like the actions of a mother and old aunts. One would have thought that a convenient bowstring or sack in the Bosphorus would have been the more usual course.