Saint Revisited

Late in the afternoon of May 23, 1430, a Burgundian archer in the service of the English captured a hard-fighting soldier of the King of France and took his prisoner back to camp. Had he captured half the French army, his commanders would have been no happier. Stripped of armor, the soldier was seen to be a handsome, well-knit girl of 18 with short-cropped dark hair. For Jeannette d'Arc of Domremy, who had given Charles VII his throne and whipped his English enemies with astonishing consistency, there now began one of the classic heresy trials of Christian history. That trial, held in Rouen (Feb. 21-May 31, 1431) under Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, is now a familiar story. Far less familiar is a second trial that, 19 years later, resurrected the ashes of the burnt heretic and transformed her into a heroine.

It was this second trial, in which Joan's former judges and their associates were themselves, in effect, the accused--though many of them were dead by then " --that made possible her sure but slow acceptance as a Roman Catholic saint (she was finally canonized in 1920). The rehabilitation trial is now again brought to light by Regine Pernoud, chief archivist of the Museum of French History (The Retrial of Joan of Arc; Harcourt, Brace; $4.75). The record, on the whole, backs popular opinion, which regards the judges who sent Joan to the stake as villains. It speaks of English bribery and pressure, Joan's imprisonment in a secular rather than an ecclesiastical prison, her lack of counsel, her inability to get an appeal through to Pope Eugene IV. The Rouen trial was full of inconsistencies and irregularities, e.g., after Joan made her famous "abjuration" renouncing her "errors," she was sentenced to life imprisonment, and what actually brought her to the stake was her return to men's clothes after she had promised to give them up. Though condemned as a "relapsed heretic," she was permitted to receive the last sacraments, and at the very end, the secular judges failed to pass formal judgment.

Yet the main interest of this study lies not in its evidence against Joan's judges, but in the evidence it presents on the character of a remarkable saint.

The Witnesses. The rehabilitation tribunal (formed partly on the instigation of Charles VII, who did not like to have it said that he had received his crown from a heretic) moved from place to place along the route that Joan herself had followed. Everywhere, it examined witnesses. Many of them were obviously as biased for her as her tormentors two decades before had been against her. Nevertheless, the record of their testimony brings together in a fascinating way the great and little figures who came in contact with Joan, and they tell about her in their own words, perhaps edited by court scribes, but unfiltered by historians or playwrights.

PERRIN DRAPPIER, beadle of Domremy: "Joan the Maid was a good girl, chaste, simple, and modest, all the years of her youth . . . When I did not ring for complin, Joan used to ask me why and scold me . . . She even promised me a present of wool if I would be regular in ringing..."

JEAN DE METZ, squire, one of the men who accompanied her to Chinon to see the Dauphin (later Charles VII): "I said to her, 'What are you doing here, my dear?' . . . and the Maid answered me: 'Before mid-Lent I must be with the King, even if I have to wear my legs down to the knees. For there is no one on earth, be he king or duke or the King of Scotland's daughter or anyone else, who can restore the kingdom of France, and he will have no help except through me.' "

SEGUIN SEGUIN, Dominican friar and theologian: "I asked her what tongue her voice spoke, and she answered, 'A better tongue than you do.' And I asked her again whether she believed in God. She answered, 'Yes, more than you do.' "

SIMON BEAUCROIX, squire, one of her companions at arms: "She would never allow immoral women to come to the army and join the soldiers . . . She drove them away unless the soldiers were willing to take them for their wives."

THIBAULT D'ARMAGNAC, knight: "In disposing an army for battle and haranguing the soldiers, she behaved like the most experienced captain in all the world."

JEAN, COUNT OF DUNOIS, Bastard of Orleans: "When we were in her company, we had no wish or desire to approach or have intercourse with women. That seems to me to be almost a miracle."

HAIMOND DE MACY, knight: "I tried several times playfully to touch her breasts . . . She pushed me off with all her might. She was indeed a modest woman."

ISAMBART DE LA PIERRE, Dominican friar: "The executioner . . . said to me that he greatly feared he was damned, for he had burnt a saint."

The Verdict. The tribunal, six years after the first testimony was taken, accomplished what it had set out to do: it formally found that Joan of Arc had been wrongfully condemned. And the record noted with satisfaction the evil fate that had befallen three of the chief figures in her trial: Bishop Cauchon died suddenly while a barber was trimming his beard, Canon Jean d'Estivet, the "promoter," i.e., prosecutor, disappeared mysteriously and his body was discovered in a gutter, and their right-hand man, Nicolas Midy, was stricken with leprosy.

Yet, while the tribunal cleared Joan of the charges of heresy and diabolic inspiration, it could not erase the fact that she was a devilish nuisance. She patronized kings and she lectured bishops. She set her private visions above the judgment of ecclesiastics. The record suggests that, very likely, even without English pressure and unjust judges, the fire would have been her inevitable end. For, unfortunately, saints have a way of being insufferable until they are good and dead.

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