635. Joan of Arc: For Fear of the Flames (Part 4)

0:10Henry, by the grace of God, King of France and England, to all who will see this present letter greeting. It is sufficiently notorious and well known how for some time past a woman calling herself Joan the Maid abandoned women's clothes and dressed and armed herself like a man, a thing against divine law and abominable to God, and condemned and forbidden by every law. She committed cruel murders and, as reported, seduced and abused simple people by trying to convince them that she was sent by God and knew heavenly secrets. While fostering these deceptions and engaging in hostilities against us and our people, she was captured, fully armed, by some of our loyal subjects, then brought to us as a prisoner.

1:02And because many have suspected and accused her of superstition, of spreading false dogmas, and of crimes of treason against divine majesty we have been urgently entreated by the reverend father our beloved and loyal counselor the bishop of bouvet to surrender joan to the reverend father for questioning and examination so that after gathering a proper assembly he can proceed against her according to the rules and regulations of divine and canon law so that was a proclamation issued on the 3rd of January 1431, and it was issued in the name of the nine-year-old king of France, Henri II, Henry II, who is better known in England as King Henry VI.

1:51Now, Henry had arrived in France in April 1429, and three months later, he had made a ceremonial entry into Rouen, where, unfortunately, tom henry had not impressed the locals had he so we are in a final episode about joan of arc and let's start with henry the sixth the hero of this story in many ways so he had arrived his little boy he arrives in rouen and the french sadly don't really take to him do they well so henry the sixth is one of the great losers of english history um and i'm afraid that that um that kind of trend of being a loser begins early because here he is he's nine years old he's arrived in Rouen.

2:31He does not impress people at all because the crowds have turned out to cheer him and all he does is complain that they're making too much noise. He then heads straight into the castle and basically refuses to leave it. And by early January, when that edict that you read out is issued, he is still there. He's this kind of nervous, very uncharismatic, effectively invisible little boy. And this is a huge problem for the English regime in France because they really need Henry to you know work a bit of the old royal magic to work the crowds all that kind of thing and Henry's simply refusing to play ball to be fair he's nine years old so I mean it is what people call a big ask yeah but but I think you either have that uh that sense for the for the stardust or you don't and Henry doesn't unlike his father Henry V who absolutely did so on the one hand you have Henry this nine-year-old little boy uh cowering in the castle now on the other hand you have a rival claimant to the throne of France don't you Charles VII from the house of Valois who for a few generations have been the royal dynasty of France and Charles VII having hitched his wagon to the star of Joan of Arc has been crowned king in the great cathedral at Grasse which is where the Valois kings are traditionally crowned and by doing that he has wormed his way into the hearts and minds of his French compatriots.

3:50And actually, this is a big kind of psychological blow in the struggle between these two characters for the French throne, isn't it? It is. And so the Duke of Bedford, who is Henry VI's regent in France, has decided, you know, there's nothing for it. We're going to have to have a coronation for Henry as well to try and blot out the memory of Charles VII's coronation. And this is why he has basically been brought to France. However, there's a problem with this plan because Reims is still under the control of Charles VII. So it's inaccessible to Henry VI. He can't go there and be crowned. And Paris, which is the only conceivable alternative location for coronation.

4:33I think Bedford feels it's in a very febrile state. Again, it's too risky at the moment to take Henry VI there. So the poor lad, I mean, he's useless, but you've got to feel for him. He's stuck in Rouen. It's an absolutely killing winter, completely bleak and freezing. And he's stuck there waiting for a coronation that it seems might never come. So, you know, all in all, it's very unfortunate. But this is not the only possible propaganda coup that the English have up their sleeves, is it? Because it's important to them basically to undermine the legitimacy of Charles VII. And if they can't get their own candidate into the cathedral to be crowned, One thing they can do is to cast doubt on Charles VII's coronation by basically saying the person who has arranged all this, the person who lies at the heart of his regime, is not privy to secrets from heaven through voices and angels, but basically is a witch, is a figure of darkness.

5:37And this person is, of course, Joan the Maid, who we heard about in the introduction, Joan of Arc, because she's now fallen into English hands. She has. She's been sold by a Burgundian nobleman to the English. And we heard at the end of the previous episode that she'd arrived in Rouen on the 23rd of December, 1430. And she had been handed over to the guy who is the current captain of the castle in Rouen. And this is a very formidable man, a guy who makes a very formidable jailer. He is Richard Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, and he had been a very close friend of Henry V's. Henry V wasn't a guy given to friendship, but he liked Warwick.

6:22And Warwick therefore feels a kind of personal responsibility, I think, to Henry VI, and had arrived in France essentially at the head of the young king's escort. And in the words of a contemporary, he was a man of impressive bearing, exceptional judgment, and great military experience. and as such he perfectly understands the urgent need to make an international spectacle of jones trial he knows that this has to be done on the the stage of not just france but of the whole of christendom but if that's going to happen he has to keep a tight leash on her because she's already tried to escape hasn't she twice and the second time if i remember correctly she jumped out of a 60 foot tower and basically only damaged her back or something got very badly concussed i mean yeah i'm not entirely sure and this is the middle ages so i'm not i don't know but warwick is not going to let anything like that happen on his watch so the moment joan has arrived in rouen she's taken straight to the city's castle which is the absolute nerve center of english rule not just in normandy but probably now by france because paris has become so unstable and of course it's the very place where Henry VI is staying but Joan's quarters are obviously much less luxurious than the king's.

7:45She is immured in a large cold unfurnished cell in one of the towers of the castle and it only has two very narrow arrow slits to let in the light so it's a very kind of grim place to be kept and in this cell she is shackled by her ankles to a huge wooden beam there are four English guards on rotation keeping watch over her day and night and Warwick forbids anyone to talk to her without permission so she you know she is absolutely not for instance getting any legal advice and the this point about legal advice is important of course because the English authorities from the outset are determined that she will go on trial she will be convicted and she will be put to death and this as we discussed last time is not purely a question of kind of cynical policy they genuinely believe that she is a witch and that she represents something diabolical don't they yeah i mean i think bedford especially does and and warwick does as well and this sense that they are dealing perhaps with satanic powers is one of the factors that has influenced them in agreeing to outsource legal proceedings to the ecclesiastical authorities.

9:06And specifically, as we heard in the edict that you read out from issued in the name of Henry VI, she is going to be transferred for trial to the Bishop of the Sea in which Joan had first been taken prisoner. So to quote that edict, our beloved and loyal Councillor, the Bishop of Beauvais. And this is a guy we've heard of before, Pierre Cauchon. So Pierre Cauchon is going to preside over this. It's important to say, isn't it? It's not a trial as we would understand it. You know, people are shouting, objection, Your Honour, and all of this kind of carry on. Yeah, it's no jury or anything like that.

9:42No, it is a, this is a, an ecclesiastical court and it is is literally an inquisition an investigation into suspected heresy and we'll talk us through some of the procedure because the procedure has been established over the last couple of centuries hasn't it and and people it's this isn't necessarily a show trial i mean people take this stuff very seriously yeah and there's a very precise format by now for inquisitions so the initial responsibility of the judges coach on is one they are also in due course going to recruit a local head of the Dominican prior to be the second judge. Their responsibility is clear.

10:20They have to establish that the person who is going to be sent to trial has a reputation so shocking, so pestiferous, that it positively demands to be investigated. And in the case of Joan, this is seen as being a very simple matter because she, by this point, has become easily the most famous woman in Christendom, perhaps, you know, the most famous person full stop. So to quote a German theologian, contemporary, such wonders Joan has performed that not just France, but every Christian kingdom stands amazed. So this trial is going to be massive news, whatever happens. But it also means that on the 9th of January, when Cochon indicts Joan as a woman of what he calls Marla Farmer, so notoriety, he can take it as read that everyone knows what she's done.

11:11He doesn't have to kind of adduce it. He doesn't have to justify it. And he draws up two particular counts of heretical behavior. The first is, to quote the charge sheet, that Joan had dared to perform, to speak, and to publicize many things contrary to the Catholic faith and injurious to its articles. Secondly, that utterly disregarding the honor due to the female sex, throwing off the bridle of modesty, and forgetting all female decency, she wore the disgraceful clothing of men a shocking and vile monstrosity and these two trials signal what over the course of jones trial are going to be the main focus of cochon's investigations so specifically the truth or otherwise of jones claims to have received direct communication from the heavens so in other words the validity or otherwise of her voices and secondly what cochon sees as her absolutely mulish insistence on wearing male dress which is directly contrary to biblical injunctions it's interesting that that issue about male dress looms so large doesn't it it does for reasons that we'll come to in the course of the trial so before that um coach has to pile up all of this evidence and all of these documents and stuff and this goes to the point about whether or not this is just a show trial by a kangaroo court and i believe a lot of scholars now argue that that's to do it an injustice, that actually this is a much more serious and painstaking proceeding than is popularly imagined.

12:42Is that right? Well, and not just popularly imagined, but than is normal in an Inquisition. It is incredibly detailed and forensic. So to quote Daniel Hobbins, who published this translation of all the documents relating to Joan's trial into English, and he emphasizes in his introduction to that collection the degree to which Cochamp is not, you know, he's not trampling on the recognised procedures in an inquisition. Absolutely on the contrary, he's going to inordinate pains to ensure that the rules are very, very strictly followed. And this is why we have all the many documents that we do relating to Jones' trial.

13:22To quote Hobbins, Cochamp believed his role in the trial would bear examination from even hostile observers. And because he knows that, you know, there is, we've said there's going to be massive massive international interest in the in this case that's the whole point of doing it so he knows that he can't afford to cut corners because otherwise he will get criticism everything has to be done precisely by the book um and so this is why even though cochon had indicted joan on the 9th of january he then spends about six weeks making sure that everything is in absolutely perfect order before the trial itself actually begins So they send investigators, don't they, to Joan's home village of Don Rémy, which is a difficult task because, as we discussed, it's a liminal space.

14:07It was full of bandits and it's now full of French, basically. So it's a dangerous place for his investigators to go. And poor Joan has been subject to a lot of physical examinations. And now she has yet another one by the Duke of Bedford's wife, the Duchess of Bedford, to check again whether she is a virgin or not. and she still is so she passes that test at any rate yeah and meanwhile koshan is drawing up all of these lists of questions and stuff isn't he and he's hiring people so officials and inquisitors and whatnot yes so a huge number of advisors assessors examiners theologians expert witnesses all these kind of people are being lined up and in fact over the course of the trial 131 lawyers theologians priests abbots end up participating in it and the kind of amazing fact for people who think that this is an english kangaroo court all but eight of these 131 figures are french that's so surprising and of those eight only three are english it's a lawyer and two theologians from oxford now that really is a twist because i'd always assume this was a completely english-run affair and actually but these are french people who are they're part of henry the sixth party his faction as it were are they yeah all loyal to the burgundians they genuinely think that henry is appointed by god they accept the treaty of toire they think that charles the seventh is an imposter uh usurper so they are they are all in right well they send out tremendous people so uh the 20th of february cochon is ready and he delivers this formal summons to joan uh telling her you have to appeal before the tribunal the following day and so at eight o 'clock on the morning the 21st of february this very dramatic day begins yes so joan is led down from her cell uh up in the tower and she's led out into a courtyard um and taken to the chapel of the castle in Rouen.

16:09And this is where Cauchon and the assessors are gathered. And of course, you know, we've said how the apparatus of this trial is very French, but the security is definitely provided by the English. So there are English guards everywhere. And the Earl of Warwick is a kind of constant lurking presence in the background. He is definitely keeping an eye on proceedings. So Joan is brought in for her trial. She is still dressed in male clothes. Her dark hair is still cropped short. And although obviously she hasn't been getting much sunlight because her cell only has those two arrow slits, she impresses people, I think, with her her bearing.

16:52She looks resolute. She looks unbowed. But, you know, she's a teenage girl and she is being brought into this room full of men, all of whom are much older than her. And, of course, who are infinitely her superiors in learning. So Joan, you know, we've said she was raised a peasant. She's illiterate. She has no expertise in theology. She has no familiarity with the kind of moral and metaphysical terms that her judges and her assessors are going to be bandying around. And she has no real understanding of the legal procedures in which she is now ensnared. she has the vocabulary she has the modes of expression of a peasant a very smart intelligent often sassy peasant but you know she is she is not a scholar from the university of paris and these are the you know the guys that she is facing and i think it is an incredibly kafka-esque environment because you know we've said she doesn't have a defense lawyer she's going to have effectively conduct her own defense.

17:59She has all these kind of guys who are large numbers of people who are just firing questions at her. There's never a single topic. They're always coming at her at different angles. There isn't any continuity of the personnel. You know, one judge will be there one day, gone the next. I mean, incredibly bewildering for her, I think, and intimidating. But right from the start, she displays an astonishing degree of self-possession, of spirit. And to read the trial proceedings, I think it is impossible not to be incredibly impressed by her. So it starts by Cochon tells her, you must swear an oath on the Gospels to tell the truth.

18:39And she kind of lays down a marker right from the beginning, doesn't she? Because she says, I don't know what you wish to ask me. Perhaps you might ask me things I can't tell you. So what are these things that she can't tell him? Well, there's a number of things, but absolutely top of the list is her voices. and she tells Cochon, you know, I'm very happy to answer questions about my parents or about, you know, everything that I've been doing since I left their house. But, and to quote her, the revelations to her from God as she defined those voices, she is saying, you know, that's a different matter.

19:13They are off limits. And she goes on to explain that she had only ever talked about these voices to Charles VII, and she doesn't believe that she is permitted by heaven to discuss them and she specifies you know i am i am not allowed to talk about them even where it necessary to cut off my head and she then tells cochon you know but i might be able to in eight days time what's happening in eight days time well it's obviously a number that she's kind of snatching from the void the voices have promised to get back to her by eight days yeah the voices will get back to her exactly wow and cochon had not been expecting this but you know he's not having any of it and in the days that follow he and the assessors are just harrying and chivvying joan relentlessly to try and force her to talk about the voices right so joan adopts different tactics doesn't she to keep the inquisitors at bay so one of them nice cricketing metaphor for you tom she plays a dead bat next question often she says certainly the beginning she says this thing you know this is just between me and god i'm not going to tell you everything for i don't have permission.

20:21But then she changes the strategy at times, doesn't she? She says, well, you need to talk to somebody else. You need to talk to the scholars who investigated me in Poitiers. Remember we talked about that when it was sort of like a kind of viva she had by Charles VII's churchman. And there's such a kind of touching degree of naivetage to that, to imagine that the scholars in English Rouen would ever go and consult the scholars in Valois Poitiers. You know, it's kind of a reminder that she doesn't entirely have a handle on the politics of it all, I think. And also, I mean, having said that she's not absolutely got her finger on the pulse of the politics, I mean, she does have this incredible kind of earthy common sense of a peasant.

21:07If you were a 19th century historian, you'd call it, you know, but she, you know, she's She started kind of being badgered by Koshaw and said, you've got to tell us everything. And she responds, there's a saying among little children that people are often hanged for telling the truth. You know, and she's not wrong there. But basically, there are 15 sessions of interrogation and they are exhausting and they are kind of merciless. And over time, she begins to concede more and more ground. She does. So already by the second session, so remember in the first session, she said, I'm not going to talk about voices.

21:38by the second session she's already doing that she's starting to talk about how she first heard them how she'd known that it was an angel speaking to her so all the details that we mentioned in our first episode describing how jane came to hear the voices the first back in don remy this is where those details come from and then in the third session she reveals that the voice is still very much a presence. It's still very much with her. So she tells Cauchon and the rest of the court that she had heard the voice three times the previous day. And she specifies once in the morning, once at Vespers, and a third time when the bell rang for the Hail Mary at night.

22:20And people may remember that the very first time back in Domremy when she heard the ringing of bells. She reveals that the voice had woken her up in the morning while she lay sleeping. And she also says that she had asked it for uh its advice on how best to deal with her interrogators and she says the voice told me to answer boldly and god would help me and then in the fourth session so that was the third session in the fourth session we get a real bombshell don't we because for the first time she says i know where the voice comes from i know what the voice is it is the voice of St. Catherine and St.

22:57Margaret, and their forms are crowned with beautiful crowns in rich and precious fashion. So remind listeners, Tom, St. Catherine of Catherine Wheel firework fame had been martyred, but for refusing to surrender her virginity. And St. Margaret, exactly the same. And a further detail, St. Margaret had been so fired with the love of the gospel that she had dressed up as a man to smuggle herself into a monastery. Right. Very, yeah, very suggestive. So there's an emphasis there on virginity and on cross-dressing, which people may feel is perhaps psychologically significant. And then shortly after that bombshell, there's another bombshell because she describes again in detail the very first time she heard the voice back in Domre Mii.

23:41And she reveals who precisely had been behind that voice. To quote her, I saw St. Michael before my eyes and he was not alone, but was well attended by angels from heaven. So St. Michael, the captain, the archangel, who is the captain of heaven, the great patron of French resistance to the English. It's St. Michael also who had spoken to her. So you've got St. Catherine, St. Margaret, St. Michael. So you mentioned the great historian Johann Housinger. And this argument that basically this is the first time it's occurred to her who the voices are, that previously she didn't know. Yeah. So to quote Husinga, it seems plausible to me that it was only fairly late, perhaps even only during her trial, that Joan linked her inspirations to the figures she knew best and cherished most among the saints.

24:32And so these saints, you know, she would have viewed them almost as her intimates. And I guess what Husinga is suggesting is that under the pressure of this interrogation, she reaches for these saints almost as metaphors for the voices. She is being harried and harried and harried, and she's desperate to try and put into words to explain to her inquisitors what the voices mean to her, why she loves them, why she trusts them, why these voices bring her consolation. And so she turns to the saints that she loved best. And I think that what you get in this testimony from Joan is a sense that she is trying to understand what she's been having.

25:15And definitely her inquisitors are struggling to understand as well, because there is a real sense in which what Joan's testimony reveals is an experience of the supernatural that is fundamentally.

25:32unlike most other testimonies from visionaries from people who claim to have heard or witnessed the saints so like catherine of sienna who mentioned before so it's not like that it's different it's more more earthy more concrete more less abstract i think right joan is not a girl for abstractions so on the one hand joan is absolutely convinced that her voices do come from heavenly entities, that they are independent of her, that they are exterior of her, that, you know, they are not rising up from inside her, from her head or whatever. On the other hand, and this I think is what distinguishes her from most visionaries, she's incredibly matter-of-fact about them.

26:13They are as real to her as her parents had been or, you know, her friends back in Dom Rémy. So Cochin asks her, did St. Margaret speak English? And Joan thinks this is a ridiculous question. She laughs. Why should she speak English? She's not on the side of the English. And then again, she's asked, well, what about St. Michael? Was he clothed or was he naked? And Joan answers, well, ridiculous question. Of course, God can clothe St. Michael. And so I think it's unsurprising that her judges, who perhaps are too attuned to abstractions and to notions of the supernatural and theology and so on, they really struggle to get a handle on the kind of the vividness of just how real these voices are to Joan.

26:58Interesting. They don't think that Joan is making this up. I think there is one inquisitor who does think this, who does think that she is deluded. I mean, it's not unheard of for teenage girls to make up stuff. No, it is interesting. And I think when you read her testimony, you can see why they would believe that. Because Joan is speaking with an utter conviction. And although we haven't really heard her in her own voice before this, except when she dictates her letters, I think the way in which she convinces people that what she's saying is true, whether it be the king or her fellow captains or the common soldiers or whatever, there is an intensity and a conviction.

27:39that is very convincing. Now, of course, the issue then, once that is accepted, is if these voices are real, then what are they? It is impossible for the inquisitors in Ruor to accept what Joan is insisting, that they are of heavenly origin, because, of course, this is a political trial. And if they accept that these voices are of heavenly origin, then that is immediately to destroy the legitimacy of the Lancastrian regime that they are serving. Equally, though, to condemn the voices as satanic raises its own issues. And the Inquisitors are learned men, and a lot of them are honest men. And they are troubled by the question of whether it is actually heretical to be deceived by Satan, because, you know, humans are fallen.

28:30We are all, in a sense, deceived by Satan. Satan is very powerful. Like, it's not your fault if Satan gets his teeth into you. And so another example of how this isn't just a kangaroo court, opinion among the assessors on this issue is split. And one of the theologians actually says, well, you know, this is above our pay grade. I think we should really go and consult the Pope. And of course, Cauchon and definitely Warwick is having none of that. You know, we can't afford to involve the Pope in this. That would be terrible. So it's a bit of a nightmare for Cochon. And what he really needs is for Joan simply to confess her errors and recant, because that would cut the whole Gordian knot.

29:09And so he and his fellow judges focus on two particular aspects of Joan's testimony. And they've obviously kind of sniffed these two areas as being the ones where Joan is most vulnerable. And the first of these, people may remember at tour the dauphin had asked joan for a sign to reassure him that she really was who she said she was she really had been sent from by god and you didn't tell us what this sign was you kept this a secret tom right and that is because joan wanted to keep it a secret herself she had been throughout the course of the trial exceedingly reluctant to reveal it and she kept insisting you know i have promised to keep this a secret she doesn't actually say who to i think the inquisitors assumed that she had promised her voices but it may be that she'd promised charles the seventh we we don't know anyway finally she just gets worn down and she reveals the truth and she says that an angel had appeared and had brought the dauphin a crown of purest gold the angel appeared to her and to the dover and to the dover and to the court everyone in the court in everyone in the court yes okay that this angel had been accompanied by a host of other angels and also by St.

30:20Catherine and by St. Margaret. What, they're all crowded into the council chamber or whatever? Well, Joan will later specify that they were very small. I mean, I think she's implying that they're kind of shaded away into a different dimension. Throughout her account of this, she's obviously really struggling to make sense of something that she feels is real, but can't put into words. However, these are the words that she gives. She then says that the angel had given the crown to the Archbishop of Reims, and that the Archbishop had then given it to the king. and I see your expression it's one of disbelief and dare I say contempt well you you were not alone because the theologians listening to this they just say this is mad this is ridiculous and there's one particular one from Paris who says this is a presumptuous misleading and pernicious falsehood a fabricated matter that diminishes the dignity of angels I mean that's my objection to it actually that it diminishes the dignity of angels you would have served well on the bench of assessors at Joan's trial.

31:13I think I'd be a brilliant inquisitor, to be honest. So the other issue, of course, is this perennial problem of her male clothing. And the reason is because it opens Joan up to a very obvious accusation. Joan says that essentially she is wearing her clothes, her male clothes, because the voices want her to wear them. however this is in direct contradiction to the teachings of the church so essentially joan is placing the testimony of her voices above that of the church and this is palpably heretical she hasn't got a leg to stand on here basically not even a leg of male hose it also of course in the opinion of her assessors demonstrates that the voices are indeed satanic because the voices would not be instructing her to do something that is against biblical instructions.

32:05So that also is something where they feel Joan is on a very sticky wicket. So on the 23rd of May, those two charges, the fact that she made up rubbish about, you know, the sign that she gave Charles VII and the fact that she insists on wearing male clothing, together with 10 other charges, among which is the proposition that by jumping out of the 60-foot tower, she'd been trying to commit suicide rather than escape and kind of various other items like that these are presented to joan she's told that in the opinion of her judges these charges satisfy them that she is indeed a heretic and her judges require her to confess and to repent all these faults if she is to be spared right and she doesn't does she for my words and deeds mentioned in this trial i refer to them and I wish to stand by them.

32:56So she's going to stick to her guns. She's not going to change her tune now. She's still standing strong. So the next day, a tumbril is brought to the foot of a tower. Joan is led down. She's put into the tumbril and the tumbril then rattles through the streets of Rouen to an abbey in the centre of the town where there is a cemetery and this is the largest open space in the city and thousands have gathered there and they are gathered around a huge wooden stage on which Cochon is sitting, his fellow judge, the Dominican, all the various other assessors from Joan's trial and a host of ecclesiastical luminaries of whom the leading figure is a genuine cardinal, the only English cardinal at the time, a guy called Henry Beaufort, who is also he's the richest man in England and he is the great uncle of Henry VI.

33:53So a very serious player indeed. Warwick of course is also you know he's he's come to watch. The Duke of Bedford is not there. He is absent in Paris but of course he is keeping a very close eye on proceedings as well. So Joan is led to a scaffold and she has been she's stood there to hear her sentence. Before the sentence is delivered, however, a theologian comes forward, joins her on the scaffold and delivers a sermon. And his text is, a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remain in the vine. In other words, someone who detaches herself from the vine of the church is asking to be consigned to the fire.