Joan of Arc: Religious and Military Leader by Janet Hubbard-Brown

Author:Janet Hubbard-Brown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Juvenile Nonfiction, Christianity, Religion, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, World, Women, History
ISBN: 9781604137101
Publisher: Chelsea House Publications
Published: 2010-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

0 • JOan Of arc

brought up, but they were reduced to 12 key crimes.

Some of them were:

[H]er visions of the saints and their speaking to her

in French and promising to lead her to paradise; the

sign the crown prince had received when she spoke

with him in private; her predictions of future events;

her insistence on wearing male attire; her leap from

the tower; and her statement that she had done

everything in God’s name.11

Still, the court members were not unanimous in what the

charge should be. Some thought that wearing men’s clothes

was a “thin basis for condemnation,”12 as was lack of sub-

mission to the Church Militant, which was a new law, and

one they suspected Joan did not fully understand.

in her own words

A prayer Joan uttered during her trial is an example of the way

she communicated with God:

Very sweet God, in honor of Your Holy Passion, I beg You,

if You love me, that You reveal to me how I should answer

these men of the church. I know well, regarding my

clothes, the command that I received, but I do not know

anything about the manner in which I should drop it. On

that, may it please You to instruct me.*

* Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin, Joan of Arc: Her

Story, p. 121.

Sentenced to Death

1

•

At the same time, frustration mounted over Joan’s insis-

tence that she obeyed only God. On May 9, the authorities

took her to the tower of the castle and threatened to torture

her. She flatly told them that under no circumstances would

she tell them anything else, but if she did, she would say it

had been forced out of her. This caused confusion as some

of the men did not want to go through with it, but then their

confusion fueled their anger. Around this time, Cauchon

received word from his superiors that the trial was taking

too long. On May 19, Cauchon told Joan that the masters

of the University of Paris had rendered their verdict. After a

14-month trial, she was found guilty for wearing masculine

dress and for heresy because she claimed she answered to

God and not to the Catholic Church. In her defense, she

said, “As for my words and deeds, which I declared in the

trial, I refer to them and will maintain them.”13 She added

that if “she saw the fire and the faggots lit and the execu-

tioner ready to kindle the fire, and she herself were in it, she

would say nothing else and would maintain till death what

she said in the trial.”14

Joan relenTs

On May 24, the verdict was publicly announced. Joan was

led outside for the first time in months, where she was to

be excommunicated, but first she had to listen to a sermon.

She had asked that her report be sent to Rome, but that

request was denied. Dressed in women’s clothes, she stood

on a high scaffold as her head was shaved. She was asked

if she would repent, give up men’s clothes, and stop fight-

ing. Additionally, she would have to submit to the Catho-

lic Church. This repentance was called an abjuration, a

document she would have to sign. Joan laughed—whether

because she was nervous or defiant will never be known.

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