Documentation : Presse étrangère

La vraie Jeanne d’Arc — La Pucelle devant l’église de son temps — Documents nouveaux par Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Ayroles de la Compagnie de Jésus. — Paris. Gaume et C^ie éditeurs, 3 rue de l’Abbaye 1890. — Un vol. in 4.° di pagg. 754. Prezzo Fr. 15.

Opera grandiosa, cristiana non meno che patriottica, ha intrapreso l’Ayroles colla pubblicazione di questo lavoro monumentale, cui a buon dritto intitola La vera Giovanna d’Arco. E siccome il soggetto, come è trattato dall’Autore, è d’importanza più romana che francese, crediamo opportuno farne alquanto più accurata menzione.

Lo scopo del libro si riassume brevemente in queste parole : trarre fuori dalla semioscurità e dal mistero, in cui l’umana ingiustizia e l’empietà avevano lasciata fino a noi la famosa liberatrice d’Orléans, e restituirla alla sua vera luce in tutta la sua bellezza cristiana, colle prove di documenti irrefragabili tratti ultimamente dalla polvere delle biblioteche. Anzitutto è necessario ricordare brevemente la straordinaria missione e il martirio glorioso della vergine guerriera.

Giovanna nacque a Domremy, piccolo villaggio presso Vaucouleurs, sulla riva sinistra della Mosa, vicino alla Sciampagna e alla Lorena, il 1412. I suoi genitori, Giacomo d’Arc e Isabella Romée, erano onesti e pii campagnuoli. Oltre una sorella, di nome Caterina, ebbe Giovanna anche tre fratelli. La sua prima età fu passata da lei nell’innocenza, nel lavoro e negli esercizii della pietà cristiana ; e godeva specialmente in visitare, le domeniche, il non lontano santuario della Vergine di Bermont.

Dal 1415 fino al 1428 erano corsi tristi giorni per la Francia, a cagione degli assalti ripetuti degl’Inglesi che ne ambivano la corona. Enrico V d’Inghilterra uscito vittorioso dalla battaglia di Azincourt, aveva gia indotto Filippo il Buono, Duca di Borgogna, a unirsi seco in alleanza il 1419. E, senza rammentare qui altre disfatte da parte dei Francesi, basti dire che il loro re Carlo VI, morendo prigione in Borgogna, non lasciava del suo vasto regno al Delfino, se non le terre a mezzogiorno della Loira. Or il conte Salisbury, generale inglese, mosse alla conquista anche di questa parte del regno ; e il 1428 strinse d’assedio Orleans, ultimo baluardo del regno di Francia. Ferito mortalmente il Salisbury sotto le mura d’Orleans, gli successe Talbot, che continuo l’assedio con non minore arditezza e ostinazione. Le cose erano a questo punto, quando Giovanna, seguendo l’invito di voci, (cui ella affermava avere spesso udite fin da 13 anni in frequenti apparizioni di S. Michele, S. Caterina e S. Margherita) manifesto ai parenti la risoluzione di liberare la Francia. Che giudizio debba portarsi di queste apparizioni lo diranno i fatti, la vita immacolata della donzella, le ripetute e assennate risposte date da lei dinanzi ai giudici di Rouen, e l’esame scientifico fattone da teologi sommi, come e da vedere nell’opera dell’Ayroles. Basti ora sapere che questa fu la continua persuasione di lei fino alla morte, in modo che potè dire a chi la voleva condannare per fattucchiera : come vedo voi, cosi ho visto io co’miei occhi corporali i Santi ; e come fermamente credo a Dio e al Salvatore, cosi credo che essi mi apparvero per ordine di Dio. Checchè sia per ora del giudizio sulla missione soprannaturale di Giovanna (il quale può farsi solo a fatti compiuti e dopo mature esame), i genitori di lei, com’e facile a pensare, non credettero a nulla di quel che la figliuola loro diceva. Anzi di qui presero occasione di invigilarla più severamente ; e a toglierle del tutto il ruzzo dal capo, divisarono di accasarla con un onest’uomo di Toul. Ma il tentativo svani pel suo costante rifiuto, avendo essa fatto voto di verginità fin dalle prime rivelazioni di cui fu favorita (p. 205). Prego essa allora il suo zio Durando Laxart ad accompagnarla presso il Governatore di Vaucouleurs, a cui manifesto la risoluzione di salvare la Francia. Respinta bruscamente per ben due volte come pazza, solo alla terza ebbe finalmente il permesso di andare dal Delfino colla scorta di sei persone, tra cui due gentiluomini, Giovanni di Metz e Bertrando di Poulengy. Il 23 febbraio 1429, indossati Giovanna abiti virili, monto a cavallo, e via col suo equipaggio alla volta di Fierbois a mezzogiorno di Tours, sei miglia lontano da Chinon di Vienna, dove risiedeva il Delfino. Da Fierbois scrisse ella a Carlo, manifestandogli il suo disegno. Costui era indeciso e la corte incredula ; pure si lascio venire la fanciulla al castello, dove fu ricevuta il 9 marzo. Ma colla manifestazione a voce del mandato di Dio, la cosa non fu finita. Prima nel castello di Coudray e poi a Poitiers, sede del parlamento francese, fu la pulzella sottomessa a prove severe. Dovette tra l’altro sostenere l’interrogatorio d’una veneranda assemblea di dotti e di sacerdoti, cui ella fece stupire colla sincerità e verità delle sue risposte. Gli esaminatori di Poitiers furono per Giovanna : essa poteva eseguire la sua missione : si per la quantità. si per la qualità de’giudici non si poteva ammettere errore di sorta alcuna (pp. 5-9). Che se più tardi si fosse tenuto conto di questa prima sentenza, il sinedrio di Rouen non si sarebbe imbrattato le mani del sangue innocente. — Il re non indugio più ad affidarle parte delle sue schiere, e il 23 aprile, 1429, mosse la giovine guerriera co’suoi da Tours alla volta di Blois.

Cinta d’una spada, trovata secondo le indicazioni da lei fatte, nella chiesa di S. Caterina a Fierbois, portava in mano una bandiera seminata di gigli e in mezzo l’immagine di Cristo coll’iscrizione Jhesus, Maria, fattasi dipingere da un pittore, come le Sante Caterina e Margherita le avevano indicate. Da Blois intimò per iscritto agl’Inglesi di ritirarsi di Francia. Niuna risposta. Il 29 aprile ella si trovava dinanzi ad Orleans, assediata gia da sei mesi. Rifiutatisi i suoi di attaccar subito gl’Inglesi, ella si contentò di far arrivare in città per mezzo della Loira le provvigioni seco portate. Il 5 maggio, venuti altri rinforzi, si cominciò l’attacco ; e dopo tre ore di combattimento la prima fortezza, la Bastiglia S. Lupo, era in mano di Giovanna. Non ostante una ferita alla spalla, trasportando ella i generali, talora esitanti, di vittoria in vittoria, l‘8 maggio entro trionfante in Orleans al grido Noel. Come a nuova Giuditta s’affollava il popolo intorno alla giovane diciassettenne, che a tutte le onoranze del popolare entusiasmo rispondeva con modestia e infantile semplicita. Sicche Guy di Laval, l‘8 giugno 1429, pote scrivere a sua madre : veramente c’e qualche cosa di divino in questa donzella. Una città dopo l’altra cadde nelle mani de’vincitori Francesi. Lo stesso Lord Talbot il 18 giugno fa fatto prigioniero, e tutto il paese della Loira fa sgombro dagl’Inglesi. Giovanna persuase re Carlo ad entrare difilato a Reims. La qual città, mutato avviso per le mutate vicende, gli apri le porte ; ed il 17 luglio 1429 Carlo VII fu solennemente consecrate e coronato nella cattedrale. Alia consecrazione e coronazione stava la pulzella colla sua bandiera in mano : essa fu con me nel pericolo, disse poi ella ai giudici di Rouen, era giusto che fosse anche nell’onore.

Questa è, benchè sommariamente accennata, la parte gloriosa della missione di Giovanna d’Arco : la parte, diciamo, umana, accessibile agli entusiasmi della fantasia e alla lode degli uomini. Ora incomincia il martirio, la parte dolorosa che mette a prova la sua virtu, parte pero non meno gloriosa innanzi a Dio e alla storia. Anzi (notisi come Dio per vie occulte, a principio incomprensibili, arrivi sempre ai suoi fini) il martirio di Giovanna e le calunnie onde fu vittima furono l’occasione che fosse tramandata ai posteri la sua memoria ; e cio con tanta esattezza, che sarebbe stato inutile sperare, se essa dopo il trionfo di Reims non fosse passata pel Golgota di Rouen. Senza la infame condanna di Rouen, ne la virtu di Giovanna sarebbe apparsa quale era veramente, ne si sarebbe fatto il processo di reintegrazione che ha dato luogo ad innumerevoli scritti, discussioni teologiche, interrogazioni di testimoni oculari, in tanto numero, che fornirono alla storia documenti preziosissimi e autorevolissimi su tutta la vita dell’angelica giovinetta di Domremy. E chi sa che questo mezzo, di cui si è servita la provvidenza, per glorificarla nel tribunale della storia, non sia il medesimo che debba condurla fino all’apoteosi cristiana ? E che Roma (come or ora diremo) la quale, raccogliendo l’ultimo grido dell’oppressa, fu causa della sua reintegrazione storica, non sia anche causa di un onore più eccelso ancora ? La Francia cristiana lo spera, e Leone XIII, a cui e tanto a cuore l’onore della cristiana civiltà, ne ha fatto un felice pronostico a Mons. Coullié, Vescovo d’Orleans, scrivendogli : ultro vobis ominamur, ut Deus ipse communibus votis vestris, quae ad gloriam totius Galliae, atque ad praecipuum urbis Aurelianensis decus spectant, benignus annual.

Ma continuiamo la narrazione. Dopo la consecrazione a Reims, l’indolente Carlo VII, più avido di piaceri che di guerra, sfruttò le ottime disposizioni de’soldati in un ozio dannoso, non ostante gli avvisi di Giovanna, che l’ammoniva di correre subito contro Parigi. Si mosse solo più tardi ; ma dopo il primo assalto, l‘8 settembre, tolse subito il giorno dopo e senza necessita l’assedio, con gran dolore di Giovanna, che nel ritirarsi consacrò a S. Dionigi le sue armi. Essa segui il re nella residenza d’inverno. Stanca della inoperosita della corte, dove ebbe non poco a soffrire, si affretto l’aprile del 1430 verso il settentrione ; e a Melun, dove passo la Pasqua, seppe dalle voci misteriose delle sue Sante che prima della festa di S. Giovanni cadrebbe nelle mani de’suoi nemici. Infatti il 23 maggio, 1430, in un assalto contro Compiegne fu presa da un soldato, di nome Lionello di Wendonne, e consegnata al Luxembourg, luogotenente generale del Duca di Borgogna. Il Luxembourg la fece custodire nella fortezza, prima di Beaulieu e poi di Beaurevoir, fino a che non fu venduta agl’Inglesi, sulla fine del novembre 1430. Il Vescovo Pietro Cauchon di Beauvais con i dottori dell’università di Parigi, tutti venduti agl’Inglesi, fecero il processo di parata a Rouen, dove risiedeva allora la corte e l’esercito inglese. Il processo cominciò il 31 gennaio 1431. Il mattino del 30 maggio del medesimo anno, s’apriva la porta della prigione di Rouen e tra circa 800 soldati inglesi, usciva Giovanna d’Arco, condotta all’ultimo supplizio. Sul capo le avevano messa questa scritta : eretica, recidiva, apostata, idolatra. Alla piazza del Vieux-Marché di Rouen era preparato un rogo, in cui Giovanna doveva morir bruciata. Un manifesto ne indicava le cause in questo modo : Giovanna che si fa chiamare la pulzella, menzognera, seduttrice del popolo, fattucchiera, bestemmiatrice, idolatra, invocatrice dei diavoli… Avvicinandosi al luogo del suo olocausto, la giovane vittima pregava con tal fervore che espresse le lacrime di tutti i circostanti, e degli stessi Inglesi, che non poterono nascondere il sentimento della commozione. Per ultimo prego il domenicano Isambard de la Pierre, che l’accompagnava, di apportarle dalla vicina chiesa una croce, per aver dinanzi agli occhi, finchè durava la vita, l’istrumento della passione del Figlio di Dio. Cinta dalle fiamme divoratrici non finiva di ripetere con chiara voce il nome di Gesù e dei Santi : e Gesù fu l’ultima sua parola. Il Quicherat, editore dei documenti riguardanti Giovanna d’Arco, dice di questo Religioso che ci tramando queste preziose notizie sulla morte della pulzella : l’uomo più retto, cui la provvidenza, ha congiunto alla pulzella durante il suo martirio, fu un oscuro Domenicano, nominate Isambard de la Pierre. Questo degno religioso… Fassiste il giorno della morte, e tenne la croce dinanzi ad essa fino all’ultimo respiro. (Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, Vol. 35° p. 149).

Ecco brevemente ricordata la straordinaria missione ed il martirio della vergine guerriera, come ci eravamo proposti, per mettere i nostri lettori in grado di apprezzare l’opera dell’Ayroles. Ognun può quindi facilmente intendere quale ombra gittasse su Giovanna d’Arco il processo di Rouen : processo sanzionato coll’autorita dell’universita di Parigi, che formava a que’tempi uno Stato nello Stato : processo composto di dodici lunghi articoli, scritti con magistrale solennita e espressi ad uno ad uno con una nota teologica del Dottori parigini. E benche ad ogni parola trapeli l’esagerazione e l’ipocrisia farisaica, nulladimeno non era possibile che qualche ombra non rimanesse. Aggiungasi che per mancanza di notizie molti atti della pulzella diventavano enigmi. Si mettevano innanzi l’abito virile, il rifiulo di soggettarsi alla Chiesa, la ritrattazione della sua missione straordinaria, l’esito infelice di essa e simili altre accuse, alle quali non si poteva rispondere trionfalmente per mancanza di sicure notizie*.

* Quanto alla famosa questione, alla quale si è data tanta importanza, cioè la missione, affidata soprannaturalmente a Giovanna, finisse a Orléans o no, l’Ayroles apporta molte cose che illustrano non poco questo punto. Egli si decide pel no ; e afferma che la missione dell’eroina di Domrémy non finiva a Orleans, nè a Reims colla coronazione di Carlo VII. E sostiene, appogiato a buone prove, lei essere stata impedita nell’esecuzione finale del suo disegno ; e dice esser tempo omai, dopo lo studio dei nuovi documenti, di romperla colla tradizione finora accettata, di presentare come finito il compito della pulzella colla coronazione a Reims (p. 660 e altrove). Alla luce dei documenti che ora possediamo, dice egli, non e più libero sostenere un’asserzione che tanto oscura la santa giovane (p. 654).

Non restava della storia della giovane infelice che la bella prodezza di Orleans, atta più ai divertimenti drammatici die ad essere annoverata tra gli esempii delle severe virtu dell’eroismo cristiano. Nè i poeti si lasciarono sfuggire si bel tema alle loro ispirazioni, come ne fan fede, fra gli altri, lo Schiller nella tragedia Die Jungfrau von Orleans e l’inglese Southey in un poema sulla stesso soggetto. Ma il più e il meglio di Giovanna rimaneva sepolto nell’ombra e nel mistero ; e il poco che si sapeva era denigrato dalla calunnia. Oltre l’odio farisaico dei giudici di Rouen (operanti a nome dell’università di Parigi, di quell’universita che nel Concilio di Basilea e poi fe’tanto male alla Chiesa), un’altra causa dell’oscurità e del denigramento della pulzella fu, in tempi a noi più vicini, lo spirito razionalista, che vorrebbe radere, se fosse possibile, ogni traccia soprannaturale dal mondo. Senza parlare del fango accumulato dal Voltaire su Giovanna d’Arco, basta citare il Michelet, corifeo della scuola razionalista, che fa della ingenua giovane una visionaria ed un’allucinata.

Ma, grazie a Dio, la luce si è fatta, e luce sfolgorante di pieno meriggio. Certo, la storia non s’inventa : e se la luce storica viene ad illuminare la vergine orleanese al declinare del secolo decimonono, essa suppone una luce, diciamo, originaria del secolo decimoquinto, cioè autentiche testimonianze di quelli che vissero ai tempi di Giovanna. E cosi e appunto. Di questa doppia luce dobbiamo parlare adesso, vale a dire : 1.° delle autentiche testimonianze sulla vita e morte della pulzella, quali si ebbero, private e pubbliche, dai coevi della medesima, testimonianze pero rimaste finora quasi del tutto occulte ; 2.° della loro rivelazione, la quale, cominciata a poco a poco, ha il suo pieno sviluppo nell’opera dell’Ayroles. Sicchè, chi vuole ora scrivere o saper il netto di questo tratto di storia cristiana e francese, non può più attenersi alle sole antiche narrazioni, senza aver la taccia di ignorante della sua causa. Quindi a ragione il nostro Autore ha battezzato il suo non volgare volume : La Vera Giovanna d’Arco.

Tra le bellissime risposte, tutte spiranti ingenuità, verità e candore, che diede Giovanna ai suoi giudici di Rouen, specialmente quando con sofismi farisaici cercavano d’imbrogliarla circa l’ubbidienza alla Chiesa, accusandola di disubbidienza perchè non ubbidiva a loro e non voleva smentire la missione soprannaturale avuta da Dio, si trova questa : Per quel che riguarda la sommissione alla Chiesa, io ho già risposto loro su questo punto : si mandi pure a Roma e al nostro Santo Padre, il Papa, tutto quel che ho fatto e tutto quel che ho detto : io mi rimetto al Papa e prima a Dio. Interrogata ancora se volesse disdire tutto quel che aveva fatto e detto, di nuovo rispose : Io mi rimetto a Dio e al nostro Santo Padre, il Papa. Quanto a questo appello al Papa, ci narra il testimonio oculare, il Domenicano Isambard de la Pierre : Il Cauchon (che era il Caifa di quel Sinedrio) disse al cancelliere di non registrare questa sommissione. Al che Giovanna soggiunse : voi fate registrare quel che e contro di me, e non quel che e per me. Un gran mormorio si sollevò nell’assemblea. Essa si sottomise alla Chiesa, dopo che fu istruita (p. 252, 255). Or questo appello al Papa, questa ultima voce di Giovanna, pronunziata dinanzi al rogo, non ebbe alcuno effetto allora per la iniquità dei giudici. Così erano i giudizii di Dio, il quale vuol far passare per la tribolazione i suoi fedeli e mettere a prova la loro virtu. Ma la voce di Giovanna trovò eco a Roma ; Roma, si può dire, raccolse il guanto della giusta vendetta dell’oppressa fanciulla. Che se non pote liberarla dalla morte temporale, la liberò dalla calunnia, ne fe’conoscere la virtù, ne proclamò l’innocenza e forse (chi cel vieta sperare ?) ne dichiarerà la santità. Giovanna comincio la sua impresa approvata e autorizzata dalla Chiesa ; ma dalla vera Chiesa, rappresentata a Poitiers dalla prima commissione ecclesiastica, che ebbe l’incarico di esaminare la vocazione straordinaria della pulzella. E questa ne ebbe lettere credenziali in tutta forma. Parte della Commissione era l’Arcivescovo di Reims, Regnault di Chartres, il Vescovo di Poitiers, l’Inquisitore generale, il Domenicano Pietro Turelure e altri (pp. 5-12). Giovanna fu attraversata nella sua missione da un falso e iniquo tribunale, l’orgogliosa Universita di Parigi, che voleva farla da rivale del Papa. Ma di nuovo la vera Chiesa, rappresentata da un altro Arcivescovo di Reims, rimise Giovanna al suo posto d’onore. Affrettiamoci a narrare i fatti.

Appena morta Giovanna, si rinnovò tra gli astanti il fatto accaduto sul Golgota, in cui si dice di molti che revertebantur percutientes pectora sua. John Tressart, secretario del re d’Inghilterra, nel tornare a casa dal luogo del supplizio, diceva : Siamo perduti, perchè abbiamo bruciata una santa, la cui anima è presso Dio. Carlo VII, forse a riparare la sua negligenza in non aver fatto nulla a pro di colei per cui portava la corona sulla fronte, il 15 febbraio 1450, scrisse una lettera al teologo Guglielmo Bouillé, affidandogli la revisione del processo di Rouen (p. 209). L’Ayroles riporta per lungo lo scritto del Bouille, fatto con tutto il metodo scolastico. E il primo che fu composto per la reintegrazione di Giovanna, scritto che poi fe’parte del processo ordinato da Roma. Il 1451, arrivò in Francia col titolo di legato il Cardinal Guglielmo d’Estouteville, il quale, d’accordo col Re, die’movimento a grandi lavori per il processo. Dotti teologi e canonisti, cui egli aveva nel suo seguito, perchè l’aiutassero di consiglio, studiarono la causa della pulzella e ne composero dissertazioni magistrali, riportate dall’Ayroles. Nomineremo in particolare Paolo Pontano, Teodoro di Lellis, Roberto Ciboule, Giovanni di Montigny, e soprattutto il Domenicano Giovanni Brehal, inquisitore generate della Fede per la Francia superiore, che può dirsi in vero senso l’anima dell’intero processo. Dal cominciamento di questa gran causa il 2 maggio 1452, fino alla sua fine il 7 luglio 1456, il Brehal s’incontra dappertutto. Viaggiò in tutta la Francia, dice il Quicherat, per informarsi della vita di Giovanna d’Arco ; si mise in corrispondenza con tutti i più famosi dottori del regno e dell’estero, per avere il loro parere in una mater ia si delicata (p. 237). Oltre gli scritti de’detti teologi e canonisti, ve ne hanno altri ancora di Vescovi venerandi che si occuparono della pulzella : quello di Tommaso Basin, quello di Elia di Bourdeilles, quello di Martino Berruyer, quello di Bocardo detto di Vaucelles : tutti allegati assai distesamente dall’Ayroles. È il bello e vecler come tutti seguono passo passo il processo calunniatore e ribattono, coll’aiuto delle testimonianze e della scienza teologica, le accuse insussistenti. Non mai, crediamo, causa fu studiata sì a fondo. Eppure, tutto questo non è che preparazione al processo veramente apostolico in tutta la forza del termine, fatto a nome e intimazione esplicita di Callisto III, Sommo Pontefice.

Erano passati più di cinque anni da che Carlo VII aveva ordinato al Bouillé di cercare documenti per un processo di riabilitazione. Queste ricerche avevano preso un ampio giro alla venuta del Card. d’Estouteville, legato pontificio. Ma le cose andavano un po’ in lungo per le ragioni arrecate dall’Ayroles (pp. 601, 602). Allora i parenti della vittima, la madre, che viveva a Orleans a spese della citta, e i due fratelli Pietro e Giovanni (il padre e il primogenito erano morti) sollecitarono con lettera la Santa Sede a far rivedere il processo intentato contro una figliuola e una sorella iniquamente bruciata. Callisto III, annuì alla loro giusta dimanda, e il 10 giugno 1455, primo anno del suo Pontificate, nomino la commissione apostolica, con a capo l’Arcivescovo di Reims, che doveva rivedere il processo di Rouen. Bellissima è la lettera di Callisto III, piena di paterno affetto per la famiglia di Giovanna e moderatissima verso i giudici di Rouen. Bella coincidenza ! Due Arcivescovi di Reims presiedono le due Assemblee ecclesiastiche che approvano la missione di Giovanna d’Arco, l’assemblea di Poitiers e questa di Reims. Ambedue son d’accordo. In mezzo a queste due vi e l’assemblea di Rouen presieduta dal vescovo di Beauvais, (soggetto al metropolitano di Reims) che disfà l’opera del suo superiore. Ma l’operato dell’assemblea di mezzo è cassato dalla terza.

Or, per continuare la storia, la commissione apostolica cominciò i suoi lavori al novembre e, dopo otto mesi di maturo esame, il 7 luglio 1456, prima in presenza di alcune persone nella gran sala dell’arcivescovato di Rouen, e poi il giorno appresso, con più magnifica pompa, fu letta la sentenza di reintegrazione di Giovanna d’Arco sul luogo stesso del martirio, alla piazza del Vieux-Marché. Senonchè l’importanza di questo processo e di questa sentenza non consiste solo nella sua forma autoritativa e giuridica.L’importanza maggiore sta nelle infinite ricerche che furono fatte : sta nell’esame accurato dei fatti, esame eseguito a cose compiute, e senza pregiudizio di veruna sorta : sta nelle numerose deposizioni di testimonii oculari : sta in un monte di scritti di teologi e canonisti, oltre gli enumerati di sopra. E i testimonii, che sono in numero di ben centoventi, asseriscono generalmente, non quello che hanno udito dire di seconda via, ma quello che hanno visto co’proprii occhi, udito colle proprie orecchie : testimonii dell’infanzia, della gloriosa missione, del martirio della donzella : e tra questi si nominano Vescovi, medici, religiosi, parenti, conoscenti d’ogni sorta : vi sono di quelli che furono presenti al processo di condanna, non esclusi quelli che furono dapprima ingannati dall’autorità dei dottori parigini*.

* Rechiamo un esempio della qualità de’testimoni uditi sul primo periodo della sua vita (pp. 631, 632). Ve ne sono 21 di Domrémy, 6 di Vaucouleurs, 7 di Toul. Tutti protestano alla fine de’le loro deposizioni di non essere stati indotti nè dall’amore, nè dall’odio, nè dalla preghiera, nè dal salario, nè dal favore, nè dal timore. Vi sono sacerdoti che hanno veduto e confessato Giovanna. Vi è Durando Laxart zio di Giovanna che la condusse, come vedemmo, a Vaucouleurs. Vi sono i due gentiluomini, che guidarono Giovanna da Vaucouleurs al castello di Chinon, i primi che udirono da lei le prime spiegazioni sulla natura della sua missione. Vi sono molti altri conoscenti di Giovanna, come si può vedere nelle pagine indicate o nei processi divulgati dal Quicherat.

Verso la fine di maggio la commissione apostolica aveva già 130 deposizioni di 118 testimonii, senza contare le deposizioni delle prime inchieste del Bouille. Insomma è luce meridiana che viene ad illuminare una figura. Ed e bello vedere gl’interrogatorii preparati dalla commissione per far le ricerche. Eccone un estratto (p. 630) : Interrogatorio a farsi al luogo d’origine per prendere informazione sopra Giovannina (Jeannette), detta volgarmente la pulzella. 1.° Il suo luogo d’origine, la sua parrocchia. — 2.° I suoi parenti, la lor condizione ; erano essi buoni cattolici e di buona riputazione ? — 3.° I suoi padrini o madrine. — 4.° Giovannina è stata fin dall’infanzia allevata nella fede e nei buoni costumi, secondo il suo stato e la sua condizione ? — 5.° Qual è stata la sua condotta dall’età di sette anni fino all’uscita del luogo natale ? — 6.° Frequentava la chiesa, i luoghi di divozione spesso e volentieri ? ecc. ecc. Poi si parla se si confessava spesso, se andava e per che ad un certo albero, detto delle fate, del come ha lasciato il paese native. Veramente pare che la provvidenza volesse preparare un processo di beatificazione dinanzi a Dio e alla Chiesa e non un processo di reintegrazione dinanzi al mondo. Chi può dire che ne’disegni di Dio non fosse e per l’uno e per l’altro ?

E tutta questa luce storica a chi si deve ? Si deve a Roma, si deve a Callisto III. Senza il processo apostolico cominciato prima dal Card. d’Estouteville e poi formalmente intimato e finito da Callisto III, Giovanna d’Arco, come dicemmo, sarebbe al più un bel tema per drammi, e null’altro. Ma nella vita vi e un dramma più serio di quello dei teatri, ed è l’eseguire bene la missione che Dio c’impone, oscura o gloriosa che sia. Giovanna d’Arco ebbe la sua, certo straordinaria ; perchè per donne non e missione ordinaria trattar l’armi. Ma ordinaria o straordinaria, quando vien da Dio si deve eseguire, come fecero Debora e Giuditta. Giovanna l’ha fatto, e l’ha fatto solo per ubbidire a Dio, come cento volte ripetè ai giudici : e per essere fedele al mandato affidatole da Dio soffrì la morte. Or Giovanna d’Arco, rappresentata sotto quest’aspetto, è veramente grande dinanzi a Dio e alla storia. E la reintegrazione di questa bella figura storica e cristiana, si deve a Roma.

Ma il lettore dira : che n’è dell’Ayroles, il cui libro si deve esaminare ? Veniamo dunque all’Ayroles. Questa luce storica, che ora illumina Giovanna d’Arco, è stata fino a noi in gran parte sotto il moggio ; e da ciò l’oscurita e il mistero in cui e rimasta avvolta finora gran parte della vita di lei. Le ragioni di questo fatto sono un secreto della provvidenza ; ma se ne deve senza dubbio gran parte all’autorita dei pseudoteologi di Rouen, che lasciarono eredi delle loro teorie i seguaci del moderno naturalismo politico e religioso. Non gia, che gli esemplari di que’documenti fossero del tutto sconosciuti ; ma, eccetto la citazione di qualche passo, essi non furono mai stampati interamente. Nel 1840, la Société de l’histoire de France ebbe il felice pensiero di riparare a questa dimenticanza, affidando a Giulio Quicherat, insigne paleografo, la cura di pubblicare i documenti riguardanti Giovanna d’Arco. Ed egli dal 1840 al 1849 pubblicò successivamente cinque volumi col titolo : Processo di condanna e di riabilitazione di Giovanna d’Arco. Nei primi tre volumi sono contenuti gli atti del doppio processo, e negli altri due sono compresi altri documenti, cui il Quicherat considerava come fonti di storia per Giovanna d’Arco. L’autore di questa pubblicazione è senza dubbio sommamente benemerito della pulzella. Ma, a tutti i poeti manca un verso, dice il proverbio : l’eccellenza del Quicherat nella paleografia non può meritargli il diploma di teologo o canonista. È la mancanza d’una scienza che non poteva avere, e stata la causa d’una grave omissione nella sua opera. Ha creduto cioè render servigio alla Società della Storia di Francia, se per amor di brevità lasciasse da parte tutte le discussioni teologiche e giuridiche fatte da teologi e canonisti durante il processo, ritenendone solo qualche passo qua e colà : perchè, dice egli, non contengono nulla di storico, ma discutono solamente l’ortodossia di Giovanna o la legalità della prima sentenza. È una grande lacuna, dice bene l’Ayroles ; e i documenti scartati non meritano il disprezzo di cui son fatti segno. Essi gettano una gran luce su Giovanna, perchè mostrano nel suo vero lume il soprannaturale della sua missione. Voler far di meno di questo sole, e come voler vedere la catena delle Alpi o de’Pirenei dalle fessure d’una oscura caverna in un giorno nuvoloso. I trattati teologici composti su Giovanna sono indispensabili a chiunque vuole studiare o raccontare la storia della liberatrice. Essi hanno più grande importanza che se narrassero nuovi fatti, perche spiegano quelli che furono svisati, per mancanza di dati storici, anche nelle storie meno avverse a Giovanna. Que’trattati furono composti da uomini eminenti in dottrina, e spesso posti nelle più alte dignità ecclesiastiche e secolari, i quali presero parte agli avvenimenti più grandi del loro tempo. Or in questo consiste il merito dell’opera dell’Ayroles, in servirsi, da storico e teologo, dei documenti raccolti dal Quicherat e in metter fuori gli scartati da questo, e così spargere di nuova luce la vita e la morte della pulzella d’Orleans. Il naturalismo aveva messo da parte e nell’oscurità gli apologisti cristiani di lei : e giusto che sieno rivelati. Molto più che lo stesso Quicherat non manca di gettar la sua pietra contro il processo di reintegrazione ; e mentre si sa certo che tutti i grandi teologi e canonisti del secolo XV che si occuparono di Giovanna (e ve ne ha di Francesi, d’Italiani e di Tedeschi) condannano come un assassinio giuridico il primo processo di Rouen, il paleografo francese lo presenta ai lettori come un capolavoro di metodo e di esattezza, e chiama confuso e diffuso quello di reintegrazione. Quanto il primo processo e conciso, chiaro e spigliato, altrettanto il secondo e diffuso e confuso (p. 614). Risponde bene l’Ayroles : il merito di tali lavori non è di esser concisi e spigliati : anzi e proprio della loro natura di esser pesanti, carichi, anzi poco chiari per chi non e dell’arte. E più sotto : Il processo di riabilitazione è diffuso e confuso, a detta del Quicherat. A distruggere le Tuileries è bastata una banda di forsennati, alcuni barili di petrolio e un giorno di pazzia. A rifabbricarle ci vorrebbero migliaia di braccia, ci vorrebbero anni e milioni e architetti di vaglia. Ora e ben più facile calunniar gli uomini die dar fuoco alle Tuileries : basta esser senza coscienza e perverse. E spesso sarà più difficile redintegrare uno nella buona fama che riedificare le Tuileries ; e per molte perdute riputazioni la luce non si farà che il di del giudizio. I giudici della riabilitazione dovevano vendicare la più denigrata di tutte le donne, dovevano dileguare calunnie dotte, che pretendevano farsi belle del dritto ecclesiastico… Che doveva risultar da tutto questo, se non una farraggine di documenti, come lo stesso Quicherat lo confessa ? (pp. 614, 615). Dunque era pregio dell’opera che tutti questi documenti ecliti e non editi passassero per le mani di uno del mestiere, voglio dire d’un teologo e storico cristiano, affinche se ne potesse apprezzare il valore.

La storia non adempie meglio il suo officio che quando si mette a servigio dell’innocenza, smascherando la calunnia. Per cio facciamo nostre le congratulazioni che il Card. Laugenieux, Arcivescovo di Reims, faceva al ch. P. Ayroles. La Chiesa, che ha già redintegrata la sua memoria (di Giovanna d’Arco), le riserva forse in tempo non lontano onori più grandi ancora. Il lavoro di V. R. avrà contribuito di molto a tale effetto, con allegare nuove prove, non solo della sua innocenza, ma ancora della sua missione soprannaturale e delle sue eroiche virtù : e questo è per V. R. la più dolce consolazione e la migliore di tutte le ricompense.

Serie XIV, vol. VIII, fasc. 969. 24 ottobre 1890.

295The Real Joan of Arc.

1. La Vraie Jeanne d’Arc. Par Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Ayroles, S.J. Paris, Gaume et Cie. 1890, 1894, et seq.
2. The Maid of Orleans. By the Rev. Francis M. Wyndham, M.A. London : St. Anselm’s Society. 1894.

The radiant figure of the inspired girl charged by heaven with the deliverance of France in her darkest hour has a unique place in secular history. Nowhere, outside the pages of the sacred story, is there in the records of the government of the universe, such another case of the immediate and visible intervention of Providence in the guidance of human affairs. The episode of the Maid of Orleans is as marvellous as any fable of mythology, and yet its main outlines have come down to us attested by such evidence as can be adduced in proof of no other historical fact, the records of a double judicial investigation, with the verbatim report of the depositions of the witnesses. The miracles of other saints are recorded in ecclesiastical annals alone. Joan’s changed the course of history, and affected to all time the destinies of two great nations. Crowned with the threefold halo of heroism, sanctity, and martyrdom, she stands out as the intermediary between the world of the spirit and that of the flesh, as a creature more angelic than human, lent to earth for a brief time and a special purpose. A rude peasant maiden chosen as the ambassadress of heaven, she delivered its message with unfaltering fidelity to the great ones of this lower world, whose terrestrial splendours could indeed have had but little power to dazzle eyes accustomed to the awful presences of thrones and principalities from on high. The lowliness of her station served, as in the case of the Apostles, to accentuate the miraculous character of her mission, by the contrast between the greatness of the work accomplished, and the feebleness of the instrument employed. Unlettered, knowing, as she herself said, Neither A nor B, undistinguished in the simple frankness of her address and bearing, from thousands 296of other village girls of her age and condition, with no external indication of the sublime destiny awaiting her, she blazed upon the world in her double part of warrior and prophetess, sibyl and saint, unheralded and unexpected as a heaven born meteor in a midnight sky. Her career, the most striking manifestation of the supernatural in modern history, is at once the despair of rationalism and the glory of religion, which honours in her a type of sanctity unexampled even among the endless variety of patterns held up for our example. And while on the one hand she recalls by her exploits the heroines of the Jewish dispensation, she is raised far above them on the other by the tender graces of Christian maidenhood, and the supreme consecration of the martyr’s death.

A flood of light has been thrown on the career of Joan of Are since the publication from 1841 to 1849 of the five massive volumes in which Quicherat edited for the Société de l’Histoire de France the Latin texts of the two processes of the Condemnation and Rehabilitation of the maid. We published in these pages in January 1891 an article by Father Wyndham, since embodied in the book among our headings, which gave an admirable résumé of the most recent writings on the subject down to that date, but the progress of events since then leaves room for much to be added by way of supplement to his essay. The introduction of the cause of the beatification and canonisation of Joan of Arc by the Congregation of Rites, bearing date January 27, 1894, had not then been decreed, giving, as it does, the preliminary imprimatur of the Church to the general belief in her sanctity by the title of Venerable it confers upon her. Only in the same year, too, was added perhaps the most important contribution to the literature of the subject by the publication of the second volume of Père Ayroles’ monumental work on La Vraie Jeanne d’Arc, entitled La Paysanne et l’Inspirée, d’après ses aveux, les témoins oculaires, et la Libre Pensée. In this division of the work, which will require three more such volumes to complete it, the learned Jesuit gives us the most authoritative picture of Joan’s early life yet published, placing her in the midst of the surroundings in which she lived, by reproducing for us in the chapters forming the first book the conditions of the Church of France, and of the native province and village of the Pucelle at the date of her 297birth and subsequent years. While these details are found in the general history of the time, those of the personal life of his heroine are drawn almost exclusively from the records of the trials of Condemnation and Rehabilitation in which her career was examined with such opposite results. Her own answers during a prolonged and severe cross-examination by her judges form the material of inestimable value for posterity furnished by the first, while from the second are taken the depositions of thirty-four witnesses who had seen and known her during the first seventeen years of her life, recorded by a Pontifical Commission, which sat at Domrémy, at Vaucouleurs, and at Toul, twenty-five years after her execution, The very persecution of which Joan was the victim has thus been the means of transmitting to posterity a more detailed picture of her life and character than is preserved to us of any historical personage removed from us by so long an interval of time. We are enabled by this evidence to reconstruct for ourselves the everyday life and doings of the little village by the Meuse on which so fierce a light of fame has been shed, and to set in the midst of it her who shared its humble toils while in daily intercourse with the angels and saints of heaven.

Born on the night of the Epiphany in the year 1412, in the lowliest condition of life—if her parents were not indeed actual serfs, as the patent subsequently conferring nobility on her family gives some reason to believe—Joan came into the world when the Church was still distracted by the great schism, healed not quite six years later by the election of Martin V. Its effects in loosening the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline and undermining religious belief were felt long after, and doubtless prepared the way for the Lutheran revolt of the following century. In France the authority of the Pope was weakened by the concessions extorted by Gallicanism during that troublous period, when three rival pretenders to the Papacy claimed the allegiance of the faithful, and the great Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic were each split into two sections under superiors deriving their authority from the one or the other.

The disorders of the Church were reflected in those of civil society. The hostility of the two factions which convulsed France was exasperated into a blood feud by the successive 298assassinations of the chiefs of both, while the English invader profited by these dissensions, and found an ally in one of the contending parties. To the miseries incident to civil war were added those inflicted by unlicensed marauders of all degrees, who took advantage of the prevailing anarchy to imitate the excesses of the bands of adventurers composing the regular armies. Every refinement of cruelty was practised on the unfortunate peasantry by these brigands. So great were their numbers that 10,000 were executed in Normandy alone in a single year, in addition to those hunted down as vermin in consideration of the price put on their heads. One chronicler tells us that from the Loire to the Seine, and from the Seine to the Somme, the cultivators having been slain or dispersed, the fields remained fallow, and the land without inhabitants. He had, he says, seen with his own eyes whole tracts of France—the vast plains of Champagne, the districts of Beauce, Maine, Perche and others, the French and Norman Vexin, the country of Caux from the Seine to Amiens and Abbeville, of Valois as far as Laon, and beyond it towards Hainault, changed into deserts, uncultivated and fallow, without arms to plough them, covered with bush and brushwood. In most of these lands, where vegetation is most vigorous, I have seen shrubs growing so as to form tangled forests.

The ground, he goes on to say, was only cultivated in the neighbourhood of towns, and of castles or fortified places, whence a sentinel could from some lofty tower descry the approach of bands of marauders, and give warning of it by the tolling of a bell or blast of a horn. All rushed from the fields to take refuge in a place of safety at the sound of the signal, which he declares was so familiar, that the very animals obeyed it of their own accord. Whole villages were depopulated and reduced to heaps of ruins, so that in one which had sheltered three thousand inhabitants, but seven remained. The capital itself was scarcely better off, and the journal of the Faux Bourgeois declares that wolves roamed at large through the streets, so that three or four were sometimes killed in a single night, to be afterwards carried through Paris hanging by their hind paws. The massacres perpetrated by the Burgundians on June 12 and 13, 1418, after they had been admitted by 299treachery through one of the gates of the city, were a curious anticipation of those of the terrible days of September 1793. The prisons, as on that occasion, were broken open, and their inmates massacred indiscriminately, not only those of the opposite party, but all detained there for any reason. The streets ran red with blood, and the number of victims is estimated at from 1600 to 2000, the Bishops of Saintes, of Senlis, of Constance, Bayeux, and Évreux, being included in the number. It was as the ally of this party, which then included the mad King, Charles VI. and his Queen Isabeau, that the English conqueror, Henry V., entered Paris in 1420, having, by his victory of Agincourt five years before, rendered himself master of northern France, while by the treaty of Troyes, on his marriage with Katharine of France he had been declared heir after his father-in-law to the entire kingdom. The latter having survived him by two months, his infant son, Henry VI, inherited his claim, and was proclaimed King of France, of which his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, assumed the regency. A series of crushing defeats inflicted on the troops of the rival claimant, the Dauphin, now Charles VII., at Cravant, on July 31, 1423, Verneuil, on August 17, 1424, and Rouvray, on February 12, 1429, had wrested from him all his dominions beyond the Loire, with the sole exception of the fortress-sanctuary of Mont-St.-Michel in Normandy.

It was during the accomplishment of these disastrous events that the obscure peasant child of Domrémy was growing up to play so unexpected a part in the strife of captains and kings. Her native village then formed an enclave of French territory on the borders of the Empire, being almost surrounded by the territories of the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine, owning allegiance principally to the latter. Prophecy and tradition associated the spot with the appearance of a maiden deliverer of France, for Merlin had foretold, that from the bois chenu in the immediate neighbourhood of the hamlet sortira une Pucelle qui apportera remède aux blessures, and Joan herself, though in her early life ignorant of this prediction, referred to another when urging the necessity of her journey to the Dauphin, in the following terms : Do you not know that it has been prophesied that France should be lost by a woman, and raised up by a Virgin from the Marches of Lorraine ?

300Her contemporaries, however, were far from connecting these ancient sayings with the little daughter of the poor peasants, Jacques d’Arc and Isabel Romée, who grew up in their midst undistinguished from her young companions save by her great though unostentatious piety. The Pater, Ave, and Credo, learned at her mother’s knee, seem to have constituted her sole theological repertory, nor is there a record of her having been taught catechism or any regular summary of Christian doctrine. On the other hand she went frequently to confession, heard Mass whenever possible, and knelt in the fields as often as she heard the bell rung for any public practice of devotion. In the church she was a model of recollection, kneeling with her eyes fixed on the crucifix, or the image of our Lady, for which she loved to twine garlands of leaves or flowers when in the woods with her companions. To the sylvan sanctuary of Bermont, within a few miles of her home, she had a particular devotion, and made frequent Saturday pilgrimages to the shrine of our Lady there, in company with her sister and others. One of her companions, in her deposition twenty-five. years after her death, declares that she was so good, simple, and pious, that she and the other girls often reproached her with being too devout, and a boy-playmate gives similar evidence :

I often saw Jeannette la Pucelle [he says]. In my young days I went with her leading her father’s plough. I was with her in the pastures and fields with the other girls. Often while we were amusing ourselves together, Jeanne retired apart, and it seemed to me that she conversed with God. I and the others laughed at her.

No less charitable than devout, she not only gave what small alms she could, but often surrendered her own bed to wayfarers, sleeping, the witnesses say, in the oven, probably a sunken chamber heated for baking, such as was formerly attached to many houses. Perrin le Drapier testifies that when he was attached to the service of the church of Domrémy, Joan often reproached him for neglecting to ring for compline, and used to make him presents of wool on condition of his being more diligent in his office.

But the little maiden, so far from being dreamy or abstracted, is described by all the witnesses as most industrious in all household tasks, in spinning, and in tending her father’s pigs 301and poultry. As it was the custom for all the inhabitants to take turns in the care of the village flocks, Joan took her share of the duty on behalf of her father, being only in this partial sense a shepherdess. Her pride in her domestic accomplishments was shown in her naive boast during the course of her trial, that in the use of the needle and distaff she did not fear the competition of any woman in Rouen.

The harmless survival of an ancient superstition among the peasantry of the Valley of the Meuse was wrested by her judges into the foundation of the charge of witchcraft, one of the chief of those on which she was condemned. Within a mile of Domrémy, on the road to Neufchâteau, was an ancient and spreading beech tree, known as l’Arbre des Dames, or des Fées, which had a legendary reputation as a favourite haunt and meeting place of the women or ladies called fairies, though all the witnesses were agreed in declaring that they had never seen one, or known any one who had. Various reasons were assigned for their disappearance, one octogenarian ascribing it to the sins of the people, while others attributed it to the reading of the Gospel under the tree by the priest, when the cross was carried through the fields on Ascension Eve. The custom, however, survived for the boys and girls of the village, accompanied sometimes by the châtelaines of the neighbouring castle, to repair thither on the Sunday after mid-Lent, called Lactare from the opening words of the Mass, to dance and play under the tree, and drink from an adjacent fountain, while eating small loaves of bread brought with them on this gipsy feast. They did the same in the spring and in the month of May, when they sometimes made a May man, probably what is in this country still called a Jack in the Green. That Joan sometimes took part in this innocent recreation, though only, as some witnesses averred, in order not to appear singular, was made by her accusers ground for charging her with holding intercourse there with evil spirits. All the witnesses for her rehabilitation were therefore examined at great length on the subject, but were unanimous in deposing that she never went there alone or under any other circumstances than the above.

Another incident of her girlhood, about which a tissue of calumnious fable has been woven, was the flight to Neufchâteau 302of all the villagers of Domrémy, when their homes were threatened by the approach of a band of marauders. That she went and returned in the company of her parents, and dwelt while there in the house occupied by them and many of their neighbours, was sworn to unanimously by all those examined on the subject, but this clear and direct testimony did not prevent the false version of the same incident from being repeated by many historians and made the basis of Voltaire’s infamous drama. According to this travesty of the truth, she lived there as a servant in a low inn, frequented by soldiers and disorderly characters, acquiring her military tastes in this society, and her equestrian prowess by riding the horses to water. The culminating point of the tale was her suit against a young man for non-fulfilment of a promise of marriage, from which he obtained his release by pleading the bad company she had kept.

There is a conflict of opinion as to the date of this controverted occurrence, but Père Ayroles shows grounds for believing it to have taken place in 1425, when Joan was thirteen. The learned Jesuit identifies it, with every appearance of probability, with a raid on Domrémy by a celebrated marauder, Henri d’Olry, established by independent historical evidence as having occurred in that year. This freebooter carried off all the flocks and herds of the village with whatever other booty he could lay his hands on, but had a short-lived success, as the Dame d’Ogévillers, into whose possession the domain of Domrémy had passed, made application, on the complaint of her vassals, to her powerful cousin, the Sire de Joinville, who sent his men-at-arms in pursuit of the raiders, and compelled them to disgorge their prey.

The story of Joan’s girlhood closes with the episode of her citation before the Ecclesiastical Court of Toul by a young man who pretended to have received the promise of her hand, but whom she compelled, by the force of her eloquence, publicly to confess the falsity of his allegations. This pretended betrothal is supposed to have been a stratagem of her father’s to withold her from her mission, and was referred to by herself in her trial at Rouen, when she declared that she had always been obedient to her parents, except in the matter of the marriage at Toul.

Such were the simple and authentic details of the external life of the peasant maiden of Domrémy, detached from the 303fabric of imaginary amplification and false interpretation that modern commentators have reared upon them. But to this apparently commonplace existence, differing in no wise from that of hundreds of girls of her age and time, there was a mysterious side unseen by the rest of the world. Joan was in her thirteenth year, when there began for her that double life, so strangely interwoven with her ordinary avocations, and forming the divinely appointed course of preparation for her sublime destiny. Its particulars would never have been known except for the malice of her persecutors, whose attempt to cover her with shame has but enhanced her glory. Derived entirely from her own avowals wrung from her under cross-examination, and thus registered as part of the proceedings of a judicial tribunal, they form, perhaps, the most wonderful record of spiritual experiences anywhere handed down to us. Those favoured with such communications are generally reluctant to speak of them, and Joan only did so when necessary for the explanation of her mission, or for her defence and justification in the course of her trial. During the years at Domrémy, she observed absolute silence on the subject, unless in so far as she may have confided in her confessor, although secrecy, as she has stated, was not enjoined on her. It must be borne in mind, as regards the credibility of statements so amazing, that they were authenticated by prodigies more amazing still, by the punctual fulfilment of her prophecies, no less then by her performance of a task impossible to unassisted human means.

Her supernatural life began when she was in her thirteenth year, in the summer of 1424, probably on May 31st, the vigil of the Ascension. In her father’s garden, which adjoined the cemetery and church, towards midday, but before she had broken her fast, there appeared to her, as to the shepherds of Bethlehem, a great light and a number of angels, the chief of whom, as she afterwards knew, was St. Michael. This apparition, which she always speaks of as a voice, though she saw as well as heard, terrified her at first, she being then but a young child, but when she had heard it three times, she knew it was the voice of an angel, It admonished her to behave herself well and frequent the church, and told her of the great pity of the Kingdom of France, showing her, as we may suppose, the grievous misfortunes and woes, of which a faint 304picture has been given above. The voice continued two or three times a week to bid her leave her own country and go into France, so that, as she says, she

Could no longer endure the place in which she was abiding. The voice told me (she says) that I should raise the siege that had been laid to the town of Orleans ; it afterwards bade me go to Robert de Baudricourt in the fortress of Vaucouleurs, of which he was the captain, and that he would give me people to conduct me. I replied to it, I am a poor girl who does not know how to ride, and I do not understand war.

St. Michael, she said elsewhere, had taught and shown her many things, but it was not permitted to her to tell all that he had revealed to her.

But though the Angel of Peril, as he is called in Brittany, never ceased to appear to her at intervals, he deputed Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch to be her more familiar and constant counsellors. The archangel himself prepared her for their coming, according to her own statement as follows :

When St. Michael came to me, he told me that St. Catherine and St. Margaret would come. He desired me to act according to their counsels, that they were ordered to direct and advise me in what I had to do, that I should believe what they told me, for such was the command of our Lord.

These saints appeared to her thenceforward under an invariable form, wearing very rich crowns of great price, though as to the remainder of their attire, she either could not or would not speak. They were as real to her, she declared, as any of the human beings about her, and she not only saw, but touched them, embracing their knees and feet with great reverence and devotion. When they departed from her she often wept, and longed to accompany them. They guided her conduct in the most minute particulars, and sometimes one and sometimes the other desired her to go to confession, even when she was not conscious of being in mortal sin. For the last seven years of her life she lived in constant communion with these celestial visitors, who sometimes came spontaneously, and sometimes in answer to her earnest prayer that they might be sent to her assistance. Once, indeed, she disobeyed them, when through impatience, like Moses when he struck the rock a second time, she jumped from the tower of Beaurevoir, where she was 305hemmed in by the enemy, in order to come to the assistance of Compiègne then threatened. The saints, she says, seeing the great necessity she was under, came to her help and saved her life, but desired her to go to confession after this transgression.

During her trial and imprisonment she appealed constantly to her voices for help and counsel, and received it several times a day. She sorely needed their consoling presence during that cruel imprisonment when she was cut off from all the external solaces of religion, and guarded by brutal soldiers night and day. A final triumph was promised to her, but in terms so vague as to leave her doubtful of the manner of her deliverance.

St. Catherine has told me that I should have help (she said to her judges), I do not know whether it will be by being delivered out of prison, or that when [ am brought up for judgment some trouble will arise by which I shall be released. I think it will be one or other. Most frequently the voices say to me that I shall be delivered by a great victory ; and they say to me afterwards : Accept all willingly ; do not be uneasy about your martyrdom ; you shall come at last into the kingdom of Paradise. The voices say that to me simply, absolutely—that is to say, without fail. I call this martyrdom the great pain and adversity I suffer in prison. I do not know whether I shall suffer still greater, but. I leave it to our Lord.

Thus they predicted her end clearly, but allowed her to put her own interpretation on their words, as we may believe in mercy in order to spare her the tortures of anticipation. In the same way, when she asked them whether she should be burned, they gave no direct reply, but desired her to leave all to our Lord and that He would help her. They had foretold her capture at Compiègne, as she described in the following answer.

During last Easter week, when I was in the ditches of Melun, it was said to me by my voices—that is to say, St. Catherine and St. Margaret— that I should be taken before St. John’s Day ; that this must be, and not to let myself be cast down, but to accept all cheerfully and that God would help me.

And to the further question as to whether the prediction had been repeated later, she answered :

They have said it to me several times, so to say every day. I begged of them that when I should be taken I might die quickly without 306long travail in prison, and they said to me to accept all cheerfully, for thus it must be, but they did not tell me the hour. Several times I have asked to know the hour, but they did not tell me.

Thus the curtain of the future was only partially lifted for her, and she was not permitted a foreknowledge that might have overborne even her lofty spirit.

The three supernal visitants who fulfilled the office of her special counsellors were not the only members of the court of heaven whom she was privileged to see. St. Gabriel is mentioned as having appeared to her at least once, and in another part of her evidence she says she had often seen angels amongst Christians. Her eyes were opened to perceive the invisible presences hidden from the grosser sense of ordinary mortals though never absent from their midst.

One of the most interesting of the contemporary accounts of the maid is contained in a letter written by de Boulainvilliers, Councillor and Chamberlain of Charles VII., to Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, when she was at the zenith of her career. Her visions are here described as consisting of a luminous cloud, whence a voice issued ; and from her habitually speaking of her monitors as voices, we may assume as probable that this was their ordinary form, while the visible apparitions were exceptional. She declares in her evidence, by way of explanation, that when she used the word voice, she also meant the light which accompanied it, saying that she rarely heard it without seeing the light, that there was a great deal of light on all sides, and that all the light did not extend to her. This phrase doubtless means that it did not surround or envelop her, but was seen externally to her own position. We have thus as clear an idea as can be gathered of phenomena so entirely without the range of ordinary experience, of the mysterious communications by which Joan was, during the five years previous to her public appearance, prepared and fortified for her extraordinary mission.

To explain away the supernatural character of the latter, while assigning to the heroine her undoubted place in the national history, has been a difficult task for the modern school of rationalism, with Michelet at its head. Joan’s contemporary enemies simplified it by treating her as a sorceress whose visions and inspiration were of the other world indeed, but 307from below, instead of from above. Joan was condemned and executed as a witch by a court of French ecclesiastics, under the influence of the University of Paris, and in the interests of the Anglo-Burgundian party. Her detractors in our day are satisfied with proclaiming her a life-long monomaniac, the victim of hallucinations produced on an overwrought brain by the political convulsions of the time. Cases of similar delusions abound, indeed, in lunatic asylums, as the self-importance of their inmates seeks gratification in the fancied assumption of spiritual exaltation or divine inspiration. There is only this one cardinal point of difference between such patients and the regeneratress of France, that they do not perform the prodigies they announce, or justify their pretensions to celestial aid by the execution of designs impossible to unaided earthly powers. The signs and wonders wrought by the maid were the convincing proofs of the genuineness of her mission, and the one set of phenomena is only explicable in the light of the other. These proofs were of a twofold character, consisting of prophecy and the fulfilment of prophecy in the accomplishment of the events foretold. Her earliest recorded utterance as to her own future was spoken to one of her boy companions, who, in his testimony in the process of rehabilitation, declared that she had once told him on the eve of St. John that there was a young girl between Coussey and Vaucouleurs (two points on either side of Domrémy) who would cause the King of France to be anointed within the year. In point of fact, he added, the King was crowned at Rheims the following year. Her mission had, however, already been proclaimed in general terms, as her first appeal to Robert de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, for an escort to convey her to the Dauphin had been made about the time of the Feast of the Ascension previous. On October 12, in the same year 1828, had begun the memorable siege of Orleans, the crisis of the most tragic period of French history.

De Baudricourt having twice repulsed Joan’s solicitations, contemptuously bidding her friends take her home and box her well, she backed her third appeal to him on February 12, 1429, by the announcement of the crushing defeat of Ronvray, which took place on that day at a distance of 100 leagues from the scene of the conversation. By this sign she finally 308vanquished the resistance of the stout soldier, who had doubtless previously thought, like M. Michelet, that he was dealing with one demented. As soon as sufficient time had elapsed for the fact to be certified—viz.,in nine days after, she was on her way to the Dauphin, with the red dress she had worn on her arrival exchanged for a suit of male attire, assumed in obedience to the instructions of her supernatural counsellors. The way, she declared, was open before her, although it lay for 150 leagues through the enemy’s country, and so in fact it proved. She reached the royal headquarters at the castle of Chinon in Touraine without impediment, travelling principally by night during the eleven days that she was on the road. Here she was subjected to a fresh test before being admitted to see the King, termed by her Dauphin, until after his consecration and coronation. Pronounced irreproachable by a committee of learned divines, at whose hands she underwent a most rigorous examination during six weeks, she was at last admitted to the royal presence, and identified the King in the midst of the circle, although he sought to embarrass her by pointing out another as himself. His doubts and hesitations were put to flight by her proof of miraculous knowledge of his most intimate thoughts in a reference to a secret known only to himself and heaven. It is believed, although there is no certain evidence on the point, to have been a painful doubt as to his birth, long the subject of his earnest prayers, which she was divinely permitted to clear up by the words in which she addressed him.

I tell thee on the part of my Lord (she is reported to have said) that thou art true heir of France and son of the King, and He sends me to thee to lead thee to Rheims, that there thou mayest receive thy coronation and consecration if thou wilt.

His face was seen inundated with a great joy on receipt of her communication, and from that moment he accepted her mission.

To her examiners at Poitiers she had declared that she would show a sign before Orleans, for such was the Divine it will. This she did as soon as a force was placed at her Ky disposal, first by leading a convoy of provisions into the town, i in full sight of the besiegers, who looked on as if spell-bound, i and then by the series of brilliant sallies, in which, as she 309had repeatedly promised, she defeated and shattered their forces, compelling them to raise the siege on May 8, 1429.

The second great sign of her mission, the coronation of the King at Rheims, was accomplished in the face of difficulties that rendered it humanly speaking impossible, the intervening country with a number of strongly fortified towns being in the hands of the enemy. Yet her march through it resembled a triumphal progress, many of the towns opening their gates on the appearance of the royal army, and the ceremony was performed on July 17, in less than three months from the time when she first assumed command. Among other predictions recorded of her, was the recommendation to make all possible use of her, as she would only last a year. This was almost literally fulfilled, as her capture at Compiègne, on May 24, 1430, was within thirteen months of her first feat of arms, the revictualling of Orleans on April 29 of the previous year. In the course of her trial she made several prophecies, registered by her enemies themselves, such as the total expulsion of the English and reconquest of the entire kingdom, the peace of Arras and recovery of Paris before seven years. Even the sword habitually used by her, as a symbol only, not an implement of slaughter, for she shed no blood with her own hands, was a testimony to her supernatural gifts, as it was found buried at a great depth behind the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois, where it was sought in obedience to her directions.

The theory of modern historians that Joan’s direct mission ended with the coronation at Rheims, and that her continuance in command was an arbitrary extension of her celestial mandate, is shown by Father Wyndham to be a conclusion unauthorised by contemporary records. It is true that intrigues and counter-influences, paralysed in the first joy of a great deliverance, began thenceforward to reassert themselves, and that her authority ceased to be accepted with unquestioning docility by leaders to whom the triumphs of the girl-warrior were a reproach. ‘The sternness, too, with which she repressed the license of the camp, must have rendered her rule distasteful to the rude soldiery accustomed to make war the pretext and apology for all excesses, Some consciousness of waning authority is betrayed in one of her answers to her 310judges, in which she declared that had she lasted three years without obstacle she would have delivered the Duke of Orleans, and presumably accomplished the remainder of her task of expelling the English from her native soil. But that she had personally ceased to be guided and inspired by heaven throughout the second, as well as the first phase of her career, is a gratuitous assumption of modern criticism.

It is a curious fact that Joan is most commonly known to posterity by names she never bore in her lifetime. When asked at the opening of her trial what her surname was, she replied that her father’s was d’Arc, and her mother’s Romée, and that the girls in her country usually were called by that of their mother. She, however, throughout her life, never styled herself, or was styled by others save as Jeanne la Pucelle, by which title she was addressed by her celestial monitors, frequently with the addition of Fille de Dieu. Thus to her contemporaries she was the Maid par excellence, the distinctive of Orleans having been added by later times. It has, however, been adopted in the decree concerning her beatification, in which she is styled The Venerable Servant of God, Joan of Arc, Virgin, called The Maid of Orleans. If, as we may hope, her cause proceeds through its further stages to her canonisation, it will be by the name of St. Joan of Arc that she will be raised to the honours of the altars.

It may be permissible to speculate why, on behalf of France among all countries that have suffered similar miseries, so violent a deviation should have been made from the ordinary laws guiding human events, why a miraculous deliverance should have been wrought by the visible intervention of heaven in favour of a particular people not more deserving apparently than many others of such special care.

A possible answer to the question may be found in the history of the subsequent century, when the tenets of the Reformation, had the two countries remained under a single rule, might have been forced upon France by the same violent means used by Henry VIII. and his successors to compel their acceptance by England. The former was thus preserved by the instrumentality of the maid from a moral disaster incomparably greater than all the material woes from which she was delivered by the same means, while the Catholic Church was spared a 311secession which would have been almost equivalent to the extinction of its authority in Europe. Joan, looked at in this light, was the champion not of her own country alone, but of the spiritual kingdom of the universe, prepared from her earliest youth for that exalted mission by the direct ministry of the angels and saints of heaven. And as the armed maiden, heroic in suffering as in war, she was the most perfect type of that Church militant whose battle she fought during her short life on earth.

We cannot read the story of Joan of Arc without being struck with the analogy it presents on many points, with the other mysterious supernatural manifestation of which France has in our own time been chosen as the scene. The visions that have made the Pyrenean sanctuary a place of pilgrimage for all nations, though directed to a different end, have many features in common with those which have consecrated the little village by the Meuse to their sublime memories. Bernadette, like Joan, was an uncultured peasant child, in no way distinguished from thousands of her class, when she, like Joan, was chosen as the instrument of a marvellous revelation. She, too, in her simplicity, did not at first sight recognise the transcendent majesty of the supernal apparition, and was in similar fashion schooled by a series of communications, in the nature of the message she was to deliver to the world. Nor was there, in either case, any such suspension of the natural faculties as produces the state of ecstasy or trance, for Bernadette, while gazing on her vision, could describe it in detail to the companions around her, and Joan’s playfellows told at the end of years how sometimes in their sports she would withdraw apart and seem as though communing with heaven, though evidently not wrapt from ordinary consciousness. Both Joan and Bernadette were in all matters external to their respective missions, of absolute simplicity of manners and undowered with any exceptional faculties, though gifted within the range of the duties imposed on them, with wisdom that baffled all the devices of human intelligence to thwart or entrap it. Fidelity to their appointed tasks was the distinguishing characteristic of each, for as the terrors of death itself could not bring the shepherdess of the Meuse to gainsay the genuineness of her inspiration, so the 312cross-examination of the keenest wits in France failed to elicit from her of the Gave, during the eight years that she remained to answer all the inquiries of the curious and sceptical, a single word in contradiction of the wonderful tale recited by her with such unvarying precision. The little witness of Our Lady was no less faithful to her vocation than the disciple of the Archangel to her more strenuous call.

To the latter it was given to smite with the sword of heaven the armed invaders encamped on the soil of ancient France.

The child of Lourdes was summoned from her simple rural tasks to do battle against a subtler enemy in a holier cause. It was Bernadette Soubirou’s part to uphold the standard of Our Lady in the war waged at the present day by gross materialism against supernatural belief, which has inflicted on modern France evils far transcending those from which Joan of Arc was four and a half centuries ago divinely commissioned to deliver her.

Ellen M. Clerke.

Unter dem Titel La Libératrice d’après les chroniques et les documents français et anglo-bourguignons, et la chronique inédite de Morosini hat schliesslich Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Ayroles de la compagnie de Jésus im dritten Bande seines Werkes La vraie Jeanne d’Arc die wichtigsten Berichte des 15. Jhdts. über die Jungfrau von Orleans zusammengestellt. Die zwei ersten Bande waren betitelt : La Pucelle devant l’Église de son temps und La Paysanne et l’inspirée. In Vorbereitung sind noch : IV. La Vierge guerrière und V. La Martyre.

Durch den vorliegenden Band will der Verfasser permettre à quiconque n’est pas sans quelque culture intellectuelle d’étudier la Céleste apparition dans les sources mêmes de son histoire. Für ihn nämlich la Pucelle est une démonstration irréfragable de la divinité du christianisme, un touchant exposé de son dogme et de sa morale, la justification des pratiques catholiques, un coin du voile qui nous dérobe les réalités invisibles soulevé, c’est le Ciel entrevu. Er bezeichnet sein Buch selbst als une œuvre de vulgarisation und hat deshalb die ursprünglichen Berichte der Chroniken einem durchgreifenden rajeunissement unterworfen, welches sich sowohl auf die alte Schreibweise, die ausser Gebrauch gekommenen Worte, wie auf die einem modernen Leser anstössigen oder unverständlichen stilistischen und syntaktischen Ausdrucks weisen erstreckte, dabei aber möglichst la saveur de la vieille langue zu bewahren suchte und bewusstermassen keine Änderungen an dem Sinn der Originale vornahm.

Für raffinés de l’érudition, d. h. für die, welche Texte in der älteren Sprache Frankreichs mit philologischem Auge und Interesse betrachten, ist also Ayroles Publikation von vornherein wertlos und das um so mehr, als z. B. für die Modernisierung der veralteten Worte nach der Angabe auf S. X das Glossaire de la langue du moyen âge von Lacurne de Sainte Palaye (gemeint ist dessen Dictionnaire historique de l’ancien langage françois, Glossaire de la langue françoise depuis son origine jusqu’au siècle de Louis XIV) als einziges Hilfsmittel benutzt ist, also z. B. Godefroys Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française für den Verfasser noch nicht existierte. Auch die nicht durchgreifend modernisierten Texte der Pièces justificatives sind, wenn auch nicht im gleichen Grade, unzuverlässig, weil auch sie, wie ich konstatiert habe, vielfache Ungenauigkeiten aufweisen. Überdies findet sich bei den aus Handschriften mitgeteilten Texten nirgends die Blattzahl angegeben, ebenso wie im Buche selbst die Vergleichung mit den benutzten Ausgaben durch keinerlei Verweise erleichtert, worden ist.

Was den Wert der vorliegenden Publikation für die Geschichtsforschung anlangt, so wird er kaum höher einzuschätzen sein, da ja schon der grundsätzliche Standpunkt A.s zu jeder kritischen Forschung im denkbar schroffsten Gegensatze steht.

E. Stengel.

Greifswald.