ART. VII.-1. Procès de Jeanne d'Arc. Par Jules Quicherat. Paris, 1841-1848.

2. Nouveaux Aperçus sur Jeanne d'Arc. Par Jules Quicherat. Paris, 1851.

3. Jeanne d'Arc la Vénérable.

Paris, 1894.

Par Monseigneur Ricard.

4. La vraie Jeanne d'Arc. Par J. P. Ayroles, S.J. Paris, 1890-1894.

5. Jeanne d'Arc. Par H. Wallon. Edition Illustrée. Paris, 1876.

6. Jeanne d'Arc à Domrémy. Par Siméon Luce. Paris, 1887. 7. Nouvelles Recherches sur la Famille de Jeanne d'Arc. Par E. de Bouteiller et E. de Braux. Paris, 1879.

8. Jeanne d'Arc. Par Marius Sepet. Tours, 1894.

MAN

ANY years have passed since the Quarterly Review' published, in March 1842, an article on Jeanne d'Arc, now reprinted in Lord Stanhope's collected works. Since that date, our historical materials for a criticism of the Maid's character and career have received great additions. Lord Stanhope, in writing his chivalrous essay, had before him only the first volume of M. Quicherat's monumental work; the four remaining volumes of the 'Procès de Jeanne d'Arc,' as well as the Nouveaux Aperçus,' were still unpublished. Many fresh documents have been recovered, even since M. Quicherat published his great collection. Monsieur Vallet (de Viriville) and M. du Fresne de Beaucourt have given to the world their painstaking histories of Charles VII. Pamphlets innumerable have been published on the Iconography of the Maid, on her family and its surviving branches, and on everything in the remotest degree connected with her extraordinary personality. The late M. Siméon Luce devoted his wide erudition to the elucidation of her early years and her social and religious environment. Father Ayroles, S.J., has criticised M. Luce in La vraie Jeanne d'Arc' with a severity caused, we think, by a partial misunderstanding of that author's purpose, but with learning and acumen. Finally, to the Maid has been decreed the title of 'Venerable' by the Roman Church; and her canonization is probably but a matter of time.

The large accumulation of historical materials now enables us to estimate and understand Jeanne d'Arc with a certainty and clearness hitherto impossible. Modern researches into the comparative study of enthusiasm, of mysticism, and of the abnormal or supernormal in psychology, also throw some uncertain light on the mystery of the Maid's inspiration, her

visions

visions and voices. In spite of the triumphs of physical science, and partly perhaps in consequence of researches in experimental psychology, the old hypotheses of hysterical disease and of fraud have been tacitly abandoned. Michelet believed in enthusiastic hallucination: the ordinary consciousness projecting its desires in visible and audible form. Henri Martin pronounced in favour of a mystic and clairvoyant contact with the Absolute, that in which we live, and move, and have our being.' M. Quicherat asserts the extraordinary facts, as we shall see, but without putting forward any theory. While Roman Catholics may, and sometimes do, explain these mysteries by the direct inspiration of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, the psychological student is constrained to acknowledge that they have their own marked and peculiar place in the long historical series of analogous mental phenomena still unexplained. To this conclusion, M. Quicherat, though a freethinker,' came more than forty years ago; and if thought is to be really, not nominally, 'free,' any one acquainted with the evidence for the facts may follow M. Quicherat, careless of the charge of superstition' and the sneers of common sense. It is notable that the differences of opinion which now prevail on this topic, were just as active in the time of the Maid herself. But modern controversy sets aside two old theories,—that of imposture, whether practised by or upon the Maid, and that of inspiration by evil demons. Whatever this 'creature,' as a Burgundian writer calls Jeanne, may have been, she was neither cheat nor sorceress; and if she was deceived, we may remember the often-quoted remark of Novalis on those whom God deceives.'

6

It is not by way of idly fingering an old Gordian knot' that we now approach the history of the Maid. In her agony France was saved by a girl, almost a child, a peasant, unlettered, and inexperienced in council as in war. As Pope Pius II. writes in his Memoirs: The tale is likely to be received by posterity with more of wonder than of belief,' yet no historical facts rest on better evidence. To examine the evidence, and to indicate the nature of the problem, not to solve it, is our purpose.

The year of the birth of Jeanne d'Arc is no longer in dispute. Hume conceives her to have been a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the time of her mission, and is thus enabled to minimize the marvel of a genius which, like a good Scot, he admires and applauds. But it is now acknowledged on all hands that the Maid was but seventeen when her public career began, having been born at Domrémy on the night of January 5, 1412. As early as 1429 we have contemporary evidence of a

tale

tale concerning her nativity. The cocks crowed all night long (the lusty bird takes every hour for dawn'), and an inexplicable gladness filled the minds of the villagers. Whether the Maid is more correctly claimed by Champagne or Lorraine is a question greatly disputed, and generally decided by local patriotism. According to MM. de Bouteiller and de Braux, Jacques d'Arc, the father of the Maid, came from Ceffonds, near Moutier en Der, in Champagne. The family of her mother, Isabelle, called Romée' from some pilgrimage, had long been settled at Vouthon, now in the canton de Gondrecourt, near Commercy. The children of Jacques d'Arc, and of Isabelle his wife, were a son, Jacquemin, of whom little is known; another son, Jean, who owned the paternal house at Ceffonds, and was later ennobled; and Pierre, who was taken prisoner with his sister at Compiègne on May 23, 1430. A sister, Catherine, married and died before Jeanne's mission began. An important member of the connexion was Aveline, sister of Isabelle d'Arc, for the husband of Aveline's daughter Jeanne, one Durand Lassois or Laxart, was the Maid's first disciple. The later fortunes of the whole family have been elaborately traced, and many French houses of respectable position now claim collateral kindred with the Maid.

The family of Arc is generally spoken of by witnesses from Domrémy as 'not rich,' but industrious and honest. Jacques d'Arc possessed, in fields and cattle, a modest competence. He was doyen of his village; his office was hardly more dignified, however, than that of a modern garde champêtre. Still, he was a prominent, substantial, and representative personage, and, as such, in 1427 had relations with Robert de Baudricourt, who commanded the loyal garrison of Vaucouleurs. Though his free birth was doubtful, according to the statement in the grant of nobility to his family, Jacques d'Arc was evidently a man of some local note; he had an honest pride in his good name, and, in brief, was a good example of the class from which, in Scotland, Burns and Carlyle were born. His wife was certainly a devout woman; Jeanne learned her creed, she says, at her mother's knee, and Isabelle Romée made a pilgrimage, in Holy Week, 1429, to the distant shrines of Puy en Velay.

Such were the Maid's domestic environments. In matters of political opinion all Domrémy, except one man, held with the Armagnacs and for the Dauphin. The neighbouring village of Maxey was Burgundian; the boys of Maxey and of Domrémy fought out the civil quarrel with sticks and stones, and Jeanne sometimes saw her brothers return bleeding from these 'bickers.' Here politics may have been only an excuse for a battle. The

boys

boys of Maxey and Domrémy used to fight within living memory; perhaps they do so still. The district dependent on the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs was the only strip of territory remaining loyal to the Dauphin Charles, in all that eastern region. The country was vexed by public and private war during the early girlhood of the Maid. Thus the great pity that was in France' came vividly before her, while the situation of her native village, on an old Roman way, enabled her to hear what travellers and pilgrims had to tell of the state of France. A vivid fancy, a tender heart, could not but be impressed by the prevalent wretchedness and anarchy. Even while she went with other children to eat cakes by the fountain and hang wreaths of flowers on the Fair May,' the Fairy Tree' of Domrémy, the child may have been brooding on the sorrows of her country. All evidence from Domrémy, whether taken by friends before her examination at Poictiers (in March 1429), or by her foes before her trial at Rouen, or, finally, by her countrymen before the trial of 'rehabilitation' in 1450-56, was unanimous in its verdict on the character of Jeanne. This last trial, conducted at the instance of Jeanne's family, and directed by Jean Bréhal, Inquisitor in France, was designed to clear the character of Charles VII. from the imputation of complicity with witchcraft. The evidence must be taken with allowances for involuntary illusions of memory, and, on the part of those connected with the trial at Rouen, with allowances for timidity and prevarication. The testimony, however, is often loyal and frank, especially on the side of the Domrémy people. She was the best girl in the parish,' simple, charitable, extremely devout, and given to attending services in church. In the fields she prayed when she heard the distant bells, and children of her own age laughed at her as altogether too saintly. Yet it seems that she excelled them all in speed of foot, if we may believe a singular contemporary testimony.

On June 21, 1429, just after the Maid's most brilliant victories, the Seneschal of Berry, Perceval de Boulainvilliers, a confidential adviser of Charles VII., described her in a letter to the Duke of Milan. According to him, it was after a footrace, in which her companions declared that they saw her fly ' volantem juxta terram,' that Jeanne first heard her airy advisers. A voice bade her go to her mother; she, supposing that some one was calling her from a distance, went home, where she found that she was not wanted, and had not been sent for. As she was returning to the other children, a luminous cloud appeared to her, and from the cloud came a voice, bidding

her

*

her to undertake her mission. She told the matter only to the curé. For five years she remained in perplexity as to obeying the summons. This tale of the foot-race was possibly told in the Maid's examination by the French clergy at Poictiers, in March 1429. It is not actually inconsistent with Jeanne's own account, as given to her judges at Rouen.

'When she was about thirteen years old' (or 'in her thirteenth year'), 'she had a voice from God, to aid her in governing herself. And, the first time, she was in great fear. It came about midday in summer, in her father's garden, and she had not fasted on the preceding day't [but was fasting when the voice came]. She heard the voice on her right hand, towards the church, and rarely heard the voice without seeing a bright light.'

This story is not necessarily, as we said, in contradiction with that of Perceval de Boulainvilliers. Jeanne may not have deemed it necessary to mention, at her trial, the voice which bade her go to her mother. It seemed in no way supernatural, was attended by no light, and might have been the voice of some boy, playing a trick upon her. In her own account, the strange voice at first only bade her go to church and be a good girl,' and, later, it told her to go to the aid of her country.

It is singular that no extant contemporary account, by friend or foe (unless we accept the evidence of a Grant of Arms, of June 1429), mentions the apparitions or voices of any special saint or angel to Jeanne, before she herself gave information about them at Rouen. At Poictiers, previous to her being sent to the army, she must have told much of her tale to the doctors; in fact, at Rouen, she publicly avowed that she had done so, though her king alone was completely in her confidence. But no description surviving from that period, and no evidence of eye-witnesses and friends, says a word about the appearances of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine. Jeanne, among the captains and before the king, as in the presence of others among her intimates, appears only to have talked of 'her counsel,' 'her Master,' and 'her voices.' Neither friends nor foes give more minute particulars till after the trial at Rouen,

*Jeanne herself, at her trial, said that she had spoken to no man of her visions before she went to Robert de Baudricourt. That she did not speak of them in confession was one of the accusations against her. Father Ayroles urges that statements made in confession are private between the penitent and his Maker, and that Jeanne may have revealed her experiences to her parish priest.

This is Father Ayroles' and M. Fabre's reading of the MS. M. Quicherat reads, et ipsa Johanna jejunaverat die præcedenti'; the true reading seems to be nec jejunaverat. ('La vraie Jeanne d'Arc,' ii. 503.)

Vol. 180.-No. 360.

2 H

though