Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans, was born at Domrémy in
about 1412. Jeanne la Pucelle, “Joan the Maid”, was an illiterate
and highly intelligent peasant girl from Champagne. The dauphin Charles of
France was at war with the combined forces of England and Burgundy, and from
about the age of thirteen Joan experienced inward promptings, her
“voices”, urging her to save France from the aggressors. In 1429
she obtained an audience with Charles, whom she won over; after a searching
examination by churchmen, she was provided with a suit of armour and a staff
of attendants. She took charge of the French army, which ten days later
routed the English besieging Orléans. This was followed by another
victory at Patay; Troyes surrendered; and Joan persuaded the dauphin to be
crowned at Rheims, as King Charles VII. The effect of this triumph of Joan's
moral leadership was tremendous; but the French did not press home their
advantage, so in 1430 Joan went off on her own to relieve the beleagured town
of Compiègne. There the Burgundians captured her, and sold her to the
English. King Charles left her to her fate.
After nine months of brutal confinement, Joan was arraigned before the ecclesiastical court of the bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, on charges of witchcraft and heresy. (“Cochon”, which sounds rather like “Cauchon”, means “pig”.) During fifteen sessions she stood up to her learned accusers fearlessly and good-humouredly, with native shrewdness, always refusing to betray her conscience or her heavenly “voices”. She was found guilty, and the University of Paris confirmed the verdict. For a short time Joan wavered before imminent and hideous death, but then stood firm again. She was handed over to the civil authorities and burned in the market-place of Rouen on 30 May, 1431. She was not yet twenty years old.
What of Joan's sexuality? The ecclesiastics who condemned her were clearly perturbed by her insistence on wearing men's clothing and the masculine cut of her hair. They questioned her repeatedly on the subject. Joan's responses make it clear that for her, it was a matter of conscience: her voices told her that for the moment, this is how she was to present herself. There is no evidence that Joan was at all uncomfortable with her sexual identity as a woman. Early in her teens, she consecrated herself to perpetual virginity. Contemporary accounts state that she would, if possible, sleep with a woman rather than with a man, but if with the latter, she would insist on remaining fully clothed. In her time, women slept together as a matter of course, and Joan felt no embarrassment in asking her captors to provide her with a female cell-mate. At that time, there was no concept of Lesbianism as a life-style, and if women touched one another whilst in bed together, contemporary theologians and historians alike regarded it as of no account. Indeed, Joan's preference for a female bed-mate was cited as evidence of her chastity.
Saint Joan of Arc was convicted by an ecclesiastical tribunal which unscrupulously served the political designs of its English masters. To strengthen his own position King Charles VII twice took steps to have the verdict set aside; but it was Pope Callistus III who appointed a commission which in 1456 declared the condemnation to have been obtained by fraud and deceit, and fully rehabilitated the memory of its victim. Four and a half centuries later, in 1920, Joan was canonized. Her feast day is 30 May.
Links
Saint Joan of Arc Center, Albuquerque, N.M.
The Creativity of Joan of Arc — Christopher Russell
Marianne
During the French Revolution (1789-1792), the idea of a woman representing
the Republic became popular, but it wasn't until the Second Empire, some 60
years later, that she was named Marianne. “Marianne” was
originally the name of a secret society which struggled against the regime,
and became famous after participating in the revolt of the slate workers of
Trelage, near Angers. These pro-republican citizens represented
“Marianne,” a common French name, as the proud woman leader,
defying her enemy. After the fall of the Second Republic in 1852, the Second
Empire kept Marianne as the symbol of the proud, strong France.