The Story of Joan of Arc the Witch-Saint

by M. M. Mangasarian

I knocked upon the Bishop's door. "Open, open," I cried, as in the dead of night I kept pounding upon the door. "I wish to come in," I cried. "I wish to save the Church from an indelible stain, I wish to protect the honor of humanity." "Open, open," I cried, again and again, and in the stillness of the night the noise of my blows reached far and wide. Louder and louder still I cried to the Bishop to open the door. "I wish to rescue France and England from committing an act of infamy; I wish to save history from an unspeakable shame. Let me in, Bishop! I come to protect you against the execration of posterity, against eternal damnation! Open, open the door!" I shouted. I kept pounding upon the door, long and loud, on the eve of that foul day in fourteen hundred thirty-one. I grew impatient with waiting for the door to open, and my voice, which a moment before swept up and down the whole gamut of hope and despair—pleading, shouting, sobbing—now became faint and feeble.

I could not arouse the Bishop. He was fast asleep. Then I was silent myself. Suddenly I heard a far away whisper. It did not come from the Episcopal palace, nor from the Cathedral close by, yet I was sure I heard some one speaking. I listened again. I could now hear more clearly. "I am coming, I am coming," was repeated in caressing accents. "I am coming, to open the door, to awaken the Bishop, to usher in a more joyous day for humanity. I will extinguish the fires of persecution, turn executioners into teachers, disarm superstition, and make the whole world sane. In that day Joan will triumph over her foes and make their churches her mausoleum." It was the voice of Reason! But it took five hundred years for that faint whisper to swell into a mighty chorus, swinging around the globe. That prophecy has been fulfilled, the Bishop's door opened, and the Church yielded to the clamor of civilization, and changed Joan's stake into the shrine where I lit my candle in her honor, in the Church of the Sacred Heart. She is no longer a heretic, she has become a saint. Her tears have changed into pearls, her tomb into a cathedral, where she sleeps in pomp on the bosom that once stung her to death.

But I was not in Rouen in fourteen hundred thirty-one; I was there five hundred years too late. The day after I arrived in the city, I went to the market place, but, instead of a procession with candles and torches, with stakes and fagots, I found commerce, industry, labor, in full possession of the great square. Prosperous looking men and women met and greeted one another pleasantly; farmers were selling fruit and vegetables; the women, flowers. Even the priests one came across smiled as they saw the happy countenances of the people. What a change! Common sense has sweetened human nature and flooded the mind with the light that destroys superstition and makes all men brothers. The guide pointed out to me the white marble slab marking the spot on which Joan of Arc met her death. "Upon this place stood the stake of Joan of Arc. The ashes of the glorious virgin were thrown into the Seine." This is the inscription on the slab which was placed there by the municipality in eighteen hundred ninety-one.

Close to this same spot the citizens of Rouen have erected a fountain, in the form of a monument, to the same heroic maiden. I stood and watched the playful waters as they fell with a liquid plash into the marble basin below. Presently, a woman came along with her pitcher. The stake at which Joan of Arc was burned to death has become a fountain, to which the people now come to slake their thirst. Walking up to the woman, I said, "What fountain is this?"

"Ah, monsieur," she exclaimed, "behold the fountain of Joan of Arc."

"But she was a heretic," I remarked. I can never forget her smile. The sun had arisen in her eyes. "We live in the twentieth century," she replied. And, unconsciously, we both heaved a sigh of relief. I rubbed my eyes to be sure we were not living in the middle ages, when Rationalism was still a babe in swaddling clothes, and Theology was lord of all. This is the twentieth century—for we are drinking at the fountain of Joan of Arc instead of carrying fagots to her stake! One of the sunniest spots in my memory will be my meeting with this peasant woman, with her pitcher, at the fountain of Joan of Arc.

But my object in this lecture is to help clear some obscure questions in connection with the trial, martyrdom and subsequent canonization of this girl of nineteen. I wish to bring about a more intelligent appreciation of the story of a young shepherdess, beginning from the day she left her home in Domremy, to the fiery scaffold; and thence to a place among the saints in the Catholic calendar. This is the only instance in Catholic history of a person once destroyed as a heretic who has afterwards received the highest honors within the gift of the Church. In fourteen hundred thirty-one an infallible body of ecclesiastics pronounced this young woman to be "a child of perdition, a sorceress, a seducer, a harlot and a heretic." Five hundred years after, another infallible body of ecclesiastics belonging to the same church pronounced the same "harlot" and "heretic" to be "angelic" and "divine." One infallible pope allowed her to be burned in fourteen hundred thirty-one; another infallible pope denounced her murderers as detestable criminals—which shows how fallible is infallibility.

A great many untruths are being circulated to help clear this contradiction. The clergy are proclaiming from the housetops that it was not the church that tried and condemned Joan of Arc to torture and death in fourteen hundred thirty-one; on the contrary, it was the church, they say, which has just vindicated her memory and beatified her with superb ceremonies. History, however, gives a different version of the affair. Before proceeding to describe the trial and condemnation of Joan of Arc, let me state the attitude of the Rationalist toward Joan of Arc's claims to inspiration. We can do justice to a woman of her description without believing in miraculous predictions. Joan of Arc claimed to have seen visions and to have heard voices, which assured her of her divine mission. She was thirteen years of age, according to her testimony, when she felt her first thrill. The visions were repeated. One day, at about noon, in the summer time, and while working on her father's farm, close to the whispering trees, she saw a radiance out of which came a voice which she fancied was the voice of an angel or of a saint. It was not at all strange that she should hear voices. All her education had prepared her for them. She had been told how others had seen angels and heard voices. The literature of the Church was full of the miraculous in those days. It was the ambition of every believer to receive visits from the other world, and to be told secrets. Joan, the little Domremy girl, shared these ambitions. In her case the wish was father to the vision. She heard the voices and saw the faces which her heart coveted. How do we explain her "voices" and her "visions"? The question is a very simple one, unless we have a leaning for theology. The voices that Joan heard were those that came from her own heart. It was her own dreams she saw in the sunlight.

The young woman had mused over the acts of brigandage of the invading army and their French allies; she had seen the smoke of the burning villages and had heard the wail of her peasant neighbors. The distress of her people had often melted her into tears and wrung many a sigh from her lips. She imagined the whole country summoning her to the rescue. So earnest was she that her thoughts assumed form and shape, and became vocal. Thus, out of the substance of her own soul she fashioned the visions which she beheld. She felt herself set apart to be the saviour of France. The brilliance of that thought darkened every other object in life—home, parents, money, marriage!

To those who will not be satisfied with this explanation, I beg to say that if the voices were really supernatural, then they should be held responsible for the cruel death to which they led or drove the young woman. Why did her voices, if they were divine, desert her when she needed their help most? Why did they not save her from prison and the stake? And which of us would like to be guided to the chambers of the inquisition, and the flames of the stake by "heavenly voices"? Moreover, if these voices came from God, why did they not speak to the English king, or to the Roman pope, in behalf of Joan, when she called on them for help? Why did they not assume the responsibility for the acts for which she was destroyed? Voices and visions which induce a young girl to go to the help of a perishing country only to use her victories for the benefit of a depraved and imbecile prince like Charles VII, and desert the young woman herself to be "done" to death! Defend us against them!