Untitled Document

23 May 2004

Saint Joan

We may or may not be done with our latest Hundred Years war in Europe, and we may have launched off into something just as profound and enduring elsewhere.

The news continues bad enough this morning, and they are trying to pin the prisoner abuse on Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US military officer in Iraq. He apparently was at abu Ghraib a couple times while some interrogations were going on, and hence is responsible, according to some JAG officer.

The general may or may not agree, but I think that someone has to be responsible, and if it has to be him to save the US Army, then that is the calling he was promoted to do. Chosen, maybe.

I was watching the History Channel last night. They had a panel on the concept and history of forced confession. Naturally they covered the Romans and their mode of operation. I have a friend who is sympathetic to the Roman approach to the problem of problem people.

You do what you need to do, and the niceties exist only to protect your own honor. I am given to understand that there once were trees in the Palestine, but the doughty Tenth Legion had such prodigious requirements that they were all cut down to make crosses.

The Republic and successor Empire of Rome lasted eleven centuries, so who am I to quibble with their sources and methods?

The panelists turned their attention presently to the methods of the great successor to the Empire in Europe, the Catholic Church. The Church was not amused by heresy, and went to some lengths to ensure that the guilty confessed to deviation, whether it was true or not.

Their methods were startling and effective. Looking at the devices used by the Officers of the Inquisitor General, I was surprised that anyone managed to be true to themselves. Truly awful in concept. My brief contact with being on the receiving end of the sources-and-methods of abuse suggest to me that heroes are made of sterner stuff than I am.

The panel finished up with a discussion of the problem of witches. I gathered from the experts that women have been a problem for some time, even before our own century. The Germans killed 100,000 of them between 1400-1600, showing an early predilection for efficiency and focus. The most effective means of dealing with the witches was to burn them at the stake.

There are a variety of approaches to the purging of demonic association. Sometimes the burning was after life had passed and sometimes it was not. But fire clearly was the means of choice.

On May 23rd, 1430, Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to their English Allies.

The Maid or Orleans was one of those problem women.

Today she is patron saint of France, but there is a heavy admission to pay to achieve these sorts of things. And whether you are Saint or heretic is determined by the court of ultimate jurisdiction.

She led resistance to the English invasion in the first Hundred Years War.

You would not have known she was going to be a problem when she was a little woman. She was the third of five children born to a humble farmer in Domremy village on the border of between Champagne and Lorraine Provinces. She spent her childhood watching her father's flocks and learned her domestic skills from her mother.

When she was twelve she began hearing the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret as she stood in the fields. The voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country, The told her to get a bad haircut, dress in man's uniform and take up arms against teh English.

By 1429, the English and their Burgundian allies occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire River. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a general Gallic sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England claimed throne of France.

Joan convinced the French leadership of her validity of her calling, a sort of reverse of the usual ecclesiastical examination. She even passed a revue for authenticity by a board of theologians. Certified as a selectee of God, she was appointed to the rank of Captain and given command of troops.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led her troops to a miraculous victory over the English. She continued fighting the enemy along the Loire River. Her reputation became so formidable that when she approached thousands of troops under Lord Talbot arrayed near the city of Patay, most of the English fled the field. One of Talbot's Lieutenants, Sir John Fastolfe, was among them.

He had been one of Henry's favorites, but he was stripped of his order of the Garter for cowardice before the Maid. Lord Talbot was captured along with a hundred noblemen and nearly two thousand soldiers.

The victory ensured the throne would remain in the hands of the Valois Dynasty and Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429, in Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king.

She returned to the field thereafter, and as I said, on this day the next year she was captured while defending Compiegne, where in another century, a German army would surrender in a railcar.

The Burgundians who captured her sold her to the English. They, in turn, found a friendly ecclesiastical court chaired by pro-English Bishop Pierre Cauchon in Rouen, a body roughly analogous to the current Iraqi Governing Council. There she was tried for witchcraft and heresy.

She was informed that her wearing of male clothing was a crime against God.

She responded that the Saints had not yet told her to change back to skirts, and besides, the trousers served as protection from sexual abuse by her jailers. She was seen as defiant and probably possessed by the Devil.

After a fourteen-month interrogation she was found guilty on all counts. I cannot imagine the sort of courage this nineteen-year-old displayed against her inquisitors. She was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace, and by some accounts, they did it the hard way.

Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue. She was a witch, after all.

In 1456 a second trial was held and she was declared innocent. In 1909 she was beatified, and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

It was a thoroughly French ride to the rescue, but I think it was too late.