Lights of Madness: In Search of Joan of Arc

By Preston Russell

Joan of Arc was burned alive in 1431, condemned for her heresy which defied church and worldly authority. Since childhood, she claimed to have heard daily voices from God. These angelic messages miraculously guided Joan to drive the English out of France and end the Hundred Years War. Author Preston Russell traces her extensive trial testimony, seeking to find her own voice from five hundred years ago. He also examines her many faces evolving in world literature, theatre, and film, extending from Shakespeare and Voltaire to Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw.

Becoming a world symbol, Joan of Arc has been embraced by Napoleon, Nazi Germany, Marxist ideology, and French political parties. The Catholic Church has also claimed her as a Saint. Competing interpretations have strived to capture her enduring mystery. Was Joan really a military genius--or actually a man--or a mystic, a witch, a liar, a lunatic, medieval religious reformer, fascist, communist, proto-feminist, heretic or saint? With his background as a physician, Dr. Russell concludes with diverse medical attempts to define Joan of Arc. Theories of insanity since Hippocrates are traced through to 20th century psychiatric theories, among them Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Albert Schweitzer.

Yet 21st century brain research is discovering surprising aspects of the minds split awareness and subconscious abilities. Neuroscientists are presently chasing the elusive ghost hiding within the machine of our physical reality, beginning to explore the metaphysical realm of universal spirituality. Russells search for Joan of Arc seeks a reconciliation between science and religion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499040562

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Preston Russell.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014911378

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Cover: Joan of Arc statue in Places des Pyramides, Paris, photograph by Thierry Prat, courtesy of Corbis

Copyright © 2005 by Preston Russell, Frederic C. Beil, Pubisher

Revised edition © 2014, by Preston Russell, Xlibris

Rev. date: 07/31/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Go! Go On! I Will Be Your Help—Go On!

Chapter Two

Rehabilitation

Childhood Recollections Of Jeannette

Jeanne Sets Out For France

Jeanne’s Reception At Chinon

Jeanne As Transformed Warrior

Victory At Orléans

Unbroken Victory After Orléans

Road To Coronation At Reims

Disobedience And Downfall Before Paris

Capture And Imprisonment

Trial And Execution

Legends Of Faux-Jeannes

Chapter Three

Jeanne In The World Thereafter

Jeanne Transformed By

Nineteenth Century Culture

The Politically Correct Jeanne

The Long Transformation Into Saint Joan

Jeanne And Modern Literary Transition

Joan According To Mark Twain

Saint Joan According George Bernard Shaw

Jeanne And Feminism

Chapter Four

Madness: Jeanne Among The Doctors

Jeanne As Deluded Liar

Jeanne And Modern Psychiatry

Jeanne And Physical Brain Theories

Jeanne And Schizophrenic Hallucinations

Jeanne And Voices From The Gods

Jeanne And Modern Brain Research

Jeanne Ravaged On The Freudian Couch

Conclusion

References

Bibliography

To my children, Lindsay and Alex.

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Illustrations

15th Century Gate at Vaucouleurs, Barbara and Preston Russell, 1994

Joan of Arc’s childhood house, Domrémy

Joan’s trial at Rouen, 1431, Jeanne d’Arc, Boutet de Monvel, 1896

Church of Ste. Catherine de Fierbois

St. Michel statue, Francisque-Joseph Duret, 1860, Paris

Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, icon ca 1525 National Museum of Poland

Charles VII, Jean Fouquet, ca 1445, Louvre Museum

Trial at Rouen,1431,Jeanne d’Arc, Boutet de Monvel, 1896

Bishop Pierre Cauchon, 15th century manuscript illustration

Isabeau de Bavière, Collected Works of Christine de Pisan, 1411

John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford

Witches Sabbat, Los Caprichos, Francisco Goya

Thomas Aquinas, Gentile da Pabriano, ca 1400

Inquisition, Spain, Frans Hogenberg, 1559

Execution in Rouen, 1431, Jeanne d’Arc, Boutet de Monvel, 1896

Joan of Arc and Charles VII at Chinon, Martial d’Auvergne, Les Vigiles de Charles VII, 1484, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Remains of Meeting Hall and Joan’s Tower of Coudray, Chinon

Joan of Arc on horseback, Antoine du Four, Les Vies des femmes célèris,ca 1505, Dobrée Museum, Nantes

Signature of Joan of Arc, 1429, Joan of Arc Center, Orléans

Joan of Arc chasing camp followers, Les Vigiles de Charles VII, Martial’Auvergne, 1484, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Joan of Arc, imaginary drawing by Clémente de Fauquembergue, 1429, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Jean de Dunois, Bastard of Orléans, ca 1450, Louvre Museum

Joan of Arc entering Orléans, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Frank Dumond , 1896, after painting by Jean-Jacques Scherrer

Siege of Orléans, Les Vigiles de Charles VII, Martial d’Auvergne,1484, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Jargeau, Statue of Joan of Arc, 1898 postcard

Battle of Patay, Jeanne d’Arc, Boutet de Monvel, 1896

William Shakespeare, Chandos portrait, before 1616

Reims Cathedral

Coronation of Charles VII, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Frank Dumond, 1896

Duc de Burgundy, Philippe the Good, Rogier van der Weyden, ca 1450, Musée des Beaux Arts, Dijon

Joan at Siege of Paris, Les Vigiles de Charles VII, Martial d’Auvergne 1484, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

Joan of Arc’s capture, Jeanne d’Arc, Boutet de Monvel, 1896

Voltaire illustration, La Pucelle d’Orléans, Jean-Michel Moreau

François Voltaire, Maurice de La Tour, 1735, Musée Antoine Lécuyer

Robert Southey

Penthesilea, De mulieribus claris, 15th century

Christin de Pisan, Book of the City of Ladies, 1413

Friedrich von Schiller

Jules Michelet, detail, Thomas Couture, ca 1850, Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Napoleon I, detail, Jacques-Louis David, 1812, National Galley, Washington D.C.

Jules Quicherat , bust by Jean Petit, 1885, Ecole Nationale des Chartres, Creative Commons Attribution

Joan of Arc statue, Emmanuel Frémiet, 1874, Paris

Marianne, detail, Liberty Leading the People, Eugéne Delacroix, 1830, Louvre Museum

Alfred Dreyfus, striped of rank in Paris, Le Petit Journal, 1895

Joan of Arc, World War One poster, Haskel Coffin, 1918, Library of Congress

Philippe Pétain and Adolph Hitler, 1940

Charles DeGaulle, Champs Elysées victory parade, 1944

Front National rally, 2007; Marine Le Pen, 2012; photos by Jérémy Jännic, Marie-Lan Nguyen, Jastrow, Creative Commons Attribution

Joan of Arc’s Canonization, May 16, l920, Vatican, Rome

Anatole France

Mark Twain, 1907

Susy Clemens, daughter of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Samuel Clemens, age 15

Joan of Arc’s trial, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Frank Dumond, 1896

George Bernard Shaw, 1925

Sybil Thorndike, 1943

Saint Joan film, 1957, Otto Preminger

Jean Seberg

Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, 1943

Renée Falconetti, film poster, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928

T.S. Eliot

Suffragist poster, Library of Congress, 1913

Marsha Norman

Ringling Brothers Circus poster, 1912

Charles VI, by the Master of Boucicaut, 1412, Bibliotheque Publique, Geneva

Gilles le Rais, Elio Firmin Feran, 1835

Andrew Lang, 1901

Francis Galton, ca 1850s

Vita Sackville-West, portrait by William Strang, 1918

Morton Prince, 1875

Sigmund Freud, 1920

St. Augustine, José de Ribera, 1687, National Museum, Poznan

Carl Jung, ca 1909

Franz Mesmer, Phrenology diagram, Jean Charcot

Saint Paul, El Greco, ca 1610, Museo de Greco, Toledo

Treatment of female hysteria in France, 1860; vibrator advertisement, 1918

Eugen Bleuler, ca 1900

Julian Jaynes, Julian Jaynes Society

Socrates, ca 100 B.C. bust, Vatican Museum

Albert Schweitzer

Andrew Newberg

Introduction

In the 1990s, my wife Barbara and I were on vacation in the Lorraine area of eastern France. Not far south below the city of Nancy, my guidebook informed me, was the birthplace of Joan of Arc, Jeanne d’Arc in France—after all her own country—which it really wasn’t at the time, I learned. Nor was she precisely clear about her last name, or even her age. My curiosity grew. We stopped at the little town of Vaucouleurs for lunch. Finally pushing away from the table, we learned that the old town gate through which Jeanne d’Arc passed into destiny to save France was up the hill behind the rustic restaurant. We strolled up the dirt road to a commanding view. Children wandered by with their dog after school. I tried to converse with them in my unsettling French. They responded shyly with nervous laughter, and moved on. Barbara and I walked further toward the arch, the old walls on either side long gone from the fifteenth century. I posed her standing under the old gate of Vaucouleurs, heroically pointing west with a broad smile. It is an amusing little picture, probably having been reproduced by other tourists like us. What a legendary little photo joke, some old stones still hanging around to feebly buttress what is largely legend as well.

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Then we drove a bit farther south to tiny Domrémy, Jeanne’s birthplace. There is the original house of her childhood, miraculously rediscovered in the early nineteenth century. Now a tourist attraction, the most rabid pilgrim could not spend more than ten dollars in the homespun gift shop, which sells thin booklets, key chains, and other trinkets. In the back is the small garden where a remarkably serious girl, aged twelve or thirteen, first heard a frightening voice, to her right—toward the church—she claimed. There stood the old church to the right. Then and there I heard something like a voice myself. Was it true? Can it be?

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Jeanne d’Arc’s childhood home, Domrémy

From that moment I was hooked. I later learned that the records of her trials still exist, tomes of testimony, rediscovered in the nineteenth century, the grist for countless books thereafter. Mark Twain had his go at them, which he considered his finest work. Then there is George Bernard Shaw’s irreverent Saint Joan, the play written over three hundred years after Shakespeare had his little pun about Jeanne the witch, or the supposed virginal La Pucelle.

Pucelle or puzzle, dolphin or dogfish,

Your hearts I’ll stamp out with my horse’s heels,

And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.

Several hundred years after Shakespeare, Voltaire had his turn at bawdily sending up the Pucelle legend. What is fact and what is fiction? Vita Sackville-West, her forthright biographer in the 1930s, examined the evidence and stated:

I have observed a tendency to believe that very little is known of Jeanne beyond the cardinal facts of her inspiration, achievement, and death. Nothing could be less true. We know practically every detail of her passive existence as a child and, as to the few months of her active career, they are so thoroughly documented that we know exactly where she spent each day, and in whose company; what she wore, what horse she rode, what arms she bore, what she ate and drank; and, more importantly still, what words she uttered. Scores of her friends, neighbours, followers, and companions-in-arms have left vivid testimony as to her appearance, manners, habits, character, and speech. The idea that there is any paucity of material for reconstructing her life and personality is fallacious in the last degree.

Remarkably, there is more documented information available on Jeanne d’Arc’s personal life, including those of Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Henry VIII, or even Napoleon. Now Jeanne is officially a Catholic saint, made so nearly five hundred years after she was burned by the Church as a heretic. The little handwritten inscriptions by the ordinary, as I read in the visitor’s book at Domrémy, Le Livre d’Or, are more spiritual than secular. In their eloquent directness, they are the most moving testament to a phenomenon transcending history. Short and immediate, the sentiments express hope in the mystical, wishing Jeanne well, asking for her grace, all sweetly caressing the face of modern cynicism. While something continued to stir in me, I added my own little prayer to the others.

As Jeanne was redefined by the nineteenth century, she has become literally—and confusingly—une sainte pour tous; spokesperson of both the French political left and right, Nazi puppet, first Protestant, first nationalist, proto-feminist. But in the process, Jeanne systematically has been shorn of any spiritual implications, a guinea pig prodded through mazes of ideological and scientific dogma. Her own words have been ignored, or reshaped to fit specific secular needs. Was she anointed by God—spoke directly with angels and saints—or was she mad, or a liar, or a witch, or a man—or a lesbian haunted by penis envy—as ponderously diagnosed in 1933, in full Freudian drag.

As a physician, I became captivated by this medieval mystery and set out on my own search for Jeanne d’Arc. Driven at first by scientific curiosity, yet after years of investigation I grew open-minded to something otherworldly that dumbfounded Jeanne’s contemporaries, as well as her interpreters over the centuries, her je ne sais quoi. The following chronology is provided to facilitate the documented testimony covered during her trials, leading to my personal quest for Jeanne’s truth or madness begins. Who knows; perhaps both will lead to the same place beyond modern explanations of reality.

1337 Hundred Years War began between France and England.

1346-56 The English defeated the French at critical battles of Crècy and Poitiers, and began to conquer Normandy and northern France.

1412 or 1413 Jeanne was born in Domrémy in the Duchy of Lorraine, on the eastern border of France.

1415 Battle of Agincourt in France: The English under Henry V defeated the French ruled by Charles VI, disputed father of the dauphin Charles, born in 1403.

1416-1419 The English formed an alliance with the French portion of Burgundy in middle France, who had been feuding with the Orléans faction under Charles VI. Prominent murders fueled both factions, including assassinations of the Ducs of Burgundy and Orléans.

1420 Treaty of Troyes signed between Henry V, Charles VI, and Philip the Good of Burgundy. The dauphin Charles was disinherited, with France and England to be ruled by the son of Henry V, newly married to the daughter of Charles VI. Their son Henry VI was born in 1421.

1422 Both Henry V and Charles VI died, leaving the English Duke of Bedford to act as regent for the infant Henry VI, pending his dual reign of England and France.

1424 At age twelve or thirteen, Jeanne first heard a voice by her church in Domrémy, Lorraine. She was progressively instructed to go save France from the English.

1429

January Jeanne left Domrémy to go to Vaucouleurs to meet Robert de Baudricourt. The English and Burgundians, who were engaged in a lengthy siege of Orléans, last major stronghold of the dauphin Charles and his faithful Armagnac party in the south.

February-March Jeanne and a small party traveled nine hundred miles west across France to Chinon to meet Charles. He tentatively validated her after a theological trial at Poitiers.

April-May Jeanne marched to Orléans and relieved the English-Burgundian siege, fighting along with Jean de Dunois, Bastard of Orléans. She was first wounded. The attack on Orléans was lifted on May 8th, to become the annual date to celebrate the event.

May-July More French victories followed in the Loire Valley at Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency, and Patay. The stronghold of Troyes reversed itself and recognized Charles as the legitimate dauphin.

July 17 The dauphin was crowned Charles VII at Reims.

August 29 Edict of Compiègne, declaring Franco-Burgundian truce for four months. Composed by advisors to Charles, this did not agree with Jeanne’s messianic vision.

September Jeanne unsuccessfully tried to take Paris, is wounded for the second time on September 8th. On September 21st, Charles VII withdrew his support.

October-December Jeanne began to experience other failures.

1430

May 23 Jeanne was captured at Compiègne. No ransom was forthcoming from Charles VII. Imprisoned for months, she failed in escape attempts and was finally sold to the English for clerical trial at Rouen, in Normandy.

1431

January 9 Trial of Jeanne at Rouen began, headed by Bishop Pierre Cauchon. She was burned at the stake as a heretic on May 30.

1435 Treaty of Arras reconciled Charles VII and the Burgundians. Charles entered Paris in 1436. Gascony was conquered in 1442, Normandy by 1450.

1452-56 With the last battle of Hundred Years War fought at Castillion in 1453, virtually all of France was restored to Charles VII by subsequent uprisings. He initiated a trial of Reclamation to clear Jeanne’s name of heresy, thereby buttressing his own divine claim to the throne. In 1456, the original verdict of Jeanne’s trial was annulled, claiming procedural flaws in first trial at Rouen in 1431.

1591 William Shakespeare published his play, Henry VI, politically deriding Jeanne as a witch.

1730 French satirist François Voltaire published his La Pucelle de Orléans, a bawdy farce deriding the Jeanne d’Arc legend. In the coming French Revolution of the 1790s, Jeanne became more unpopular as a symbol of royalism, progressively a footnote in history.

1804 Seeking resolution in a nation divided after the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged a monument in Orléans to Jeanne.

1840s Jeanne’s original trial records were reconstructed by Jules Quicherat, renewing great public and literary interest. This inspired major revisionist works by Anatole France, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw, among many others.

1869 Jeanne was proposed for Catholic canonization by Bishop of Orléans. By 1909, she had advanced to being beatified. France’s humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 added patriotic zeal to Jeanne’s perpetuation, leading to political and religious reverberations into the twentieth century.

1920 Jeanne d’Arc was declared a saint at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on May 16th.

Chapter One

Go! Go On! I Will Be Your Help—Go On!

As the defendant began to respond, the scribe’s quill moved across the parchment:

When asked about the place of her birth, she replied that she was born in a village called Domrémy de Greux, and in Greux is the principle church.

She was basically from nowhere in a little duchy in the Lorraine, on the eastern border of France. Little good ever tended to come from that region. Her mother and fathers’ names were Isabelle Romée and Jacques d’Arc, ordinary Catholic rural laboureurs. And it was from my mother, the girl continued, that I learned the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and the Credo. Nobody taught me my belief but my mother. She believed that she was around nineteen-years-old, as far as I know. Villagers called her Jeannette, and since I came to France, Jeanne. As for my surname, I know of none. She was nothing to look at, short, dark eyes beneath dark bangs, her hair cropped above the ears in a bowl cut, en ronde. She was dressed in long hose and loose tunic of a man, her breasts flattened beneath a snug quilted doublet. Except for her attractive feminine voice, this homely teen offered little to arouse concupiscence.¹

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In English-occupied Normandy in France, Jeanne sat before her vast panel of judges in the Chapelle Royale in the castle of Rouen. Dozens of them surrounded her, while scribes and other attendants receded into the shadows. Dour expressions covered a spectrum of dignity, concern, irritation, and occasional curiosity. The accused had been refused attendance at Mass because of her obstinacy toward proper authority, haughtily refusing to change from male attire. She complained of her chains, to no avail. Repeatedly, with mounting anger, she was commanded to answer questions under sacred oath. Repeatedly the prisoner responded with caveats:

Perhaps you may ask of things that I will not answer… As to some things I shall tell the truth, as to others, not. If you are well informed about me, you would wish that I were out of your hands. I have done nothing save by revelation.

But those revelations were not subject to a vow of total truth—I shall willingly tell you what I know—but not all! As far as Jeanne was concerned, her head could be cut off before she revealed all. Master Jean Beaupère, a theologian from the University of Paris, was chosen to conduct the interrogation. Believing that women were full of cunning and subtlety, his frustration mounted. This young woman in particular galled him, sensing that her