Gone Medieval - Joan of Arc

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Joan of Arc is a name that’s instantly recognisable to most people. A controversial figure in her own day, she has remained so ever since, often being adopted as a talisman of French nationalism. But how much do we really know—or understand—about the young woman who ignited France’s fightback against England during the Hundred Years’ War, but who paid the ultimate price at the age of just 19? In this episode of Gone Medieval, first released in January 2022, Matt Lewis is joined by Dr Hannah Skoda, to get to the heart of the real ‘Maid of Orléans’.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. Joan of Arc is a name that's instantly recognisable to most. A controversial figure in her own day, she has remained so ever since, often being adopted as a talisman for French nationalism. But how much do we really know or understand about a young woman who ignited France's fight back against England during the 100 years war, but paid the ultimate horrific price at the age of just 19. In my case, I think the answer is not as much as I'd like to know. So I'm delighted to welcome Dr Hannah Skoda, a fellow and tutor in medieval history at the University of Oxford to help me

discover more. Thank you very much for joining us, Hannah. It's a pleasure. Thank you for asking me. I guess the first question is, what do we know about Joan of Arc as a young lady? Where did she come from, what do we know about her family and her background? So we know Joan was one of five children and she was the daughter of a prosperous peasant called Jacques Dark and she lived in a small village called Don Remy in what's known as the bar area of France. And what one really needs to kind of get a sense of at this stage, I think, is that France is completely divided to the extent it doesn't really even make sense to talk about France. So it's largely divided between two factions. The Burgundians, on the one hand, faction led by the Duke of Burgundy, and the Armagnacs, on the other hand, which is a faction led by the Duke of Armagnac and the Dofeng.

And so they increasingly, because the Dofans is from the Valois family, they become known as the Valois faction as well. Anyway, France is just totally split between these two, and Joan comes from an area, which is an Armaniac area. but she is surrounded by Burgundian lands. It's like a little kind of island of Armagnac control in a kind of Burgundian heartland. So Joan must really have kind of grown up with a really strong sense of not just conflict, not just war with the English, but a kind of divided France, a sense that, you know, you couldn't trust anybody. And during her trial, she tells one story about how the children used to play at being Armagnac or Burgundian.

and attacking Burgundians. So there's a really strong sense from a very early age of this kind of horrific sense of division. You might have thought, I guess they'd have been playing at being French and English. So it's probably odd

that they were playing at being two different factions within France, but I guess highlights the fact that where Joan was growing up, the main enemy maybe wasn't even England. It was the divisions that existed within the French side that allowed the English to prosper.

It's really interesting. She has this really strong anti-Bugundian scent. And when she talks about first going to the Dofans court, so the Dofans the son of the king of France, who becomes Charles the 7th. When she talks about first going to his court from her home, she talks about traveling into France, as if where she is isn't France. So I think she's in a bit of a muddle herself really about how things work. But set beside that is an increasingly strong sense

with Joan that she believes in France as an idea. And she refers kind of obsessively to France and the French and the French language. And she's doing this actually sort of in the face of the fact that this doesn't really exist in this period. So she's very self-consciously actually trying to kind of cultivate a sense that France is a thing and that it's something of great value to be French. It was maybe a deliberate effort to move away from the idea of Burgundians and Armagnacs and to try and force them to all think of themselves as being French to throw an umbrella over this argument and say, you know, the English are the real enemy here.

we're supposed to all be French. Absolutely. That's definitely part of what she's up to. There's an amazing letter which she wrote or dictated to the Duke of Burgundy a little bit later on in her short career. And she's basically pleading with him to come back to what she then calls the French side that he shouldn't be allying with the English because that's a sort of betrayal. But of course, the Duke of Burgundy doesn't exactly see things like that because they're thinking in such different terms and in very different terms from the sorts of nations.

that we might think about nowadays. How do we know some of this information about Joan as a young woman and her childhood? I imagine it's fairly poorly documented if she's from a relatively poor background. So is this information that we're learning from Joan later on in her career or is it something that the hagiography has gone back and tried to find out about Joan later on?

Most of what we know about Joan is from the trial record. So when she has tried for heresy after her catcher, those who are trying her, first of all, they must have gone out and gathered a lot of information about her. We don't sort of officially having a document saying that's what they've done, but it's clear they did. And so they must have gone and found out as much as they could about where she came from, about her reputation, about what she'd been up to and so on. And they then ask her questions based on this information over the course of the trial. So the trial itself, which is incredibly long and grueling and grueling to read, to be honest, it's quite a disqual. It's quite a

stressing experience working one's way through it. But it gives one all kinds of amazing details about Joan's childhood, where she comes from what her family background was like. Amazing little episodes, like at one point the judges are really interested in whether Joan danced around a fairy tree with her friends and don't know me when she was little, because they want to sort of be able to show she was like superstitious and witchlike and stuff. But it gives you an amazing insight into the sort of nature of popular religion in this village. she's asked as well about whether she was betrothed at one point because she seems to have been betrothed to a man

and then Joan didn't want to get married and she kind of reneges on it. And here the judges are interested because that shows disobedience to her parents, which again shows she's an evil, heretical sort of person. But again, gives one of really interesting insight into the sorts of expectations of her in that village context when she was younger. And how did Joan eventually bring herself to the attention of the Dofan, the future Charles the 7th. Was she driven to find him out?

What made her want to go and seek Charles and try to push this idea that she could help almost create a new France? Joan tells us in her trial that she's been visited by voices. So first of all, she says that it's God who spoke to her and then gradually over the course of the trial, the information that she gives about this

becomes more and more precise. Until in the end, she's telling her judges that she was visited by St. Margaret. St. Catherine and St. Michael, and that these three visions told her to seek out Charles and to explain to him that she is the one who's going to lead the armies and save France. And again, the word is France. It's not just the Armaniacs or the Valois. Anyway, so we know this from the trial. Joan was clearly extremely determined to carry out this mission that she believed had been kind of divinely given to her. And so she seeks out the captain of the local town, a man called Hobbes. Baudrichard. And she tries three times to get him to agree to take her to the Dauphin's court. The first two times he refuses because he just thinks she's completely mad. I mean, what a totally bonkers idea. And the third time he agrees and he takes her. And she manages to convince the Dauphan, which is really pretty extraordinary. So historians obviously, you know, ask lots of questions

about what was going on. Why did Robe de Baudrichor suddenly decide that he was going to take her? And a lot of historians have sort of assumed that Joan was just like a kind of poppet or a sort of porn of some greater faction. And there's a kind of sexism there, I think, to assuming that Joan herself couldn't have been sufficiently driven, that she was the one who decided this. And in any case, it still leaves us with the question of why Joan, there must have been something particularly special there. Her detractors and the judges during the trial try to make out all kinds of dodgy stuff going on between her and Robert de Budricor. but again, there's no evidence of that. The most convincing explanation is that there's a connection with the Anjou faction. So, the genealogy of this is really complicated,

but one of the really powerful figures in the Dofans Court is called Yolanda of Aragon. And Yolanda is the mother of René of Anjou and Marie of Anjou. Marie of Anjou is married to Charles the 7th, so that's her kind of connection in the court. and Renee's father-in-law, so Renee is the brother-in-law of Charles the 7th, anyway, his father-in-law is a guy called Charles the Duke of Loren. And we know from an offhand comment in the trial that Charles was a bit of a hypochondriac. And at one point, he asked Joan, because he'd heard about a kind of local mystic,

before she becomes famous or anything, he'd asked her to come and visit him because he had various ailments and he thought maybe a holy woman might be able to help him. There's no evidence that she particularly did help him. But that little clue just might give us a connection as to how Yolanda of Aragon heard about Joan, thought that she might be a kind of useful player to suddenly insert into the French court. And Yolanda certainly seems to have been pretty instrumental in general in kind of assuring finance for those campaigns and so on. So it's a reasonably convincing theory. But it's not one that sort of denies agency to Joan.

It doesn't mean that Joan herself didn't kind of push herself forward and really go for this and really believe in her cause. But it gives a sort of practical explanation as to how she might have actually managed to get an audience with the Dofam. And I suppose we're always reading some of these sources and stories from the trial and things through the eyes of the men who couldn't understand that a woman could possibly have achieved what Joan had achieved legitimately or based on her own strength of character or will. There must be some story behind it. And I guess they're looking for mud to throw at Joan at that point. as well to involve men in the story. Yeah, exactly. On the one hand, she's massively constrained

in all kinds of very obvious ways by her gender, which makes it just incredible that she achieved what she did. But on the other hand, her gender kind of enables her to achieve what she did because it makes her so extraordinary. Right from the start,

the fact that a young peasant girl is claiming that she can save France makes her seem like this amazing, miraculous figure. You know, if she'd been a soldier or something, then there was nothing particularly miraculous about it, but it's the fact that she is so unlikely in every single way, in some ways that makes her so special and so appealing, I think. And there's also an important dimension related to her sexuality as well.

It really matters that Joan can claim that she's a virgin and that she's got this very particular kind of holy status by virtue of that. And is that why they were maybe looking at the idea that she might have been betrothed because that might play against the idea of her being a virgin, a more genuine religious character who might have received these visitations from God? Were they trying to besmirch that? Yeah, I mean, presumably the interest in the betrothal,

it's an attempt to kind of make her seem like any other woman a little bit more. What they're really interested in in that particular episode is the idea that she didn't do what her parents told her to do and that she basically broke a contract. But there are all kinds of attempts all the way through her career and all the way through the trial to show that Joan was not the virgin that she claimed to be. But equally, there's an equally large number of people who are saying, yes, she is, she's

absolutely amazing. To the extent even during the posthumous trial to try and resurrect her reputation in 1456, and during that trial, it's even claimed that Joan was such an unusual woman and so virginal, she didn't even menstruate. She's completely different from normal women. And what was the initial reaction of Charles the Dofan, Charles the 7th, and his courtiers to the appearance of this young woman claiming that she was the one who was going to be able to save France? There are various stories about how Joan convinced the court and the Dauphin himself

that they should place their trust in her and give her the resources that she needed to carry out her mission. Joan in her trial at one point is pushed so heavily by her interrogators that she says an angel presented a crown to Charles and then everybody kind of knew she was like this holy person. But even Joan then admits that was not true, but she just kind of felt the pressure of the questions to say that. there's another story which he mentions that Charles dressed like all of his other courtiers and she was able, because she had this divine mission, to pick out which one was the dofam amongst all these, basically identically dressed men. And that story seems a little bit more convincing and there's a couple of other kind of

attestations that that might have been the case. Anyway, so we don't really know that sort of very first encounter how that happened. But the dofah has like, he's got a really, really big decision to me. make in the sense that, well, the stakes are just really high. If he rejects Joan, and it turns out that she was a holy woman, one has to really try and kind of recreate a religious context in which this is happening. If he makes a mistake and just reject her and she was a holy woman, then, you know, that's pretty bad on many, many levels.

Apart from, he's missed a fantastic opportunity, but he could incur God's wrath as well. But on the other hand, if he places credence in her and she's actually a witch or sent by the devil, then he's also done a completely dreadful thing. So they have an investigation. This is actually the first trial of Joan of Arc. This is not a trial of condemnation. They're not trying to prove her a heretic. It's a trial to try and decide whether her visions have come from God

or whether they've come from the devil. It's kind of a big problem in the early 15th century because there are quite a lot of female mystics around. And if someone claims they've had visions, in every case, how do you know whether those visions have come from God or from the devil? So they actually develop a process called Discretio Spiritum, discernment of spirits, to try and work out whether someone's visions are from the devil or whether they're from God. And so during this trial, they have to work out, firstly, whether Joan herself was the virgin and the virtuous woman she claimed to be. So it's partly about

behavior. And then they have to find out about the visions themselves. They have to try and show the visions aren't sort of, they're not too embodied and various other sort of ways of trying to tell whether they come from God. Then there's a question of a sign. So they want a sign to show that she's really been sent. And it's a little bit unclear because of the nature of the evidence what that sign was going to be. But the later story develops that the sign was given in front of Aure Aureon. So it's the fact that she raises the siege at Aure Aureon that indicates she really is God's chosen one to lead the French. And so was Joan going to Aureon then part of that testing process that allowed Charles to try and determine whether she was sent from God to save France or, or from the devil to condemn it. And I guess then does the victory at Orlean really cement her position in Charles's mind,

at least as a holy woman? Absolutely. So what's really hard to say is whether she promised in advance that she would raise the siege at Olion. And it was like a sign promised or whether that's the kind of narrative that's constructed after she's raised the siege at O'Leon, which is obviously a little bit more convenient at that point to be able to say, that was the sign. But either way, this certainly cements her position as someone who has delivered

the goods effectively. This was a really, really crucial moment. So the English had pushed the French, or the Armagnac faction, so far back by this point. And O'Leon was this last outpost holding out against the English. The English had been besieging it for months and months, and they were really just about to take it. Then Joan turns up, and she is able to disperse the English, raise the siege of O'Leon. And at that point, then, the Amniaks have control again over the Loire, and given that's the kind of river, which is absolutely crucial to communications and kind of movement of military resources more generally, it's a really, really critical moment. Do we know how instrumental Joan was in raising that siege at Orleans, or does she become

a figurehead because of the victory, because it seems to confirm her credentials as a holy woman? It's really hard to say. And in a sense, I wonder whether actually we don't need to draw a distinction between how instrumental she was in a military sense and the kind of symbolic nature of what she does because in a sense, the way that strategy works in this period and the way that morale and ideology feed into that, if Joan functions as a standard bearer who pulls everybody together, then she is instrumental,

even if she's not necessarily leading a particular charge. The evidence about her role is very mixed. It's quite surprising the number of sources which barely mention Joan at all, given how crucial we think she was. But then there are other sources which do describe her and which describe her role in quite interesting terms. So, for example, Charles himself, the Dofant, Charles VIII, Charles VIII by this stage,

he barely mentions her in most of his letters, but randomly writes the letter to the people of Narbonne in southern France, saying, and Joan was brilliant at the siege, and she did a really great job raising the siege. So I don't know why in that particular letter he mentions her, maybe there were loads of other letters which haven't survived. But that's one bit of evidence that she was important. Another really important piece of evidence comes from 1434, so five years later, and it's a memorandum written by the Duke of Bedford. And he describes how Joan was absolutely

instrumental in raising the siege. But that's five years later. And the Duke of Bedford has a particular axe to grind at that point because he's trying to prove that he hadn't like misspent lots of money. And he's having a very hard time in England. So Joan is the kind of useful way of him to say, well, it wasn't my fault. There was this awful woman there who did it. So it's hard to know how seriously to take that bit of evidence to. So the short answer is we're not really sure how far her military role went, but in a symbolic sense, this is a really key moment. And I think we shouldn't underestimate Joan's role in that. And I suppose to her contemporaries, it wouldn't have mattered what she did so much as what the outcome was and what that meant for who Joan was

that she was genuinely a religious holy woman who had been sent to say France, she produced this victory, whether she did it in armour, wearing a sword or carrying a standard or leading men in any kind of way, or whether she just happened to be there, is almost irrelevant. The fact is she appeared at Orleans, the siege was lifted, and that meant something. Actually, one of the most fun bits of evidence about Jones' involvement at Orleans comes from a little doodle in the margins of a clerk at the Parliament of Paris, so someone called Clement Fouconberg. And he just writes notes on what's happened each day at the Parliament.

Anyway, and he hears about what Joan has done. And he just draws this kind of marginal doodle in the side of a very serious set of accounts. And in this doodle, she is wearing a dress, which is really interesting because we know that she wasn't wearing a dress at this point. But in terms of how kind of gossip and news is spreading, that suggests that people are talking about her in different ways. And in his doodle, she's carrying a standard. So, yeah, maybe she's the kind of symbolic standard bearer, but she's also holding a whopping great sword. So, you know, if one thinks about how the news is spreading and how people are talking about it and sort of networks of gossip about this, then there's clearly quite a lot of confusion. People think Joan is the standard bearer.

They're not quite sure how she's presenting herself in terms of her clothing. Maybe she's fighting. No one's really quite sure, but they know she matters and she's important. And it's a huge, huge boost to the French. Stories have a way of spreading, don't they? So I'm surprised she wasn't seven foot tall by the time it reached that doodle, but all those things get exaggerated and lumped together. So how much then does Joan contribute to the revitalisation of the French cause?

So they've been struggling for more than a decade, almost 15 years, I guess, since Agincourt. By this point, they've been struggling to fight off the English. Do we see a turning point in the French fortunes in the Hundred Years' War with Joan's arrival? Yes, we really do. It's not one that necessarily lasts terribly long. but there is a spate of victories following O'Leon, which are really dramatic. So she raised the siege at O'Leon, May 1429.

And then there's a series of military victories. So Jargo, Manxio Loire, Beauchancy, Patti, so a series of towns falling, which are strategically hugely important. And the whole thing culminates with the coronation of Charles the 7th at Reims, which is a huge symbolic moment. And I'm aware, while I've been talking, I've sometimes been calling him Charles the 7th and sometimes been calling him the Dofah, which wasn't entirely deliberate, but sort of reflects my in-between, not Armagnac, not Burgundian,

position myself. So the Burgundians in the English at this point call him the Dofah because they refuse to acknowledge that he's the legitimate king. Joan and her friends and that whole faction are calling him Charles the 7th because they say, yes, he is the new king of France. Anyway, the moment of the coronation at Reims is a moment which says, look, we're in control of this great region, and this is our king, and he is now our king through God. He's been the kind of sacral nature of the coronation has happened. People have witnessed this great ceremony,

and we've achieved our goal, and now we just need to consolidate it. And Joan is right at the center of all of that. The coronation in particular is a huge coup for Joan and what she said she would do. After that, so that's July, by September, they get to Paris, and then things are starting to fall apart for Joan. And at that point, we need to be aware of factions within the Armaniac Fanoir cause because those start to fall apart. So the support that Joan enjoyed amongst Charles the seventh men starts to sort of fragment. So some of them still think she's great and her strategy is the right one. And others are increasingly keen on a kind of reprosement with the Duke of Burgundy. And obviously they don't like Joan because Joan thinks that's a bad idea. It's all

about military conquest, and the support for her begins to fall away so that she's really left increasingly isolated until eventually she's captured by the Duke of Burgundy at Compienne. And I suppose another question that probably doesn't matter and probably didn't matter to Joan's contemporaries is around whether this is Joan leading them to victory because she's a holy woman, or this is the French being revitalised, having renewed confidence because something has happened at Orlion that's led to the victory. And I imagine they unquestionably believed that that's because Joan's a holy woman. And so she's able to sweep them all the way through. So at that point, I guess the question is, is Joan actually having an impact or is this just more confidence from

the French that they can win, that they can push back? Exactly. I think lots of it really is about confidence and morale boosting. I think she's really becoming a thorn in the side of what the most powerful men around Charles the 7th want to be doing by the September of that year. And at that point, they can see that, you know, she might boost morale, but actually her very, very pugnacious attitude and the strategies which she is advocating, they are so convinced that this is not the right way to go about things, that it's kind of not worth the sort of morale boost any longer. She's fulfilled her function.

She gave them that extra impetus when they needed it. The do-fant, Charles the 7th was crowned at Reims. They had this great symbolic moment. And at that point, Jones' very different sort of sense of how the war should be carried out just doesn't fit into what they want any longer. And is this where her gender again starts to become part of the story? So it must have raised issues in the sense of a woman trying to lead a military effort and also a religious effort for France.

But is there an element two of these lords around Charles kind of thinking, well, now it's time the men took over again. And we know better than this peasant girl from nowhere. this is about diplomacy now. This is, as you say, getting the Burgundians back on side, which wasn't part of Joan's plan, but they must have felt that that was part of the bigger political scheme that needed to happen to move to the next stage. So then Joan becomes a problem. So does her gender restrict her from being able to push her own beliefs on the strategies that they should employ? Or, as you said before, was it because it made her stand out even more?

It actually helped her get to the position that she did get to. Yeah, I think there's a bit of both there. I think on the one hand, she is hugely constrained by it. And on the other hand, it is her gender, which makes her seem even more miraculous and special. I'm sure you're right that there are increasing number of men in the quarter and the dophah who just don't like the fact that here is an extremely assertive young woman telling them what they should do. And when they have very particular views on the best strategy to pursue at this stage, there is

some evidence from later on as well that quite a few of these men are finding Joan obnoxiously arrogant at this stage. And there are various comments about how she's strong. dressing and really luxurious clothing. Who knows whether that's true. Everybody had their own agenda in describing what she was up to. But there is a sense from a lot of them

that she's kind of getting above herself sort of thing. It's an interesting parallel there with Empress Matilda in England. So as soon as she's very near to the throne in 1141, all of the chroniclers suddenly start talking about her acting high-handedly. She's vile. She's short with everybody. You know, she's too assertive. She's too manly.

So that seems to be a charge that is thrown a woman who men want to get out of the way, that she's behaving in an unwomanly way, in an unnatural way. So this has to be stopped. It's a really interesting comparison. I think what really people struggle with with Joan is the fact that they can't kind of box her into one category or another. So some of the time she's being criticised for being too womanly and kind of emotions all over the place sort of thing, all the usual stereotypes. And other times she's being criticised precisely for like getting above herself and trying to behave like a man.

And the whole thing is embodied in really interesting ways in her cross-dressing. So Joan first puts on male clothing when she rides with Robert de Boudricor and that first journey to the Valois court to meet Charles the 7th. And at that point, it's clearly for practical reasons, so that's fine. But she gets increasingly kind of wedded to this clothing so that during the trial she doesn't want to take off the male clothing. She wants to continue to dress like that. And so that's sort of one layer that people find very hard to get their heads around.

And in a religious sense, they're not sure about the acceptability of it. and so on. But I think what makes it even harder for people to deal with is that her male clothing is never a disguise. Joan always presents herself as a woman who is a virgin, but she's wearing male clothing. And the fact that they can't kind of pigeonhole her in any way, I think makes people react her as though she is particularly threatening and particularly problematic. The usual tactics of putting a woman down don't work because she's got ways of getting around them. Yes, exactly. You can't kind of box her in in one way or another. So how does Joan end up as a prisoner of the English?

So she's captured by the Burgundians at Compiagnan in May 1430. They sort of hang on to her for ages because they can't quite decide what to do. And then eventually in December 1430, she is handed over to the English for a very large sum of money. And in terms of the motivations of the Burgundians there, the Duke of Burgundy is still kind of hedging his bets. He's allied with the English at this point. but he's clearly like playing both sides against one another. So this is a good way of pleasing the English. Actually, the Valois French don't really seem to care about Joan much any longer.

So he's doing a bit of kind of diplomatic politicking there. But most of all, he needs the cash. He's really desperate for money to finance his own military campaigns. And he gets a lot of money for Joan because the English are desperate to have her. I guess he's able to look like he's solving a problem for the Valois in getting rid of Joan for them now she's becoming inconvenient. Yeah. And he's solving a problem for the English.

by capturing this woman who's a real thorn in their side, and he's getting rich in the process as well. Yeah, exactly. It's like win-win situation for him. And the English then take a bit of time to decide precisely what to do with Joan, because for them, the dilemma is they want to get rid of her because she's a pain for them.

But at the same time, what they really, really must not do is create a martyr. Because if they do that, then the kind of morale boost she gave to the French will be magnified, however many times. So they don't give her political, trial. They stop and they think about it and then they hand her over to the Inquisition, effectively or to the church, so that she is tried by the church, not by the English,

though the English are involved behind the scenes. But she has tried for heresy. So she's not tried for treason or some kind of trumped up political charges. She has tried for heresy. And the trial is very, very particular about this. And this really, really matters to the English, because if they can get her burned as a heretic, that completely undermines her. kind of ideological standing amongst the Valor Armagnac French. If they don't manage to do that, then her ideological power will be increased a hundredfold. If they can get her condemned as a her heretic, it kind of undoes all the work that she's done in renewing the French cause, but if they can't, the danger is the French will roll on because they'll have been vindicated

by the church. I guess if the church say she was a genuine holy woman, then that vindicates the French side. If she's a heretic, then the English are able to say, look at all these gains they've made because of a heretic, because of the devil's work. This isn't God on their side at all. So I guess this must have mattered. The English must have been leveraging things behind the scenes because they must have wanted what they considered the right outcome. Exactly. We spend a lot of time as historians thinking about, you know, was this a quote-unquote fair trial? It certainly wasn't a fair trial. Of course it wasn't, but did they sort of observe proper procedure and do they genuinely manage to condemn her for heresy?

And actually what seems pretty clear to me is that they are very, very careful about ensuring that the trial does kind of close all the gaps and that they make sure they really have got her for this because the stakes are so high, they need to get it just right. And they do hand it over to the church. Good proportion of the judges are men from the University of Paris, all theologians. But at the same time, the Earl of Warwick, he's there, like most of the time, sort of checking what's going on. So they're clearly going to make sure they get the outcome that they want. But they do get the outcomes of that they're. they want. How certain are we that Joan was maybe tortured during this period? I think there are lots of stories of her being very badly treated by her guards to try and extract a confession. There are stories I've seen. Maybe they're in fiction about the idea that she was perhaps raped while in prison so that she was no longer a virgin. Do we know whether there's any certainty to any of those stories about her treatment while she was a prisoner? No, we don't know. It's really, really difficult to say. So most of our evidence for how the trial was conducted, come from, first of all, the records of the trial itself. And secondly, from the,

it was called the nullification trial of 1456. So in the 1450s, Charles the 7th decides that he would like to kind of resurrect the reputation of Joan, conveniently forgetting the fact that he completely abandoned her after she's captured by the Burgundians. Charles the 7th never mentions her, like it's as if she never existed. They keep absolute silence about her. Anyway, in the 1450s, suddenly he decides, oh, it might be a useful figure again. So they instigate this trial to look into the procedure of the first trial in 1431. And in 1456, they marshal lots and lots of witnesses, people who were involved in that first trial, to try and find out more about how it was undertaken. It's completely fascinating. It's also really interesting to watch men in 1456

talking about what happened in 1431 and just lying, completely lying about it. Like, oh, I never said she should be tortured. And then we have the evidence in 1431 saying she should be tortured. So the 1456 information is very problematic. But it does suggest that Joan was certainly put under complete, unacceptable and terrifying duress. And not necessarily that she was raped, but that she was absolutely terrified of being raped. So one of the questions is, you know, why did she put on her male clothing again during the first trial? And during the second trial, 1456 one, they say, well, she put the male clothing on because she was so scared that she was going to be raped. Anyway, so I don't know, it's a really moot point what actually happened.

But what is clear is that this was an utterly, utterly terrifying experience. And as I said at the start, when you read through the trial records, which are readily available, you can find them online really easily as well and read them in translation. It's such a moving experience. And it's really utterly grueling. You have a sense of this young woman who starts off being interrogated. in March 1431, she starts off at really self-confidence and kind of feisty and like standing up for herself. And you think, that's amazing. She's just really, really impressive. Have a quotation here

when she's asked early on about something rather. And she says, I do not know what you want to question me about. You might ask me such things as I'm not going to say to you. So her judges say, you know, will you swear an oath that you'll answer all the questions truthfully? And she's like, well, how can I promise that? Because I don't know what you're going to ask. Another point, she said, if you are well informed about me, you ought to wish that I were out of your your hands, which is just amazing, like this teenage girl saying this to the kind of serried ranks of Paris Theologians. It's stunning. But as the trial wears on, it finishes in May 1431, as it wears on, you see that confidence eroding and dissipating, and you just see her getting

more and more terrified. And there's lots of different ways of reading her. You can hear very different kind of voices of Joan in the trial. It's a very problematic document. But that sense of breaking someone down is very evident and is just miserable. And I think it's quite easy to forget in the story that this is an 18, 19 year old, barely more than a girl. She's a young lady with no experience of politics. She's not been trained for war or to deal with these kind of experiences. I imagine she would feel like she's proven herself to Charles and to the French,

only to be abandoned by them when she becomes slightly inconvenient and almost handed over to be tortured, broken down and forced to say that everything she had done and believed was a lie. And all of this is happening to an 18, 19-year-old young lady who is in no way prepared for any of this. I know. And what is so pathetic all the way through the trial as well is that she is convinced Charles is going to come to her rescue. So at various moments she says, go and ask the king. Or the king will come and he will tell you what's right. And we know that Charles just washed his hands of her completely. He doesn't even mention her for another 20 years.

And it's just pathetic seeing her standing there still trusting that he cares and that he'll come and do something. And of course, there's no way he's going to do anything. But the other thing is that, as you say, you know, she's had to operate in a context, a political military context for which she was had no training. She's completely unprepared. In the trial, she finds herself in another terrifying context, which is a kind of academic one. So Joan is illiterate. We know that she couldn't read or write. there's various letters surviving from her which are dictated, and then she crosses them.

But during the trial, she's being interrogated by highly, highly learned theologians from the university who ask her really tricky questions. And I think a lot of the time she just doesn't really understand what they're asking her. And for the first few sessions of the trial, her answers are super clever. Even when she doesn't quite get the kind of theological nicety they're getting at, she will give such a brilliant answer that she sidesteps the question. It's just amazing. But as it goes on, she's broken down by this and she's not remotely intellectually equipped to deal with the sorts of issues that they're trying to get her on. So, for example, one of the ways of telling whether your visions have come from God or from

the devil is whether they're embodied or not. So if they're really embodied, then they're more likely to be demonic. That's what the church teaches. So her judges keep asking her, like, what did your visions look like? Could you smell them? What was their hair like? If they spoke to you, did they have mouths? And Joan doesn't understand that they're trying to get at this issue of sort of corporeality or embodiedness.

So she says all the wrong things. And so eventually that's one of the things that's used to condemn her. And do you think there was any kind of genuine concern, either on the part of the church or the English or the Burgundians even, I guess, that Joan was a her her visions weren't genuine, or is this just cynical politics hiding behind religion to do away with a young woman? It's a really, really hard question for historians to ask, you know, did Joan actually see these things or is she making up? And I cannot imagine in any world that someone would have made up, completely invented something like this for kind of self-aggrandizement or something because the stakes are so high. Even when she first sort of appears on the scene, Joan says, I've got one year to do this. So she knows that this is going to come to a sticky end.

I mean, one thing Joan is not as stupid. So I think she is utterly, utterly convinced of her cause. On the other hand, what is striking is her story does change over the course of the trial. So when she first talks about this, it's a voice from God. And then as she's questioned more and more, it becomes a series of visions. And then it becomes these three saints. And they get more and more detail as she continues. So I don't know whether, I don't think she's deliberately embroidering it.

But she's kind of working herself into thinking about things in particular ways under the pressure of being questioned. As for whether other people believed in this or whether they're just cynically using her. Again, it's a question which is kind of impossible to answer, but I think if one puts oneself in an early 15th century context, it's perfectly conceivable that people really did believe this, or at least found it sufficiently credible

that it could inspire huge groups of people. This is a context where mysticism is becoming increasingly intense. There are quite a lot of female mystics in this period. It's a period of extreme devotion right across the social spectrum. It's a period where lots of people are claiming that they're having visions. Several people are being burned. They're having the wrong visions. And it's a period when people are interested in things like prophecy and divination as well.

And we know that Charles the 7th was interested in this kind of stuff. So it all does kind of make sense in this particular spiritual context. I mainly ask the question. I know it's probably a mean one and impossible to answer. But I mainly ask because I think it's too easy for. for us to ignore that religious element to people's beliefs in those times that we can definitely see the cynical politics at work here of taking someone who is inspiring your enemy, doing them down and executing them. But I don't know whether you can entirely write off the genuine

concern of was this a genuine message from God for France, or was this the devil at work, and whether that was a real concern that people had. So if it was an unfair question, I'm sorry, but I just think sometimes we easily discount those things. No, it's not. It's a really good question. And I think what I find particularly intriguing about this period is that there are lots and lots of mystics. There's a whole movement which we call the Devotio Moderna, the modern devotion, which is a movement of extreme religious intensity. And people, say, right across the social spectrum, engaging with religious devotional experience on a really intimate and very intense kind of way. So in that sense, we would expect people to believe Jones visions. But at the same time, I'm struck by how many people are cautious about them.

and worry about setting aside the politics, but worry about whether one should believe a mystic or not. So it's a period when there's lots of this stuff happening, but it's also a period when people are really thinking about which should we believe and which should we not believe. They don't want to be gullible. They do believe the possibility of voices from God, but at the same time, they want to be really careful to pick the right ones to believe. So it's a period of sort of, I don't know, constructive doubt in some ways. And the other really funny thing about Joan is that she's not convinced by all the other

mystics either. Joan is perfectly ready to say, well, I think that one's rubbish. My one's completely like, they're from God, definitely. So there's this other mystic called Catherine of La Rochelle, who hangs out in the French camps, the French military camps, and Joan meets her there. And they're clearly rivals. And at one point, Joan says to Catherine and La Rochelle, I didn't believe you have visions. And then she says, and frankly, you should go home and look after your husband and your children and do the housework, which is just brilliant. We see Joan as this kind of amazing proto-feminist figure, but she's not. That was her reaction to Catherine of Larichelle, which is just like, stop making it up and go home and be a housewife. Joan ends up being burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Am I right in thinking that you have to normally be convicted twice as a heretic? So one conviction for heresy isn't enough to get you burnt at the stake. Did Joan have to be convicted twice as a heretic or not? So Joan's story is very particular. And what happens is kind of a dream come true for the English, really. In the end, he is so broken down. She abjures. her faith. So she says, I made a mistake. I didn't see those visions. I made it all up. What I did see came from the devil. I acknowledge the role of the church. I will do everything you say. At which point, the judges say, okay, well, fine, we're not going to burn you then. But we are going

to condemn you to a life of imprisonment and penance on bread and water. So solitary confinement for the rest of her life and bread and water. And I think Joan naively hadn't realized that that would be what would happen if she said, yes, I admit it all. And I admit I was wrong. So she's told this. She signs a statement saying it was from the devil and lots of other stuff I made up. I'm not sent from God. So they get exactly what they wanted. And then when Joan realizes that this life of just horror faces her, she then puts her male clothing back on and she says, no, I didn't mean it. Actually, I do stick by my original beliefs. And at which point then they say, well, that's it. Then you're going to be burned. But then they burn her. And it's kind of subsequently painted as a sort of martyrdom. But the fact that, The fact that she renounced her visions before that means that they really got what they wanted from her. And is it right that her ashes were kind of swept up and thrown in the river's end to prevent any of them becoming relics? Because they were worried about her becoming a martyr. There's a real anxiety that that might happen.

Quite shortly after her death, there is a certain amount of pride and interest in Joan which develops. So there are a couple of women who move around France and the Holy Roman Empire in subsequent decades, claiming that they're Joan. but they're clearly not Joan because she was burned. And then in the city of Orleans, quite quickly a sort of, not exactly a cult of Joan, but a lot of interest in Joan as a municipal sort of heroine appears. And then they even produce a play called the Mystery of the Siege of O'Leon, which is rather magnificent.

But in general, I have to say, I'm more struck by the rapidity with which Joan is consigned to oblivion, actually. So, okay, there are these kind of pockets of interest in Joan, but I think it's more striking that her death doesn't really seem work as a martyrdom at that point. And people don't really talk about her particularly. And the trial of nullification in 1456 does serve then to kind of resurrect her reputation and so on. But in the 1430s and 40s, no one's really interested, I don't think. A really mean question to end on then. What do you think Joan felt about her visions and her destiny?

I mean, you've talked about the idea that she knew she only had a year to do this. did she know that she was putting her life in danger that she may end up facing martyrdom? Did she genuinely believe she was sent from God to save France? Or do you think there was something else going on with her? How do you think she felt as a young woman taking these things to the court of France? I think my answer would be to say that her attitude changes. All of us, as individuals, we know that we feel differently about things from day to day. sometimes we feel, I don't know, totally inspired by our jobs.

And other days we wish we were doing something completely different. And I think Joan is similar. I think she is completely committed to what she's doing. And I don't know, at times she's really annoying. But basically her commitment is inspirational and her courage is inspirational. What she achieves is just incredible and could not possibly have been achieved. Were she not utterly committed to it? And she certainly knew the risks.

She's absolutely not stupid. She knows this is going to end in tragedy for herself. She knows there's going to be a great deal of pain. She has to fight every single step of the way. So I think she is thoroughly committed. But there are moments over the course of her life and career where we can see she is absolutely terrified. And sometimes perhaps even wavering.

So one famous episode is when she's captured by the Burgundians, she tries to escape from a tower at Bourrevoir. And there's a question over whether actually she's trying to take her own life rather than just to escape. And of course, in the Middle Ages, is that seen as a mortal sin. And it may be, Joan has questioned at length about this,

it may be a moment at which the whole thing just becomes too much for her, the sheer terror and isolation and loneliness. And there's another moment when she's asked about one of the kind of military Sally's fourth that she does when she knows that she's going to be horribly wounded and she is horribly wounded. And she's asked what her voices told her to do

and whether she wanted to do what her voices said. And Joan admits that actually she really didn't particularly want to do it. Yeah, there are moments when she is kind of wavering and clearly scared and terrified. I think those moments really bring home, as we said, the fact that this was an 18, 19-year-old young girl who achieved so much but faced so much horror and terror as well. It really brings home the human side of her story to all of us, because I think we can imagine ourselves wavering and not wanting to do the things that we think we should do,

but which feel dangerous and frightening to us. So Joan's story is one, I think, that has been easy to romanticise, but looking at those human elements really unveils the horrors of war, I guess, and of the religious clashing with the marshal, clashing with understanding its own place in the world and trying to decide who was a heretic and who was sent from God. So thank you very much for joining us, Hannah. That was wonderful. It was very informative.

There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts, and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us out. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.