mystical experience as a feminist weapon joan of arc

Mystical Experience as a Feminist Weapon: Joan of ArcAuthor(s): Anne Llewellyn BarstowSource: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 26-29Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New YorkStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40003571 .Accessed: 08/09/2013 19:49

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Mystical Experience as a Feminist Weapon: Joan of Arc Anne Llewellyn Barstow

For years as I worked on the history of women's roles in religion, I avoided the mystics. Trained as a social historian, I considered mystical experience too subjective, too narrowly individualistic, to be useful for historical study. But when my search for independent women led me repeatedly to female mystics, I was forced to rethink my skepticism about visonary experience.

Two issues: women's use of mystical experience- experience, that is, out of reach of male control - to develop an awareness of themselves as individuals; and female utili- zation of mystical experience as a means of being heard in a patriarchal society are the focus of this essay. As I have worked with the material, it has seemed to me that mysticism was both an integrative and an activating force in the lives of some late medieval women, enabling them to see themselves in new roles, to measure themselves against male authority figures, and to forge a new awareness of themselves as individuals in a man's world.

My conclusions are more suggestive than exact. Difficul- ties of assertaining to what extent a woman's self-concept de- velops without male influence, and of using the word feminist for fifteenth-century materials, raise questions that cannot be answered here. Let me say here that I use the term feminist to refer to autonomous experience, and to action that places a woman in the center, as the motivating agent.

I have chosen the fifteenth-century visionary Joan of Arc for three reasons. The contrast between her life before and after her revelations is startling: from illiterate peasant girl to inspiration for the French army at a turning point in the Hun- dred Years' War. Second, her comments at her trial about herself and her mystical experiences give us a rare glimpse into the formation of a new persona. Most important for our purposes is the fact that Joan told no one about her visions for the first four years, not confessor, parents, friends, thus not allowing herself to be influenced or coopted. And after becoming famous, she still relied on no one, priests nor brothers nor military allies. It is this independence that lets us glimpse autonomous female experience.

Hearing Voices Whether Joan shaped her personality around her visions

or her visions around her personality- we cannot argue the nature of mysticism here- suffice it to say that Joan, who had no connections to the world of power, parlayed her claim of a private channel to the spirit world into lasting na- tional fame. She overcame handicaps of poverty, class, and gender to become one of France's chief heroes.

I will draw on Joan's own words at her trial,1 will place her role in the context of other prophetic women of her time, and will mention contemporary responses to her, mainly Christine de Pisan's. But first one should ask why Joan has not been much written about by feminist historians.2 I sus- pect that her "voices" are the problem, for in our day, per-

sons who hear voices are considered mad. Yet they were the central experience of her life; we cannot study her without coming to terms with them. Joan began hearing a voice when she was thirteen. Later she confirmed that the voice was really three voices, that she not only heard but saw and even touched them, that they were, in fact, Saints Cather- ine and Margaret, and the archangel Michael.

Joan claimed that she saw them every day, sometimes three times a day, sometimes more. They appeared to her in the woods, in church, in battle, in the courtroom, in her cell where her guards made so much noise that she could not follow what the voices were saying to her. She often heard them when bells were ringing, and when they did not ring, she missed them; she asked the church warden at Domremy to ring the bells more often, and when she had joined the army she requested the chaplains to ring the bells for half an hour on end. Her neighbors reported that often when she was in the fields and heard the bells, she would drop to her knees.3 They assumed she was saying her prayers, but Joan was in fact listening for her voices; she had become dependent on them.

The voices ordered her to go the king of France, to put on male clothing, to find a sword hidden behind an altar, to

Engraving depicting Saint Margaret, by M. Husz, 1486.

26 Women's Studies Quarterly XIII:2 (Summer 1985)


announce a French defeat on the day it occurred a hundred miles away, to drive the English out of France.4 She argued with her voices, disobeyed them, and when threatened with death by fire, denied them. And three days later, affirmed them again, thereby sealing her death.5

Joan had transformed herself at their instruction. She had ceased dancing, refused an engagement, pledged her virginity to her mission. She cut her hair short like a man's, learned to ride horseback, to wear armor, to use a sword. Yet despite this transvestism she maintained a female iden- tity, renaming herself Jeanne La Pucelle, Joan the Maid.6

From her voices Joan received that powerful charismatic gift, a perfect belief in herself. Before she had left her home province she told her first admirers that

No one (else) in the world . . . can recover the kingdom of France; there is no succor to be expected save from me. . .because my Lord wills that I should do it.7

Even when she stood in chains before her judges, she warned them that they condemned her at their peril, for she was sent by God.

Perhaps the best glimpse we have of Joan's use of her mystical powers to make herself heard in the world of men comes from Count Dunois. Dunois recollected that she came to the king after the victory at Orleans, urging him, as always, to push on, to attack again. The king asked her to de- scribe her ''counsel." Blushing, Joan had replied that

When I am vexed that faith is not readily placed in what I wish to say in God's Name, I retire alone, and pray to God .... I hear a Voice which says to me: "Daughter of God! go on! go on! go on! I will be thy Help: go on!" And when I hear this Voice, I have great joy. I would I could always hear it thus.

Dunois finished by commenting that "in repeating to us the language of her Voice, she was- strange to say!- in a mar- vellous rapture, raising her eyes to Heaven."8

By identifying herself with three important saints, taking on the intriguing persona of a young maid in armor, and proving clairvoyance, a peasant girl had won the backing of the king and leading nobles, and the enthusiastic support of the French army and people. Is there a message from Joan's story for women today struggling to be heard in a man's world? I will examine several relevant factors.

Tradition of Female Visionaries First off, Joan did not create the role of female prophet.

Among women who challenged the church with their visions before her, Prous Boneta believed that she carried the Holy Spirit within herself. Another ecclesiastical critic, Guglielma of Milan, also claimed that she was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and that in order for the church to be saved, the pope and the cardinals must be women.9

Political prophets were numerous, some of them lay and most of them female. As early as the 1270s, the French king Philip III had called on several clairvoyant lay women, per- sons who could tell things past and future and probe secret matters while leading a good life. But a generation later, when Philip IV turned for advice to a beguine (a woman in an independent, lay community), she was accused of at- tempted murder, interrogated while the soles of her feet were burned, and imprisoned.10 Apparently it was safer to have a reputation for the occult in the thirteenth century than in

the fourteenth, but in light of Joan's fate, better in the fourteenth than in the following century.

Whatever the hazards, the number of French female visionaries who concerned themselves with politics increased in the late fourteenth century. A widow, Constance de Rabastens, had visions in which Christ appeared, encourag- ing her to preach and to urge the French nobility to stand against the English. For her efforts, in 1385 Constance was taken in chains to the inquisitor of Toulouse, forbidden to publish her visions, and imprisoned. We know nothing more of her fate.11 The widow Jeanne-Marie de Maille became a recluse in a hermitage beside a Franciscan monastery at Tours. Despite her hermit's life she took deep interest in the political troubles of the day, spending long hours in private conversation with King Charles VI when he visited Tours.12 Luckier than some prophets, Jeanne-Marie ended her days peacefully in her hermitage in Tours, perhaps because she was protected by the Franciscans with whom she lived.

A more dramatic and disturbing case is that of Marie Ro- bine, a peasant woman who came on pilgrimage to Avignon in 1387, seeking healing for an illness.13 Miraculously cured, she settled as a recluse in a cemetery and began to have visions that became increasingly pessimistic and apocalyptic. In a final vision Marie saw a vast amount of armor, and fearing that she was intended to wear it, protested that she could not be a warrior. She was assured that the armor was not for her "but that a maiden who should come afterwards should bear these arms and deliver the kingdom of France from the enemy." People came to believe that Joan was the maiden of whom Marie prophesied.

It is important to see how the actions of these women had established an accepted, even expected role for spiritually gifted women. Joan was of course aware that there was a ready-made role for her to step into and that as a female prophet she was not unique. What is not clear is whether she understood the risk involved. In Joan's own time the well- known visionary nun St. Colette also received the confidence of the nobility, being consulted for over forty years by the mother of the Duke of Burgundy and employed during the papal Schism as negotiator with the antipope. But while Colette received the cooperation and respect of the church, proving the wisdom of submitting one's visions to one's con- fessors and of joining an order,14 Joan the laywoman was betrayed by French clerics in the pay of the English.

Another lay female prophet contemporary with Joan, a woman whom she clearly looked upon as a competitor and whom she tried to vanquish from the scene, was Catherine de la Rochelle, a visionary who met Joan in the fall of 1429. Catherine's apparition, ua white lady dressed in cloth-of- gold," had instructed her to go to the towns loyal to Charles and to demand the people's silver and treasure; if any held out, she would have the gift of knowing and of discovering the treasure (the adept's gift of finding lost or concealed ob- jects). With this wealth she would hire soldiers for Joan. Joan's reply to this offer of help must be read in her own words: "I told Catherine that she should return to her hus- band, look after her home, and bring up her children.15 There was no room in Joan's mission for a second miracle worker. There certainly wasn't room for a married woman, a woman who had not bothered to dedicate her virginity to the success of her mission.

Joan of course checked with her voice, who confirmed her

Women's Studies Quarterly XIII: 2 (Summer 1985) 27


Title page of the History of Joan of Arc, by Jean Hordal, professor at the Law School of the University of Pont-a-Mousson, published 1612. Engraving by Leonard Gaultier.

opinion by declaring that Catherine's mission was "mere folly and nothing else." Joan promptly wrote this piece of information to the king, and reminded him of it again when she next saw him.

For once not content with her heavenly counsel, Joan carried out her own test of Catherine's authenticity as a diviner; she would sleep with Catherine in her bed one night, in order to see the "white lady" herself. Unable to stay awake the first night, Joan was told that she had missed her. Un- daunted, Joan took a nap the next day and tried again. That night, although Joan kept the vigil, she saw nothing, proof enough that Catherine was a fraud. But Joan paid a price for rejecting Catherine as an ally, for the rival mystic later accused Joan to the inquisition, perhaps in order to save herself.

About Joan's attitude toward another female mystic, Pieronne, unfortunately we know nothing. The young Bre- ton visionary met Joan when both women took commun- ion together on Christmas Day, 1429. 16 Pieronne maintained that God often appeared to her in human form and talked to her as one friend does to another; that the last time she had seen him he was wearing a long white robe with a red tunic underneath, that whenever the precious body of Our Lord was consecrated she would see uthe great and se-

cret wonders of Our Lord God."17 This vision was declared blasphemous, and, refusing to recant of her claim that she frequently saw God in this way, Pieronne was condemned by French inquisitors and burned at the stake. That Pieronne had proclaimed Joan good and her actions the will of God, cannot have helped Joan's case.

While it is difficult to separate the theological from the political motives in Pieronne's trial, the theological point was made that talking with God and seeing his wonders was heresy. What the church would not tolerate, in Pieronne's case as in Joan's, was the individual's claim to special com- munication with the divine.

Thus, while Joan was by far the most famous visionary of her age, she was not unique. The long line of prophets and visionaries whom we have considered are mainly the French, and only the female, representatives of a European phenom- enon. It is readily understandable that late medieval religion produced more female mystics than male, considering that women were barred from the increasingly powerful priesthood. Since the twelfth century, when the doctrine of tran- substantiation empowered priests to perform the eucharistic miracle, men had available to them a ready-made, institu- tionally guaranteed role as miracle worker. And yet, women were as caught up as men in the intense, emotional religious revival of the high Middle Ages. Their response to this more powerful priesthood, which they could not join, was an un- precedented outpouring of visions, prophecies, and healings, in which they saw themselves as fully worthy of the highest calling.

We have seen that women envisioned themselves or other females as saviors or messiahs, as advisors to kings and popes, even as priests and cardinals, or as the holder of the papal office itself. Given this tradition, it is not surprising that Joan believed that the Lord spoke to her, singling her out for a mission which no one else could perform, that she felt herself called to advise the Dauphin, to lead his army, to stand beside him when he was crowned. Even her claim that her voices called her "Daughter of God" seems almost nor- mal and everyday in comparison to the visions of Prous Boneta.

Joan as Charismatic Leader Further evidence that women could be seen as powerful

heroes comes from Christine de Pisan, the foremost woman writer in France. Writing immediately after the crowning of King Charles, Christine penned a resounding war poem in celebration of Joan's victory at Orleans.18 As early as 1399 Christine had entered into a public debate on the cause of women; as Joan Kelly has pointed out, Christine produced the first known feminist statement.19 She was well prepared to praise Joan as a woman, and did so with spirit and ironic humor. Comparing Joan to Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Hec- tor, and Achilles, she claims that Joan's fame should be greater than theirs because she is only "a little girl of sixteen." Joan has accomplished more even than Esther, Judith, and Deborah, for although God performed miracles through these women, he accomplished a greater mission, the sav- ing of France, through this Maid, a mere "Pucellette."

Christine glories that a woman has led the army to victory, boasting that "never did anyone see greater strength, even in hundreds or thousands of men!" But Christine also praises Joan in traditional feminine terms, claiming that she

28 Women's Studies Quarterly XIII: 2 (Summer 1985)


not only ucasts the rebels down" but "feeds France with the sweet, nourishing milk of peace." Here we encounter Joan the androgyne, the little maid who smites Goliath, "a woman - a simple shepherdess- braver than any man ever was in Rome." Christine's poem is but the first of many literary attempts to encompass in one image of Joan both the masculine, invincible warrior and the diminutive but potent young maid. The attempt fails, as it always must, given the limits of our concepts of masculine and feminine, but Christine's Joan does not slip into childishness, cloying in- nocence, nor passivity as do many later literary portraits of the Maid. Her Joan is an exciting hero, more than a match for any man, on the battlefield or in mythology.

This glimpse of Joan, less than three months after she stepped into history at Orleans, goes far toward document- ing how she could have seen herself as a magical leader. Her contemporaries accepted her as such; not only common people but, in this case, a sophisticated woman who had lived her life in court circles. Rich and poor alike were prepared to accept one divinely chosen, miraculously led per- son as the answer to their crisis.

Moving into the ready-made role of female prophet and magic worker, Joan seized with both hands the possibilities in her time and place to be a charismatic leader. That the role required finally that she be burned at the stake tells us more about the politics and religion of the ruling class than it does about Joan. Their condemnation of Joan as heretic and witch offers much material on late medieval fear of

Statuary carved by Joseph-Andre Allar at the Bois Chenu basilica showing Joan (kneeling) listening to her voices: Saint Catherine, Saint Michael, and Saint Margaret.

power in women, material that I analyze at length in my book on Joan.20 Her story is thus an important document in women's history, both as an example of a woman using inner experience to establish her authority in the world of men, and as a warning of the price she may have to pay.

NOTES 1. The basic collection of materials on Joan is Jules Quicherat, Proces

de Condamnation et de Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc (Paris: Renouard, 1841-49). The best French edition of the trial is Pierre Tisset and Yvonne Lanhers, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc (Paris: Klincksieck, 1960). The English translation quoted from is T. Douglas Murray. Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.. 1902).

2. Consider for example the interesting but flawed study by Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (New York: Knopf, 1981). Warner's study is imaginative but lacks sufficient knowledge of two subjects essential to understanding Joan, the inquisition and medieval mysticism. See my review of Warner's book in American Historical Review (April 1982): 437-38.

3. Murray. Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 62, 64, 16. 22, 306; 149-50, 215, 218, 220-21, 240.

4. Ibid., pp. 10, 12-13, 28-29, 74-75. 5. Ibid., pp. 130-32, 137-38. 6. Ibid., p. 12. 7. Ibid., p. 223. 8. Ibid., pp. 238-39. 9. On Guglielma, see Marjorie Reeves. Joachim of Fiore and the

Prophetic Future (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 50, and n. 68; Stephen E. Wessley, 'The Thirteenth-Century Guglielmites: Salvation Through Women," in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 289-303. On Prous Boneta, Essays in Medieval Life and Thought Presented to Austin P. Evans (New York: Columbia University Press. 1955). pp. 3-30.

10. E. W. McDonnell, Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), pp. 330-32 and 450-52, with the Latin and French texts.

11. The material on Constance de Rabastens is taken from Andre Vauchez, "Les Soeurs de Jeanne," Le Monde 6, January 1980: 15. It is based on a Catalan version of Constance's confessions edited by Noel Valois.

12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. See also Noel Valois, "Jeanne d'Arc et la Prophetie de Marie

Robine," Melanges Paul Fabre (Paris, 1902), based on Marie's unedited Livre des Visions et des Revelations, and on the reported words of Master Jean Erault at Joan's retrial (cf. Murray, Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 269-70).

14. Vita Sanctae Coletae (1381-1447), ed. Yves Cozaux et al. (Leiden: Brill. 1982), pp. 141-43; New Catholic Encyclopedia 3. Two more famous women, the nuns Catherine of Siena and Bridget of Sweden, received prophetic visions that they addressed to popes, kings, and the nobility of Europe. Bridget became a saint in 1391 and Catherine in 1461, indicating the advantages, both in this life and the next, of membership in an order.

15. Murray, Jeanne d'Arc, pp. 52-53. 16. A Parisian Journal, 1405-49, by the Bourgeois of Paris, trans. J.

Shirley (Oxford. 1968), pp. 253-54. 17. Ibid., pp. 265. 18. Christine de Pisan, Ditie de Jehanne DArc, ed. and trans. Angus

J. Kennedy and Kenneth Varty (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medie- val Languages and Literature, 1977). For an excellent discussion of the Ditie, see Deborah Fraioli, "The Literary Image of Joan of Arc: Prior Influences," Speculum, 56, no. 4 (October 1981): 811-30.

19. Joan Kelly, "Early Feminist Theory and the 'Querelle des Femmes,' 1400-1789," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8. no. 1 (Au- tumn 1982): 4-28.

20. Anne L. Barstow, Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985).

Anne Llewellyn Barstow is Associate Professor of History at SUNY/College at Old Westbury. Her book, Joan of Arc: Heretic, Mystic, Shaman, is being published this year. She is now starting research on the issue of the gender of the vic- tims in the European witchcraft persecutions.

Women's Studies Quarterly XIII: 2 (Summer 1985) 29


Article Contentsp. 26p. 27p. 28p. 29

Issue Table of ContentsWomen's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 1-40Front MatterEditorialSpecial Features: Teaching about Women and Poverty: A Community/University CollaborationLinking the University and the Community: The Conference on Women and Poverty in Massachusetts [pp. 2-5]Personal Reports [pp. 6-8]Analysis and Action [pp. 9-14]

Special Features: The Curriculum Integration Movement: Taking a Closer LookIncorporating Perspectives on Women into the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Ford Foundation Workshop [pp. 15-17]Reports on Curriculum Integration Projects [pp. 17-22]Standard Forms of Information Organization: Academic Libraries and Curriculum Integration [p. 23-23]Review: Recent Books on Curriculum Integration [pp. 24-25]

Mystical Experience as a Feminist Weapon: Joan of Arc [pp. 26-29]The New Research on Women: How Does It Affect the Natural Sciences? [pp. 30-32]"Only Connect": Developing a Course on Women in International Development [pp. 33-35]Newsbriefs [p. 36-36]Back Matter

mystical experience as a feminist weapon joan of arc

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