Juliet Barker
NEITHER SAINT NOR SINNER
The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc
By Larissa Juliet Taylor (Yale University Press 320pp £20)
Exclusive from the Literary Review print edition. Subscribe now!
Joan of Arc is the ultimate icon. For French patriots she is the inspirational heroine who, against all the odds, raised the siege of Orléans, crowned the Dauphin and saved France from the English. For feminists she is the woman who triumphed in a man's world, challenging gender stereotypes by adopting male clothing and becoming not merely a soldier, but a victorious leader of men. For the Catholic church, she is a virgin saint, a simple country girl called by God to become the saviour of her country and to pay the ultimate price at the hands of its enemies when she was burned at the stake in Rouen. Celebrated in books, paintings and films, she is probably the most famous woman to have lived in the Middle Ages.
Joan's life was extraordinary by any standard. What is also remarkable for someone of this period is that it is so well documented. Though only nine of her own letters survive, we have the transcripts of both her trial at Rouen in 1431 and the nullification process of 1455-6 that resulted in the original verdict being declared void. The trial consisted of a series of interrogations held over the course of a month, during which Joan was probed for information about her life, morals and beliefs. In preparing the questions, her inquisitors had the advantage of evidence gathered from those who had known her since her birth in Domrémy, the village in Lorraine where she had lived until, at the age of seventeen, she embarked on her mission to the Dauphin in 1429. They were therefore able to ask her leading questions in the hope of making her incriminate herself. Joan's participation in the local custom of hanging garlands on the Fairy Tree, for instance, was turned into a suggestion of witchcraft, while her refusal to marry the man her parents chose for her, which led to her successfully defending a court action for breach of promise, was used to accuse her of breaking the biblical commandment to obey her father and mother.
For the nullification process, witness statements were demanded from those who had known Joan in every phase of her life. They ranged from the humble villagers of Domrémy to squires who had served with her on campaign, right up to the highest in the land, including the Duke of Alençon and the Count of Dunois. It is from this evidence that so many of the colourful stories about Joan emerge, such as her chasing away camp followers with her sword and rebuking even the greatest commanders for swearing. Another group of witnesses, whose recollections have contributed substantially to the creation of the legend of Saint Joan, consisted of those who had taken part in the original trial. They attested to the shameful way Joan was treated by 'the English', who were determined to secure her conviction and death by any means possible.
The problem for any biographer of Joan is that the evidence in both the original trial and the nullification process was biased to an extraordinary degree. Those recording her words and actions did so for entirely partisan reasons: in 1431 to expose her as an instrument of the devil and taint the king she had created by his association with her; in 1455-6 to demonstrate that she had indeed been the handmaid of God and that Charles VII's coronation had therefore been divinely ordained.
Larissa Juliet Taylor clearly understands the pitfalls presented by the source material better than many earlier biographers, devoting an appendix to an intelligent and measured discussion of them that should be required reading for any student of Joan of Arc. In the rest of her book, too, she is careful to take a balanced view. She is not afraid to point out that the saint had feet of clay, telling lies when it suited her (for example, when she wanted to escape from the oppressive domesticity of home) and, more importantly, becoming so convinced of her own infallibility that she came to believe that she, rather than her king, was the only hope for a unified France. The Joan that emerges from The Virgin Warrior is no cardboard saint or patriotic figurehead but a living, breathing girl: ardent and wilful, pious but pragmatic, a natural leader of men with an intuitive sense for the military imperative. Out of a mass of often confused and conflicting evidence, Taylor creates a coherent and compelling narrative. She is particularly good at explaining how the Dauphin prepared Joan for her role before letting her loose on the English, and demonstrating how Joan's sense of mission evolved and her stated objectives became more ambitious and specific.
Where Taylor is less successful is in delineating the wider picture. She has a tenuous grasp of chivalric culture and the laws of war. The English should not have tried to take Orléans because the duke was a prisoner in their hands and was dependent on its revenues to raise his ransom, not, as Taylor suggests, because Salisbury had supposedly promised not to attack it. Henry V's slaughter of his prisoners during (not after) the Battle of Agincourt was not a war crime by the standards of the day, unlike Joan's similar action after taking Jargeau, which Taylor attempts to excuse. If it was 'rare' for leaders to emphasise their direct role in killing 'since there was no honor or glory attached to such behaviour', why did the French aristocracy quarrel over the right to be in the front line at Agincourt? And it is simply absurd to claim that by 1431, the prosperous city of Rouen had suffered a decade of 'the worst of times' with famine 'a constant of daily life', or indeed that 'unlike Paris' it 'had never been content under English occupation'.
Despite her good intentions, Taylor also fails to take proper account of the motivation of those who supplied evidence to the nullification process. Those who had taken part in the trial were anxious to avoid repercussions by exculpating themselves: conveniently, the three main prosecutors were all dead and could therefore be blamed for manipulating the trial and compelling their attendance. Had all those who expressed sympathy for Joan's plight in 1455-6 been as vocal in 1431, her fate might have been different.
Taylor, like most biographers before her, also falls into the trap of assuming that it was Joan's resumption of male clothing that led to her final condemnation as a relapsed heretic, but as Craig Taylor pointed out in his Joan of Arc: La Pucelle (Manchester University Press, 2006), the trial notaries marked as her 'fatal reply' her admission that she was speaking to her voices again. Though her trial and execution were undoubtedly politically motivated, the fact remains that, in the eyes of the church, she was indeed guilty of heresy.
And in the eyes of her king, she was expendable. He had already found her replacement, a shepherd boy from the Auvergne, 'who talks just as well as Joan ever did'. Perhaps saddest of all, her brief but dazzling career has blinded all her biographers and future generations to the fact that it was largely futile. It would be another twenty years before the English were finally expelled from France. When that happened, it was achieved by a reformed, well-armed and tightly disciplined army, not by a peasant girl, even one who believed she was sent by God.
Juliet Barker is the author of the best-selling 'Agincourt' (Little, Brown, 2005). Joan of Arc features in her forthcoming book, 'Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417-1450', which will be published by Little, Brown in October.