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The Maid of France
Being The Story Of The Life And Death of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc)
CHAPTER 2
DOMREMY. PROPHECIES, FAITH, AND FAIRIES
Domremy, in which Jeanne was born (January 6, 1412?), is one
of many villages that nestle by the banks of the Upper Meuse.
The straggling river, broken by little isles, and fringed with reeds,
flows clear in summer; the chub and dace may be seen through
its pellucid water, unbroken as it is by dimples of the rising
trout. As in a Hampshire chalk-stream the long green tresses
of the water-weeds wave and float, the banks are gardens of
water-flowers, the meadows are fragrant with meadow-sweet. After
the autumn rains the river spreads in shallow lagoons across the
valley, reflecting the purple and scarlet of the vineyards.
The scene, on a larger scale, much resembles the valley of
the Test at Longparish, with its old red-roofed villages, mills, and
mill-leads--but the surrounding hills are higher, and in places are
covered with dark forests. The climate is temperate, the people
are grave,--"Seldom die, never lie," is a local proverb attesting
their longevity and truthfulness.
Though the house of Jeanne d'Arc, and the village church where
she prayed, still exist, terribly "restored," they contain little that is
old, except the ancient receptacle of holy water, shaped like a stone
cannon. Little is here that to the Maid was familiar; but the
aspect of her country, the river wherein her father threatened to
drown her; the oakwood, even the clear fountain where once she
saw her Saints, are almost unchanged.
The Meuse flowing north past the legendary oak forest, "le
Bois Chesnu," separates, on the left, Jeanne's linked villages of
Domremy and Greux from the villages of Maxey and the two
Bureys, before it reaches the walled town of the region, Vaucouleurs,
then held for the Dauphin by a stout, rough, humorous captain,
Robert de Baudricourt. The villenie of Vaucouleurs, including
Domremy and Greux, was a kind of island of loyalty in a region
either Anglo-Burgundian, or alien, in a territorial sense, to France.
From the Duchy of Loraine the house of the father of Jeanne
was separated only by a little burn, or it was even on the Loraine
side of the march, for the inconstant stream is said to have
changed its course once or more than once. Whatever the truth
may be, a point on which much learning has been expended,
Jeanne and Charles VII agreed in regarding the sites of Domremy
and Greux as French soil, though the habit by which Domremy
people spoke of "going into France" suggests that their village
may once have been regarded as on the Loraine side of the
march. To the west, Champagne, with Troyes and Reims, was
Anglo-Burgundian; on more sides than one the local seigneurs
were "false Frenchmen," like the de Vergy family; or changed
sides at will, like Robert de Saarbruck, the blackmail-levying
Damoiseau of Commercy. None the less Robert de Baudricourt
held high the flag of France in the castle of Vaucouleurs, which,
while Jeanne dwelt at Domremy, was seriously threatened, as far
as we know, only on one occasion (1428).
In Domremy, about 1410, dwelt Jacques d'Arc, a native of
Ceffonds in Champagne, with his wife, from Vouthon, named
Isabelle (de Vouthon), and called Romee, whether by reason of
a pilgrimage achieved by her, to Rome or to some famous
distant shrine, or because she inherited the surname. The mother
of the Maid was certainly devout, and, even in middle age, not
destitute of energy and a taste for pious adventure. The parents
of the Maid were good Catholics, of good repute, and honourable
position as "labourers." Jacques owned horses and cattle, in 1421
was doyen of his village, and in 1427 represented it in some
litigation. He was a relatively rich and a prominent member of
his little community.
In front of the village of Domremy, at the foot of a line of
low hills which command, on the west, the valley of the Meuse,
was a place of strength generally named "the castle of the island."
This castle had a large court, walled and fortified, and a great
garden, enclosed by a moat; there was also a chapel dedicated
to Our Lady. The island itself was formed by the stream of the
Meuse, which it divided. The hold belonged to the family of
Bourlemont, seigneurs of the village; but the Bourlemonts had,
before 1420, ended in an heiress, whose daughter and successor
in the estates had married and lived at Nancy, with her lord
Henri d'Ogiviller.
The castle, court, gardens, and adjoining pasture land were
let to a little syndicate of the villagers, on a lease running from
April 2, 1420, to June 24, 1429, about a week after the time
when Jeanne was at the great French victory of Pathay. The
village syndicate paid rent for the deserted fortress in money and
in services. They were seven in number, with two chief and leading tenants,
Jean Biget, of whom no more is known, and Jacques
d'Arc, the father of the Maid. Jacques d'Arc was manifestly a
person of substance for his station in life, and in the fortress of
the isle he had a place of strength, where his little children could
play at sieges, and act scenes of the chivalrous life; while, in times
of danger, they helped to drive the cattle and pigs of the villagers
within the fortified castle court.
Fancy (which plays too great a part in biographies of the
Maid) may legitimately paint her as she walks alone, beneath the
poplar trees, in the deserted alleys of the feudal garden, under the
blank windows of the silent untenanted castle. May she not, as a
child, have conceived of herself as the chatelaine of a fairy fortress,
and practised, in day dreams, the courtly manners which she brought
to the Court?
Of Jacques d'Arc we know little more except that he was
naturally averse, later, to the strange adventure of his daughter,
and two years before she declared her mission, dreamed, to his
horror, that he saw Jeanne going away with men-at-arms. "In
that case," he said to his sons, "you must drown her or I will."
The death by water, the death by fire, were threats with which
Jeanne was familiar. "My father and mother held me in great
subjection," said the Maid. She disobeyed them but once, namely,
in going whither her Voices called her.
The Maid had two elder brothers, Jacques or Jacquemin, who
lived at Vouthon, Jean, and a sister, Catherine, who died young;
she had also a brother Pierre. The only known educated persons
among her near kin were her maternal uncle, a cure, and a cousin-
german, Nicolas Romee, called de Vouthon, a religious of the
Abbey of Cheminon, who later served as her almoner and chaplain.
(Concerning him there are some doubts.) Jeanne herself could
not read or write, and learned her Ave Maria, Pater Noster, and
Creed from her mother. The birth-year of the Maid is not known
with certainty: all evidence proves that it was in 1410-1412, and
we shall provisionally accept, with M. Simeon Luce, the date of
1412.
As to the birthday of Jeanne, we have only one indication.
After her triumphs at Orleans, Perceval de Boulainvilliers, in a
letter to a foreign prince, told the following tale. On the night
of the Epiphany (January 6, Twelfth Night), when men are wont
to commemorate with jollity the acts of Christ, the Maid was born.
"All the peasants of her village were moved with a great joy, and,
knowing nothing about the birth of the Maid, they ran up and down,
trying to find out what novelty had occurred. The cocks, like
heralds of the new mirth, broke out beyond their wont, crowing
and flapping their wings, and, for some two hours seemed to
prognosticate the occurrence."
There is no reason why all this should not have occurred. The
facts are not miraculous, but highly probable; the interpretation
of the facts as miraculous was made apres coup; after Jeanne
became renowned as the girl who promised to save France. We
know that Twelfth Night was a merry, noisy night, with its feast
of the King and Queen of the Bean. Mary Stuart always kept
the festival in great splendour at Holyrood, decking one of her
Maries with all the Royal jewels as Queen of the Bean. Villagers,
in their own way, were as merry and more noisy, and would run
about in high spirits, and awaken the poultry. As for the crowing
of the cocks, thus rudely aroused,
"Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long."
{Hamlet, Act I. Scene I.)
Thus the story recorded by Boulainvilliers comes to no more
than this: Jeanne dArc was born on Twelfth Night, January 6.
The festivity and the cock-crowings were the usual accompaniments
of the festival.
A new myth, however, has been evolved about the birth of the
Maid. Her latest historian says, "From the first, people wanted
to make out that the marvels which had signalised the nativity of
Jesus were repeated on the advent of Jeanne d'Arc. It was
imagined that she was born on the night of Christmas (Noel). The
shepherds of the village, moved by an unspeakable joy of which
they knew not the cause, ran about in the dark to seek for the
unknown marvel. The cocks" (behaved as they do in the letter
of Boulainvilliers). "Thus the child had in her cradle her Adoration of the Shepherds."
Christmas is not Twelfth Night, though the critic identifies the
two festivals. There were no shepherds in the case,--swine-herds
there may have been,--but the villagers "knew nothing of the birth
of the Maid," says Boulainvilliers, and therefore did not adore and
disturb the cradle of the newborn child of Jacques d'Arc. Learning hath its bubbles as legend has,
"and these are of them." {Macbeth, Act I. Scene 3.) We may take it, without undue
credulity, that Jeanne d'Arc was born on January 6, 1412. Of
her earliest years, till she was twelve or thirteen, nothing is recorded
except her participation in the pastimes of the village children.
An intelligent girl of twelve or thirteen, even in a remote and
relatively quiet corner, would hear abundant talk concerning the
great wars, and the havoc wrought by the English, and the routieis
or armed bands, who fought now for England and Burgundy, now
for the Armagnacs, the French party; or plundered for their own
hands, taking advantage of the prevalent anarchy. It were a strange
mistake to think that when there were no newspapers there was
no news, and no interest in public affairs. In countries such as
France then was, as in the Highlands in the eighteenth century,
or in Africa now, it was the duty of every wayfarer to tell what
news he had, and to gather more. On the roads, pedlars, merchants,
and pilgrims were always passing to and fro, all eager to
hear or to tell any new thing. As in the Douglas wars of King's
men and Queen's men, in the minority of James VI, everybody
took sides. The boys in Scotland fought for King or Queen,
James or Mary; and when Jeanne told her judges that her
brothers and the other boys of Domremy, French in sympathy,
came bleeding home from fights with the boys of Maxey, on the
other side of the river, who were Burgundians, we may be certain
that, though they would have thrown stones in any case, those
stones were thrown in honour of the cause which they heard their
fathers profess. The elders of Domremy and Maxey did not fight,
but argued on the Armagnac or the Burgundian side. They
heard of Bauge Bridge and of Verneuil fight, and rejoiced or
regretted the results, little as these affected their daily lives. Born
on the right side of the Meuse, Jeanne might have been Burgundian
in sympathy. Born on the left side, the sorrows of France were
her inspiration.
She scarcely regarded herself, we saw, as a native of France.
Voices bade her "go into France," as if Domremy were outside of
France. (She also, later, spoke of the Ilee de France as "France.")
But her pitying loyalty to the Dauphin--while he remained uncrowned she never spoke of him as "king"
--was a matter of
personal as much as of patriotic sentiment.
The intellectual influences that reached her were those of the
Church, of common talk, and of local tradition,--in fact, of folklore.
A girl who constantly frequented the village church, which was
only severed by the graveyard from her father's garden close,
would hear sermons that touched on politics, and on the sorrows
of her uncrowned king. Wandering Cordeliers, mendicant
Franciscan brethren, as a rule French in sympathy, might be
entertained by her father, and would talk politics of their own
sort by her father's fireside. Jeanne's first conception of her
mission was that she must lead her prince to be consecrated at
Reims with the holy oil, brought by an angel to St. Remy. She
could not discover by the light of nature the mystic efficacy of the
consecration of the monarch, and of the holy oil from the Sainte
Ampoule {ampulla) of St. Remy, the patron of her village church
and of Reims. The cure, Minet, who baptized her, and other clerics,
were likely to preach much on the famous legend of the village
patron saint. Concerning other saints, the preachers, and ecclesiastical
folklore and mystery plays, would inevitably give copious
information. Relics were abundant, and were carried about for
exhibition; women loved to touch them with their rings. Jeanne
and other children bore garlands of flowers to saintly shrines, to
St. Bermont, for example, and heard the chapel legends. To her
Charlemagne was as much a saint as St. Louis; but her favourites
were St. Catherine of Alexandria, and St. Margaret; her sister
was named after St. Catherine, to whom a church in Maxey was
dedicated.
Neither lady has any sufficient historical credentials. Though
the dialectical skill with which St. Catherine vanquished the
heathen doctors cannot have been, to the ignorant Jeanne, the
most attractive portion of her legend, Jeanne was to stand up like
Catherine against contentious doctors, first at Poitiers, in the dawn
of her great adventure; last, at its close, in Rouen. St. Catherine
could not have shown more acuteness, loyalty, and untaught
sagacity than Jeanne. St. Margaret was of almost equal renown.
Relics of St. Margaret, her head, belt, and one arm, were farmed
out for forty-six francs eight gros to two Macon men, who probably
carried them about and exhibited them for money. But as this
was done in January-August 1441, ten years after the death of
the Maid, she was unaffected by the exhibition of the relics. Both
Saints were beautiful, and were sought by many wooers. Jeanne,
according to several knights who had been much in her company,
did not arouse their passions, "because of the goodness which is
in her," propter bonitatem suam, says one of them, Bertrand de
Poulengy. Few, if any, fair Saints were like Jeanne in this respect,
they were always pursued by enterprising admirers.
The third of Jeanne's spiritual guides, St. Michael, was very
popular in France at the time. He guarded the castle of St.
Michael in Normandy against the English, was an armed and
militant archangel, and figured in the standard of Charles VII.
Every child in France had many opportunities of seeing images
and relics of the Saints, and their effigies on the windows of the
churches. Each pious child was, and still is, apt to have a special
devotion to some Saint or Saints. In these ways Jeanne did not
differ from devout boys and maids, such as St. Theresa was when
she set forth, as a little girl, to seek martyrdom among the Moors.
But Jeanne's desire was to do rather than to suffer. Meanwhile she played
and danced with the other boys and girls, till,
when she was about thirteen, came the sudden change in her life,
came the visions and the Voices. After that, she says, she seldom
danced and sang.
The sports of the children were associated with ideas on the
borders of folklore and religion. The fairy folklore influenced
Jeanne not at all, though it was to have for her the most perilous
consequences. The place of the oak, and of other trees, in ancient
religions of tree-worship, has been illustrated by the learning of
Mr. Frazer, for classical beliefs; and, thanks to the stories of
Druids in Celtic Britain, is popularly known. Old religions die
hard, melting into peasant superstitions; and these clung about the
oaks of Domremy as much as about Eildon Hill.
Within half a league of Domremy, and visible, Jeanne said,
from the door of her father's house, was a forest called Oakwood,
le Bois Chesnu, nemus quercosum. Now, according to Jean Brehal,
Inquisitor, and one of the clerical legists who were judges in the
Trial for the Rehabilitation of the Maid (1450-1456), the old
name of the forest was Nemus Canutum (Bois Chenu),"whence
grew," says Brehal, "an ancient popular rumour, that a Maid should
be born in this place, who should do great deeds." Brehal then
quotes a prophecy of Merlin to the effect that "a marvellous Maid
will come from the Nemus Canutum for the healing of nations."
In the prophecies attributed to Merlin by Geoffrey of Monmouth
(1 140) there is talk of a Maid from the Nemus Canutum which had
come, says Brehal, to be understood as referring to the Bois Chenu.
The vulgaris et antiqua precrebuit fama,--the echo of the supposed
prophecies of Merlin won its way, like the predictions of Thomas
the Rhymer, into folklore. The Nemus Canutum once identified
with the Bois Chesnu on the marches of Loraine (really it was in
Britain), a wonderful virgin was expected to come from the marches
of Loraine to rescue France. The evolution of the idea is clearly
traceable, thus: A generation before the time of Jeanne, a visionary
from the south, named Marie d'Avignon, visited Charles VI, then
suffering under his ruinous wife, Isabelle of Bavaria. Marie
had dreamed a dream in which she beheld arms and armour.
She said that she could not use these, and was told that they
were for a Maid who should restore France. This dream, known
far and wide, was suggested by the Merlin prediction about a Maid
from the Nemus Canutum; that grove was recognised in the Bois
Chesnu on the marches of Lorraine, and in that region, folklore
averred that "a Maid who is to restore France, ruined by a woman,
shall come from the marches of Loraine." Prophecies from all
sorts of sources were always current in the Middle Ages. This
folklore fable was to have a great effect on Jeanne's career.
The alleged prophecies of Bede and Merlin were widely
circulated in manuscripts. They were apt to be quoted in
sermons; they became matters of popular information; they were
constantly consulted and applied to any new notable events.
There is no reason to suppose that "forged prophecies" of
Merlin were "the means by which the young inspired girl was
put in motion"--by some unknown churchmen, or that "without
these pious frauds the miracles of the Maid would never have
been wrought." The inspiration of the Maid arose in her visions
and Voices, in 1424 or 1425. We have no evidence that she had
heard of the Merlin prophecy of the Victorious Virgin till after
she announced her mission,--till 1428-1429,--and no fraudulent
priest was needed to convey to her ears the "ancient popular
rumour."
The oak wood, in which swine, the chief exportable commodity
of the region, fed on the acorns, also sheltered wolves-- and the
story ran that they never harmed the sheep shepherded by Jeanne.
The enemy never touched the cattle of any of her familiars. This
tale clearly comes from Domremy, with the story of the crowing
cocks, and suggests that the villagers suffered little, if at all, from
plunderers. As the flocks of the villagers were pastured on the
common near the village, and watched by the children of various
parents in their turn, it is probable that all the little shepherdesses
were as fortunate as Jeanne. According to a hostile contem-
porary, the birds fed from her lap, which has nothing to surprise
us, if the child sat quietly alone. Thoreau was not unique in
possessing the intimacy of birds; and a chaffinch has sat on my
leg and looked friendly even at me, in a little wood; while the
shy kingfisher has perched on my fishing-rod; and a "heather
linty," on the Naver, has flown to seek my protection from a
hawk. The robin, a daring bird, easily learns to feed from any
kind hand.
The forest had other tenants than birds and wolves. There
was, as Jeanne told her judges, a beech near Domremy called
"the Ladies' tree" or "the Fairies' tree," and hard by there was a
fountain. The water was thought medicinable, and Jeanne had
seen people come thither to be healed of fevers-- whether they
were any the better or not she did not know. There was a great
tree called "the fair May," where she used to dance with other
little girls, and weave garlands for our Lady of Domremy, and
make a " man of the May," a Jack in the Green. She often heard
from her elders that the lady fairies {Domince Fatales, fatal they
proved to her) were conversant there. One of her own god-
mothers, wife of Maire Aubery, or Aubrit, said that she had
seen the fairies. Jeanne knew not whether this were true or not.
Probably the godmother spoke but godmotherly. Jeanne said
she had never seen fairies at that tree, as far as she knew. She
and the other little girls hung garlands on the boughs-- sometimes
they left them there, sometimes took them away. She danced
there little after she knew of her mission, and sang more than
she danced. Her grave days began when she " learned that she
must go into France." She never heard that there were fairies
in the oak wood. But one of her brothers told her that, according
to the clash of the countryside, she " had got her case " {ceperat
factum suunt) in the wood. She told her brother that this was
untrue.
When she went to the Dauphin at Chinon, some asked her if
the Bois Chesnu was in her country, because there were prophecies
that thence should come a Maid to do wonders. She herself had
no belief in this prediction. If so she was wiser than her learned
seniors. We shall find later that she spoke of the prophecy, or of
a similar saying, in 1429, before she went to Chinon.
The judges at Rouen had made inquiries at Domremy, and
put the questions in folklore (or, as they thought, daemonology), to
which Jeanne replied. They asked what she knew of " those who
travel in the air with the fairies." She had heard the talk oi
them, "but does not believe in it." We have more folklore in
the evidence of Morel, a peasant of Greux. Since the Gospel
of St. John was read aloud in the fairy haunts, the fays go there
no more. The Sunday in Lent called Lcetare was styled " the day
of Fountains," and then boys and girls used to dance at the Fairy
tree, and picnic there, having little cakes made for them, and
would drink the water and sing at the Fontaine des Groseillers.
The tree, according to Jeanne Thesselin, was said, in a romance
which she had heard read aloud, to have been the trysting-place
where Pierre, Lord of Bourlemont, met his fairy love, as Thomas
of Ercildoune met his Fairy Queen at the Eildon tree. The
feasts below the tree were perfectly recognised gatherings. Pierre
de Bourlemont, Lord of the Manor, and his wife, Beatrix, used to
take part in these rural revels, usually held on the Sunday in Lent
called Lcetare, or des Fontaines. They drank of the fountain-- the
Church patronised what may have been a survival of paganism,
or may have been a mere traditional holiday. There was no
evidence that Jeanne went to that tree alone: she did what all
the young people did and continued to do.
The judges made their own bad use of the information. To
us it only proves that the children were gay and merry in
Domremy; that they were not subdued by the black cloud of
war. The ancient Celtic tree-worship, perhaps, lent grace to the
romance of the life of the children, then as now. " In spring,"
said Gerardin, a peasant sixty years of age, " that tree is as fair
as lily flowers, the leaves and branches sweep the ground." These
people were not brutalised. The same witness said that he had
known the Maid. " She was modest, simple, devout-- went gladly
to church and to sacred places-- worked, sewed, hoed in the fields,
and did what was needful about the house."
This is a summary of all that the surviving neighbours of
Jeanne had to say, in 1450-1456, about the pensive dark-haired
girl with the happy face. The questions to which answers were
demanded of the neighbours, at the Trial of Rehabilitation,
conducted by the Inquisitor in 1450-1456, were (after pre-
liminaries as to her near kinsfolk and godparents) :
1. Was she early and duly instructed in faith and morals,
considering her age and social position ?
2. How did she behave in youth, from her seventh year till
she left her father's house?
3. Did she often, and willingly, frequent church and holy places ?
4. How did she occupy herself in this period of her youth ?
5. Did she confess herself often and willingly?
6. What do you know about her in connection with the fairy
tree and fountain ?
7. How did she leave home, and what do you know of her
journey (to Chinon).
8. Was information taken in her native place, by authority of
her judges, when she was held captive by the English ?
9. When she once left home for Neufchateau, by reason of
the men-at-arms, was she always in the company of her parents ?
These were the questions put to survivors who had known
Jeanne at Domremy. This part of the examination began in
January 1455-1456. Of no village folk in that remote age is so
much known as is known about the folk of Domremy. By reason
of the Maid their obscure names and their ways will never be
forgotten while civilisation endures. "She was such that, in a
way of speaking, all the people of Domremy were fond of her."
She ploughed, watched the cattle, sewed, and did other woman's
work. She was sometimes in church when her parents thought
that she was in the fields. When she heard the bell for Mass,
she came to church. She went often to confession. "There was
not a better in the two villages" (Domremy and Greux). "For
the love of God she gave alms-- and if she had money would have
given it to the curate, Guillaume Fronte, for Masses to be said."
" She often went to church when other girls went to dance." She
used to urge the beadle to ring the church bells punctually,
giving him little presents. Her little friend Hauviette wept sorely
when the Maid left Domremy, M she loved her so much for her
goodness." Often she withdrew from the games of the children
to pray, and they used to laugh at her. She was wont to nurse
sick people-- she took care of Simon Musnier when he was ill, as
he well remembered. She would lie by the hearth all night, and
let poor people sleep in her bed.
Nicolas Bailly, who had examined twelve or fifteen Domremy
witnesses for the English judges of 1431, said that they gave
much the same testimony as the twenty-eight witnesses gave in
1456. He sent in his reports, and was told by his employer that
he and his assistants were " false Armagnacs."
Indeed the prosecution, in 1431, had to make the most of the
wickedness of the Fairy tree at Domremy, and to assert that a
godmother who told the Maid that she had seen fairies was a
bad old woman; Domremy being noted for its witches. Jeanne
was a witch, and did witchcraft under the Fairy tree, and had a
mandrake, a forbidden root of magic.
This is one of the most nefarious parts of the accusation.
Nothing bad could be found in the evidence given at Domremy
in 1431, nothing more than folklore gossip, so the harmless Fairy
tree, frequented by all the young people, was dwelt upon; and
reports of the blameless, charitable, industrious, and devout life
of the Maid were suppressed.
As far as the evidence from Domremy goes, till she asserted
her mission, in May 1428, Jeanne was an ordinary example of
the good, amiable, kind, religious peasant girl, liked by all, but
laughed at a little, by the other young people, for her earnest
piety. When she announced her mission, she said that God had
called her "to go into France" and help the Dauphin. If she
then told anything about the manner of her calling, the Voices
and visions, the fact is nowhere reported. Of her conseil, as she
called it, of " her brothers the Saints," she only spoke in general
terms. She did not speak out till her trial at Rouen, and then
could not be induced or compelled to offer details. Her soldiers
had no idea that St. Michael was their General. Her trusted
equerry and her very confessor knew not that she was visited by
St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael.
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