Question: Swear to tell the truth concerning what will be asked you touching the faith and what you shall learn.
JOAN: Of my father, of my mother, and of all that I have done since I arrived in France, I will willingly swear. . . .
Joan, on her knees and with both hands on the book, a missal, swears that she will speak the truth about all that is asked of her.
Question: What are your names and surnames (surnoms)?
JOAN: In my town they called me Jeannette, and since I came to France I have been called Joan. As for my surname, I know of none.
Question: Where were you born?
JOAN: I was born in the town of Domremy which makes one with Greux. It is in the place of Greux that the principal church is.
Question: The names of your father and mother?
JOAN: My father was called Jacques d’Arc and my mother Isabelle.
Question: Where were you baptised?
JOAN: In the church of Domremy.
Question: Who were your godfathers and godmothers?
JOAN: One of my godmothers was called Agnes, another Jeanne, another Sibille; one of my godfathers was called Jean Lingue, another Jean Barre; I had many other godfathers and godmothers, as I have heard my mother say.
Question: Who was the priest who baptised you?
JOAN: Master Jean Minet, to the best of my belief.
Question: Is he still alive?
JOAN: Yes, I think so.
Question: How old are you?
JOAN: As far as I know, about nineteen years old. And it was from my mother that I learnt Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Credo. Nobody taught me my belief, if not my mother. (C38–41)
Question: Did you learn any trade in your youth?
JOAN: Yes, to sew linen cloths and to spin; for spinning and sewing let me alone against any woman in Rouen. . . . When I was in my father’s house, I busied myself with the housework.
Question: Did you confess your sins every year?
JOAN: Yes, and to my parish priest*; and when he was unable I confessed to some other priest with his permission. Once or twice or thrice, as I think it was, I confessed to begging friars; that was in the town of Neufchâteau. And I received the sacrament of the Eucharist at the feast of Easter.
Question: Did you receive this sacrament of the Eucharist at feasts other than Easter?
JOAN: Pass over that. (C46)
The evidence here given by Joan herself was confirmed by the folk of Domremy who had known her from her infancy or childhood.
Jean Moreau, farmer of Greux, seventy years of age or thereabouts: “Jeannette, whom this concerns, was born at Domremy and baptised in the Church of Saint-Remy, a parish of that place. Her father was called Jacques d’Arc and her mother Isabelette, farmers, during their lifetime, at Domremy. From what I saw and knew, they were faithful Catholics and hard workers, of good repute and decent conversation, according to their condition; for several times I spoke with them. I was myself one of Jeanne’s godfathers; she had for godmothers the wife of Etienne Royer, and Beatrice, widow of Estellin dwelling in the town of Domremy, and Jeannette, wife of Tiercelin de Viteau, dwelling in the town of Neufchâteau. Jeannette, in earliest youth, was well and properly brought up in the faith and good conduct and so much so that nearly all the inhabitants of Domremy loved her. And Jeannette knew her belief, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, as little girls of her age know it.
“Jeannette was of seemly converse so far as a girl of her condition can be, for her parents were not very rich. And in her youth and until the time when she left her father’s house, she went to the fields to plough and sometimes guarded the animals in the fields, and did women’s work, spinning and the rest. Jeannette would go often and of her own will to the church and to the hermitage of Notre Dame de Bermont near to the town of Domremy, when her parents thought that she was ploughing or working elsewhere in the fields. When she heard the bell toll for Mass while she was out in the fields, she came away to the town and to church to hear the Mass, as I have seen her do. I have seen her confess at Paschal (Easter) time and at the other solemn feasts; she confessed to Messire Guillaume Front, at that time priest of the parish church of St. Remy de Domremy.” (R.67–68)
Simonin Musnier, farm-worker, about forty-four, a childhood playmate: “I was brought up with Joan the Maid next door to her father’s house. I know that she was good, simple, pious, fearing God and his saints; she went often and of her own will to church and to sacred places, caring for the sick and giving alms to the poor; this I saw myself, for when I was a child I myself was sick and Joan came to comfort me. . . .” (R.76)
Mengette or Marguerite, wife of Jean Joyart, forty-six or thereabouts, her friend: “My father’s house was almost adjoining Joan’s and I knew Joan the Maid, for often I span thread in her company and with her did other house tasks, day and night; she was brought up in the Christian religion and full of good ways,* as it seemed. She went of her own will and often to church and gave alms out of her father’s property (biens) and was so good, simple and pious that I and the other young girls would tell her that she was too pious. She worked with a will and busied herself with a multitude of tasks; she span, did the house work, worked at the harvest and sometimes, when the time came, took her turn to guard the animals as she span. She went readily to confession; I often saw her on her knees to the priest of the town.” (R.78)
Hauviette, wife of Gerard de Sionne, about forty-five years old: “From my childhood I knew Joan the Maid who was born at Domremy to Jacques d’Arc and Isabelette, husband and wife, honest and decent farmers and true Catholics of good repute. I know this because I was often in company with Joan, and being her friend I went to her father’s house. I do not, however, remember her godmothers and godfathers, unless it be by what I heard said, for Joan was older than me by three or four years, or so it was said.
“Joan was a good, simple and sweet-natured girl, she went often and of her own will to church and the sacred places and often she was ashamed because of people remarking how she went so devoutly to church. I have heard the priest who was there in her time say that she came often to confession. Joan busied herself like any other girl; she did the housework and span and sometimes—I have seen her—she kept her father’s flocks.” (R.77)
Colin, son of Jean Colin of Greux, farmer, about fifty years old, her comrade: “Joan, from what I saw, was a good, simple, sweet-natured girl of good behaviour. She went readily to church, as I saw myself, for almost every Saturday afternoon Joan, with her sister and other women, went to the hermitage of Notre Dame de Bermont, bearing candles. She was very devout towards God and the Blessed Virgin, so much so that I myself, who was young then, and other young men, teased her. She worked with a will, watchful over feeding the animals, willingly caring for the animals of her father’s house, span, and did the housework. I have heard it said by Messire Guillaume Front, formerly the parish priest, that Joan was a good Catholic, that he had never met a better and had none better in his parish.” (R.75–76)
Durand Laxart or Lassois, farmer of Burey, Joan’s uncle-by-marriage: “Joan was of my wife Jeanne’s kinsfolk. I knew Jacques d’Arc and Isabelette well, the parents of Joan the Maid, good and true Catholics, and of good repute, and I believe that Joan was born in the town of Domremy and that she was baptised at the font of St. Remy in that town. Joan was of good behaviour, devout, patient, going readily to church, willingly to confession, and gave alms to the poor when she could, as I witnessed, both in the town of Domremy and at Burey, at my house, where Joan resided during a period of six weeks. Willingly did she work, spinning, ploughing,* keeping the cattle, and did other work suitable for women.” (R.82)
Isabelette, wife of Gerardin d’Epinal, about fifty: “Willingly did she give alms and gathered in the poor and she would sleep beneath the hood of the hearth that the poor might sleep in her bed. She was not to be seen loitering about the streets, but was much in church at prayer. She did not dance, so that we, the other girls and young men, even talked about it. She was always working, spinning, cultivating the earth with her father, doing the housework and sometimes she guarded the cattle. She went readily and often to confession, as I witnessed, for Joan the Maid was my gossip, and carried Nicholas, my son, at the baptismal font. And often I went with her and saw her confess in church, to Messire Guillaume who was the priest at that time.” (R.81)
Michel Lebuin, of Domremy, farmer at Burey, forty-four years old or thereabouts: “Joan went readily to church and very often to (other) sacred places. I know this because myself, on several occasions, when I was young, I went with her on pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Bermont, the hermitage. She went almost every Saturday to that hermitage, with her sister, and put candles there. For the love of God she gave away willingly all that she could get. She busied herself actively about women’s work and helping the other girls, doing it very well and properly; she confessed frequently; I know, for I was a companion and I often saw her confess.” (R.79)
Dominique Jacob, priest of a neighbouring parish (Montiers-sur-Saulx in the diocese of Toul), about thirty-five years old: “Joan was from Domremy and as far as I know she was baptised in the church of St. Remy in that town. For her parents, they were Jacques d’Arc and Isabelette, joined in wedlock, who were good Catholics and of good repute: I always heard them spoken of as such. . . . Joan was older than me. I saw and knew her three or four years before she left the house of her father and mother; she was brought up in goodly ways and decent habits and went often to church and sometimes, when the bell was tolled for Compline at the town church, she fell upon her knees and, so it seemed to me, said her prayers piously.” (R.73)
Etienne de Sionne, priest of Roncessay near Neufchâteau, about fifty-four years old: “I often heard it said by Messire Guillaume Front, parish priest during his lifetime at the town of Domremy, that Joan, called the Maid, was a good and simple girl, pious, well brought up, fearing God, so much so that she had not her equal in the town. She often confessed her sins to him, and he said that had Joan had money of her own she would have given it to her priest for the saying of Masses. This priest told me that every day when he celebrated she was at the Mass.” (R.73)
Perrin Drappier, churchwarden of Domremy, about sixty years old: “Joan the Maid, in the time of her youth until she left her father’s house, was a good, chaste and simple girl, modest in manner, taking not the name of God nor of his saints in vain, fearing God. She went frequently to church and frequently confessed. The cause of my knowing this is that I was, in those days, churchwarden at the church of Domremy and often did I see Joan come to church, to Mass and to Compline. And when I did not ring the bells for Compline, Joan would catch me and scold me, saying that I had not done well; and she even promised to give me some wool if I would be punctual in ringing for Compline. And Joan went often with her sister and other people to a church and hermitage of Bermont, founded in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She gave much in alms; she worked with a will, spinning and doing the necessary tasks; and sometimes she went to plough and took her turn at keeping the cattle.” (R.70–75)
A childhood like any other, with, like any other in this too, a few features recalling the appalling background of events which made themselves felt even in that forgotten corner at the limits of Barrois and Lorraine.
Question: Did the people of Domremy take the Burgundian side or that of their opponents?
JOAN: I knew only one Burgundian there and I could have wished his head cut off—however, only if it pleased God.
Question: In the town of Maxey, were they Burgundians or enemies of the Burgundians?
JOAN: They were Burgundians. . . .
Question: Were you ever with little children who fought for the side which is yours?
JOAN: No. I have no memory of that; but I did see that certain people of the town of Domremy had fought against those of Maxey, whence they came back sometimes much wounded and bleeding.
Question: In your extreme youth had you great wish to go out against the Burgundians?
JOAN: I had a great will and desire that my King have his kingdom. . . .
Question: Did you take the animals out to pasture?
JOAN: I answered that elsewhere. When I was quite big and had reached the years of reason, I did not generally guard the animals, but I did help to take them to the meadows and also to a fortified place which was called the Isle, for fear of men-at-arms; but I do not remember whether in my childhood I guarded them or not. (C.63–65)
The above exchange gives us something of the atmosphere of a France divided against itself, in which opinion aligned people against each other, and in which the approach of armed men alarmed the peasants and sent them and their beasts into refuge. At Domremy the place called the Isle, mentioned by Joan, was the only fortified place. And it was a refuge which sometimes turned out to be inadequate. In 1428 Antoine de Vergy, governor of Champagne for the King of England, received orders to go and besiege the city of Vaucouleurs, the only one in the whole bailiwick of Chaumont which had not yet made submission; all the others, Chaumont itself as well as Nogent-le-Roi, Coiffy, Audelot, Montigny-le-Roi, had rallied to the English crown.
JOAN: For fear of the Burgundians, I left my father’s house and went to the town of Neufchâteau in Lorraine, to the house of a woman named La Rousse where I stayed for about fifteen days. (C.46)
Isabelette, wife of Gérardin d’Epinal: “Joan went to Neufchâteau with her father, her mother, her brothers and sisters who, because of the soldiers (gens de guerre), took their animals to Neufchâteau. But she did not stay there long and she came back to Domremy with her father, as I witnessed; for she did not like living there and said that she preferred to live at Domremy.” (R.82)
Dominique Jacob, parish priest of Montiers-sur-Saulx: “All the inhabitants of Domremy took to flight, because of the men-at-arms, and came to Neufchâteau, and among them came also Joan with her father and mother and always in their company.” (R.74)
Hauviette: “I, too, was also in Neufchâteau at the time and was seeing Joan all the time.” (R.77)
Gérard Guillemette, farmer, of Greux, about forty years of age: “I who am speaking was myself at Neufchâteau with Joan, her father and her mother, and I always saw her with her father and mother, excepting that during three or four days Joan, her mother and father being present, helped the hostess with whom they lodged, called La Rousse, a worthy woman of that town. I know well that they did not stay in Neufchâteau more than four or five days, until the soldiers had gone away. Then she came back to Domremy with her father and her mother.” (R.85)
Meanwhile, hard times notwithstanding, the young people of the country still managed to enjoy themselves sometimes.
JOAN: Quite close to the town of Domremy there is a tree called the Ladies’ Tree, and others call it the Fairies’ Tree, near which is a spring of water; and I have heard tell that those who are sick and have the fever drink the water of this spring and ask for its waters to recover their health. I have witnessed this myself but I do not know if it cures them or not. It is a big tree called beech* from which fine Maypoles are made; it belonged to Messire Pierre de Bourlemont, Knight. Sometimes I went out with the other girls and by the tree made garlands (of flowers) for the image of Our Lady of Domremy; . . . I have seen the girls put such garlands on the tree’s branches and sometimes I myself put some on, with the others; sometimes we took them away with us and sometimes we left them there. . . . I do not know whether, since I reached the age of discretion (l’âge de raison), I ever danced about this tree; I may well have danced there with the children but I sang there more than I danced. (C.65–66)
Gerardin d’Epinal, farmer, sixty years old or thereabouts: “This tree is called the Ladies’ Tree. I have seen the lords temporal and the ladies of Domremy, once or twice, in the spring, take bread and wine and go out to eat under this tree; it is then as beautiful as lilies and immense. Its leaves and its branches reach down to the ground. On Springs Sunday (Dimanche des Fontaines) the boys and girls of Domremy are accustomed to go out under this tree; their mothers make loaves for them and, young men and girls, off they go to celebrate Springs (faire fontaine) under this tree.† There they sing and dance and come back to the Spring at Rains, eat their bread and drink of its waters, as I have witnessed. Joan went there with the other girls and did all that the others did.” (R.80)
Hauviette: “This tree, since ancient times, has been called the Ladies’ Tree, and it used to be said that the ladies who are called fairies went there. However, I never heard it said that anyone had ever seen one. The boys and girls of the town are accustomed to go to this tree and to the Rains Spring on the Sunday of Laetare Jerusalem called (Sunday) of the Springs, and they take bread with them. I went with Joan the Maid, for she was my comrade, and other girls and young men to the Fairies’ Tree on Springs Sunday. There we ate, we danced, we played; I have seen nuts (walnuts) taken to the tree and to the Springs.” (R.77)
Jeannette, widow of Tiercelin: “The tree which is called the Ladies’ Tree—it is said that in past times a lord, Messire Pierre Granier, Knight, lord of Bourlemont, and a lady called (a) fairy, used to meet each other under this tree and talk together; this I heard read out of a romance.* And girls and young men of the town go there every year on Laetare Sunday, called ‘Of the Springs’, for an outing. And there they eat, dance and go off to drink at the Rains Spring.” (R.72)
The foregoing suffices to suggest the tales which were told on the long winter evenings, and to recall youthful revels, dances and picnics under the tree which was several centuries old. Joan was in all things “like the others” and, like the others, she had her love affair.
Question: What made you cause a certain man at the city of Toul to be summoned for (breach of promise of) marriage?
JOAN: I did not have him summoned, it was he who had me summoned. And there I swore before the judge to speak the truth and in the end he roundly said that I had made the man no promise whatever.
In the Middle Ages a promise of marriage had contractual force. It would seem that Joan had a suitor who, rejected, tried to revenge himself by haling her before the court of justice at Toul, which found against him—incidentally to the consternation of her father and mother who would have preferred to see her wed.
Question: What was the dream which your father said he had had about you before you had left his house?
JOAN: When I was still in the house of my father and mother, I was several times told by my mother that my father had told her that he had dreamt that I, Joan, his daughter, would go away with some men-at-arms. And much care did my father and mother have about it and they kept me close and in great subjection; and for my part I obeyed them in all things save only in that lawsuit I had in the city of Toul in the matter of marriage. And I have heard my mother say that my father told my brothers, “Truly, if I knew that that must happen which I fear in the matter of my daughter, I had rather you drowned her. And if you did not do it, I would drown her myself.”
But why this refusal of marriage on Joan’s part?
JOAN: The first time that I heard the voice, I promised to keep my virginity for as long as it should please God, and that was at the age of thirteen or thereabouts. (C.123–127)
For in this childhood, “like the others”, something had happened concerning which Joan had said not a word to anybody.
It might at first sight seem superfluous to argue about Joan of Arc’s birth and origins after reading the testimony which establishes them so clearly. The worth of the texts in question raises no doubts in the historian’s mind; they emanate from eye-witnesses and bear the best sign of authenticity in that, agreeing about the real point in question, they differ sufficiently from each other to do away with any fear that one may be dealing with “faked” documents (copied from each other, for instance). The texts are taken from the trial of condemnation (C) and the trial of rehabilitation (R) and we shall see later (Chapters 7 and 9) how they were composed and in what form they still survive.
It should be noted that all the above declarations, whether made by Joan herself or by the witnesses of her childhood, were made on oath and registered as such by the clerks of the two trial courts. Joan refused to take the oath and made clear and definite reservations when making statements touching her voices or the person of the King; but in what concerned her father and mother and place of birth she did not raise even the slightest difficulty and immediately swore to speak the truth. Let us also mark, in passing, the expressions she employed (see next chapter) when the question of her leaving Domremy was raised: the idea of being a “king’s daughter” was as fantastic to her as that of having “one hundred fathers and one hundred mothers”.
Nevertheless the hypothesis of a “Joan of Arc bastard of Orleans” has so often been repeated that one is obliged to examine it.
Who started it?
It appeared for the first time in an article by one Pierre Caze, sub-prefect of Bergerac, who was not an historian but was under the mistaken impression that he was a dramatist. He expounded his theory in 1805, in the Observations which prefaced a tragedy of his composition published in Libourne and entitled The Death of Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orleans. In 1819 he returned to the subject, in two volumes: The Truth about Joan of Arc or enlightenment on her origin.
Since then books and articles taking up the same hypothesis have appeared periodically, so that in 1895 the learned Lefevre-Pontalis was already describing it as an “old attempt at mystification”.* It should be noted that all the writers who have successively expounded this thesis of Joan’s bastardy have done no more than resume the same arguments supported by the same documentation as those of P. Caze; during 150 years no new document which might reinforce the theory has come to light. All those which have been put forward as “new” have been shown on analysis to be documents already well known to historians and well studied by them.
According to this hypothesis Joan was the daughter of Isabeau of Bavaria and Louis, Duke of Orleans, brother of King Charles VI.
As Louis d’Orleans was assassinated on the night of November 23, 1407, it follows that any child of his must have been conceived before that date. Now contemporary documents (among others the Chronique du Religieux de Saint Denis) establish that Isabeau of Bavaria gave birth, on November 10, 1407, to a son who died within a few hours, having been hastily baptised with the name of Philippe. Since, for reasons no longer historical but gynaecological, it is impossible to suppose Isabeau again pregnant between November 10 and 23, we are obliged to suppose that the child was really a girl for whom a still-born boy was substituted. Offspring of Isabeau’s and Louis’ guilty passion, the child it seems was first hidden and subsequently entrusted to some peasants of the village of Domremy to whom she was taken on the night of Epiphany: for those who hold this theory, this would explain why the village cockerels, roused by the noise of the royal suite, all crowed in the middle of the night, as described in a letter written by Perceval de Boulainvilliers (see Chapter 4).
And the reason for this removal and substitution? They were because the child was illegitimate.
The liaison between Isabeau of Bavaria and her brother-in-law Louis of Orleans has never been formally established but it is a possibility; some historians consider it as probable even as early as 1404. What, on the other hand, is altogether impossible in the eyes of any historian tolerably familiar with the mores, domestic and juridical customs, and mentality of the Middle Ages is the notion of concealing the birth of a bastard. This idea alone is sufficient to expose a profound ignorance of the period. The fact is that during the Middle Ages bastards were admitted to the family circle and acknowledged without shame; this state of mind persisted, indeed, until relatively recent times; one has only to recall Louis XIV’s bastards. It was in the eighteenth and above all the nineteenth century that the distinction between legitimate and “natural” children began to be made and that some effort was made to dissimulate the latter: the reasons for this evolution in manners are too numerous to be set out here—growing influence of Roman law, fear of dispersing the family heritage by division, in a word all that characterises bourgeois civilization.
To believe that anyone could, in Joan of Arc’s time, seek to conceal an illegitimate birth is simply to perpetrate an anachronism. Bastards, we repeat, were brought up as members of the family: if the family happened to be noble they bore its arms, to which was added what heraldists call a brisure, the “bar of bastardy”. Examples abound: one might begin with Dunois himself, known as and called the Bastard of Orleans in Joan of Arc’s day; it was thus that he signed his letters in fact: he was the son of Louis of Orleans and Yolande d’Enghien. A few years later the royal accounts carry an entry at regular intervals for the fees paid to “the wet-nurse for My Lord the Count of Maine’s bastard”, the child being a daughter of Charles du Maine, Queen Marie’s brother and Charles VII’s brother-in-law. Two chroniclers of the period, Enguerrand de Monstrelet and Jean de Wavrin, were bastards. Philippe the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had, despite his three marriages, sixteen bastards, of whom one, Antoine, was called The Great Bastard, and bore that nickname without, as we should say nowadays, developing a complex.
For any historian of the Middle Ages the hypothesis, then, at once appears in the highest degree improbable; it entails transposing the mores and state of mind of a later epoch into the past.
Furthermore, it is unacceptable from the point of view of historic method. For history—let us not forget this—is an exact science regulated by scientific method. We cannot accept a mere supposition unsupported by any document. It is, therefore, desirable that we glance at any of the documents which might support the hypothesis in question.
The birthdays of the various children born to Isabeau of Bavaria and Charles VI are established chiefly by reference to the Chronique du Religieux de Saint Denis, which offers to historians perfectly acceptable guarantees of authenticity. This chronicle states without prevarication that the child born on November 10, 1407, was of the male sex and was christened Philippe.
The works of an eighteenth-century historian, the Abbé Villaret, albeit suspect since he never gives his sources, also call this child Philippe in the edition which appeared during his lifetime, that is in 1764; but in two later editions, dated respectively 1770 and 1783, this same child becomes a girl called Joan. Obviously, for the modern historian, contemporary evidence is superior to the work of an eighteenth-century writer whose posthumous editions may have contained mistakes.
In default of documents—for in fact no other has ever been produced—those who favour the hypothesis of royal bastardy have recourse to various hints whose value we shall examine as they appear in the texts we shall be quoting. And to begin with those already quoted, these people evince surprise, for example, at the fact that Joan did not know her exact age (for, we must note, in order to be “bastard of Orleans” Joan would have had to be born in 1407 and consequently to have been twenty-five at the time of her trial). But, for the historian of the Middle Ages, the surprising thing would have been if Joan had known her age. For at that time nobody was much concerned to know how old he or she might be. The notions which have acquired such importance in the modern world—date and place of birth, civil status, authenticated by an identity card or a passport were utterly alien to the mediaeval world. In Joan of Arc’s time historiographers and chroniclers were just beginning to record the birth dates of kings and very great noblemen; at the same period parish registers were beginning to be kept here and there, and in them christenings, weddings and deaths were noted. But they were rare, and are even rarer in surviving archives: parish registers did not begin to become numerous until the sixteenth and, above all, the seventeenth centuries.
An example of such typical uncertainties may be in place here: in 1415, one Jean Fusoris—well known to historians of the Middle Ages, for he was a famous technician in his day, a maker of astronomical instruments—was arrested on suspicion of treason in the course of the English invasion. Interrogated twice during a single year, on the first occasion, he claimed to be “fifty or thereabouts”, on the other that he was “sixty or thereabouts”. (L. Mirot, Le procès de maître Jean Fusoris, Mem. de la Soc. de l’Hist. de Paris, 1900, pp. 173 and 230.)
Thus, in all trials and inquests, the customary formula for answering the question as to one’s age was: “X” years of age, or thereabouts, vel circiter, vel circa, vel eorcirca. In our translation of the Trial of Rehabilitation, we left out this formula, as we left out all procedural forms and repetition in general; in the present work we have restored it as it is found in the original manuscripts and in Quicherat’s Latin edition.
It was, furthermore, to offset this want of precision that children were given several godparents of each sex who could at least swear that they had been baptised: proceedings were based on oral testimony, without expecting the exactitude which we expect nowadays from documentary evidence.
So we do not know Joan’s age exactly; we have only what she herself said, and what was attested by the witnesses at her Trial of Rehabilitation—to wit, that at the time of her Trial of Condemnation she was nineteen or thereabouts, twenty or thereabouts.
There is a single discordant voice, Hauviette’s, Joan’s friend. Questioned during the Trial of Rehabilitation, January 28, 1456, she replied that she was “forty-five years old or thereabouts”, which would put her birth date in the year 1411. Now in the course of her evidence she said, “Joan was older than me by three or four years, from what people said.” This would advance Joan’s date of birth and place it in the year 1407 or 1408—prerequisite if she is to be considered “bastard of Orleans”. But one hundred and fifteen witnesses were questioned during the Trial of Rehabilitation and Hauviette’s evidence cannot be allowed to outweigh that of Joan herself and the 114 other witnesses, especially since the age written down by the clerk may very well have been misheard or ill-written without anyone, at the time, bothering much about it. Moreover, note that Hauviette is not positive: “from what people said” (à ce qu’on disait); may not her remark have been inspired by the very feminine wish to make herself out younger than she was? At all events, it is obvious that the age question is quite inadequate to prove the supposition of bastardy.
Experience teaches us that there is a certain difference between a girl of nineteen or twenty and a girl of twenty-five. If the vast majority of witnesses and Joan herself agree that she was nineteen or twenty years old, let us admit that, in default of absolute precision, there is a strong presumption that she was born in 1412 “or thereabouts”. This would, moreover, agree with other testimony, since Joan declared that she was about thirteen when she had the first of her revelations, and that these revelations persisted during four or five years.
* curé.
* remplie de bonnes moeurs.
* In this and other testimony, Joan is described as “allant à la charrue”. The term may not mean literally that she ploughed; it may refer to such works of cultivation as hoeing.—E.H.
* hau, not hêtre.
† An old Celtic rite, apparently.—E.H.
* Possibly an old ballad.—E.H.
* Le Moyen Age, May/June 1895.