“Have you not heard is said that is has been prophesied that France shall be lost by a woman and restored by a virgin from Lorraine? " – Joan of Arc
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It's easy for us, as modern psychics and mystics, to lose perspective on the trials and challenges of those who came before us. Not only did mystics of the past experience more opposition, but they often had enormous missions. Our daily struggles to earn a living, raise our children, find happiness and romance pale in comparison. This amazing peasant girl is one such example of a truly amazing mystic.
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Jeanne d’Arc or Joan of Arc was born in around 1412 in Domrémy, Bar, France to devoutly religious parents of the peasant class. Around the age 13, she started hearing voices that she claimed they were St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. She possessed many characteristics common to her contemporary female visionaries - extreme piety, claims of direct communication with the saints, and a reliance on individual mystical experiences, as opposed to those found through the institution of the Church.
As history would prove, Joan also possessed remarkable mental and physical courage.
At first her voices simply told her to be good, chaste and pray daily. Later they began to tell her that she, and she alone, could save France from the English.
During what we now call The Hundred Years War (1337 - 1453), a power struggle for control of the French Throne was waged between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France. Some of the particulars of this power struggle can be lost on us in the modern world because it involved a series of intermarriages between these two countries and monarchs dying without proper heirs.
Charles, the dauphin (heir apparent), came to power in 1422. However the crown was in dispute between he and King Henry VI of England. This was because Charles' mother, Isabeau, had implied that he was illegitimate. English forces occupied a large portion of northern France and France was in danger of the same fate as Ireland; become a colony of the England.
All of the cautious military tactics of experienced generals and the feeble diplomacy of politicians had done nothing to change the odds in France's favor. In 1428 the English laid siege to Orleans, however their force was insufficient to capture the entire city. It was at this time, that Joan first attempted to meet with Charles.
Led by her voices, Joan amassed a small band of followers. Against her father's wishes, she road to Vaucouleurs in May to meet Charles. She and her visions, where promptly dismissed. The 16 year old Joan went home. Undeterred she returned the next year.
In April of 1429, Joan disguised her mission. She said she was leaving Domrémy to help her Uncle's wife, who was with child. Upon reaching Vaucouleurs, Joan insisted that Captain Robert de Baudricourt take her to save the king. He burst out laughing. He advised Joan's Uncle to spank her soundly and return her to her parents. Joan, however, stood her ground, gaining the sympathy of the people of Vaucouleurs, who began to believe in her mission.
Joan, according to Church Investigators, said, "I come here to talk to Robert de Baudricourt so that he either deigns take me, or have me taken, to the king. There is no solution but through me.And even then I would much rather slip away to be with my poor mother, since this is not my state. But go I must, for such is the will of my Lord."
"But who is your lord?" de Baudricort asked.
"The King of Heaven!" Joan replied.
The Captain took Joan to meet with Charles.
When Joan met Charles for the first time, she identified him immediately, even though he was hiding behind several of his courtiers in an attempt to trick her. She presented herself with great humility and simplicity, an impoverished little shepherd girl, and said to the King "Most illustrious Lord Dauphin, I have come and am sent in the name of God to bring aid to yourself and to the kingdom."
At some point, Joan asked for a private audience with Charles in a side chamber. Although the discussion was never official documented, Joan told him about a private prayer he had made the previous November. In that prayer, Charles asked God to aid him in his cause if he was the rightful heir to the throne, and to punish him alone rather than his people if his sins were responsible for their suffering. She is said to have related the details of this prayer and assured him that he was the legitimate claimant to the throne.
When Joan and Charles emerged from the side chamber, he appeared radiant. He told several courtiers that she had told him things that only God or God's Messenger, could know.
The Dauphin provided Joan with several military men, and she was joined in her fight by her brothers Jean and Pierre. Joan then did something that solidified her image in history. She cut her hair to the length of a male Page and had special armor made just for her. She was a virgin and a military leader and did not want to be perceived as an object of sexual desire.
Her standard was painted with an image of Christ in judgment, and the banner she would carry into battle bore the name of Jesus. When questioned about the sword she would wield, Joan said that it would be discovered in the church of Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, and one was indeed found there.
Joan rejected the non-aggressive strategy that had dominated the French Generals before her. Her first mission was the joining of a convoy assembling at Blois, bringing supplies to Orleans. Once placed in control of the French army, she didn’t hesitate to chastise prestigious knights for swearing, behaving indecently, skipping Mass or dismissing her battle plans; she even accused her noble patrons of spinelessness in their dealings with the English. She also drove away the mistresses and prostitutes who traveled with her army at swordpoint, hitting one or two in the process.
Joan had insisted on approaching Orléans from the north where English forces were concentrated, intent on fighting them immediately. But the commanders decided to take the convoy in a circuitous route around the south. The Orléans' commander, came out to meet them across the river. Joan was indignant at the deception and ordered an immediate attack on St. Jean-le-Blanc, the nearest English bastille on the south bank. But the commander, supported by the Marshals, protested and with some effort, finally prevailed on her to allow the city to be resupplied before any assaults on anything.
Over the next couple of days, to boost morale, Joan paraded periodically around the streets of Orléans, distributing food to the people and salaries to the garrison. Joan also dispatched her famous missive to the English Siege Commanders. She called her self La Pucelle (The Maiden) and ordered them in the name of God to, "Begone, or I will make you go!" The English commanders greeted with her jeers. Some even threatened to kill Joan's messengers as "emissaries of a witch."
Though remembered as a fearless warrior and considered a heroine, Joan never actually fought in battle or killed an opponent. Instead, she would accompany her men as an inspirational mascot, brandishing her banner in place of a weapon. She was also responsible for outlining military strategies, directing troops and proposing diplomatic solutions to the English.
On May 4th the French attacked and captured the outlying fortress of Saint Loup, which she followed on May 5th with a march to a second fortress called Saint Jean le Blanc, which was found deserted. The next day she opposed Jean d'Orleans at a war council where she demanded another assault on the enemy. D'Orleans ordered the city gates locked to prevent another battle, but she summoned the townsmen and common soldiers and forced the mayor to unlock a gate. With the aid of only one captain she rode out and captured the fortress of Saint Augustins.
That evening she learned she had been excluded from a war council where the leaders had decided to wait for reinforcements before acting again. Disregarding this decision, she insisted on attacking the main English stronghold called "les Tourelles". She was wounded in the neck by an arrow but returned to lead the final charge.
On May 8th, the siege of Orleans was broken, and the English retreated. In only ten days, Joan of Arc had taken Orleans back.
During the next five weeks, Joan led French forces into a number of stunning victories over the English, and Reims, the traditional city of kingly coronation, was captured in July. Later that month, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan of Arc kneeling at his feet. In May 1430, while leading another military expedition against the English occupiers of France, Bourguignon soldiers captured Joan and sold her to the English, who tried her for heresy. King Charles VII never attempted to pay a ransom or get her repatriated to France.
Joan's Interrogation by Bishop Pierre Cauchon
The modest maiden was not afforded a moment's privacy. Vile men of the lowest sort watched her every move. She was the denied the consolations of Mass and Holy Communion. Joan's trial began on January 9th, 1431.
It was conducted by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, a traitorous Frenchman and counselor of King Henry. He wished to discredit Joan in the eyes of her own countrymen, therefore placing King Charles VII's reign into question. He wanted to have Joan condemned by an ecclesiastical court as a sorceress. She had braved enemy soldiers at the risk of her life, but now she faced a perfidious Bishop with risks to her immortal soul.
Bishop Cauchon had planned everything - except Joan's heroic resistance. He tried to trap her with duplicitous questions, to weary her spirits through unending examinations, but she parried every thrust, preceding each defense of truth with an assault on lies.
One exchange between the Bishop and Joan was this:
"Was Saint Michael naked?" asked the Bishop.
"Do you think that God has not wherewithal to clothe him?" she replied.
"Had he hair?"
She replied with her own question, "Why should it have been cut off?
Unable to force a confession, Bishop Cauchon now sought to catch Joan in a doctrinally damning error. After all, she was a simple Christian who knew nothing about theology. She must stop claiming she was sent by God and submit the matter to the judgment of theologians who alone could discern the nature of her supposed voices.
On May 24th, 1431, she was brought to St. Ouen's cemetery. When Bishop Cauchon began to read her death sentence, Joan was overcome with the fear of dying, and she cried out that she would bow to the Church and recant.
Of the 70 charges against her that ranged from sorcery to horse theft, all had been dropped by 12. Most of them related to her wearing of men’s clothing and claims that God had directly contacted her. Offered life imprisonment in exchange for an admission of guilt, Joan signed a document confessing her alleged sins and promising to change her ways. It has been speculated that the illiterate Joan never knew what she had put her name - or, more accurately, her mark of a cross to.
Bishop Cauchon returned her to the tower in Bouvreuil. Knowing the threats to her chastity that Joan had suffered there and the dangers to her person and virginity, the bishop decreed that Joan must no longer wear "man's clothing," thus denying her the protection of a military uniform and armor. Several days later, after at least one violent rape by the guards, Joan put her male attire back on. She then told the angry judges who visited her cell that her voices had reappeared.
After she died, the English raked back the coals to expose her charred body so that no one could claim she had escaped alive, then burned the body twice more to reduce it to ashes and prevent any collection of relics. They cast her remains into the Seine from the only bridge called Mathilda.
The executioner, Geoffroy Therage, later stated that he "...greatly feared to be damned."
A posthumous retrial opened after the war ended. Pope Callixtus III authorized the proceeding, also known as the 'nullification trial,' at the request of Inquisitor-General Jean Brehal and Joan's mother Isabelle Romée.
The technical reason for her execution had been a Biblical clothing law. The final result of the retrial was the reversal of her conviction. Joan was declared a martyr. The Ecclesiastical Court implicated the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of a secular vendetta.
The appellate court declared her innocent on July 7th, 1456. In 1920, Joan of Arc, already one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
We psychics are challenged everyday about the nature of our work and the reality of psychic abilities. Can you imagine if you had a much bigger mission, like Joan of Arc, that you knew would lead to your own death? Do we really have it so hard today, in the 21st century?
Mark Twain had this to say about Joan of Arc:
"We can understand how Joan could be born with military genius, with leonine courage, with incomparable fortitude, with a mind which was in several particulars a prodigy, a mind which included among its specialties the lawyer's gift of detecting traps laid by the adversary in cunning and treacherous arrangements of seemingly innocent words, the orator's gift of eloquence, the advocate's gift of presenting a case in clear and compact form, the judge's gift of sorting and weighing evidence, and finally, something recognizable as more than a mere trace of the statesman's gift of understanding a political situation and how to make profitable use of such opportunities as it offers; we can comprehend how she could be born with these great qualities, but we cannot comprehend how they became immediately usable and effective without the developing forces of a sympathetic atmosphere and the training which comes of teaching, study, practice, years of practice and the crowning and perfecting help of a thousand mistakes.
"It is beyond us. All the rules fail in this girl's case. In the world's history she stands alone - quite alone. Others have been great in their first public exhibitions of generalship, valor, legal talent, diplomacy, and fortitude; but always their previous years and associations had been in a larger or smaller degree a preparation for these things. There have been no exceptions to the rule. But Joan was competent in a law case at sixteen without ever having seen a law book or a court-house before; she had no training in soldiering and no associations with it, yet she was a competent general in her first campaign; she was brave in her first battle, yet her courage had had no education. Friendless, alone, ignorant, in the blossom of her youth, she sat week after week, a prisoner in chains, before her assemblage of judges, enemies hunting her to her death, the ablest minds in France, and answered them out of an untaught wisdom which overmatched their learning, baffled their tricks and treacheries with a native sagacity which compelled their wonder, and scored every day a victory against these incredible odds and camped unchallenged on the field.
"In the history of the human intellect, untrained, inexperienced, and using only its birthright equipment of untried capacities, there is nothing which approaches this. Joan of Arc stands alone, and must continue to stand alone, by reason of the fact that in the things wherein she was great she was so without shade or suggestion of help from preparatory teaching, practice, environment, or experience. There is no one to compare her with, none to measure her by; for all others among the illustrious grew towards their high place in an atmosphere and surroundings which discovered their gift to them and nourished it and promoted it, intentionally or unconsciously. Her history has still another feature which sets her apart and leaves her without fellow or competitor: there have been many uninspired prophets, but she was the only one who ever ventured the daring detail of naming, along with a foretold event, the event's precise nature, the special time-limit within which it would occur, and the place and scored fulfillment.
"At Vaucouleurs she said she must go to the King and be made his general, and break the English power, and crown her sovereign - "at Rheims." It all happened. It was all to happen "next year" - and it did. She foretold her first wound and its character and date a month in advance, and the prophecy was recorded in a public record-book three weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning of the date named, and it was fulfilled before night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her military career - saying it would end in one year from the time of its utterance - and she was right.
"She foretold her martyrdom - using that word, and naming a time three months away - and again she was right. At a time when France seemed hopelessly and permanently in the hands of the English she twice asserted in her prison before her judges that within seven years the English would meet with a mightier disaster than had been the fall of Orleans: it happened within five - the fall of Paris.
"Other prophecies of hers came true, both as to the event named and within the time limit prescribed. Taking into account, as I have suggested before, all the circumstances - her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high gifts and made her conquests in the field and before the courts that tried her for her life, she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced."
My fellow psychics, accept your callings and small sacrifices to the service of your fellow beings with diligence and fortitude. We carry a very small cross indeed.