Mystical Experience as a Feminist Weapon: Joan of Arc

Author(s): Anne Llewellyn Barstow

Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 26-29
Published by: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
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Mystical Experience
as a Feminist
Weapon:
J oan of A rc
A nne
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 usef ul f or historical
study.
But when
my
search f or
independent
women led me
repeatedly
to f emale
mystics,
I was f orced 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 f emale utili-
zation of
mystical experience
as a means of
being
heard in
a
patriarchal society
are the f ocus of this
essay.
A s I have
worked with the
material,
it has seemed to me that
mysti-
cism was both an
integrative
and an
activating
f orce in the
lives of some late medieval
women, enabling
them to see
themselves in new roles, to measure themselves
against
male
authority f igures,
and to
f orge
a new awareness of them-
selves as individuals in a man's world.
My
conclusions are more
suggestive
than exact. Dif f icul-
ties of
assertaining
to what extent a woman's
self -concept
de-
velops
without male
inf luence,
and of
using
the word f emi-
nist f or
f if teenth-century materials, raise
questions
that cannot
be answered here. Let me
say
here that I use the term f em-
inist to ref er to autonomous
experience,
and to action that
places
a woman in the
center, as the
motivating agent.
I have chosen the
f if teenth-century visionary
J oan of A rc
f or three reasons. The contrast between her lif e bef ore and
af ter her revelations is
startling:
f rom illiterate
peasant girl
to
inspiration
f or 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 f ormation of a new
persona.
Most
important
f or our
purposes
is the f act that J oan told no one about her visions
f or the f irst f our
years,
not conf essor,
parents, f riends, thus
not
allowing
herself to be inf luenced or
coopted.
A nd af ter
becoming
f amous, she still relied on no one,
priests
nor
brothers nor
military
allies. It is this
independence
that lets
us
glimpse
autonomous f emale
experience.
Hearing
Voices
Whether J oan
shaped
her
personality
around her visions
or her visions around her
personality-
we cannot
argue
the
nature of
mysticism
here- suf f ice it to
say
that
J oan,
who
had no connections to the world of
power, parlayed
her
claim of a
private
channel to the
spirit
world into
lasting
na-
tional f ame. She overcame
handicaps
of
poverty, class,
and
gender
to become one of France's chief heroes.
I will draw on J oan'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 f irst one should ask
why
J oan has
not been much written about
by
f eminist historians.2 I sus-
pect
that her "voices" are the
problem,
f or in our
day, per-
sons who hear voices are considered mad. Yet
they
were the
central
experience
of her
lif e;
we cannot
study
her without
coming
to terms with them. J oan
began hearing
a voice
when she was thirteen. Later she conf irmed that the voice
was
really
three
voices,
that she not
only
heard but saw and
even touched
them,
that
they were,
in
f act,
Saints Cather-
ine and
Margaret,
and the
archangel
Michael.
J oan 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 f ollow what the voices were
saying
to her. She of ten
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
of ten,
and when she had
joined
the
army
she
requested
the
chaplains
to
ring
the bells
f or half an hour on end. Her
neighbors reported
that of ten
when she was in the f ields and heard the
bells,
she would
drop
to her knees.3
They
assumed she was
saying
her
prayers,
but J oan was in f act
listening
f or her
voices; she had
become
dependent
on them.
The voices ordered her to
go
the
king
of
France,
to
put
on male
clothing,
to f ind a sword hidden behind an
altar,
to
Engraving depicting
Saint
Margaret, by
M. Husz, 1486.
26 Women's Studies
Quarterly
XIII:2 (Summer 1985)
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announce a French def eat 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 f ire,
denied them. A nd three
days later,
af f irmed
them
again, thereby sealing
her death.5
J oan had transf ormed herself at their instruction. She had
ceased
dancing,
ref used an
engagement, pledged
her vir-
ginity
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 f emale iden-
tity, renaming
herself J eanne La
Pucelle,
J oan the Maid.6
From her voices J oan received that
powerf ul
charismatic
gif t,
a
perf ect
belief in herself . Bef ore she had lef t her home
province
she told her f irst admirers that
No one
(else)
in the world . . . can recover the
kingdom
of
France; there is no succor to be
expected
save f rom
me. . .because
my
Lord wills that I should do it.7
Even when she stood in chains bef ore her
judges,
she
warned them that
they
condemned her at their
peril,
f or she
was sent
by
God.
Perhaps
the best
glimpse
we have of J oan's use of her
mystical powers
to make herself heard in the world of men
comes f rom Count Dunois. Dunois recollected that she came
to the
king
af ter the
victory
at
Orleans, urging him,
as al-
ways,
to
push on, to attack
again.
The
king
asked her to de-
scribe her ''counsel."
Blushing,
J oan had
replied
that
When I am vexed that f aith 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!" A nd when
I hear this Voice, I have
great joy.
I would I could
always
hear
it thus.
Dunois f inished
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 identif ying
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
f rom J oan's
story
f or women
today struggling
to be heard in a man's
world? I will examine several relevant f actors.
Tradition of Female Visionaries
First
of f ,
J oan did not create the role of f emale
prophet.
A mong
women who
challenged
the church with their visions
bef ore
her,
Prous Boneta believed that she carried the
Holy
Spirit
within herself . A nother ecclesiastical
critic, Guglielma
of
Milan, also claimed that she was the incarnation of the
Holy Spirit
and that in order f or 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 f emale. A s
early
as the
1270s,
the French
king
Philip
III had called on several
clairvoyant lay women, per-
sons who could tell
things past
and f uture and
probe
secret
matters while
leading
a
good
lif e. But a
generation later,
when
Philip
IV turned f or advice to a
beguine (a
woman in
an
independent, lay community),
she was accused of at-
tempted murder, interrogated
while the soles of her f eet were
burned,
and
imprisoned.10 A pparently
it was saf er to have
a
reputation
f or the occult in the thirteenth
century
than in
the
f ourteenth,
but in
light
of J oan's
f ate,
better in the f our-
teenth than in the
f ollowing century.
Whatever the
hazards,
the number of French f emale vi-
sionaries who concerned themselves with
politics
increased
in the late f ourteenth
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
ef f orts,
in 1385 Constance was
taken in chains to the
inquisitor
of
Toulouse,
f orbidden to
publish
her
visions,
and
imprisoned.
We know
nothing
more
of her f ate.11 The widow J eanne-Marie de Maille became a
recluse in a
hermitage
beside a Franciscan
monastery
at
Tours.
Despite
her hermit's lif e 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,
J eanne-Marie ended her
days
peacef ully
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
A vignon
in
1387, seeking healing
f or 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 f inal vision Marie saw a vast amount of ar-
mor,
and
f earing
that she was intended to wear
it, protested
that she could not be a warrior. She was assured that the ar-
mor was not f or her "but that a maiden who should come
af terwards should bear these arms and deliver the
kingdom
of France f rom the
enemy." People
came to believe that
J oan 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 f or
spiritually
gif ted
women. J oan was of course aware that there was a
ready-made
role f or her to
step
into and that as a f emale
prophet
she was not
unique.
What is not clear is whether she
understood the risk involved. In J oan's own time the well-
known
visionary
nun St. Colette also received the conf idence
of the
nobility, being
consulted f or over
f orty 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-
f essors and of
joining
an
order,14
J oan the
laywoman
was
betrayed by
French clerics in the
pay
of the
English.
A nother
lay
f emale
prophet contemporary
with
J oan,
a
woman whom she
clearly
looked
upon
as a
competitor
and
whom she tried to
vanquish
f rom the
scene,
was Catherine
de la Rochelle, a
visionary
who met J oan in the f all 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
gif t
of
knowing
and of
discovering
the treasure
(the adept's gif t
of
f inding
lost or concealed ob-
jects).
With this wealth she would hire soldiers f or J oan.
J oan's
reply
to this of f er of
help
must be read in her own
words: "I told Catherine that she should return to her hus-
band,
look af ter her
home,
and
bring up
her children.15
There was no room in J oan's mission f or a second miracle
worker. There
certainly
wasn't room f or a married
woman,
a woman who had not bothered to dedicate her
virginity
to
the success of her mission.
J oan of course checked with her
voice,
who conf irmed her
Women's Studies
Quarterly
XIII: 2 (Summer 1985) 27
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Title
page of
the
History
of J oan of A rc, by
J ean
Hordal, prof essor
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
f olly
and
nothing
else." J oan
promptly
wrote this
piece
of inf or-
mation to the
king,
and reminded him of it
again
when she
next saw him.
For once not content with her
heavenly counsel,
J oan car-
ried out her own test of Catherine's
authenticity
as a
diviner;
she would
sleep
with Catherine in her bed one
night,
in or-
der to see the "white
lady"
herself . Unable to
stay
awake the
f irst
night,
J oan was told that she had missed her. Un-
daunted, J oan took a
nap
the next
day
and tried
again.
That
night, although
J oan
kept
the
vigil,
she saw
nothing, proof
enough
that Catherine was a f raud. But J oan
paid
a
price
f or
rejecting
Catherine as an
ally,
f or the rival
mystic
later ac-
cused J oan to the
inquisition, perhaps
in order to save
herself .
A bout J oan's attitude toward another f emale
mystic,
Pieronne, unf ortunately
we know
nothing.
The
young
Bre-
ton
visionary
met J oan when both women took commun-
ion
together
on Christmas
Day,
1429.
16
Pieronne main-
tained that God of ten
appeared
to her in human f orm and
talked to her as one f riend 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, ref using
to recant of her claim that she
f requently
saw God in this
way,
Pieronne was condemned
by
French
inquisitors
and burned at the stake. That Pieronne
had
proclaimed
J oan
good
and her actions the will of
God,
cannot have
helped
J oan's case.
While it is dif f icult to
separate
the
theological
f rom the
po-
litical 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
J oan's,
was the individual's claim to
special
com-
munication with the divine.
Thus,
while J oan was
by
f ar the most f amous
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 f emale,
representatives
of a
European phenom-
enon. It is
readily
understandable that late medieval
religion
produced
more f emale
mystics
than
male, considering
that
women were barred f rom the
increasingly powerf ul priest-
hood. Since the twelf th
century,
when the doctrine of tran-
substantiation
empowered priests
to
perf orm
the eucharistic
miracle, men had available to them a
ready-made,
institu-
tionally guaranteed
role as miracle worker. A nd
yet,
women
were as
caught up
as men in the
intense,
emotional
religious
revival of the
high
Middle
A ges.
Their
response
to this more
powerf ul priesthood,
which
they
could not
join,
was an un-
precedented outpouring
of
visions, prophecies,
and
healings,
in which
they
saw themselves as
f ully worthy
of the
highest
calling.
We have seen that women envisioned themselves or other
f emales as saviors or
messiahs,
as advisors to
kings
and
popes,
even as
priests
and
cardinals, or as the holder of the
papal
of f ice itself . Given this
tradition,
it is not
surprising
that
J oan believed that the Lord
spoke
to
her, singling
her out
f or a mission which no one else could
perf orm,
that she f elt
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.
J oan as Charismatic Leader
Further evidence that women could be seen as
powerf ul
heroes comes f rom Christine de
Pisan,
the f oremost woman
writer in France.
Writing immediately
af ter the
crowning
of
King Charles, Christine
penned
a
resounding
war
poem
in
celebration of J oan's
victory
at Orleans.18 A s
early
as 1399
Christine had entered into a
public
debate on the cause of
women;
as J oan
Kelly
has
pointed out,
Christine
produced
the f irst known f eminist statement.19 She was well
prepared
to
praise
J oan as a
woman,
and did so with
spirit
and ironic
humor.
Comparing
J oan to
Moses, J oshua, Gideon,
Hec-
tor, and A chilles, she claims that J oan's f ame should be
greater
than theirs because she is
only
"a little
girl
of sixteen."
J oan has
accomplished
more even than
Esther, J udith,
and
Deborah,
f or
although
God
perf ormed
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 vic-
tory, boasting
that "never did
anyone
see
greater strength,
even in hundreds or thousands of men!" But Christine also
praises
J oan in traditional f eminine
terms, claiming
that she
28 Women's Studies
Quarterly
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not
only
ucasts the rebels down" but "f eeds France with the
sweet, nourishing
milk of
peace."
Here we encounter J oan
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 f irst of
many
liter-
ary attempts
to
encompass
in one
image
of J oan both the
masculine,
invincible warrior and the diminutive but
potent
young
maid. The
attempt f ails,
as it
always must, given
the
limits of our
concepts
of masculine and f eminine, but
Christine's J oan does not
slip
into
childishness, cloying
in-
nocence,
nor
passivity
as do
many
later
literary portraits
of
the Maid. Her J oan is an
exciting hero,
more than a match
f or
any man,
on the battlef ield or in
mythology.
This
glimpse
of
J oan,
less than three months af ter she
stepped
into
history
at Orleans,
goes
f ar 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 lif e in court circles. Rich and
poor
alike were
pre-
pared
to
accept
one
divinely
chosen,
miraculously
led
per-
son as the answer to their crisis.
Moving
into the
ready-made
role of f emale
prophet
and
magic worker,
J oan seized with both hands the
possibilities
in her time and
place
to be a charismatic leader. That the
role
required f inally
that she be burned at the stake tells us
more about the
politics
and
religion
of the
ruling
class than
it does about J oan. Their condemnation of J oan as heretic
and witch of f ers much material on late medieval f ear of
Statuary
carved
by J oseph-A ndre
A llar at the Bois Chenu basilica
showing
J oan
(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 J oan.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 collectionof materials on J oan is J ules Quicherat,
Proces
de Condamnationet de Rehabilitationde J eanne d'A rc (Paris: Renouard,
1841-49). The best French editionof the trial is Pierre Tisset and Yvonne
Lanhers, Proces de Condamnation de J eanne d'A rc (Paris: Klincksieck,
1960). The
English
translation
quoted
f rom is T.
Douglas Murray.
J eanne
d'A rc, Maid
of
Orleans (New York: McClure, Phillips
& Co.. 1902).
2. Consider f or
example
the
interesting
but f lawed
study by
Marina
Warner, J oan
of
A rc: The
Image of
Female Heroism (New York:
Knopf ,
1981). Warner's
study
is
imaginative
but lacks suf f icient
knowledge
of two
subjects
essential to
understanding J oan, the
inquisition
and medieval
mys-
ticism. See
my
review of Warner's book inA mericanHistorical Review
(A pril
1982): 437-38.
3.
Murray.
J eanne d'A rc,
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. J oachim
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," inMedieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxf ord: Basil
Blackwell, 1978), 289-303. OnProus Boneta, Essays
inMedieval
Lif e
and
Thought
Presented to A ustinP. Evans (New York: Columbia
University
Press. 1955). pp.
3-30.
10. E. W. McDonnell, Beguines
and
Beghards
inMedieval Culture (New
York:
OctagonBooks, 1969), pp.
330-32 and 450-52, with the Latinand
French texts.
11. The material on Constance de Rabastens is taken f rom A ndre
Vauchez, "Les Soeurs de J eanne," Le Monde 6, J anuary
1980: 15. It is
based ona Catalanversionof Constance's conf essions edited
by
Noel Valois.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid. See also Noel Valois, "J eanne d'A rc et la
Prophetie
de Marie
Robine," Melanges
Paul Fabre (Paris, 1902), based onMarie's unedited Livre
des Visions et des Revelations, and on the
reported
words of Master J ean
Erault at J oan's retrial (cf . Murray,
J eanne d'A rc, pp. 269-70).
14. Vita Sanctae Coletae (1381-1447), ed. Yves Cozauxet al. (Leiden:
Brill. 1982), pp.
141-43; New Catholic
Encyclopedia
3. Two more f amous
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 inthis lif e and the next, of
membership
inanorder.
15.
Murray,
J eanne d'A rc, pp.
52-53.
16. A ParisianJ ournal, 1405-49,
by
the
Bourgeois
of Paris, trans. J .
Shirley (Oxf ord. 1968), pp.
253-54.
17. Ibid.,
pp.
265.
18. Christine de Pisan, Ditie de J ehanne DA rc, ed. and trans.
A ngus
J .
Kennedy
and Kenneth
Varty (Oxf ord: Society
f or the
Study
of Medie-
val
Languages
and Literature, 1977). For anexcellent discussionof the Ditie,
see Deborah Fraioli, "The
Literary Image
of J oanof A rc: Prior Inf luences,"
Speculum, 56, no. 4 (October 1981): 811-30.
19. J oan
Kelly, "Early
Feminist
Theory
and the 'Querelle des Femmes,'
1400-1789," Signs:
J ournal
of
WomeninCulture and
Society
8. no. 1
(A u-
tumn 1982): 4-28.
20. A nne L. Barstow, J oan
of
A rc: Heretic, Mystic,
Shaman (Lewiston,
N.Y.: EdwinMellenPress, 1985).
A nne
Llewellyn
Barstow is A ssociate
Prof essor of History
at
SUNY/College
at Old
Westbury.
Her book, J oan of A rc:
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 witchcraf t persecutions.
Women's Studies
Quarterly
XIII: 2 (Summer 1985) 29
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