When Joan was between twelve and thirteen, a wonderful thing befell her.
We have already heard one account of it, written when Joan was in the
first flower of her triumph, by the seneschal of the King of France. A
Voice spoke to her and prophesied of what she was to do. But about all
these marvellous things it is more safe to attend to what Joan always
said herself. She told the same story both to friends and foes; to the
learned men who, by her king's desire, examined her at Poictiers, before
she went to war (April 1429); and to her deadly foes at Rouen. No man
can read her answers to them and doubt that she spoke what she believed.
And she died for this belief. Unluckily the book that was kept of what
she said at Poictiers is lost. Before her enemies at Rouen there were
many things which she did not think it right to say. On one point, after
for long refusing to speak, she told her foes a kind of parable, which
we must not take as part of her real story.
When Joan was between twelve and thirteen (1424), so she swore, 'a
_Voice came to her from God for her guidance_, but when first it came,
she was in great fear. And it came, that Voice, about noonday, in the
summer season, she being in her father's garden. And Joan had not fasted
the day before that, but was fasting when the Voice came.[4] And she
heard the Voice on her right side, towards the church, and rarely did
she hear it but she also saw a great light.' These are her very words.
They asked her if she heard these Voices there, in the hall of judgment,
and she answered, 'If I were in a wood, I should well hear these Voices
coming to me.' The Voices at first only told her 'to be a good girl, and
go to church.' She thought it was a holy Voice, and that it came from
God; and the third time she heard it she knew it was the voice of an
angel. The Voice told her of 'the great pity there was in France,' and
that one day she must go into France and help the country. She had
visions with the Voices; visions first of St. Michael, and then of St.
Catherine and St. Margaret.[5] She hated telling her hypocritical judges
anything about these heavenly visions, but it seems that she really
believed in their appearance, believed that she had embraced the knees
of St. Margaret and St. Catherine, and she did reverence to them when
they came to her. 'I saw them with my bodily eyes, as I see you,' she
said to her judges, 'and when they departed from me I wept, and well I
wished that they had taken me with them.'
What are we to think about these visions and these Voices which were
with Joan to her death?
Some have thought that she was mad; others that she only told the story
to win a hearing and make herself important; or, again, that a trick was
played on her to win her aid. The last idea is impossible. The French
Court did not want her. The second, as everyone will admit who reads
Joan's answers, and follows her step by step from childhood to victory,
to captivity, to death, is also impossible. She was as truthful as she
was brave and wise. But was she partially insane? It is certain that mad
people do hear voices which are not real, and believe that they come to
them from without. But these mad voices say mad things. Now, Joan's
Voices never said anything but what was wise beyond her own wisdom, and
right and true. She governed almost all her actions by their advice.
When she disobeyed 'her counsel,' as she called it, the result was evil,
and once, as we shall see, was ruinous. Again, Joan was not only
healthy, but wonderfully strong, ready, and nimble. In all her converse
with princes and priests and warriors, she spoke and acted like one born
in their own rank. In mind, as in body, she was a marvel, none such has
ever been known. It is impossible, then, to say that she was mad.
In the whole history of the world, as far as we know it, there is only
one example like that of Joan of Arc. Mad folk hear voices; starved
nuns, living always with their thoughts bent on heaven, women of feeble
body, accustomed to faints and to fits, have heard voices and seen
visions. Some of them have been very good women; none have been strong,
good riders, skilled in arms, able to march all day long with little
food, and to draw the arrow from their own wound and mount horse and
charge again, like Joan of Arc. Only one great man, strong, brave, wise,
and healthy, has been attended by a Voice, which taught him what to do,
or rather what _not_ to do. That man was Socrates, the most hardy
soldier, the most unwearied in the march, and the wisest man of Greece.
Socrates was put to death for this Voice of his, on the charge of
'bringing in new gods.' Joan of Arc died for her Voices, because her
enemies argued that she was no saint, but a witch! These two, the old
philosopher and the untaught peasant girl of nineteen, stand alone in
the endless generations of men, alone in goodness, wisdom, courage,
strength, combined with a mysterious and fatal gift. More than this it
is now forbidden to us to know. But, when we remember that such a being
as Joan of Arc has only appeared once since time began, and _that_ once
just when France seemed lost beyond all hope, we need not wonder at
those who say that France was saved by no common good fortune and happy
chance, but by the will of Heaven.[6]
In one respect, Joan's conduct after these Voices and visions began, was
perhaps, as regarded herself, unfortunate. She did not speak of them to
her parents, nor tell about them to the priest when she confessed. Her
enemies were thus able to say, later, that they could not have been holy
visions or Voices, otherwise she would not have concealed them from her
father, her mother, and the priest, to whom she was bound to tell
everything, and from whom she should have sought advice. Thus, long
afterwards, St. Theresa had visions, and, in obedience to her priest,
she at first distrusted these, as perhaps a delusion of evil, or a
temptation of spiritual pride. Joan, however, was afraid that her
father would interfere with her mission, and prevent her from going to
the king. She believed that she must not be 'disobedient to the heavenly
vision.'