Since I promised my readers that I would occasionally post something of some substance, I decided to go ahead and add this to my blog before I publish my next post, which will surely be a bit more entertaining than this. What follows is the last paper that I wrote for my Medieval Law class. I've had an interesting experience with this paper; I have loved it one minute and hated it the next. It's often very hard for me to judge the quality of my own writing, and this paper is certainly no exception. Anyway, I only had two main sources for this paper: a translation of
The Trial of Joan of Arc along with a scholarly article pertaining to some of the more controversial aspects of the trial. I enjoyed reading both of these, and if you're interested in them, they're cited all over the place in the footnotes for this paper. One more thing: although I'm posting this paper on the "intrawebs," that doesn't mean that I would want anybody to do something stupid like plagiarize. If anyone does this, I will hunt the person down and burn him or her at the stake. I loathe academic cheaters. If I ever become a professor, I will be the plagiarizers' worst nightmare. On to the paper...happy reading.
In 1431, while France was still under English rule, Joan of Arc was tried before an ecclesiastical court for crimes committed contrary to divine, canon and civil law. The notoriety of her deeds was widespread both in France and abroad: Joan, armed with men provided by the French king Charles VII, had lifted the English siege at Orléans on May 8, 1429, in a spectacular turn of events. More victories followed for Joan, and eventually Charles VII was crowned king at Reims Cathedral on July 17 in the same year. Unfortunately for Joan, who considered herself divinely commanded by God to expel the English from France, her string of victories came to an end when she launched an ultimately unsuccessful attack upon Paris. She was captured outside the walls of Compiègne on May 23, 1430. There ensued a custody battle for Joan between the Duke of Burgundy and the vice-inquisitor of France; although she was a prisoner of war, she was also accused of heresy, which resulted in the ecclesiastical authorities claiming a legitimate interest in her prosecution. Joan was captured within the diocese of Bishop Pierre Cauchon, thus Cauchon was to have jurisdiction over the infamous trial along with the Inquisitor of France.
The trial record was one of the most complete of its time, given that the church authorities who eventually prosecuted Joan recognized the need for a thorough transcript of the proceedings; this was no ordinary case, and these were no light accusations. When examined from the standpoint of the inquisitorial trial procedure set forth in the 13th century, the trial involved some significant violations of juridical conduct, some of which even Joan herself seemed to be vaguely aware of. Despite this fact, one can easily see that ecclesiastics offered Joan her only real hope of avoiding death.
Joan of Arc’s trial was a heresy investigation carried out under a legal procedure known in canon law as inquisition. Rather than a prosecuting attorney bringing charges against a defendant, an inquisition involved the judge himself bringing charges against the accused after he had observed certain other steps in the trial:
The essential feature of inquisition was that the accusation against the defendant came in the form of a public outcry or general belief that the accused had committed a crime. Unlike the earlier procedure of “accusation,” in which one or more persons functioned as the accuser, in an inquisition the accuser was the outcry itself. Once infamy had been established—this is, the existence of public outrage—the bishop or ecclesiastical judge could summon the defendant and investigate the truth of the accusations. The judge was to present the defendant with a list of charges in the form of chapter or articles. The judge could then require the defendant to swear an oath to tell the truth.
[1]At first glance, the trial record of Joan of Arc seems to indicate that the main judge, Bishop Cauchon, followed this correct procedure in his prosecution of Joan: by the end of all the proceedings, Joan had indeed been presented with the formal charges for which she was being tried; her infamy had been ‘established’; she had been offered counsel; and she had sworn numerous oaths. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes apparent that certain aspects of these procedures, particularly the order in which they were followed, were questionable. Perhaps these controversial elements of the trial would not be as significant if it were not for the fact that they actually strengthened the prosecution’s case against Joan.
One of the hotly debated issues surrounding the trial’s proceedings was the fact that Joan was not presented with formal charges until after she was extensively questioned by the ecclesiastical authorities. Moreover, the very manner in which the charges were drafted was open to question. According to the inquisitorial procedure set up in 1215 by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council, charges were to be generated largely on the basis of pre-trial investigation. This research was to be undertaken by the judge or his associates:
The pope envisaged that a judge would first be alerted by reports from afar and then go to the scene of the crime to see for himself. He modeled this procedure of “general inquisition” on Genesis 18.21, where God says of Sodom and Gomorrah, “I will go down and see whether they have done according to the cry that is come to me.”[2]Rather than deriving the articles from an initial inquest, it was primarily from unconfirmed hearsay in addition to statements made by Joan herself subsequent to the trial’s commencement that the charges were eventually drafted by the court. All seventy of these charges were finally announced to Joan weeks after she had first been questioned. This substantial lapse in time between Joan’s summons and her receiving of formal charges was also contrary to Innocent III’s system, which required that the judge’s first obligation, when implicated persons were summoned to his court, was to give them, in writing, detailed points (chapters, or articles) of the charges against them and to explain the charges, thereby enabling them to defend themselves.
[3]Medieval canonical rules of due process required a judge to follow all the correct preliminary trial procedures. A defendant had the right to remain silent before being formally charged. If the judge proceeded unlawfully, a defendant could declare himself or herself aggrieved and enter an immediate appeal. This was particularly important for cases involving heresy, as one could be convicted not only for confessing a previously committed crime but also for expressing a belief that could be taken as a brand-new crime of false belief; it would become instantly notorious and require no further proof simply by being uttered in court.
[4] Given the circumstances surrounding Joan’s case, it would seem as if Cauchon might have intentionally postponed giving the formal charges in order to trick Joan early into making heretical statements that otherwise would never have been included in the articles written against her later.
No articles were presented to Joan during her first court appearance, and she did not immediately make any sort of appeal on the basis of their absence. Procedurally, Cauchon seemed only to be concerned with requiring Joan to take an oath before the court, but he encountered reluctance. When Cauchon asked Joan to “swear to tell the truth about the things we ask you that concern the faith, and
that you know,”[5] Joan replied that she would willingly tell those things which pertained to her mother and father and her activities in France. But she added that she would absolutely not disclose her revelations from God, even under pain of death. Cauchon’s oath,
much like the illegal oath of the heresy inquisitors, would undoubtedly have been enough to trap her into making dubious doctrinal statements, for instance about the precise meaning of her everyday prayers. But when Cauchon had quickly worked his way through questions about her parents and home and came to ask her to recite the Pasternoster and Ave Maria, she stymied him by saying that she would recite them only in confession. She thus showed that she was able to distinguish between the internal and external forums of the church.[6]
Evidently, Joan was aware that she could imperil her own situation by answering truthfully and unconditionally to every question asked by the court, and so she often withheld information. Her usual method of refusing to answer a question was to say, “Pass on,” as when she was asked whether she received the Eucharist at any other feasts other than Easter.[7] This wise and cautious attitude on Joan’s part proved to be persistent throughout the majority of the trial. She certainly did not divert all the potential damage of her own words, however, as proven later in many of the articles.
The problematic juridical procedures involved in the trial of Joan of Arc were thoroughly discussed and debated long after her death, but they did not go completely unnoticed and unquestioned during the trial itself. This is slightly surprising, given the fact that the trial was very politically charged; it was certainly not free from the influence of the English, who wished to see Joan prosecuted for challenging English claims in France. Regardless, a highly respected canonist of the day named John Lohier considered the proceedings to hold no validity:
Lohier objected that the trial lacked the form of an ordinary process; that it was held under constraint, so that the assessors were not really free to make unbiased decisions; that, though it dealt with the honor of the king of France, no one from that quarter had a voice in the trial; that no libellus or articles had been submitted; and that no counsel had been provided to the defendant, who was a simple girl, to help her respond to questions posed by learned masters and doctors on difficult subjects.[8]
William Manchon, a notary in the case, stated that Bishop Cauchon clearly believed that his handling of the trial up to the point of Lohier’s criticism had been flawless; Cauchon was therefore very annoyed by the negative criticisms from the canonist.
Cauchon made it known that, despite Lohier’s objections, he wished to proceed with the trial as it had begun. Despite this sentiment, the bishop’s actions would suggest otherwise, as he made some significant trial modifications; out of these procedural alterations came forth the long-overdue articles which were finally read to Joan weeks after she first arrived in Rouen. Cauchon remedied Lohier’s main objection to the lack of formal charges in the following way:
He professed to be opening a new phase of the trial: what had proceeded, he said, was an ex officio preparatory process; now he was opening an “ordinary process,” in which the promoter would present against Joan certain articles that Cauchon had ordered to be compiled.[9]
After Joan had responded to these seventy articles brought against her, Cauchon had them reduced in number to only twelve; these were sent to faculty members at the University of Paris for a formal opinion. Also, after Lohier’s feedback, Cauchon did indeed offer Joan counsel from among any of the assessors she wished to choose. She declined the offer, stating that she did not wish to abandon the counsel of the Lord himself. One can easily see from this evidence how Cauchon could legitimately claim that he had followed correct procedure; it is only under intense scrutiny that the trial proceedings fall into debate, namely in regards to the timing of the presentation of articles.
Some recent scholarship has suggested that the delaying of the presentation of articles was not intentionally overlooked by Cauchon, who in his ecclesiastical career was otherwise very meticulous in terms of proper procedure. In the bishop's defense, H. Ansgar Kelly argued that abuses in the inquisitorial system had taken place for so long by the time of Joan’s trial that to postpone (or neglect altogether) the writing of formal charges could not be labeled a perversion of law; evidence suggests that this was a commonplace practice among judges of the time. The general lack of procedural criticism during the trial itself led Daniel Hobbins to make the following suggestion: If contemporaries did not consider it a trespass not to present the articles at the beginning of the trial, then the problem seems one of our own making.[10] In light of this information, whether or not it was incorrect trial procedure to suspend the writing of formal charges becomes debatable; what is not so uncertain is the notion that this action had negative ramifications for Joan, who ended up providing more damning ammunition for the prosecution’s case during Bishop Cauchon’s aptly labeled ‘ex-officio preparatory process.’
When the ecclesiastical trial is examined in a much larger context, however, it becomes clear that these procedural errors, although significant, did in no way seal Joan’s fate. In fact, from the very beginning, this trial was Joan’s only real hope of evading death. The English authorities had handed Joan over to Bishop Cauchon upon the condition that she be convicted; if not, she would be returned to the English for prosecution. Considering that Joan’s ecclesiastical trial was conducted in France under undeniably biased conditions and within a highly-charged atmosphere, a trial by secular authorities in England would have only been even less conducive to proper procedure. Her English adversaries could in fact have put Joan to death without a trial.
It is obvious from the trial record that many of the law experts and theologians involved in the case earnestly wished for Joan to recant her heretical statements. Near the end of the trial, some faculty members at the University of Paris sent Bishop Cauchon a formal opinion regarding the revised twelve articles against Joan. This statement, which found her to be largely at fault, was read to Joan by a certain doctor. After this, the same doctor read a long letter to Joan that included a lengthy exhortation to abandon those beliefs that had caused her to stray so far from the Church militant:
…I warn, pray and entreat you by your devotion to the Passion of your creator, and by the love you bear for your body and soul, correct and amend all these things and come back to the path of the truth by obeying the Church and by submitting to its judgment and decision. By doing so, you will save your soul and, I believe, redeem your body from death. But if you do not, and should you persist, know that your soul will be utterly damned; your body, I fear, will also be destroyed. May Jesus Christ keep you from such a fate.[11]
Exhortations such as these were repeatedly made to Joan. Perhaps they were not undertaken completely in vain; during her first sentencing, Joan interrupted its reading in order to sign a formal abjuration. The ecclesiastics seemed to be genuinely elated that she had chosen to return to the “path of truth.” Joan would still face perpetual imprisonment under the Church’s supervision, but church authorities could also alter the verdict at any point. A punishment of life in prison proved that Cauchon and his associates were not solely concerned with seeing Joan killed for her heretical crimes. For a short period of time, in fact, it looked as if the Church had indeed spared her life, which was a truly miraculous thing when one considers the circumstances of the trial.
Only days after her abjuration was signed, Joan made it invalid when she donned men’s clothing once more and told certain ecclesiastics that she had abjured in error; in doing these things, Joan sealed her own fate. She was declared a lapsed heretic, handed over to the secular authorities, and burned at the stake for her crimes. The trial of Joan of Arc, despite its controversial proceedings, can still be viewed as a legitimate effort on behalf of the Church to spare Joan’s life. Had she not lapsed, Joan would have spent the remainder of her days living under church supervision; instead, she was killed at the hands of the English people whom she so vehemently detested.
[1] The Trial of Joan of Arc, trans. Daniel Hobbins (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005), 16.
[2] H Ansgar Kelly, “The Right to Remain Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc,” Speculum 68 (1993): 995.
[3] H. Ansgar Kelly, “The Right to Remain Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc,” Speculum 68 (1993): 995.
[4] Ibid., p. 994.
[5] The Trial of Joan of Arc, trans. Daniel Hobbins (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005), 49.
[6] H. Ansgar Kelly, “The Right to Remain Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc,” Speculum 68 (1993): 1014.
[7] Ibid., p. 1015.
[8] H. Ansgar Kelly, “The Right to Remain Silent: Before and After Joan of Arc,” Speculum 68 (1993): 1018.
[9] Ibid., p. 1020.
[10] The Trial of Joan of Arc, trans. Daniel Hobbins (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005), 23.
[11] The Trial of Joan of Arc, trans. Daniel Hobbins (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2005), 189.
I've been wanting to vent about horrible Lexington drivers (and drivers in general) for some time now. Why? First of all, I've lived here for 5 years, which has been a sufficient amount of time to familiarize myself with typical traffic conditions in many parts of town; I'm not just going to make a sweeping negative statement about Lexington drivers based solely on a particular area of the city or on limited driving exposure to the place in general. Secondly, although I really enjoy walking whenever I can, I still have to drive pretty much everyday; the frustrations involved with encountering terrible drivers cannot simply be avoided by my choosing to not use my vehicle. Lastly, my increasing impatience with those who can't seem to follow basic rules of the road or even properly operate an automobile seems to coincide partly with my decreasing tolerance for morons and all things asinine.
