THE TRIAL OF JEANNE D’ARC

…Asked whether when the first time she came before the king he asked her if it was by revelation that she had changed her dress, she answered: “I have answered this before: nevertheless I do not recall whether I was asked. It is written down at Poitiers.”

Asked whether the clerks of her own party who examined her, some for the space of a month and others for three weeks, had not questioned her about the changing of her dress, she answered: “I do not recall. But they asked me where I took to a man’s dress, and I told them it was at Vaucouleurs.”

Asked if the aforesaid masters inquired whether it was through her voices that she had assumed this dress, she answered: “I do not recall.”

Asked if the queen did not inquire, at her first visit, about her taking to a man’s dress, she answered: “I do not remember.”

Asked if her king or queen or other people of her party did not sometimes ask her to put off her man’s dress, she answered: “That is not in your case.”

Asked whether she was not asked to at the castle of Beaurevoir, she answered: “Yes, truly. And I answered I would not put it off without God’s leave.”

She said the Demoiselle of Luxembourg and the Lady of Beaurevoir offered her a woman’s dress, or the cloth to make one, and told her to wear it; and she replied she had not God’s permission, and it was not yet time.

Asked if Messire Jean de Pressy and others at Arras did not offer her a woman’s dress, she answered that he and many others had often asked her to wear it.

Asked whether she believed she would have done wrong or committed a mortal sin by taking a woman’s dress, she answered

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answered she did better to obey and serve her sovereign Lord, namely God.

She said if she had had to do it she would rather have done so at the request of these two ladies than of any other ladies in France, save her queen.

Asked whether, when God revealed to her that she should change to a man’s dress, it was by the voice of St. Michael, or by the voice of St. Catherine or St. Margaret, she answered: “You will learn no more for the present.”

…Asked, since she had wished to hear Mass, whether it did not seem to her more fitting to be in female costume, and which she would prefer, to wear a woman’s dress and be at the Mass, or to keep to a man’s dress and not hear Mass, she answered: “Promise me that I may hear Mass if I wear a woman’s dress, and I will answer you.”

Then the examiner said to her: “I promise that you may hear Mass, if you are in a woman’s dress.” She answered: “And what do you answer, if I have sworn and promised to our king not to put off this dress? Yet I will tell you: have made

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for me a long dress reaching down to the ground, without a train, and give it to me to go to Mass; and then, on my return, I will put on once again the dress I have.” Asked once and for all, whether she would wear a woman’s dress and go to hear Mass, she answered: “I will have counsel on it, and then I will answer you.” Moreover, she urged us that for the honor of God and of Our Lady she be permitted to hear Mass in this good town.

Whereupon she was told by the examiner that she should take a woman’s dress, simply and absolutely. She replied: “Give me a dress such as the daughters of your burgesses wear, a long houppelande (and also a woman’s hood) and I will wear it to go and hear Mass.” She added that as urgently as she could she besought us to permit her to hear Mass in the dress she wore, without any change.

Asked if, on that which she had said and done, she will submit and commit herself to the decision of the Church, she answered: “Everything I have said or done is in the hand of God, and I commit myself to Him. And I certify to you that I would do or say nothing against the Christian faith; and, if I had said or done anything, or if anything were found on me which the clergy should declare to be against the Christian faith established by Our Lord, I would not uphold it, but would cast it out.”

Asked if she would submit herself therein to the ordinance of the Church, she answered: “I will not now answer you more; but on Saturday next send me the priest, if you do not wish to come, and I will answer him this with God’s aid, and it shall be set down in writing.”

….Asked on the subject of the woman’s dress offered her so

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that she might hear Mass, she answered that she would not put it on till it should please Our Lord. And if it be that she must be brought to judgment she requests the Lords of the Church to grant her the mercy of a woman’s dress and a hood for her head; she would die rather than turn back from what Our Lord commanded her; she firmly believed God would not let her be brought so low, or be presently without His help or miracle.

Asked why, if she wore man’s dress at God’s bidding, she asked for a woman’s robe in the event of her death, she answered: “It is enough for me that it be long.”

Asked if her godmother, who saw the fairies, was held to be a wise woman, she answered that she was held and reputed to be an honest woman, and not a witch or sorceress.

Asked whether her saying she would take a woman’s dress if they would let her go would please God, she answered that if she were given permission to go in woman’s dress she would immediately put on man’s dress and do what Our Lord bade her. So she had formerly answered: and nothing would induce her to swear not to take up arms or to wear man’s dress, to accomplish our Lord’s will.

Asked about the age of the garments worn by St. Catherine and St. Margaret, she answered: “You already have my reply on this matter, and you will get none other from me. I have answered you as best I can.”

…She added these words to the article touching her taking

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woman’s dress: “Give me a woman’s dress to go to my mother’s house, and I will take it.” This she would do to escape from prison, and when she was outside she would take counsel concerning what she should do.

Finally, after the contents of the register had been read to her the said Jeanne confessed that she believed she had spoken well according to what had been written in the register and read to her, and she did not contradict any other saying from the register.

Palm Sunday, March the twenty-fifth. Jeanne asks permission to hear Mass

On the following Sunday morning, Palm Sunday, the twenty-fifth day of March, in Jeanne’s prison in the castle of Rouen, we the abovenamed bishop spoke with her in the presence of Jean Beaupère, Nicolas Midi, Pierre Maurice, doctors, and Thomas de Courcelles, bachelor of sacred theology. And we said to Jeanne that many times, particularly the day before, she had asked that by reason of the solemnity of these present days and this time she should be permitted to hear Mass on this Palm Sunday; therefore we asked her whether if we allowed her she would abandon male costume and put on a woman’s dress, as she had been wont in the country of her birth and as women of her country were wont to do.

To which Jeanne replied by requesting us to permit her to hear Mass in the male costume which she wore and to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist on Easter Day. Then we told her to answer our question, whether she would abandon man’s dress if she were given that permission. But she answered that she had not had counsel thereon and could not yet wear woman’s dress.

And we asked her if she would take counsel of her saints to wear woman’s dress, to which she replied that it might

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well be permitted her to hear Mass as she was, which she sovereignly desired, but as for changing her dress she could not and it was not in her.

After the said lawyers had exhorted her by all the goodness and piety which she seemed to have, to wear a dress fitting to her sex, the said Jeanne answered that it was not in her to do it; and if it were it would soon be done.

Then she was told to speak with her voices to discover if she could once more wear woman’s dress to receive the Eucharist at Easter. To which Jeanne replied that as far as in her lay she would not receive the Eucharist by changing her costume for a woman’s; she asked to be permitted to hear Mass in her male attire, adding that this attire did not burden her soul and that the wearing of it was not against the Church.

…Here follows word for word the tenor of the articles of the accusation, and of the answers made by Jeanne, with the other answers which she made elsewhere, to which she refers

“In your presence, venerable father in Christ and in Our Lord, Pierre, by divine mercy bishop of Beauvais, now Ordinary

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Judge and possessing territory in the city and diocese of Rouen; and of the religious brother Jean Le Maistre, of the order of Preaching brothers, bachelor of sacred theology, vicar in this town and diocese and in this trial especially appointed by master Jean Graverent, distinguished doctor of sacred theology, of the same order, Inquisitor of Heretical Error in the kingdom of France by the Holy See; before you, competent judges, to the end that the woman commonly called Jeanne the Maid, found, taken, and detained in the limits of your territory, venerable father, and the boundaries of your diocese of Beauvais, surrendered, entrusted, delivered, and restored to you, her ecclesiastical and ordinary judge by Our Lord Christian King of France and England, to be dealt with by the law and corrected, as one vehemently suspected, denounced, and defamed by honest and sober people; to the end that she should be denounced and declared by you her said judges as a witch, enchantress, false prophet, a caller-up of evil spirits, as superstitious, implicated in and given to magic arts, thinking evil in our Catholic faith, schismatic in the article Unam Sanctam, etc., and in many other articles of our faith skeptic and devious, sacrilegious, idolatrous, apostate of the faith, accursed and working evil, blasphemous towards God and His saints, scandalous, seditious, perturbing and obstructing the peace, inciting to war, cruelly thirsting for human blood, encouraging it to be shed, having utterly and shamelessly abandoned the modesty befitting her sex, and indecently put on the ill-fitting dress and state of men-at-arms; and for that and other things abominable to God and man, contrary to laws both divine and natural, and to ecclesiastical discipline, misleading princes and people; having to the scorn of God permitted and allowed herself to be adored and venerated, giving her hands to be kissed; heretical or at the least vehemently suspected of heresy; that according to the divine and canonical

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sanctions she should be punished and corrected canonically and lawfully, as befitted these and all other proper ends: Jean d’Estivet, canon of the churches of Bayeux and Beauvais, Promoter or Procurator of your office, appointed therein by you and specially deputed agent and prosecutor in the name of that office, says, proposes, and intends to prove and duly inform your minds against the said Jeanne, accused or denounced; nevertheless the said Promoter protests that it is not his intention to endeavor to prove what is superfluous, but only what will and must suffice to this end, wholly or in part, with all other protestations customary in such matters, and reservations of the right to add, correct, alter, interpret, in law and in fact.”

…Now on Monday, March 12th asked if her voices called her daughter of God, or daughter great-hearted, she answered that before the siege of Orleans, and since then, they have spoken to her every day, often calling her Jeanne the Maid, daughter of God.

XII

“And, the better and more easily to accomplish her plan, the said Jeanne required the said Captain to have a male costume made for her, with arms to match; which he did, reluctantly, and with great repugnance, finally consenting to her demand. When these garments and these arms were made, fitted and completed, the said Jeanne put off and entirely abandoned woman’s clothes; with her hair cropped short and round like a young fop’s, she wore shirt, breeches, doublet, with hose joined together and fastened to the said doublet by 20 points, long leggings laced on the outside, a short mantle

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reaching to the knees, or thereabouts, a close-cut cap, tightfitting boots and buskins, long spurs, sword, dagger, breastplate, lance and other arms in the style of a man-at-arms, with which she performed actions of war and affirmed that she was fulfilling the commands of God as they had been revealed to her.”

…On Tuesday, February 27th, asked if she thought the instruction to wear man’s dress was lawful, she answered that everything she did was at God’s command; and that, if He had bidden her wear a different dress, she would have done so, for it was God’s bidding. Asked whether she thought that in this particular instance she had done well, she replied that she did not wear it without God’s command, and that no single action of hers was otherwise than at His command.

On Saturday, the 3rd, asked whether when she went to her king for the first time, he inquired if she had changed her dress after revelation, she answered: “I replied to this before,” and “nevertheless, I do not recall that I was asked that.” She

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added it is written at Poitiers. On the same day, asked if she believed that she would err or commit mortal sin by returning to woman’s clothes, she answered she would do better to obey and serve her sovereign Lord, namely God.

XIV

“The said Jeanne affirms that it was right so to wear garments and habits of dissolute men; and will persist therein, saying that she must not abandon them, except with express permission by revelation from God, to the injury of God, of His angels and His saints.”

To this fourteenth article Jeanne answers: “I do not do ill to serve God; to-morrow you shall have a reply.” The same day, asked by one of the assessors if she had received instruction or revelation to wear man’s dress, she answers that her reply has been given, and she leaves it at that: then says that she will send answer the next day. She adds that she knows well who made her wear man’s dress, but she does not know how she ought to reveal it.

On Saturday, February 24th, asked if she desired a woman’s habit, she answered: “If you will give me permission, send me one. I will take it and go: otherwise I do not want one. I am content with this, since it is God’s will that I should wear it.”

On Monday, March 12th, asked whether she did not think she was doing wrong to wear man’s dress, she answered no; and even at that moment, if she were back with her own party, it seemed to her that it would be to the great good of France for her to do as she did before her capture.

On Saturday, March 17th, asked why, since she declares her wearing of male attire to be at God’s command, she asks for a woman’s shift in the event of her death, she answered it were enough for her if it were long.

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XV

“The said Jeanne having repeatedly asked permission to hear Mass, was admonished to put off man’s dress and return to woman’s dress; her judges gave her hope that she would be allowed to hear Mass and receive Communion if she would finally put off man’s dress and wear female attire, as befits her sex. She would not agree, and preferred not to take Communion and the holy offices, rather than abandon this dress, pretending that by so doing she would displease God, so revealing her obstinacy, her stubbornness in evil, her want of charity, her disobedience to the Church, and the scorn she has of the holy sacraments.”

To this fifteenth article, on this Tuesday the 27th of March, Jeanne answers that she would much rather die than turn back on Our Lord’s command.

On this same day, asked if she will put off man’s dress and hear Mass, she replies that she will not yet put it off, and that it is not on her that the day depends when she may do so. ‘

She says that if the judges refuse to let her hear Mass, it is in God’s power to let her hear Mass when it pleases Him, without them.

As for the remainder of the article, she answers that she confesses she has been admonished to wear woman’s dress; but she denies the irreverence and the succeeding charges.

On Thursday, March 15th, asked which she would prefer, to wear woman’s dress and hear Mass or keep to male costume and not hear Mass, she answered: “Promise me I shall hear Mass if I am in woman’s dress, and I will answer you.” Whereupon the examiner said he would promise, and Jeanne then answered: “What do you say if I have sworn and promised to our king not to put off this dress? Yet I answer you: Have a long dress, reaching down to the ground, with no

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train, made for me, and give it to me to go to Mass; and then on my return I will put on once more the dress I have.” Asked once and for all whether she would wear a woman’s dress and go to hear Mass, she answered: “I will have counsel on it, and then I will answer you.” And in honor of God and of Our Lady she urged she would be allowed to hear Mass in this good town. Whereupon she was told to take a woman’s dress, simply and absolutely. She replied: “Give me a dress such as the daughters of a burgess wear, a houppelande, and also a woman’s hood; and I will wear it to go and hear Mass.” Moreover she said, as urgently as she could, that she besought us to permit her to hear Mass in the dress she wore, without any change.

On Saturday, March 17th, questioned on the subject of the woman’s dress offered to her so that she could hear Mass, she answered that she would not put it on till it should please Our Lord; and if it be that she must be brought to judgment and stripped, she asks the lords of the Church to grant her the mercy of a woman’s shift and a hood for her head; for she would rather die than turn back from her Lord’s command. She firmly believes God will not permit her to be brought so low, or be without His aid, or miracle. Asked whether her saying she would take a woman’s dress if they would let her go would please God, she answered that if she were given permission to go in woman’s dress she would immediately put on man’s dress and do what Our Lord bade her, and that nothing in the world would induce her to swear not to take up arms or wear man’s dress, to accomplish Our Lord’s will and pleasure.

XVI

“The said Jeanne, after her capture, at the castle of Beaurevoir and at Arras, was repeatedly and charitably admonished

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by noble and eminent persons of both sexes to abandon man’s dress and to wear habits decently fitting her sex. This she absolutely refused, and still obstinately persists in her refusal to do, as well as the other duties fitting to her sex; in all things she behaves more like a man than a woman.”

To this sixteenth article Jeanne confesses that she was admonished at Arras and at Beaurevoir to wear woman’s dress, and that she refused and still refuses. As for the other womanly duties, she says there are enough other women to do them.

On Saturday, March 3rd, asked if she recalls whether the clerks of her own party who examined her, some for the space of a month, others for three weeks, did not question her about the changing of her dress, she replied that she did not remember: that, however, they did ask her where she assumed her male costume, and she told them it was at Vaucouleurs. Asked if they inquired of her if she assumed it because of her voices, she said: “That is not in your case.” Further asked if she was not asked to change her habit at Beaurevoir, she answered: “Yes, truly”; and she said she would not without God’s leave. The Demoiselle of Luxembourg asked Jean de Luxembourg not to deliver her to the English, and with the Lady of Beaurevoir offered her a woman’s dress, and told her to wear it. She replied that she had not God’s permission, and it was not yet time. She added that Messire Jean de Pressy and others at Arras did not offer her a woman’s dress; others asked her to change her dress. Moreover, she said that if she had had to do it she would rather have done so at the request of these two ladies than of any other ladies in France, save her queen. Asked also whether when God revealed to her that she should change to man’s dress, it was by the voice of St. Michael, or by the voice of St. Catherine or St. Margaret, she answered: “You will learn no more for the present.”

…This Wednesday after Palm Sunday, 1431, March 28th. The reading of the articles is continued.

(And first, required to take oath, she answered she would willingly swear to speak the truth on that which touched her case, and so she swore.

To the article touching her dress, she answered that she wore her habit and arms at God’s bidding; this was true both of the male costume and the arms.

When asked to abandon this dress, she answered she would not give it up without Our Lord’s permission, not even to save her head, but, please God, it would soon be put off. She added, that if she had not Our Lord’s permission, she would not wear woman’s dress.)

…”She has made this declaration simply and purely, adding at times ‘except at Our Lord’s command.’ She has preferred

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to be absent from the office of the Mass, to be deprived of the Holy Sacrament of Communion, at the times when the Church commands the faithful to receive the said Sacrament, rather than wear woman’s clothes once more and relinquish male costume.

…V

“This woman says and affirms that, by the will. and command of God, she has taken to herself and has worn, and still dons and wears, clothes like those of a man. Moreover, she has said that, since she had God’s command to wear man’s clothes, she must take hood and doublet, breeches and hose with many points, her hair cut round above her ears, and nothing about her to display and announce her sex, save Nature’s own distinctive marks. And in this garb she has received the Sacrament of the Eucharist on several occasions. And she has declined and still declines to wear woman’s clothes once more, although many times she has been gently requested and reproved: for she says that she would rather die than relinquish a man’s clothes; she has said this purely and simply, at times adding ‘unless it be at Our Lord’s command.’ She has said that if she found herself in this garb among those of her company, for whom she took up arms erstwhile, and if she could do as she did before her capture and captivity, it would be one of the greatest blessings that could come to the whole realm of France: she added that not for anything in the world would she swear to give up man’s clothes and to bear weapons no more. In all this she

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has declared that her acts were good, and are good, and that she has obeyed God and His commands.”

…Masters Aubert Morel and Jean Duchemin, licentiates in canon law, advocates of the official’s court of Rouen, gave their opinion as follows

“With the protestations customary in matters of faith, and submitting ourselves to the correction of our lords and judges and of the other doctors of sacred theology and the legal authorities to whom it is fitting to go deeply into this, it appears to us meet to declare: first, that in respect of the alleged revelations of this woman, according to written law it is possible for them to exist in God; nevertheless as this woman has not confirmed them by miracle or testimony of Holy Writ, as there is no evidence for them, there is no reason to believe in the words and statements of this woman. And in respect of her refusal of woman’s dress, since she has not received God’s bidding to this effect (which cannot be believed, since she alone did it, of her own accord, against both the honor and repute of her sex as well as good manner of life), since she was duly warned and disdained our admonitions, she is and should be

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excommunicate and anathema.

…”In respect of her rejection of woman’s dress or refusal to wear it, it appears that she acted against the honor of woman’s sex: she should be warned of the necessity of resuming woman’s dress, otherwise sentence of excommunication can be pronounced against her, if she has not received God’s command on this point, which cannot be presumed. When she says she would be deprived of the sacrament of communion with Christ at the times when the faithful are wont to partake of it, rather than put off man’s dress, on this point, it appears, she goes directly counter to her holy duties, since every Christian is compelled to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist once a year. When she will not submit to the judgment of the Church Militant, it appears she contravenes

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the article Unam Sanctam and the decision of the law.

Jeanne d’Arc executed on 30 May 1431