【英文读物】The Life of Joan of Arc.docx

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1、【英文读物】The Life of Joan of ArcPREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION SCHOLARS have been good enough to notice this book; and the majority have treated it very kindly, doubtless because they have perceived that the author has observed all the established rules of historical research and accuracy. Their kindne

2、ss has touched me. I am especially grateful to MM. Gabriel Monod, Solomon Reinach and Germain Lefvre-Pontalis, who have discovered in this work certain errors, which will not be found in the present edition. My English critics have a special claim to my gratitude. To the memory of Joan of Arc they c

3、onsecrate a pious zeal which is almost an expiatory worship. Mr. Andrew Langs praiseworthy scruples with regard to my references have caused me to correct some and to add several. The hagiographers alone are openly hostile. They reproach me, not with my manner of explaining the facts, but with havin

4、g explained them at all. And the more my explanations are clear, natural, rational and derived from the most authoritative sources, the more these explanations displease them. They would wish the history of Joan of Arc to remain mysterious and entirely supernatural. I have restored the Maid to life

5、and to humanity. That isPg vi my crime. And these zealous inquisitors, so intent on condemning my work, have failed to discover therein any grave fault, any flagrant inexactness. Their severity has had to content itself with a few inadvertences and with a few printers errors. What flatterers could b

6、etter have gratified the proud weakness of my heart?1 Paris, January, 1909.INTRODUCTION MY first duty should be to make known the authorities for this history. But LAverdy, Buchon, J. Quicherat, Vallet de Viriville, Simon Luce, Boucher de Molandon, MM. Robillard de Beaurepaire, Lanry dArc, Henri Jad

7、art, Alexandre Sorel, Germain Lefvre-Pontalis, L. Jarry, and many other scholars have published and expounded various documents for the life of Joan of Arc. I refer my readers to their works which in themselves constitute a voluminous literature,2 and without entering on any new examination of these

8、 documents, I will merely indicate rapidly and generally the reasons for the use I have chosen to make of them. They are: first, the trial which resulted in her condemnation; second, the chronicles; third, the trial for her rehabilitation; fourth, letters, deeds, and other papers. First, in the tria

9、l3 which resulted in her condemnation the historian has a mine of rich treasure. Her cross-examination cannot be too minutely studied. It is based on information, not preserved elsewhere, gathered from Domremy and the various parts of France through which she passed. It is hardly necessary to say th

10、at all the judges of 1431 sought to discover in Jeanne was idolatry, heresy, sorcery and other crimes against the Church. Inclined as they were, however, to discern evil in every one of the acts and in each of the words of one whom they desired to ruin, so that they might dishonour her king, they ex

11、amined all available information concerning her life. The high value to be set upon the Maids replies is well known; they are heroically sincere, and for the most part perfectly lucid. Nevertheless they must not all be interpreted literally. Jeanne, who never regarded either the bishop or the promot

12、er as her judge, was not so simple as to tell them the whole truth. It was very frank of her to warn them that they would not know all.4 That her memory was curiously defective must also be admitted. I am aware that the clerk of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember exa

13、ctly the answers she had given in her cross-examination.5 That may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. It is none the less certain that after the lapse of a year she retained but an indistinct recollection of some of the important acts of her life. Finally, her constant hall

14、ucinations generally rendered herPg ix incapable of distinguishing between the true and the false. The record of the trial is followed by an examination of Jeannes sayings in articulo mortis.6 This examination is not signed by the clerks of the court. Hence from a legal point of view the record is o

15、ut of order; nevertheless, regarded as a historical document, its authenticity cannot be doubted. In my opinion the actual occurrences cannot have widely differed from what is related in this unofficial report. It tells of Jeannes second recantation, and of this recantation there can be no question,

16、 for Jeanne received the communion before her death. The veracity of this document was never assailed,7 even by those who during the rehabilitation trial pointed out its irregularity.8 Secondly, the chroniclers of the period, both French and Burgundian, were paid chroniclers, one of whom was attache

17、d to every great baron. Tringant says that his master did not expend any money in order to obtain mention in the chronicles,9 and that therefore he is omitted from them. The earliest chronicle in which the Maid occurs is that of Perceval de Cagny, who was in the service of the house of Alen?on and D

18、uke Johns master of the house.10 It was drawn up in the year 1436, that is, only six years after Jeannes death. But it was notPg x written by him. According to his own confession he had not half the sense, memory, or ability necessary for putting this, or even a matter of less than half its importan

19、ce, down in writing.11 This chronicle is the work of a painstaking clerk. One is not surprised to find a chronicler in the pay of the house of Alen?on representing the differences concerning the Maid, which arose between the Sire de la Trmouille and the Duke of Alen?on, in a light most unfavourable

20、to the King. But from a scribe, supposed to be writing at the dictation of a retainer of Duke John, one would have expected a less inaccurate and a less vague account of the feats of arms accomplished by the Maid in company with him whom she called her fair duke. Although this chronicle was written

21、at a time when no one dreamed that the sentence of 1431 would ever be revoked, the Maid is regarded as employing supernatural means, and her acts are stripped of all verisimilitude by being recorded in the manner of a hagiography. Further, that portion of the chronicle attributed to Perceval de Cagn

22、y, which deals with the Maid, is brief, consisting of twenty-seven chapters of a few lines each. Quicherat is of opinion that it is the best chronicle of Jeanne dArc12 existing, and the others may indeed be even more worthless. Gilles le Bouvier,13 king at arms of the province of Berry, who was fort

23、y-three in 1429, is somewhat more judicious than Perceval de Cagny; and, in spite of some confusion of dates, he is better inPg xiformed of military proceedings. But his story is of too summary a nature to tell us much. Jean Chartier,14 precentor of Saint-Denys, held the office of chronicler of Fran

24、ce in 1449. Two hundred years later he would have been described as historiographer royal. His office may be divined from the manner in which he relates Jeannes death. After having said that she had been long imprisoned by the order of John of Luxembourg, he adds: The said Luxembourg sold her to the

25、 English, who took her to Rouen, where she was harshly treated; in so much that after long delay, they had her publicly burnt in that town of Rouen, without a trial, of their own tyrannical will, which was cruelly done, seeing the life and the rule she lived, for every week she confessed and receive

26、d the body of Our Lord, as beseemeth a good catholic.15 When Jean Chartier says that the English burned her without trial, he means apparently that the Bailie of Rouen did not pronounce sentence. Concerning the ecclesiastical trial and the two accusations of lapse and relapse he says not a word; and

27、 it is the English whom he accuses of having burnt a good Catholic without a trial. This example proves how seriously the condemnation of 1431 embarrassed the government ofPg xii King Charles. But what can be thought of a historian who suppresses Jeannes trial because he finds it inconvenient? Jean

28、Chartier was extremely weak-minded and trivial; he seems to believe in the magic of Catherines sword and in Jeannes loss of power when she broke it;16 he records the most puerile of fables. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that the official chronicler of the Kings of France, writing about 1450

29、, ascribes to the Maid an important share in the delivery of Orlans, in the conquest of fortresses on the Loire and in the victory of Patay, that he relates how the King formed the army at Gien by the counsel of the said maid,17 and that he expressly states that Jeanne caused18 the coronation and co

30、nsecration. Such was certainly the opinion which prevailed at the Court of Charles VII. All that we have to discover is whether that opinion was sincere and reasonable or whether the King of France may not have deemed it to his advantage to owe his kingdom to the Maid. She was held a heretic by the

31、heads of the Church Universal, but in France her memory was honoured, rather, however, by the lower orders than by the princes of the blood and the leaders of the army. The services of the latter the King was not desirous to extol after the revolt of 1440. During this Praguerie,19 the Duke of Bourbo

32、n, the Count of Vend?me, the Duke of Alen?on, whom the Maid called her fair duke,Pg xiii and even the cautious Count Dunois had been seen joining hands with the plunderers and making war on the sovereign with an ardour they had never shown in fighting against the English. Le Journal du Sige20 was do

33、ubtless kept in 1428 and 1429; but the edition that has come down to us dates from 1467.21 What relates to Jeanne before her coming to Orlans is interpolated; and the interpolator was so unskilful as to date Jeannes arrival at Chinon in the month of February, while it took place on March 6, and to a

34、ssign Thursday, March 10, as the date of the departure from Blois, which did not occur until the end of April. The diary from April 28 to May 7 is less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do occur may be attributed to the copyist. But the facts to which these dates are assign

35、ed, occasionally in disagreement with financial records and often tinged with the miraculous, testify to an advanced stage of Jeannes legend. For example, one cannot possibly attribute to a witness of the siege the error made by the scribe concerning the fall of the Bridge of Les Tourelles.22 What i

36、s said on page 97 of P. Charpentiers and C. Cuissarts edition concerning the relations of the inhabitants and the men-at-arms seems out of place, and may very likely have been inserted there to efface the memory of the grave dissensions which had occurred during the last week. From the 8th of May th

37、e diary ceases to be a diary; it becomes a series of extracts borrowed from Chartier,Pg xiv from Berry, and from the rehabilitation trial. The episode of the big fat Englishman slain by Messire Jean de Montesclre at the Siege of Jargeau is obviously taken from the evidence of Jean dAulon in 1446; an

38、d even this plagiarism is inaccurate, since Jean dAulon expressly says he was slain at the Battle of Les Augustins.23 The chronicle entitled La Chronique de la Pucelle,24 as if it were the chief chronicle of the heroine, is taken from a history entitled Geste des nobles Fran?ois, going back as far a

39、s Priam of Troy. But the extract was not made until the original had been changed and added to. This was done after 1467. Even if it were proved that La Chronique de la Pucelle is the work of Cousinot, shut up in Orlans during the siege, or even of two Cousinots, uncle and nephew according to some,

40、father and son according to others, it would remain none the less true that this chronicle is largely copied from Jean Chartier, the Journal du Sige and the rehabilitation trial. Whoever the author may have been, this work reflects no great credit upon him: no very high praise can be given to a fabr

41、icator of tales, who, without appearing in the slightest degree aware of the fact, tells the same stories twice over, introducing each time different and contradictory circumstances. La Chronique de la Pucelle ends abruptly with the Kings return to Berry after his defeat before Paris. Le Mystre du s

42、ige25 must be classed with thePg xv chronicles. It is in fact a rhymed chronicle in dialogue, and it would be extremely interesting for its antiquity alone were it possible to do what some have attempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and following them several scholars, have believ

43、ed it possible to identify this poem of 20,529 lines with a certain mistaire26 played on the sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their conclusions from the following circumstances: the Marchal de Rais, who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in Duke

44、 Charless city expending vast sums27 there from September, 1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its municipal funds a standard and a banner, which had belonged to Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles and their cap

45、ture from the English.28 From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in 1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take the manner of the storming of Les Tourelles to mean a mystery rather than a pageant o

46、r some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the certain mistaire of 1435 as indicating a representation of that siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even thenPg xvi we must examine whether it be that mystery the text of w

47、hich has come down to us. Among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is the Marchal de Rais. Hence it has been concluded that the mystery was written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which effect was given above the Nantes Bridge, on October 20, 1440. How,

48、 indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death could the vampire of Machecoul have been represented to the people of Orlans as fighting for their deliverance? How could the Maid and Blue Beard be associated in a heroic action? It is hard to answer such a question, because we cannot possibl

49、y tell how much of that kind of thing could be tolerated by the barbarism of those rude old times. Perhaps our text itself, if properly examined, will be found to contain internal evidence as to whether it is of an earlier or later date than 1440. The bastard of Orlans was created Count of Dunois on July 14, 1439.29 The lines of the mystery, in which he is called by this title, cannot therefore be