What about Joan? A fierce woman in combat? Medieval gender bender? Sandra Miesel has the inside scoop on Joan of Arc

Women's Quarterly, Wntr, 2002 by Sandra Miesel

In 1429 Joan did fulfill her goals of raising the siege of Orleans and getting the dauphin crowned as King Charles VII at Reims, the traditional coronation site for French monarchs. Thereafter the king--whom history would dub the Well-Served--lost interest in Joan. She was a threat to his prestige and his purse. After failing to take Paris, Joan was captured at Compiegne, May 23, 1430, when a Burgundian soldier yanked her from her horse by the trailing hem of her cloth-of-gold surcoat. Charles made no move to ransom or rescue her. Sold to the English, Joan was brought to trial the following January in English-occupied Rouen. The English feared her as a witch and desired her condemnation to discredit Charles. The University of Paris, which dreamed of controlling Church and State, also demanded her death.

Feminists tend to see the trial of Joan of Arc in terms of sexual politics--men oppressing a strong woman. But it was really pure politics. Her captors chose to try her in a French court of the medieval Inquisition, packed with pro-English clerics. Irregularities compromised Joan's trial, which unfolded in two phases over four months. She was condemned on her word alone without proof and lacked defense counsel. We can still read Joan's fearless answers in the trial transcript, so like the records of political show trials in all eras.

When the initial charges of witchcraft failed, Joan's accusers focused on her voices and their command that she wear male dress, making them signs of defiance against the Church. Up to this point Joan had given no details about the voices to anyone, but under relentless prodding she revealed visions as well. She identified her heavenly helpers as Sr. Michael the Archangel (symbol of French resistance) and the early virgin martyrs Catherine of Alexandria (philosopher and patroness of girls) and Margaret of Antioch (victor over a dragon, helper in childbirth).

Warner and Gordon, renegade Catholic schoolgirls, work hard to make Joan an insubordinate dissident who spurned Church authority for private conscience. But this ignores Joan's repeated attempts to appeal to the pope, which should have halted the trial. Joan was never anything but a loyal daughter of the Church.

Although Joan defied torture threats, she flinched at the sight of the stake and promised to give up male costume. But surrendering brought life imprisonment in solitary, not an easy time in a Church prison. Within three days, she reverted to men's clothes and the counsel of her saints. On May 30, 1431, without further sentence by a secular court, Joan was speedily burned as a relapsed heretic--in a dress.

Joan's defenders would later testify that she was tricked by her captors into resuming male garb and did it to defend herself against rape. Warner questions this, not noticing that male underwear and hose tied to a doublet do give a trifle more security than a woman's gown without panties (which were then unknown).

Though she died in shame, Joan had indeed turned the tide against the English invaders. In 1449, Charles petitioned Rome to nullify Joan's sentence, more for his sake than hers. In 1455, the verdict was duly overturned for procedural error.