The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
I shall begin with the letter of the Senechal de Berry, Perceval de
Boulainvilliers, to the Duke of Milan.* The date is June 21st, 1429, six
weeks after the relief of Orleans. After a few such tales as that the
cocks crowed when Jeanne was born, and that her flock was lucky, he
dates her first vision peractis aetatis suae duodecim annis, ‘after she
was twelve.’ Briefly, the tale is that, in a rustic race for flowers,
one of the other children cried, ‘Joanna, video te volantem juxta
terrain,’ ‘Joan, I see you flying near the ground.’ This is the one
solitary hint of ‘levitation’ (so common in hagiology and witchcraft)
which occurs in the career of the Maid. This kind of story is so
persistent that I knew it must have been told in connection with the
Irvingite movement in Scotland. And it was! There is, perhaps, just one
trace that flying was believed to be an accomplishment of Jeanne’s. When
Frere Richard came to her at Troyes, he made, she says, the sign of the
cross.** She answered, ‘Approchez hardiment, je ne m’envouleray pas.’
Now the contemporary St. Colette was not infrequently ‘levitated’!
*Proces, v. 115.
**Proces, i. 100.
To return to the Voices. After her race, Jeanne was quasi rapta et a
sensibus alienata [‘dissociated’), then juxta eam affuit juvenis quidam,
a youth stood by her who bade her ‘go home, for her mother needed her.’
‘Thinking that it was her brother or a neighbour’ (apparently she only
heard the voice, and did not see the speaker), she hurried home, and
found that she had not been sent for. Next, as she was on the point of
returning to her friends, ‘a very bright cloud appeared to her, and out
of the cloud came a voice,’ bidding her take up her mission. She was
merely puzzled, but the experiences were often renewed. This letter,
being contemporary, represents current belief, based either on Jeanne’s
own statements before the clergy at Poictiers (April 1429) or on the
gossip of Domremy. It should be observed that till Jeanne told her own
tale at Rouen (1431) we hear not one word about saints or angels. She
merely spoke of ‘my voices,’ ‘my counsel,’ ‘my Master.’ If she was
more explicit at Poictiers, her confessions did not find their way into
surviving letters and journals, not even into the journal of the hostile
Bourgeois de Paris. We may glance at examples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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