The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
(3.) PRESCIENCE, as in the prophecy of her arrow-wound at Orleans.
According to her confessor, Pasquerel, she repeated the prophecy and
indicated the spot in which she would be wounded (under the right
shoulder) on the night of May 6. But this is later evidence given in the
trial of Rehabilitation. Neither Pasquerel nor any other of the Maid’s
party was heard at the trial of 1431.
To these we might add the view, from Vaucouleurs, a hundred leagues
away, of the defeat at Rouvray; the prophecy that she ‘would last but
a year or little more;’ the prophecy, at Melun, of her capture; the
prophecy of the relief of Compiegne; and the strange affair of the bon
conduit at the battle of Pathay.* For several of these predictions we
have only the Maid’s word, but to be plain, we can scarcely have more
unimpeachable testimony.
*Proces, iv. 371, 372. Here the authority is Monstrelet, a
Burgundian.
Here the compiler leaves his task: the inferences may be drawn by
experts. The old theory of imposture, the Voltairean theory of a ‘poor
idiot,’ the vague charge of ‘hysteria,’ are untenable. The honesty and
the genius of Jeanne are no longer denied. If hysteria be named, it
is plain that we must argue that, because hysteria is accompanied by
visionary symptoms, all visions are proofs of hysteria. Michelet holds
by hallucinations which were unconsciously externalised by the mind
of Jeanne. That mind must have been a very peculiar intellect, and the
modus is precisely the difficulty. Henri Martin believes in some kind of
manifestation revealed to the individual mind by the Absolute: perhaps
this word is here equivalent to ‘the subliminal self’ of Mr. Myers. Many
Catholics, as yet unauthorised, I conceive, by the Church, accept the
theory of Jeanne herself; her saints were true saints from Paradise.
On the other hand it is manifest that visions of a bright light and
‘auditions’ of voices are common enough phenomena in madness, and in the
experiences of very uninspired sane men and women. From the sensations
of these people Jeanne’s phenomena are only differentiated by their
number, by their persistence through seven years of an almost abnormally
healthy life, by their importance, orderliness, and veracity, as well as
by their heroic character.
Mr. Myers has justly compared the case of Jeanne with that of Socrates.
A much humbler parallel, curiously close in one respect, may be cited
from M. Janet’s article, ‘Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme’
[‘Revue Philosophique,’ March 1888).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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