Jeanne d\' Arc: birth of a myth

If Jeanne d' Arc were essential among the principal figures of the history of France, it is partly due to the many literary, political relays and monks which have proposed the character for more than four centuries:

Very present also abroad, the image of Jeanne d' Arc is the object since the end XIXe century of attempts at recovery by various political parties as well of the left as of the right , and by various currents of thought philosophical or religious for sometimes contradictory reasons, making even of Jeanne d' Arc in France a VIP.

Thus, a French law of the June 24th 1920 promulgated by the president Paul Deschanel lays out that:

  • the French Republic celebrates annually the festival of Jeanne d' Arc, celebrates patriotism.
  • This festival takes place second Sunday of May, birthday day of the delivery of Orleans.
  • It will be high in the honor of Jeanne d' Arc, on the place of Rouen where she was burned alive, a monument with this inscription: GRATEFUL FRENCH PEOPLE .

Jeanne d' Arc seen by Voltaire

In 1762, Voltaire publishes a book, which wants to be a pastiche of the style of the heroic epopee, the Maid of Orleans . It is about a text, made up of 21 songs, which produces effects burlesques and comic by diverting certain narrative characteristics of kind (incongruous archaisms, interpellation of the reader, commonplace bringings together of the protagonists of the account, etc). Thus the mounting of Jeanne d' Arc is a winged ass (PEGASE with the two long ears) which transports its mistress in a quasi instantaneous way to the places where its presence is necessary. This ass tries to appease its concupiscence on Jeanne d' Arc and is cut down by Dunois, one of the captains of Jeanne d' Arc, captain to which it sacrifices her virtue then. Voltaire in his correspondence hardly takes serious “to the aunt coglionery” (“so many couillonnades”) but it is still allocated to the character of Jeanne d' Arc in 1775 in the Essai on manners . In a style certainly different but with an identical frame of mind, he denounces popular credulity, the intervention of providence in the Histoire and the drifts criminal rising from religious sectarianism.

A Jeanne of Arc crystallizing the national feeling for Michelet

It is however with the alert feather of the historian Jules Michelet that one owes the most radical transformation of the character into 1841. This year indeed it publishes a book, heading Jeanne d' Arc (makes of it the Book V of sound French history ), and inserts this young woman in the category of the hero whom incarnates the people. It supports its argumentation on the modest origins of Jeanne, her provincial origins, its absence of erudite culture, the naivety of its religious practice, its good sense which prevents to arrange it in the camp of enlightened, its moments of doubt and weakness… While being binding on its captains by his exemplarity, by carrying out the unit around its person, Jeanne d' Arc is in the beginning, according to Michelet of one of the decisive stages of the construction of the France. It crystallizes the national feeling of French people and makes emerge nationalism. Its vision of Jeanne makes a parallel, disconcerting for this atheistic historian, with the Christ. Jeanne yields with her mission of which it knows that it will cost him the life.

“always Let us remember, French, that the fatherland on our premises was born from the heart of a woman, her tenderness and tears, blood which it gave for us. ”

This vision of a Jeanne of Arc of “left” - girl of the people, forgotten by the king Charles VII, martyrized by the Church, heroin of the people - is amplified with the publication by Jules Quicherat, a pupil of Michelet, acts of the two lawsuits (in Latin) according to the manuscripts of the National library of France (1841 - 1849). Then Henri Martin, another republican historian, publishes in 1856 a book on “Jeanne Darc” (by democratizing the orthography) doing this one the incarnation of the spirit and Gallic virtues, “pure the French gasoline”. According to him it represents a “Messiah of rationality” being opposed to the Roman clergy. The long note of Pierre Larousse in the Grand Dictionary of the 19th century (1870) synthesizes the feelings of the republicans perfectly, often free thinkers: “1) Did Jeanne Darc have really visions? (not). 2) Didn't its mobile more some take its source in the movements of a exalté patriotism? (yes). 3) Which were truths feelings of the king in his connection? (indifference and distrust). 4) Which in all times the true thought of the clergy for Jeanne was (to block its mission, to make it die and, under pretext to rehabilitate it of, to charge with legends its memory). ” To note that its remarks are written one year hardly after the panegyric of Mgr Dupanloup to Orleans evoking the holiness of Jeanne d' Arc.

The socialist assert them also this approach of Jeanne d' Arc. Thus Lucien Herr, librarian of the National university, written in the Working Party , under the pseudonym of Breton Pierre, the May 14th 1890 an article whose title is Our Jeanne d' Arc who denies with the Catholic church straight to found the worship of that it burned a few centuries earlier (“Jeanne is ours, it is with us; and we do not want that one touches there”). Charles Péguy, normalien and Socialist, friend of Lucien Herr, composes his first Jeanne d' Arc in 1897 which is dedicated “to all those and with all those which will have died of their human death for the establishment of the universal socialist republic”. Péguy in its book, which is hardly success, chooses however, far from the criteria of the history positivist, to privilege the dramatic form and to center its writing on the personal life and the interior life of Jeanne. Thus the vocation of Jeanne d' Arc does not owe anything with the “voices” but rather with its obsession evil and the revolt which it causes in her. Publication by the same author in 1910 of the Mystery of the charity of Jeanne d' Arc sign the return of Péguy to the faith. He adds to his preceding work of the many passages made up essentially of meditations, prayers and draw work towards the lyric drama. Its book arouses the interest of the catholic mediums traditionalists who see there the ideal counterpoint with the book of Anatole France.

Indeed in 1908 appears Jeanne of arc of Anatole France. This work, written with a strictly rationalist mentality, does not call into question human qualities (courage, sincerity) of critical Jeanne but the unreliability of the sources available at the time and relativizes the share of extraordinary events in the epopee. He thus explains the delivery of Orleans by the weakness of English manpower. In fact Anatole France gives to Jeanne a role more psychological than military; she reinforces moral French camp and throws the disorder at the English and Bourguignons. The voices are for him a simple phenomenon of hallucinations. The conclusion of the author finally made scandal. According to him indeed these various factors were useful, without the knowledge of Jeanne, a clerical plot: one oneself-saying prophecy announcing that the safety of France would pass through a virgin would have been formatted by the clergy to serve the cause of the Church. Less polemic in 1910 in the new army Jean Jaurès pays to him-also homage to Jeanne d' Arc.

Birth of holy

The Catholic church is, because of the circumstances of its death, badly at ease at the 19th century vis-a-vis the character of Jeanne d' Arc. However by imposing the image of a “holy layman” Michelet creates a myth perceived like a genuine machine of war against the Church. This is why in 1869 monseigneur Felix Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans starts the process of Canonization in order to make Jeanne d' Arc the symbol of the Christian woman fighting for her faith and its fatherland. This lawsuit allows, after one half-century of procedure (November 2nd 1874 - May 16th 1920), in particular stopped by the Great War, to declare holy Catholic church this woman who was condemned by an ecclesiastical court before being rehabilitated a few years after her death.

The May 8th 1869, the bishop of Orleans pronounces in the name of the Church a true panegyric of Jeanne where for the first time it evokes the holiness of the Virgin. In 1874 initiates the procedure with a first lawsuit educated in Orleans (1874/1875). This one is dominated by the personality of Henri Wallon, academic and Minister for the State education, (author of the famous constitutional amendment which makes France a République ). It prepared a memorandum of 60 pages, which summarizes its book “Jeanne d' Arc” published in 1860, which is a skilful synthesis. A second lawsuit opens in 1885. The first procedural difficulty is posed then. Which formula of canonization is it necessary to use?

It is the formal way, heaviest, which is implemented. It is then necessary to examine all the sources known (historical, religious, literary, oral traditions….) The file of canonization gathers 1741 pages on the whole is largely more in volume that the sources on which it is based. In January 1894 the pope Leon XIII indicates that papacy agrees to examine the file of Jeanne. More lyric the bishop of Aix-en-Provence proclaims:

“Jeanne also is ours One does not laicize the saints. ”

In 1897 opens finally the true lawsuit whose final decision returns to Rome but whose course is delegated to Monseigneur Dupanloup, then with its two successors. With the 13 pages of the summary of the life of Jeanne d' Arc (printed paper form only in 1920), the figure of a Jeanne is constituted corresponding to the requirements of the Church, although the Congregation of the rites which supervises in Rome this type of lawsuit generally shows a demanding critical spirit. The more so as here it has a considerable documentation historical (what is not always the case in this kind of file). Thus the work more quoted is the edition of the lawsuits of the 15th century carried out by Jules Quicherat, former student of… Michelet and free-thinker, become meanwhile director of the École of the Charters.

However interpretative skids are made. Thus, contrary to the explicit declarations of Jeanne d' Arc, with the question “did she Entrust her mission to her priest under the seal of the confession? ” he is answered by the affirmative. In the same way, the episode of the “jump of Beaurevoir” is reinterpreted: Jeanne, captive reserve in a tower between July and November 1430 would have tried to commit suicide, which is contrary with the catholic precepts. One draws aside the testimony of Jeanne then, informant to his future torturers that at this time “she liked better to die that to live”, for accounts of second hand. Another example of handling, the famous sentence, brought back 20 years later towards 1452/1456, of an English (It would be about Jean Tressart, one of the secretaries of king d' Angleterre) exclaiming with died of Jeanne: “We all are lost, because a holy person was burned”. Crushing the majority of the “witnesses” of the lawsuit of 1897 translate by: “We burned holy”, sentence taken again by Michelet a few years before the lawsuit in canonization. Semantic slip which is far from being neutral.

In fact never is not approached the starting paradox to knowing that an ecclesiastical court condemned that which was going to become holy (execution arising of the civil capacity, pertaining to the English). If one excludes the repentance of 1855 of monseigneur Dupanloup, not only once the Church does not recognize that it has a share of responsibility in death for Jeanne d' Arc. It is this negation which involves a certain number of polemical skids since they are “the different ones” which burned Jeanne. The Church, under the pressure of the king Charles VII, however publicly repudiated the court which condemned Jeanne since 1456, breaking the initial lawsuit for “fraud, calumny, fraud and mischievousness”, affirming as of this time that Jeanne “did not incur any note or tries infamy” and making affix a cross on the place of the torment “to the perpetual memory of late”.

Who thus responsible for died for Jeanne? English? Admittedly in 1897, the anglophobia remains strong but Jeanne must be a holy universal catholic i.e. thus useless to awake old quarrels. The skid little before the lawsuit (in 1894) the father Pie Langogne, future bishop of Corinth, opens a new way that the Affaire Dreyfus a few weeks later will illustrate one day new:

“What a inconsistancy, or rather what a hypocrisy in all these angers Jewish or enjuivées against the sad bishop of Beauvais! Pierre Cauchon, this honni of the Church, but it is a man with them”.
Never the Church enters this anti-semitism within the framework of the lawsuit, but this feeling east seems it divided in a not easily quantifiable fringe of its faithful, this skid not being insulated. Another potential culprit, the University. The court of Rouen was the emanation of the Université of Paris which at the 19th century is the incarnation of the modernism and rationalism. It is to forget a little quickly that at the 15th century the academics are members of the clergy. But to make of Jeanne d' Arc faithful of Rome vis-a-vis the university gallicane is also a means for the clergy of the end of the 19th century confronted with a laic revolution to create a parallel between its situation and that of Jeanne. Another designated culprit, the spirit of the French revolution. The book of Voltaire is brocardé, all the more easy thing as it is of a minor work and poor quality. The will of the free-thinkers, republicans and freemasons to organize in 1878 a commemoration for the centenary of its death (falling a May 30th) had put in fury the bishop of Orleans which had tried to push back out of its diocese these demonstrations.

All these quarrels quickly appear rather vain. Even if the Church has the capacity to pass in addition to the political considerations, the lawsuit in canonization suffers from the relations tended between France and the the Holy See at the beginning of the 20th century because of the law of 1905 of separation of the Church and the State. Although a first stage is reached in 1909 with the beatification of Jeanne, it is necessary to await the end of the First World War with the “room blue horizon” of 1920, composed of many war veterans having known the fraternization of the monks and of laic in the trenches, directed on the right, so that the points of view approach. The May 9th 1920 the pope Benoit XV, in the presence of the ambassador of France at the Holy See, Gabriel Hanotaux, canonizes Jeanne d' Arc. The House of Commons the June 24th 1920 then adopts the project of the deputy (and writer) Maurice Barrès to institute a national festival of Jeanne d' Arc.

Is Jeanne d' Arc a figure of extreme right-hand side?

This title, borrowed in an article of the historian Michel Winock, is to be put in connection with the practice which the festival of Jeanne d' Arc took the National front to celebrate each year.

It is a distance heritage of the conflict of the end of the 19th century between right-hand side and left to seize the myth “the Maid of Orleans”, conflict which the nationalist right of the time leaves victorious. At the beginning of the XIXe century certain partisans of monarchy see as a Jeanne d' Arc that which, mandée by God, makes crown the legitimate king. Thus the historian Philippe-Alexandre the Brown one of Charmettes, as of 1817 in his Histoire of Jeanne d' Arc binds the character to the flowers of lily and in fact a symbol of the alliance of the Church and the Crown. Moreover vis-a-vis the figure of a Jeanne of Arc “of left”, previously evoked with the role of Michelet, French prelates of the Catholic church oppose who begin as of 1869 a step intended to obtain the canonization of Jeanne. This will, perceived by the left like a “monopolization” or a “recovery”, causes starting from the beginning of the XXe century a beginning of rejection of the character. Thus the newspaper of left the Action declares it the April 14th 1904:

“Jeanne d' Arc, even burned by the priests, does not deserve our sympathies”.
The agitator anticlerical Laurent Tailhade writes the April 26th same year:
“That the next May 8th France free-thinker protests by a storm of whistles, by a waterspout of hootings against the worship returned to a idiot who caused our misfortune”.

This rejection explains partly why Jeanne easily will become an emblematic figure of the nationalist right.

Admittedly of other voices on the left keep a sympathy to the character (Jean Jaurès for example) but the business Thalamas, from the name of this professor who in 1904 is transferred college Condorcet, following complaints of parents, to have held of the critical remarks on Jeanne d' Arc, will exacerbate the tensions between two ideological factions which are opposed: layman and nationalist. The nationalist press indeed, carried out by Henri Rochefort and Edouard Drumont, stigmatizes the teacher and the enemies with the France “of Cauchon with Thalamas”. The daily newspaper Humanity being made fun of the demonstrations in front of the statue of Jeanne d' Arc, the nationalist poet Paul Déroulède in exile with Saint-Sebastien, causes Jean Jaurès in duel. This one, however not very hostile with the character of Jeanne d' Arc, accepts and takes the train for the Spain. Finally the duel with place with Hendaye without result.

It is however necessary to distinguish the design from the majority of the catholics for which Jeanne d' Arc is at the same time the emblem of their faith but also, joining Michelet on this point, the small guardian of sheep who defended the fatherland valiantly. Thus Monseigneur Ricard, vicar general of the archbishop of Aix-en-Provence writes in 1894: “Exaltez, in the person of Jeanne, Christian patriotism, in order to protect France against alliances which threaten it”. This design is exacerbated with the businesses Dreyfus and Thalamas in the nationalist movements which call into question the Republic and make of Jeanne d' Arc their standard. For the nationalists, Jeanne d' Arc is France but not any, not that of the Jews, the free-thinkers, the intellectuals, the Protestants, of the Socialists, nor of course that from coldly naturalized abroad; they evoke France defined by its rural and catholic origins, whose Jeanne d' Arc is for them a model.

Edouard Drumont, following the writings of Henri Martin, tries in 1904 in a public meeting to define Jeanne d' Arc on ethnic criteria declaring:

“It is a Celt, Jeanne d' Arc, who saved the fatherland. You know my ideas and you know of which name we call the enemy who replaced on our premises the English invader of the 15th century… This enemy is called for us the Jew and the freemason. ”
He concludes his intervention by sound “Lives France! Live Jeanne d' Arc! ”.

However of many republicans do not wish that Jeanne d' Arc become the totem catholic and nationalist line. Thus as of 1884 the radical deputy of the Aveyron, Joseph Fabre, proposes the creation of an annual festival of Jeanne d' Arc, to which it gives the name of “festival of patriotism”. He proposes the date of the May 8th which corresponds to the date birthday of the release of Orleans. This project is supported by approximately 250 deputies including by a certain number of nationalist members of Parliament of which Paul Déroulède. Finally the Republican majority refuses by fear which this commemoration is diverted and recovered by the Church. In 1894 Joseph Fabre, become senator, returns to the load and obtains the support of the president of the council Charles Dupuy. The Senate vote the project but not the House of Commons. At the beginnings of the Great War it is the leader of the nationalist right, Maurice Barrès, deputy and cantor of the Sacred union, which starts again the proposal by filing in in December 1914 a new bill. For him the institution of a festival of Jeanne d' Arc is necessary. He writes as follows: “Its worship was born with the invaded fatherland; it is the incarnation of resistance against the foreigner”. President of the League of the patriots after the war, it returns to the load and tries a skilful synthesis between the various concepts surrounding the character of Jeanne.

“Each one of us can personify in it his ideal. Are you catholic? It is a martyrdom and holy which the Church has just put on the furnace bridges. Are you royalist? It is the heroin which made devote the son of holy Louis by the sacrament gallican of Rheims… For the republicans it is the child of the people which exceed in magnanimity all the established sizes… Finally the Socialists cannot forget that she said:
" I was sent for the consolation of the poor and the malheureux."
Ainsi all the parties can be claimed of Jeanne d' Arc. But it exceeds them all. No one cannot confiscate it. ”

The project is voted the June 24th 1920 is hardly more than one month after canonization of Jeanne by the Pape Benoît XV. While posting itself publicly, by the presence of elected officials where diplomats, with the various ceremonies of canonization of Jeanne, the majority of the national block of post-war period shows the will of a bringing together with the the Holy See, which takes an official turning in 1921.

In Orleans on May 8th 1929, for the 500e birthday of the release of the city, the Catholic church organizes a vast religious celebration to which Gaston Doumergue, president of the Republic and Protestant, assists officially. It is the first time that a President of the Republic attends a mass officially since the separation of the Church and the State of 1905. This gesture, like the exit of the film the marvellous life of Jeanne d' Arc the May 12th 1929, is highly criticized by the press agency of the French Communist party, Humanity . This function of gathering explains why in general each president of the republic at least once goes at the time of its mandate to Orleans in order to make a speech around the topics of the national unit, of solidarity between French (François Mitterrand in 1989, Jacques Chirac in 1996).

However the nationalist right and often extremist try to especially monopolize the character of Jeanne after the judgment of the French Action by the pope in 1926. It is easy for him to do it parallel between Jeanne d' Arc, anathematized by an ignorant Church in its time, and its own situation. All the leagues of the time are claimed of Jeanne d' Arc, the Beam of Georges Valois, the patriotic Jeunesses of Pierre Taittinger, the Croix of Fire… In 1938 the members of the various dissolved leagues ravel with the festival of Jeanne d' Arc with their standards and their newspapers of which the specific number of I am everywhere on the Juifs.

Under the national Révolution of Pétain it is less that which fought the invader who is celebrated that Jeanne the land one, good catholic and especially anglophobe. Thus Robert Brasillach writes in I am everywhere May 12th 1944:

“Jeanne belongs to French nationalism in what it has of more realistic, of deeper and moreover attached to the ground. ”.

And he opposes the judeo-maconnic latter to the “plot”. At the time of the year 1944, with most extremely of the combined bombardments, a leaflet distributed at the time of the festival of Jeanne d' Arc proclaims: “So that France lives one needs like Jeanne Arc to pare the English out of Europe”. A poster of propaganda collaborationnist puts in parallel to rough-hew it of Jeanne d' Arc and the bombardment of Rouen by RAF: " The assassins always reconsider the place of their crime". Admittedly Jeanne is also evoked in the rows of the Résistance by works of Aragon or of Jules Supervielle but it seems owe estampiller all the manifestations of the extreme nationalist right and colonialist after the war. The general Weygand will create an Alliance Jeanne d' Arc, in which André Frossard takes part, which seeks to make of Jeanne a champion of the French Algérie. The main deputy Biaggi, notorious antigaullist, lance with the National Assembly the October 15th 1959: “When Jeanne d' Arc pared the English out of France, it is not with self-determination that it appealed”.

When Jean-Marie Le Pen creates the National front, as a good expert of the mythology of the extreme right-hand side, it chooses the image of Jeanne d' Arc to make the symbol of it be opposed to all the “invaders”, i.e. the foreigners and immigrants. Bruno Mégret writes the May 7th 1987, whereas he is appointed Isere: “It is there to say to us that we belong at a community which is clean for us, which is different from that of the others and of which we must be proud parce what it is ours and that of our ancestors”. The National front institutes its own festival of Jeanne d' Arc on May 1st and makes this event the point of organ of its demonstrations.

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