St. Joan tells her judges she saw St. Michael with her own eyes

ROUEN, Normandy, February 27, 1431 AD — Saint Joan of Arc told the churchmen trying her at Rouen on Tuesday that the first of the voices she heard as a girl was Saint Michael the Archangel’s. St. Michael came with many angels, St. Joan said, and she saw them with her own eyes. Pressed to say what the Archangel looked like and what he first told her, she refused.

St. Joan was nineteen, a village girl from Domremy. In 1429 AD she helped lift the English siege of Orleans and stood beside Charles VII at his crowning in Reims. Captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne last May, she was sold to the English in November. The English could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could have her condemned as a witch and a heretic.

The court trying her was a church court. The Bishop of Beauvais presided, and most of the men beside him were theologians of the University of Paris. If the judges found her voices false or the work of evil spirits, they could declare her a heretic and hand her over to the civil authorities. So the fight was over her voices. The judges wanted the voices described closely enough to rule on where they came from. St. Joan would describe them only as far as she believed Our Lord allowed, and the judges could send her to her death.

St. Joan had no lawyer, and between sessions English soldiers kept her in irons in the castle of Rouen. On Tuesday more than fifty theologians, abbots and lawyers sat for the court’s fourth session. Jean Beaupère, a theologian, questioned her.

St. Joan told Beaupère that her voice had come to her many times since Saturday’s session. Asked what it had said after that session, she answered: “It told me to answer you boldly.”

St. Joan said she would not answer some of the court’s questions until the voice gave her permission. Answering without it, she said, might cost her the voices’ support. Once Our Lord gave her permission, she would not be afraid to speak.

Beaupère asked whether the voice was an angel’s, a saint’s or God’s own. St. Joan said it was the voice of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, and that both wore rich crowns. When he asked whether the two saints were dressed alike, St. Joan said: “I will tell you no more now; I have not leave to reveal it. If you do not believe me, send to Poitiers!” At Poitiers in 1429 AD, churchmen loyal to the king had examined her and found nothing in her against the faith.

Beaupère then kept returning to one question: which of her saints had come to her first. St. Joan said: “I did not recognize them immediately; I knew well enough once, but I have forgotten; if I had leave I would gladly tell you. It is written down in the register at Poitiers.” Asked again which of the apparitions had come first, this time she named St. Michael.

For the third time Beaupère asked which voice had come first: the one she had heard as a girl of about thirteen. St. Joan said it was St. Michael, whom she saw before her eyes, and that he was not alone but came with many angels from heaven.

Beaupère then asked whether she had seen St. Michael and the angels “corporeally and in reality”. St. Joan answered: “I saw them with my bodily eyes as well as I see you; and when they left me, I wept; and I fain would have had them take me with them too.”

Asked in what form St. Michael appeared, St. Joan said: “There is as yet no reply to that, for I have not had leave to answer.” Asked what the Archangel said to her the first time, she told Beaupère: “You will get no further reply to-day.”

Later in the session the court asked about her banner. It was white linen, painted with lilies, the world and two angels, with the words Jhesus Maria (Jesus, Mary). St. Joan said she liked the banner far better than her sword. She carried it when she attacked, so that she would not kill anyone, and she said she had never killed anyone.

A summary of her answers later went to the University of Paris for its judgment. On May 23 Pierre Maurice, a canon of Rouen, read her the University’s judgment. He began with the angels, St. Catherine and St. Margaret, “whom you have frequently seen with your bodily eyes”. Pierre Maurice told her that the masters of the University of Paris declared “that it is all false, seductive, pernicious, that such revelations and apparitions are superstitions and proceed from evil and diabolical spirits.” St. Joan answered: “As for my words and deeds, which I declared in the trial, I refer to them and will maintain them.” Even if she were condemned, St. Joan told Pierre Maurice, she would say nothing different. She would not change a word if she stood in the fire already, with the wood alight and the executioner ready. St. Joan would hold to her answers until she died.