CMS150 - Winter 2001

I. Housekeeping
A. Read, The Interrogation of Joan of Arc for Tuesday
B. Read, Fiction in the Archives for Thursday

II. Background info:
A. nature of transcript
1. recorded during trial of 1431 in French [putatively verbatim] does not survive completely
2. translation of French transcript into Latin [after 1435 ­ After reconciliation of Burgundy and C7] into which letters and narrative accounts of events compiler of 1435 transcript wants to justify death;
3. reshapes French transcript to find dominent theme and consistent set of accusations
B. Investigation of Joan
1. preliminary investigation
a. 3 months of questioning culminating in 70 charges
obsessession w/ male dress
b. reading of charges to Joan
c. note: transcripts records charges and Joan’s response [in Latin]
2. ordinary trial
a. reading of charges to Joan
b. note: transcripts records charges and Joan’s response [in Latin]
1) carrying magical mandrake root
2) prostitute and camp follower
3) lover of Robert de Baudricourt
c. articulation of digest of charges [reduced to 12 articles]; Joan’s d. responses not recorded
nb: all charges of sexual misconduct dropped
case focuses on visions voices and drag
3. relapse
a. on 5/23: court reads aloud its memo of Joan’s faults, crimes and errors
b. on 5/24: she signs an abjuration (in French) confession to idolatry in calling up evil spirits and in wearing male attire (against the decency of nature); she puts on women’s clothing
c. on 5/28? she is observed wearing male attire in prison; on investigation,  Joan announces she has been directed by St. Catherin and Margaret to recant abjuration and resume male dress
d. on 5/29: relapse trial
only issues: voices, men’s cloathing
C. nullification trial
1. C7 cdn’t let thought that his crown due to witchcraft stand
Pope doesn’t want to rescue Joan [who died defiant of the church militant

2. trial 25 years after Joans death (1455)
a. procedural  not substantive nullification
1) many witness gone
2) those who tstified given chance to speak generally of Joan’s goodness [men never aroused by her]
3) discomfort over vagueries of loyalties during war
b. focus on procedural errors of heresy trial qua inquisition nb: although heresy trial nullified, Joan not sanctified [she died defiant]
c. Joan’s subsequent history more local than national
Voltaire: e.g., wrote a mock epoch exploiting charges of carnality
d. until post French revolution, when
1) heroine of right: champion of nationalism, divine right of kings
2) heroine of left: champion of poor against elite
-> national heroine
3) not sainted by Vatican until after WWI [when France was exhausted physically and economically by war ­ like 100 years war; perhaps spiritually as well?]

III. Joan and gender = Joan and heresy

A. Three topics: voices, drag, and heresy
1. Voices
a. who were they?:
1)Catherine: virgin saint
2) Margaret: escaped from her father’s house to avoid marriage dressed as a man
3) St. Michael: shrine at Mont-Saint Michail in Normandy was traditional bulwark against English
b. what sort of influence did they have on Joan
1) gave her her mission
2) J’s vow of virginity made in response to voices
3) J’s adoption of drag made in response to voices
4) J’s recanting made in response to voices
c. belief in voices from god
1) late middle ages marked by success of popular devotional  movements;
2) clerical intellectual elite believed in supernatural  manifestation as much as lay people;
3) distinguished by superior ability to distinguish the good from the bad via inquisitorial methods (preferably w/o torture)
d. Joan’s success: miracle to French royalist; devily to Anglo-Normans

2. heresey and drag
a.  heresy charges contra joan
1) idolatry
2) converse with the devil
3) schism [synom w/ rebellion]

nb: heresy and idoltary fluid concepts, circular in definition
b. charges at ordinary trial:
1) St’s Gabriel, Michael, Catherine and Margaret appeared to her and told her secret things and gave her knowledge of the future
2) accuses Joan of making reverence to the voices as though divinities
a) theologiens: Joan believed visions had material existence to which she did reverence
b) Joan never got a priest’s opinion on whether or not they where evil or good
3) drag
a) St. Catherine and Margaret told her to wear a man’s clothes
b) Joan of own will sought and requested male clothing
c) even in prison where it meant denial of sacraments
d) itself idolotrous because it imitated the rites of heathens [??]
4) other proof’s of her heresy
a) leap from Beaurevoir castle when first captured
b) departure from paternal home in Domrémy w/o father’s consenst

B. church treatment of transvestism
1. suprisingly, it doesn’t get a lot of treatment from chrch fathers
2. one kind of holy transvestite ok [female saint who dresses as man to live as monk]
a. e.g. St. Margaret: dressed as man and escaped to a female monastery where she lived as Brother Pelagius; the devil tempted her by causing her (as the only man around) to be accused of causing the pregnancy of one of the nuns.  She was driven out of the monastery and lived in exile in a mountain cave.  Only at death, in a letter to the abbot, did she reveal the truth.’

b. nb male monks write these stories for male monks: treat issue of threatening female sexuality: one good/unusual woman is victim [ritual sacrifice] for generalized evil sexualtiy of all woman because she diverts that evil from the male commmnity

c. nb: female cross dressing implicitly valorizes the male model [note, no tradition of valorizing male cross dressers who valorize the female model]
3. Thomas Aquinas
a. transvestitism ok (even though legally forbiden) ex necessitats causa, se occultandi ab hostibus: to hide from enemies, there are no other clothes, some other good reason
b. nb: this is not drag queen style cross dressing: it is "passing" [cf women who live as monks ­ totally suppresses female identity]
c. Q: what kind of cross ­ dressing did Joan do?
d. drag queen: everyone knew she was a woman.
e. close cropped hair, male clothing, weapons
f. Joan had kept nothing about her to denote her sex: excepto eo quod tibi natura contulit
g. i.e., unlike the female monks, she didn’t disguise her anatomy

C. church treatment of idolatry
1. for lay people: worshipping false gods
2. for theologians: worshipping false gods that passed themselves off as the true god: inherent notion of fiction, fraud, false representation
a. nb: all representations of god are fictions [what does Jesus looke like?]
b. need to distinguish bt true and false fictions
1) true fictions point viewer away from themselves to God [look at a crucifix and you don’t think of the artistry of the representation you think of the passion of Christ]
2) false fiction got the viewer to become preoccupied with its own materiality
3. inquisitors obsessed with Joan’s visions because they want to test them for materiality/corporality [was St. Michael naked, did St Margaret speak English]
4. inquisitors could treat Joan not merely as idolator of her voices/visions, but also claim that she "had made herself an idol for the people"
a. half corss dressing turned her into something outside of nature: male clothing that did not hide femaile nature: which drew attention to itself
b. destabilizes male sexual identiyt, not female: feminizes man [as opposed to valorizing male like holy transvestites]
1) women do not merely make themselves into men, they make masculinity [gender] something less than it pretends to be
2) nb: insistence of soldiers that she never aroused their carnal desire
3) nb: Joan’s masculinity feminizes all the representations of C7
c. gender premised on duality and distinction
Joan raised the question of what gender was?