Joan of Arc (), a French historical figure condemned for heresy by an ecclesiastical court under English control and executed in 1431, is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. She accompanied an army during the Hundred Years' War, adopting the clothing of a soldier, which became the purported basis for her conviction and execution. Joan's adoption of men's clothing has been the subject of debate over the centuries and has been interpreted in religious, historical and cultural contexts.
Trial and clothing
After her capture during the siege of Compiègne while retreating from a failed attack at Margny, Joan was handed over to the English by the Burgundians, imprisoned, and subsequently put on trial for heresy. Despite the judges' attempts to persuade her to renounce her male attire, Joan repeatedly defended it as a "small matter" that was "the commandment of God and his angels". As Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin note, "Other questions about her mode of dress provoked only repetitions of these answers: She had done nothing that was not by the commandment of God. Probably not even Cauchon could then have guessed the importance that her mode of dress would come to assume." As Beverly Boyd observed, "The issue was, of course, [Joan's] voices .. but the emblem of the heresy was her wearing of men's clothing."
Joan signed a cedula, a document in which she agreed to cease wearing male clothing. Some sources suggest that this was done without the benefit of adequate legal safeguards or possibly without her full understanding of the document's content. Later, she resumed wearing male attire in what was considered a "relapse," after the garments had been returned to her by her captors. Contemporary accounts indicate that her captors were aware of her claim that she wore such clothing out of necessity and divine instruction. Under the procedures of the Inquisition, individuals who returned to previously abjured practices could be sentenced to death. On 30 May 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by her English captors with Church officials present.
Cross-dressing in Christian hagiography
Vern and Bonnie Bullough wrote that despite specific canonical prohibitions, explicit and unconditional approval of cross-gender attire is generally absent in the writings of the Church Fathers. On the contrary, Susan Schibanoff notes that "one version of transvestism appears to have been both admired and encouraged, albeit indirectly, in the legends of female saints who disguised themselves as men to live as monks". Joan's accusers therefore carefully framed their accusations, alleging that Joan retained "nothing about her to display and announce her sex, save Nature's own distinctive marks". Unlike the holy transvestites, who entirely concealed their biological sex, Joan had not concealed her anatomy or other "marks" of her biological femininity.
The "holy transvestite" – a female saint who disguised herself as a man – was a common medieval hagiographical archetype and was occasionally invoked in defense of Joan's clothing. Saint Marina exemplifies the archetype: fearing for her virginity on her wedding night, she cut off her hair, donned male attire, and joined a monastery, passing herself off as "Father Marinos". She was later falsely accused of impregnating an innkeeper's daughter and driven into exile. After her death, Saint Marina was absolved of all guilt.
With regard to the holy transvestite tradition, Simon Gaunt argues that "sexuality is central to the construction of sanctity in the Middle Ages", and that holy men and women are not removed from sexuality, but continue to define themselves through reference to sexuality that has been reshaped and redirected. Echoing medieval historian John Anson, Gaunt describes these legends as a "monastic fantasy" that attempts to appease sexual longing by imagining a woman in the monastery who need not inspire guilt. This appeasement is, however, complexly gendered by the apparent masculinity of many of these women.
By the fifteenth century, stories of such saints had become widespread throughout Europe, with origins reaching back to early Christianity. One of the earliest examples is Saint Thecla, whose story is told in the New Testament apocryphon Acts of Paul and Thecla. According to the legend, she became so enraptured by the teachings of Paul the Apostle that she left her fiancé and followed him, reportedly dressing as a man during a part of her travels. Thecla's story was popular and widespread, with depictions of her and dedications to her ranging from Antioch to Iberia. According to Rudolf Dekker and Lotte van de Pol: "The transformation into a man was a very dominant theme with [certain] female saints from the fifth to the seventh century. Saint Margaret, for example, was once said to have escaped on her wedding night in men's clothes. [...] A saint especially popular among the common people in Europe from the eleventh century on [...] was Saint Uncumber. She was a Portuguese princess who refused to be married to the heathen King of Sicily, and prayed to God to be saved from this fate. Her salvation was unusual; she suddenly grew a beard. Variations on this theme recur more often. As in many cases, myth and reality interact, and several medieval women took these saints as their models." Joan of Arc's guides and visions did not include any of the "holy transvestites". Nevertheless, such legends formed part of the religious and cultural context in which Joan's adoption of male clothing was understood.
Outside of Christian hagiography, cross-dressing and miraculous sex changes are recurring motifs in medieval European legends and folktales, as well as in traditions from other parts of the world. Folklorist Stith Thompson describes relatively few traditional "sex tests" for exposing men disguised as women, but numerous ones for women dressed as men. These range from placing a spinning wheel nearby to scattering peas on the ground, which supposedly caused women – but not men – to slip. The latter motif appears in Grimms' Fairy Tales and William Shakespeare's As You Like It, and the method has even been attributed to King Solomon.
Contemporary perspectives
During and immediately following her life, perspectives on Joan varied widely, most often along factional lines. Rumors of a woman leading an opposing army were historically used to incite troops against heresy, sorcery, or immorality. English soldiers at the time referred to Joan as a "witch", asked "whether she expected [soldiers] to surrender to a woman", and referred to her troops as "unbelieving pimps". The English author of The Brut claimed that her troops followed her by "crafte of sorcerie". After his defeat at Orleans, Bedford reported to the English crown that his men had been bewitched by a "satanic" agent in the form of a woman dressed in men's clothing. Crane notes that the English and their French Burgundian allies referred to her as a "monstrous woman, disorderly and notorious woman who dresses in men's clothes, whose conduct is dissolute" ().
On the other side of the English Channel, the situation was largely reversed. From almost the start of Joan d'Arc's journey, there was little hesitation on the side of the French. Of special note was the loyalty given to her by her soldiers, who were among the most skilled in France. The Bourgeois of Paris claimed that this was because, "all who disobeyed her should be killed without mercy", but the author of the noted that "All regarded her with much affection, men and women, as well as small children." Jean de Mâcon, an eyewitness to the siege of Orleans, noted that there was only one act of derision, while the Cronique de Lorraine added that "All the army promised to always obey her. Each victory motivated more loyalty and further victory. Even disobedience to her higher command seems to have invited loyalty; she brought action and victory, while the older, noble generals achieved nothing but inaction and defeat."
These viewpoints tended to extend to her trials: first the Condemnation trial by the pro-English Burgundians, and later the rehabilitation trial under a commission appointed by Pope Calixtus III and organized by Charles VII. As Pinzino notes,
The Condemnation trial found Joan's transvestism condemning. The primary cross-dressing charge, that Joan dressed entirely as a man "save Nature's own distinctive marks", was designed to evade Aquinas's exceptions on cross dressing—as Raoul Le Sauvage phrased it, to "escape violence and keep one's virginity", was predicated on total disguise and passing. Joan never attempted to "pass", but simply wore the attire of men, thus giving the English cause to condemn her for the act.
After the recapture of Rouen, the site of Joan's trial, Charles VII (who owed his crown to Joan and had supported her as he believed her to be divinely inspired) dispatched a letter on 15 February 1450 which ordered the creation of a commission to reexamine the Condemnation trial, under the leadership of Guillaume d'Estouteville, Charles's cousin. As Pernoud and Clin note, "That trial was now a symbol of complex cultural fissures in search of closure: of the internal fractures of a riven France, of national splits enervated by English invasion, and of religious and civil power struggles sustained by the University of Paris." The rehabilitation trial focused strongly on the transvestism charge, which Pope Pius II noted was problematic. Individuals testifying during the trial stressed the necessity of her dress, both for means of keeping order in her troops in battle and for protecting her chastity. As the trial noted, she wore "long, conjoined hosen, attached to the aforesaid doublet with twenty cords (aiguillettes)" and "tight leggings", with the cords being used to securely tie the parts of the garment together so her clothing couldn't be pulled off by her English guards.BAN Lat. 1119 f.47r; Proces... Vol I page 220,221 Guillaume Manchon testified, "And she was then dressed in male clothing, and was complaining that she could not give it up, fearing lest in the night her guards would inflict some act of [sexual] outrage upon her", a claim backed up by a number of other witnesses. The same justification was given for her relapse by a number of witnesses, such as Friar Martin Ladvenu, Pierre Cusquel, Giullaume Manchon, and Friar Isambart de la Pierre, although a number of others, such as Jean Massieu, Pierre Daron, and Guillaume Colles, alternatively claimed that she was entrapped into wearing male clothing by a guard who took away her female clothing. Jean Moreau testified that he had heard Joan reply to the preacher that she had adopted male clothing during her campaign because she had to live among soldiers, among whom it was more appropriate for her to be in male, rather than female clothing. The court ruled that "nothing improper has been found in her, only good humility, chastity, piety, propriety, simplicity."
Modern interpretations
According to Kelly DeVries, "No person of the Middle Ages, male or female, has been the subject of more study than Joan of Arc. She has been portrayed as saint, heretic, religious zealot, seer, demented teenager, proto-feminist, aristocratic aspirant, savior of France, person who turned the tide of the Hundred Years War and even Marxist liberator." Due to such widely differing interpretations of her life and its meaning, many interpretations of the implications of her adoption of male clothing and lifestyle have been debated.