Joan of Arc and the Genesis of Her Voices November 19, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval , trackback
Joan of Arc has appeared once before on this blog in that fascinating moment where she apparently picked out the Dauphin with psychic antennae. Today, two years on, Beach is turning instead to another part of Joan’s paranormal life, her voices. Joan heard, from her early adolescence onwards, voices. These voices gave her instruction and there seems to have been one dominant voice: memories of Socrates and his daimon. Joan understood the voice to be a simple instruction from God and followed orders. There is for example a striking eye-witness account of her refusing to put on her armour, jumping onto a horse and going out to kill the English, because she was ordered to do so by her voice immediately. Think now, though, about the moment when this provincial peasant girl began to hear voices. What was the crisis or the event that triggered them?
The earliest sources is Perceval de Boulainvilliers letter to the Duke of Milan dating to June 21, 1429
Finally when she had reached the age of twelve years, the first revelation was made to her in the following manner. While she and other maidens were guarding the sheep of their parents, they were wandering about the field. Those round about approached, and they asked her whether she would like to enter a race for a handful of flowers, or the like. She consented, and the conditions being agreed upon, she moved during the second and third circuit with such speed that they did not think that she touched the ground at all, so that one of the children cried out: ‘Joan,’ for that was her name, ‘I see you flying close to the ground.’ When she had completed the course, and at the side of the meadow; as in a trance, and lost to all feeling, was regaining her breath and resting her tired body, there appeared near her a youth who thus addressed her: ‘Joan, return home, for your mother said that she had need of your help,’ and thinking that it was her brother, or one of the neighbors’ children, she hastened home. Her mother met her, asked her the reason for coming, and for leaving the sheep, and reproached her. And as the maid innocently answered: ‘Did you send for me?’ Her mother answered, ‘No.’ Then thinking that she had been deceived by the youth, she wishes to return to her companions, when suddenly a shining cloud is spread before her eyes, and from the cloud was heard a voice, saying to her: ‘Johanna, you must lead a different life, and perform wondrous deeds, for you are she whom the King of Heaven has chosen to restore the kingdom of the French, and to aid and protect the King Charles, who has been driven from his kingdom. You must don men’s clothing, and taking up arms you will be the leader of the war; all things will be done by your counsel.’ The voice having so declared, the cloud disappeared, and the Maid amazed by such a prophecy, and not at first believing what she had heard, but much perplexed whether she ought to believe it or not, in her innocence paid no heed to it. By day and by night similar apparitions came to the maid and occurred again and again; she held her peace; she revealed her thoughts only to the priest of the presbytery, and remained in that perplexity for the space of nearly five years.
There is a lot of meat to chew on here, but there is another important source. In the trial that ended her life, 1431, she was extensively questioned and several facts there emerged about the genesis of her spiritual guide(s):
Afterwards she declared that at the age of thirteen she had a voice from God to help her and guide her. And the first time she was much afraid. And this voice came towards noon, in summer, in her father’s garden: and the said Jeanne had fasted on the preceding day. She heard the voice on her right, in the direction of the church; and she seldom heard it without a light. This light came from the same side as the voice, and generally there was a great light. When she came to France she often heard the voice. Asked how she could see the light of which she spoke, since it was at the side, she made no reply, and went on to other things [Joan often told the judges ‘next question’, this may have been one such case]. She said that if she was in a wood she easily heard the voices come to her. It seemed to her a worthy voice, and she believed it was sent from God; when she heard the voice a third time she knew that it was the voice of an angel. She said also that this voice always protected her well and that she understood it well.
What must be immediately clear is that these two accounts are incompatible as her first experience. They cannot be – surely – the same episode? Very likely the developing Joan experienced a series of revelations and very possibly she felt the first was too dangerous to share with her interrogators? Can we trust these two different accounts then? The first account was written not by Joan but by an ally trying to explain and perhaps intimidate a foreign magnate. It was written to the glory of France and the dauphin not to the glory of soon-to-be-charcoal Joan. The second account was given to a group of hostile and often obnoxious men who clearly intended to kill ‘the maid’. Everything Joan said there has to be taken up with pincers as she was justifying but also protecting herself. What can we learn about the genesis of Joan’s chats with God and his messengers? A few things stand out.
The voices began at what might well have been puberty for a French peasant girl. Puberty often marks a threshold with these matters…
The voice was perceived as being external in as much as it appeared from one side. This was not a voice in the head as some ‘hearers’ report.
Joan ‘saw’ the voice with a light. Lights are sometimes associated with visions and rationalists have tried to explain them, at times, as neurological events (migraines etc). See for example the vast literature on Paul’s vision in the desert.
The detail about hearing the voices in the wood is interesting: in the modern world this would perhaps mean nothing more than in a quiet, lonely place, but why the woods rather than the field?
The claim that the boy told her to go to her mother is unaccountable: he lied. For me this rings a very vague bell, but not sure what… He must have been a ghost figure, see the peculiar detail about the boy being perhaps her brother.
There are several triggers for visions including sleep, repetitive tasks, and intense physical activity. Note the last in relation to running around the field.
She had a confidant in the local priest. It would be fascinating to know more about how he treated the young visionary.
As to that field game are we dealing with a simple childish fancy or was this a medieval fertility ritual: sorry almost certainly too much Golden Bough at an impressionable age…
A couple of other thoughts. Later in the trial Joan admitted that the voices often came with church bells. (One of her interrogators makes the interesting point that perhaps the noise of the bells sounded like voices). She also came to believe that the first voice was St Michael, the instrument of God’s wrath in the world and one that the French were particularly fond of in their wars against the English.
Other insights into Joan and those voices: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com She is one of those very few historical figures, like Garabaldi, Mannerheim, say, who never gets old….
It is a great pity that we do not have the text of the early examination from Poitiers. Coming from a sympathetic but judicial perspective it would have had the virtues of both accounts above without, perhaps, their vices.
29 Nov 2014: Chris S writes: Great, provocative article. My kneejerk response is Joan was clearly of a bicameral, or schizophrenic, mindset. The former since it’s more constructive, while the latter has been relegated to mental pathology. For those unfamiliar with Julian Jaynes, he proposed that humans before the iron age were privy to auditory and visual hallucinations telling them what to do. It’s a tricky, yet tantalizing, hypothesis since a strong argument against it is how can a large population share the same hallucination, or see what someone else is “seeing”? At first blush it could imply there’s a latent psychic power allowing a sharing of thoughts and hallucinations, except the end of The Origins of Consciousness presents a screed against all things parapsychological. Anyway, I digress. ‘Later in the trial Joan admitted that the voices often came with church bells.’ This really stood out to me. A dear friend of mine, and some of her family, are epileptics and they’re very spiritual people. She told me how she and her father would ‘hear’ bells and other auditory phenomena as a prelude to a seizure. Bringing us back to Jaynes. EEG observations, pre-1976, suggest both brain hemispheres rapidly switch off activity between each other in a matter of seconds. In schizophrenics, it could take up to four minutes for this switching to take place. In short, connectivity between hemispheres is greatly inhibited in schizophrenics compared to neurotypical subjects. The same is seen with people suffering temporal lobe epilepsy. AFAIK, correlation not causation. Still intriguing. The phenomenon I referenced is called “aura” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_%28symptom%29 EC writes, ‘Have you read Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? A fascinating book which is relevant here because he theorises that the “gods” that ancient peoples describe speaking to were in fact their right brains, split at that time from their left and appearing to communicate as separate entities. He proposes that e.g. Odysseus was one of the earliest unicameral-brained people – that is to say possessed of modern consciousness and not ‘guided by voices’. Perhaps the Maid of Orleans was one of the last bicameral-brained people?’ Ruththeunstoppablycurious calls out brain problems Personally, sounds like Joannie had either a brain tumour of some kind or, possibly, migraines. Both can have similar symptoms such as sounds and lights (and sensitivity to), even voices and visions. I’ve had migraines with some similarity of symptoms. Though I don’t remember anyone reporting she was a sufferer of headaches.’ Thanks Chris EC and also Ruth!
