Key notes in Scene 6

• This is not trial by jury under civil law, but is an ecclesiastical court, addressing heresy. De Stogumber and Courcelles press for criminal charges to be leveled, but the judges refuse to allow such trivialities to occupy the time of their court.

• George Bernard Shaw sets out to restore the reputation of Joan’s judges, which has been subject to defamation following her posthumous rehabilitation. It is important to his purpose that the bishop and the Inquisitor are seen to be acting in good faith; Joan is challenging the fundamentals of their world-view, and their reaction should not be seen as shallow malice. George Bernard Shaw wants us to recognize that this is an extremely significant historical moment, so we must not be distracted by suspicion that this is a petty clash of personalities, or a mere divergence of opinions. Thus the Inquisitor speaks out against cruelty, and Cauchon condemns torture and ‘forced confessions’.

• Crucially, Joan refuses to deny that the voices she heard came directly from God. In privileging her own judgement above that of the Church she condemns herself. Ladvenu identifies in her ‘a terrible pride and self-sufficiency’. Roman Catholicism insists on the need for priests, and the mediation of the institution between individual worshippers and their God. It was one of the principal innovations of Protestantism to argue against the need for such mediation, and to stress the importance of the individual’s direct relationship with God.

• In medieval Europe, church services were invariably conducted in Latin, a language ordinary members of the congregation did not understand, while the ability to read the scriptures was the province of priests and monks alone. Protestantism required individual church members to be able to read the Bible, so the spread of literacy and use of vernacular languages was encouraged. In this scene, we are again reminded that Joan is illiterate and needs assistance even to write her name. Her spirit might have been Protestant, but the times were Roman Catholic, and that tension lies at the heart of her tragedy.

• Reference is made to Joan’s attempt to escape by leaping from a tower sixty feet high. Such an act would appear tenable only for someone with supernatural powers, and it is significant that although she dared to make the jump, Joan was injured in the process. This future saint was not blessed with capabilities denied to other human beings; rather, George Bernard Shaw insists, she was reckless in her single-mindedness. Her recklessness might be perceived as foolishness, but it is a manifestation of that same strength of will which enabled her to inspire those soldiers who followed her. She was not different in kind, but manifested greater intensity of purpose than most other people.

• Warwick’s allegiance to the order upheld by the feudal aristocracy takes precedence over his observance of religious imperatives, to the point of risking damnation, in the bishop’s view. Feudalism and the medieval Catholic Church were based on assumptions that were essentially international. At this point in history, it was becoming evident that despite their shared horizons there was no guarantee of an alignment of interests between the institutions. Indeed, the Inquisitor declares that ‘All secular power makes men scoundrels’ (pg 118) There are clear indications that the old European social and cultural order is starting to disintegrate.

• Through his characterization of de Stogumber, George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dramatist, continues his attack on English arrogance. The chaplain believes that the voices of saints heard by Joan would necessarily have spoken English. George Bernard Shaw detected an assumption amongst the English of divinely ordained privilege. But note that Joan takes a common language to be the basis for shared national identity. Ironically, a solid grounding for nationalist sentiment, so greatly feared by the feudal order, is already evident in de Stogumber’s chauvinism. His name is French, but his outlook is aggressively English, with all the insularity that this might imply from a continental European point of view. The chaplain is Joan’s most vociferous opponent, but his crude sense of national identity makes him in effect her close ally. Perhaps the shock he experiences when witnessing her burning at the end of the scene is not such a complete reversal as it initially appears.

• The Inquisitor notes that heresies often begin with saintly simplicity. This is an important observation, for George Bernard Shaw recognized that a very thin line separated heresy and saintliness in a case such as Joan’s. If the Church accepted the authenticity of her voices and visions then she would be a saint; if it denied their divine origin, she would be a heretic. This is the pivotal point on which the historical reversal of Joan’s reputation rested.

• The Inquisitor is allowed a long soliloquy in which he condemns the dangers of unorthodox behaviour. This outlook will offend modern liberal sensibilities, but George Bernard Shaw has Lemaitre speak emphatically against cruelty. This may seem to contradict the popular view of the Inquisition, as an institution that operated with uncompromising severity, but George Bernard Shaw’s point is that secular morality is inadequate to grasp the compassionate basis of Inquisitorial judgement, summed up in the declaration that ‘if you hate cruelty, remember that nothing is so cruel in its consequences as the toleration of heresy’ (pg 123). Within the terms of his understanding of the world, Lemaitre is a man of real integrity, although we should not overlook his declaration that habit has inured him to public burnings. When a meaningful system for living is reduced to the dull workings of habit, some form of change is surely necessary.

• Joan confronts her inquisitors with an earthy common sense. There is a clear disjunction between their sophisticated understanding and her own impassioned but simple beliefs. Employing characteristically colloquial idiom she calls her prosecutor, Courcelles, ‘a rare noodle’ because he mindlessly follows precedent (pg 128). The effect is comic, especially when Courcelles repeats the term. George Bernard Shaw seeks to intensify the audience’s feeling of warmth towards the artless honesty of the Maid. But it is important to recognize that precedent was paramount in this feudal, Catholic society, with its resistance to change and its respect for established authority. Joan’s rejection of the patterns of the past was nothing short of revolutionary.

• The characterization of Cauchon becomes a matter of great importance at this stage of the play. He has the perspicacity to see how Joan’s Protestant denials of the Church threaten its future, and he responds with a sense of the historical moment, rather than reacting with the hostility of blind prejudice. He laments the barbarity of the English soldiers who conduct the burning. Cauchon is keen to halt their impropriety. The Inquisitor advises him not to hurry; the court itself has proceeded correctly, and if the English now violate the proper order of execution it ‘may be useful later on: one never knows’ (pg 139). This prescient insight suggests that Lemaitre would not have been entirely surprised that, 5 hundred years later, Joan would be canonized as a saint by that very Church that had excommunicated her, and had handed her over to her doom. He recognizes the quality of innocence within the guileless young woman.

• Warwick remarks to Ladvenu that Joan’s case is concluded. The monk replies enigmatically that ‘It may have just begun’ (pg 142). Here is further apparent prescience, with another intelligent and sensitive member of the Catholic Church recognizing some of the implications for history of Joan’s life and death. The comment also serves to prepare the audience for the surprises in the Epilogue.

the Holy Office : the Inquisition

Moab : region of Jordan, to the east of the Dead Sea

Ammon : region to the north of Moab

St Athanasius : (c.296 – AD 373) Bishop of Alexandria for 45 year commencing in AD 328

SAINT JOAN scene 6

Joan’s trial for heresy is staged at Rouen. She is found guilty and passed to the secular authorities for punishment. Captain de Stogumber, shocked by what he has witnessed, describes how she has been burnt at the stake.

A great hall in a castle at Rouen, on a fine sunny day, 30 May 1431, is the setting for the ecclesiastical trial. The Earl of Warwick enters, and is soon followed by Bishop Peter Cauchon, accompanied by Brother John Lemaitre, a Dominican monk, and John D’Estivet, Canon of the Chapter of Bayeux. Warwick discusses with Cauchon the imminent trial of the Maid. The bishop explains that Lemaitre, a representative of the Inquisition, is a specialist in combating heresy. D’Estivet will act as prosecutor of the case.

Warwick observes that it is 9 months since Joan was taken prisoner by Burgundian troops. It is 4 months since he purchased her from their custody, before passing her to Cauchon as a suspected heretic. He is eager to have proceedings completed, and the Maid sentenced. The bishop explains that lengthy examination of the prisoner has been taking place.

Lemaitre says he has detected grave heresy. This pleases Warwick, but Cauchon asserts his determination to ensure a fair trial for Joan, insisting that the Church must be just. The Inquisitor speaks of Cauchon’s devotion to fair conduct, and of his determination to save the Maid’s soul, if possible. Warwick’s view is that Joan’s death is ‘a political necessity’ (pg 177), but Cauchon angrily declares that the Church is not subject to such necessity. The Inquisitor states bluntly that Joan will die, because every utterance she makes convicts her.

Warwick departs, so the ecclesiastical court may assemble. Cauchon occupies one of the judicial seats, the Inquisitor takes the other. The assessors enter, led by de Stogumber had Canon de Courcelles. De Stogumber complains that the sixty-four-point indictment against Joan has been reduced without consultation. The Inquisitor replies that 12 charges will suffice. Cauchon agrees that heresy is the real issue, and speaks out against the arch-heresy of Protestantism, which poses a serious threat to the ‘structure of Catholic Christendom’ (pg 124).

Joan is admitted to the court, dressed in black and chained by the ankles. She shows physical signs that imprisonment has affected her adversely, but her vitality is still evident. She tells the bishop that a carp he sent for her meal has made her ill, and she complains that the English are unjust goalers, determined to see her burnt as a witch. She asks why the Church does not oversee her captivity.

Martin Ladvenu, another Dominican monk, brings home to Joan the imminence of her execution through burning at a stake. She is horrified at the prospect, and looks around for help. Impetuously, she concedes that voices have devilishly led her to the verge of death. Ladvenu, believing God has intervened to save her at the 11^th hour, hurriedly drafts a recantation, which he asks her to sign. She discloses that she cannot write her name, as she is illiterate.

De Stogumber in infuriated, sensing that the woman is slipping away from the doom he desires for her. He declares that the English will kill her anyway, and calls Cauchon a traitor. Still, Ladvenu reads the recantation to Joan. She signs, assisted by Ladvenu’s guiding hand, but as a stage direction indicates, she is ‘tormented by the rebellion of the soul against her mind and body’ (pg 136). The Inquisitor declares her free from the threat of excommunication, and Joan thanks him.He then announces that on account of her sins she is condemned to spend the rest of her days ‘in perpetual imprisonment’ (pg 137). Joan is shocked, and , tearing up the signed document, she affirms that her voices were right, and demands that the fire be prepared for her burning. She confronts her accusers with the charge that they follow the devil, while she follows God.

The executioner and his assistants leave to prepare the flames. Joan declares that it is God’s will that she should ‘go through the fire to His bosom’ (pg 138). Cauchon and the Inquisitor pronounce her excommunication, and pass her over to the secular powers, with an admonition to them to show compassion in the mode of execution. Joan is led from the court. The assessors depart, with the exception of Ladvenu, who is appalled at the outcome. The judges ask him to oversee the proper conduct of the execution, but he intends to stand at Joan’s side as sympathizer rather than a persecutor.

Cauchon deplores the manner in which the English are staging the burning. The Inquisitor is more reconciled to the course of events and declares. ‘One gets used to it. Habit is everything. I am accustomed to the fire: it is soon over’ (pg 139). Unexpectedly, he argues that Joan is innocent, in the sense that her ignorance was her downfall.

Warwick enters. The Inquisitor leaves to witness the end of the execution. It is clear that Warwick and Cauchon have disparate views as regards the extent of their authority. The bishop departs. After a short while, Warwick is joined by de Stogumber. He was the most vociferous advocate of burning for the witch, but now he is tormented by what he has witnessed. In the midst of the horror, Joan called out to Christ. She asked for a cross, and was given one, hastily contrived from two sticks. De Stogumber is horrified that some people laughed at her, and he suggests they would have made fun of Christ at His crucifixion.

Ladvenu arrives, carrying a bishop’s cross. He asserts that Joan’s death showed her to be blessed by Christ, and suggests that her physical death was merely the beginning of a new mode of existence. De Stogumber rushes wildly from the room declaring himself a Judas, who should take his own life. Warwick sends Ladvenu to constrain the chaplain. As he exits, the Master Executioner of Rouen appears, and announces proudly that Warwick’s bidding has been done. Joan’s remains have been disposed of in the river, although her heart would not burn. When he tells Warwick that he has heard the last of her, the earl smiles uneasily, recalling Ladvenu’s words to the contrary.

Key notes in Scene 5

• Dunois calls Joan ‘my little saint’ (pg 101). It took until 1920 for the Church to endorse his estimation.
  

• George Bernard Shaw refers to the cathedral’s bells as a medium for the voices Joan hears.The sound of the bells acts as a focus for the vivid work of her imagination. When Charles asks why the voices do not visit him, as king. Joan replies, ‘They do come to you; but you do not hear them’ (pg 106). George Bernard Shaw believed that receptiveness was a quality crucial for greatness. Joan had the capacity to become an agent of the Life Force, enabling it to operate through her actions and words.

• To Dunois’ observation, ‘We never know when we are beaten’. She retorts, ‘You never know when you are victorious’ (pg 106). The positive single-mindedness of her vision is a source of great strength, but it also results in a naïve incapacity to grasp the political reality of her situation. She is incapable of understanding, until it is spelled out for her, that the men who wield power regard her as a threat, and will take drastic action to negate her influence.

• Identifying Joan’s pride the archbishop remarks, ‘The old Greek tragedy is rising among us. It is the chastisement of hubris’ (pg 106). Despite her chirpy colloquial speech, Joan is intended as a tragic hero, and George Bernard Shaw makes that explicit here. ‘Hubris’ is the term used in Greek tragedy to identify self-confidence that blinds tragic figures to the inevitable fate that will follow their indifference to laws authorized by the gods. There are no gods of that order in George Bernard Shaw’s play; rather, it is the nature of power, the character of those who possess it, and above all the weight of tradition, that determine the immediate outcome of Joan’s life. It is the function of the play’s Epilogue to show how Joan, after her death, will rise above those factors that circumscribed her earthly fate.

• Joan draws readily on proverbial wisdom, such as ‘If ifs and ans were pots and pans there’d be no need of tinkers’ (pg 108). This is the orally transmitted wisdom of a rural culture, using unsophisticated examples in readily remembered formulas. People of Joan’s class inhabited a world without books, although before long literacy would cease to be the Protestant spirit of the Reformation. Joan, despite her rustic manner, speaks for the future, not the past.

• In particular, she understands that war has been altered by the intention of gunpowder. The impact of continuing technological change had been felt profoundly during the recent First World War. In the Preface George Bernard Shaw suggests that Joan’s intuitive grasp of the nature of modern warfare foreshadowed the calculating strategies of Napoleon. In this scene, Bluebeard harks back to Caesar and Alexander for his skeptical comparisons. All were agents of significant historical change, but arguably Joan’s example of Protestant nationalism has produced the most far-reaching legacy.

• The archbishop attributes Joan’s voices to her ‘wilfulness’ (pg 110). He is suggesting that she is obstinate, but the will to act has been a concern throughout the play. In the initial scene, de Beaudicourt is seen to compensate for lack of will through bluster and bullying. The Dauphin’s weakness is attributable to still greater deficiency of will. For George Bernard Shaw, the Will was the motor of history, operating through certain individual, and what the archbishop takes to be mere stubbornness is actually a manifestation of the Life Force finding an effective outlet.

• Joan has reached a crucial turning point in her life. Isolated, her fortunes now enter a downward spiral. She remarks here that she has always been alone, and refers to her father’s threat to have her drowned if she failed to watch his sheep. George Bernard Shaw refers in the Preface to his blatant example of patriarchal oppression, an attempt to curb her attraction to soldiering, and to confine the young woman within the conventional limits allocated to her gender.

of Agincourt, of Poitiers and Crecy : battles in the Hundred Years War

SAINT JOAN scene 5

Following the coronation of Charles VII, Joan speaks with Dunois, the king, and the archbishop, within the cathedral at Rheims. It becomes apparent that despite her success she is an isolated and vulnerable figure.

The setting is the cathedral at Rheims, immediately following the coronation of King Charles. Joan, dressed beautifully but still in masculine fashion, is praying. An organ is playing. As the music fades, Dunois appears, and tells Joan to desist praying as the people in the streets are calling for her. She has no desire to share the limelight with the king, and speaks of the fear she experiences before a battle, and boredom once the action has passed.

Dunois warns her that she has offended the powerful and the ambitious, and should expect them to seek revenge. She tells him, ‘the world is too wicked for me’ (pg 102). Only the saintly voices sustain her. She hears them in the sound of church bells. Dunois considers her excessively fanciful.

The king appears, accompanied by Bluebeard and La Hire. Joan conceals herself behind a pillar. The king’s remarks show him still to be a weak character; he has failed to take on the dignity of kingship along with its trappings. Joan emerges. She feels discouraged by Charles’ inappropriate attitude and demeanor, and declares her intention to return to her father’s farm. It is evident that she is not wanted at the Court, despite her role in crowning the Dauphin. He is clearly unsettled by her.

She then speaks, with apparent prescience, of her death. Dunois says that from recent experience he has learnt to take war seriously, and he is confident that he will drive the English from France. Joan wants to capture Paris before she departs, to ensure the king has his capital city. The prospect of further conflict horrifies the timid Charles.

The archbishop enters. He chastises Joan for not showing proper respect to the king and his Court. He accuses her of ‘the sin of pride’ (pg 106). Dunois advises that although she has had God on her side, and continuance of God’s support. He argues that the time has come for them to assume responsibility for their own work. He points to his own contribution as a general engaged in practical necessities, rather than a worker of miracles. But Joan counters that with the advent of gunpowder his conception of warfare is outmoded. She suggests that the men should be less obsessed with her perceived pride and more concerned with the truth she conveys.

Dunois cautions that Joan never counts the cost of her adventures, adding that ‘she thinks she has God in her pocket’ (pg 109). Her recklessness will lead to capture, with a prize of 16 thousand pounds for her mercenary captor. When the mystique that surrounds her miracles is punctured, she will lose her following amongst the French troops. Charles says he will have no money to pay a ransom, and the archbishop announces, to her evident horror, that Joan, once captured, will be denounced a witch.

Joan is forced to realize that she is effectively alone in the world of human affairs, but she sustains faith in her heavenly friends and advisers. She concludes that ‘the loneliness of God is His strength’ (pg 112), and vows to draw strength from him until she meets her death. She departs, leaving the men impressed by her ‘dangerous power’, yet fearing the worst for her (pg 113).