Women Writers Through History | Medieval Poet Christine de Pizan, First to Honor the Historical Warrior, Joan of Arc

Christine de Pizan (1364 – c. 1430)

"Jeanne d'Arc et le siège d'Orléans" by medieval poet Christine de Pizan (1429) was the first poem to honor the historic Jeanne d’Arc. Several legends attributed to St. Bede the Venerable, Euglide of Hungary, and Merlin, among others, proclaimed that a young Maiden would save France from destruction. Jeanne d’Arc was that maiden. First, her village was near the border between France and the Duchy of Lorraine. Second, she had come forward to confess that God had told her this was to be.

In May 1428, Joan traveled to Vaucouleurs. She attracted a small band who believed her claims to be the virgin who would save France. Baudricort, who was in charge of the eminent battle, finally agreed to allow her to proceed. With cropped hair and dressed in white armor, she took command of an army from King Charles. Joan led her soldiers to fend off the Siege of Orléans in March 1429. After firing off a defiant letter to the enemy, Joan led several French assaults against the English, forcing them to retreat across the Loire River. One miraculous victory after another followed. She and her army escorted Charles to be crowned King Charles VII in July 1429.

In the spring of 1430, the king ordered Joan to confront England’s Burgundian allies in an assault on Compiégne. Joan was thrown from her horse and abandoned outside the town’s gates as they closed. The Burgundians took her captive and turned her over to the English. The ungrateful King Charles left her to her fate. Tried by the Church, she was charged with over seventy counts, including witchcraft, heresy, and dressing like a man. They sentenced her to be burned at the stake.

“The Poem of Joan of Arc” comprises sixty-one stanzas of four hundred eighty-eight lines. Following is a quote from the poem which shows the admiration that Christine had for Joan of Arc:

XXXIV

What honor for the female Sex!

God’s love for it appears quite clear,

Because the kingdom laid to waste

By all those wretched people now

Stands safe, a woman recused it

(A hundred thousand men could not

Do that) and killed the hostile foe!

A thing beyond belief before!

XXXVI

While ridding France of enemies,

Retaking town and castle both

No force was ever quite so great,

If hundreds or if thousands strong!

Among our men so brave and apt,

She’s captain over all; such strength

No Hector or Achilles had.

All this God does, who’s guiding her.

(Translated from Le Ditie de Jahnne D’Arc, by Thelma Fenster.)

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