Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc) (January

Clothing

During her campaigns and imprisonment, Joan of Arc wore clothing more commonly worn by men. Her motive is given in her own words, either quoted directly or via eyewitnesses who knew her.

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A summary of this evidence would be as follows:

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• During her campaigns she said - as quoted by chronicles such as "la Chronique de la Pucelle" - that she wore such clothing primarily to better safeguard her chastity while camped in the field with her troops, to discourage them from lusting after her, and because her saints had commanded her to adopt such clothing as part of her service in the army.
• She was quoted by a number of the clergy who took part in her trial, who later admitted that she had said repeatedly that she clung to such clothing in order to deter rape, and according to medieval clothing expert Adrien Harmand, the transcript of the earlier (Condemnation) trial confirms that she wore two layers of pants attached securely to the doublet with twenty fastenings, the outer pants being made of a boot-like leather, likewise attached with fasteners to the doublet. Such clothing provided her with more protection than an open dress would against attempted rape at the hands of her English guards. (See Harmand's: "Jeanne d'Arc, son costume, son armure", p 123, for the passage from the transcript and explanation; and pp 177-185 for an examination of the outer pants). Unlike modern pants such as blue jeans, these could be physically attached to the upper garment and (in the case of the outer pants), were made of hardened leather.

Additionally, the above accounts said that she was finally maneuvered into a "relapse" by two methods:

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• # after being forced to wear a dress under threat of immediate burning, her guards increased their attempts to abuse her in order to induce her to re-adopt the protective clothing, and
• # in the end they finally left her nothing else to wear except the offending male outfit, which she put back on after a prolonged argument with the guards that went on "until noon" (according to the bailiff at the trial, Jean Massieu). This was seized upon as an excuse to convict her by Pierre Cauchon, who had been placed as her judge by the English.

It's also likely that she wore male clothes for practical reasons: it eased her tasks at the battlefield (horse riding for example).

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Since the medieval Church granted an exemption for such necessity-based instances of "cross-dressing", as defined in the "Summa Theologica", "Scivias", etc, her actions were defended during her campaigns by a number of prominent clergy such as the Archbishop of Embrun, the famous theologian Jean Gerson, etc, as well as by the clergy who were called upon to give their ruling at the postwar appeal of her case (the "Rehabilitation" or "Nullification" Trial) after the English were driven out of Rouen.

Related Topics:
Archbishop - Theologian - Jean Gerson

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