Joan's leap at Beaurevoir

Contemporary woodcut of Joan being led to prison

Back in the strange days of the poetry and the second sight, I'd hoped I might write a poem about this. But the muse absconded before I could do that. (Please come back, I need you, I love you.)

I still think about it, though, about Joan's leap at Beaurevoir, about the one time she went against her voices, as I continue to consider the great saint often. I re-read the trial transcript, always anticipating the questions about Joan's escape attempt from the tower, when contrary to the apparent urgings of Saint Catherine, she exited the window, perhaps 60 feet up, possibly using a homemade rope, which broke. Joan was knocked unconscious, and her leg was damaged in the fall. She was recaptured quickly. (She'd tried to escape before. In her cell at Beaulieu she'd pulled up loose boards, let herself down to the ground floor, where she found herself just outside the door to her guards' room, and the keys by the door. She was caught just as she was about to lock them in. But she was irrepressible.)

Despite the great pain of knowing its outcome for Joan, the trial transcript is inspiring reading. As W.S. Scott says, "Her patience, her good humor, her religious faith, and her common sense -- a quality which so strongly marked everything she did and said -- never failed."

All of that is here in this very brief excerpt regarding her escape attempt at Beaurevoir:

Concerning the tower of Beaurevoir:

She answered: I did not do it out of despair, but in the hope of saving my life and of going to help a number of good people who were in need. And after leaping she made a confession and asked pardon of Our Lord. And she believes that she did wrong in making the leap.

She said also that she knew by revelation from Saint Catherine that she had received forgiveness after she had confessed. And it was by Saint Catherine's advice that she had confessed it.

Asked if she had been given a heavy penance, she said that she herself bore a large part of it in the hurt she received in falling.

The transcript