Jeanne des Armoises

Jeanne des Armoises († after 1457) was one of several women who passed themselves off as this after the death of Joan of Arc in 1431. Supposedly she escaped the pyre. The story of Jeanne des Armoises is described in a document that was found in Metz in 1686 : the Chronicle of the Dechents of St. Thiébault in Metz ( Chronique du Doyen de St Thiébault de Metz ).

Story of Jeanne des Armoises

According to the chronicle mentioned above, the young woman appeared in the Metz area on May 20, 1436, posing as Jeanne la Pucelle and calling herself Claude . She was identified as her sister by several of the town's citizens and nobles, and most notably the brothers Pierre and Jean du Lys, who were present. The nobleman Nicole Louve, who had once witnessed the anointing of Charles VII in Reims , identified her on the basis of wound scars and birthmarks. From this Jeanne-Claude received a horse and two other nobles as an escort. However, the Metzer Chronicle stated in a later entry that many citizens and nobles of the city had been defrauded.

Together with the du Lys brothers, Jeanne-Claude rode into Vaucouleurs on May 21 , where she presumably met Joan of Arc's old comrade in arms, Robert de Baudricourt . She then spent three weeks in Marieulles in the house of a noble family in Metz, before setting off on a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Liesse . From there she traveled with the du Lys brothers to Arlon , to the court of Duchess Elisabeth of Luxembourg . There she appeared as a "former Burgundian prisoner", even though the Duchess was allied with the Duke of Burgundy .

During her time in Arlon, Jeanne-Claude was drawn into the investiture feud for the Archdiocese of Trier . The son of the Luxembourg Seneschal Ruprecht IV , Count Ruprecht V. von Virneburg, had fallen in love with her. The Virneburgs supported the excommunicated Ulrich von Manderscheid as a candidate for the Archbishopric of Trier against the Archbishop Raban von Helmstatt, who was recognized by the Pope and Emperor . The Virneburgs placed Jeanne-Claude as the “savior of France” at the head of a mercenary army with whom she entered Cologne on August 2, 1436 . Coincidentally, the Grand Inquisitor Heinrich Kalteisen was also in the city and immediately started investigations against the supposed Pucelle . As Johannes Nider reports in his Formicarius , she wore weapons and armor, drank vast quantities of wine in the town's taverns and boasted of enthroning a bishop, just as she had once helped the King of France to the throne. But in the end she was also excommunicated by Kalteisen for doing magic, wearing men's clothes and supporting a banned person . She and Virneburg therefore had to flee Cologne back to Arlon on August 25th. This episode contributed indirectly to the fact that Duchess Elisabeth of Luxembourg was effectively disempowered in Luxembourg by her anti-Burgundian uncle, Emperor Sigismund .

Jeanne-Claude initially lived on with the Duchess in Arlon, from where she maintained a lively correspondence to Orléans , Chinon , Vaucouleurs and even wrote personally to King Charles VII. The Duchess finally married her around November 1436 to Robert des Armoises, lord of the castle at Jaulny in Lorraine , twenty years her senior . Her husband was related to Robert de Baudricourt through a first marriage. In a notarized deed by the Duchess, which was written for a sale shortly after the wedding, Jeanne-Claude is officially referred to as Jeanne du Lys, pucelle de France for the first time . The couple moved to Metz, where they lived in a house opposite the Saint-Sigolène church. Presumably Jeanne-Claude fought against the English in La Rochelle in the years up to 1439 . In any case, the King of Castile had received a letter from a virgin in France, in which he was asked to provide arms aid for the French fighting there, which he actually granted.

In the summer of 1439 Jeanne-Claude appeared in Orléans , whose citizenship identified her as Joan of Arc. In honor of the victory against the English ( Siege of Orléans ) a big festival was held, and she received a gift of money from the city. But shortly afterwards she had to flee the city for Paris , but there, too, she was exposed as a fraudster in September 1439. She was arrested and charged as a " usurper ". Before a public parliament (court) she finally had to admit that she was not Joan of Arc. From this process it can be inferred that Jeanne-Claude had two children with her husband. Apparently she was not punished, because in 1440 she found a job as a field captain in the mercenary army of Gilles de Rais , Marshal of France and former comrade Joan of Arc in Poitou . After de Rais was executed in the same year, Jeanne-Claude was relieved of her post as captain of the field in 1441 on the personal orders of the king. Allegedly she then received an audience with King Charles VII, from whom she was interviewed in a personal conversation. In doing so, however, she was unable to give him information about confidentiality that the king had once shared with Joan of Arc, whereupon Jeanne-Claude had to admit her false identity again.

Jeanne-Claude probably did not have to fear any criminal consequences again. She was mentioned for the last time in 1457 when the “good king” René de Anjou issued her a letter of protection, which was supposed to protect her from further legal proceedings for her frauds.

A Louis des Armoises, who could have been one of Jeanne-Claude's children, was killed in 1477 in the battle of Nancy .

reception

From historical revisionist literature (see de Sermoise and Atten) Jeanne-Claude des Armoises is identified as a real Joan of Arc. The identification of her person by several citizens of Metz and Orléans and especially the brothers du Lys is used as proof of her theses. However, this is rejected by the traditional specialist literature. Above all, the construction of a Jeanne d'Arc biography after 1431 is criticized because it is based on pure speculations and assumptions, such as the allegedly noble origin of Joan of Arc, which made it possible for her to survive after 1431. The identification by the Brothers du Lys is seen as an attempt to profit from a fraud.

In the choir of the church of Pulligny ( Département Meurthe-et-Moselle ) there was allegedly a tombstone that belonged to Dame Jeanne du Lys, pucelle de France . For the canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920 he was removed.

literature

• Pierre de Sermoise: Joan of Arc and Her Secret Missions. London 1973
• Alain Atten: Jeanne-Claude des Armoises: an adventure between the Maas and the Rhine, 1436. In: Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch. Volume 19, 1975
• Jules Quicherat: Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc dite la pucelle. Volume 5, Paris 1849, with the chapter fausse Jeanne d'Arc
• Hans Prutz : The false maiden of Orléans 1436-1457. Munich 1911
• Ph. Contamine: Jeanne des Armoises. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages. Volume 5, Munich and Zurich 1991
• Sabine Tanz : Jeanne d'Arc. Late medieval mentality reflected in a worldview. Weimar 1991
• Sven Rech: Jeanne d'Arc retired? Incredible things in Jaulny Castle. In: Tour de Kultur: Our most beautiful voyages of discovery, SR 3 . Edited by Stefan Müller. PVS Edition, Pressevertrieb Saar, 2007. ISBN 978-3-937811-04-8 , pages 136–141.