Jeanne d'Arc by Lucien Fabre (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Fabre, Lucien: Jeanne d'Arc. Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1948. 554 pages. Jeanne d'Arc is a splendid and thoroughly readable biography of a great Saint,, a great national heroine. With lhe scholarship and devolion Lucien Fabre has brought to his task, it is right that we should expect a finely proportioned historical study, — the fruit of an abundant research, the singularly evident teslimony of a labor of love. Perhaps Monsieur Fabre's happiest researches were those lending him the materials for a plausible reconstruction of day-by-day life of Domreny. He has provided us not only with most finished of settings, but he has encouraged us to breathe in great draughts of that atmosphere fifteenth-century Lorrainers thrived on. In our own day when common talk is war — its gains, defeats, rumors; its own brand of conventionally acceptable ignorance of what the whole story may mean — we can pass from an appreciation of the 1951 variety of tensions and heartaches to not unlike worries and sorrows of the past. For us it should be easier to assess some of the elements in thai long war of altrition between France and England, where the winning of battles had not necessary connection with the winning of wars. The efforts and effects of war on Joan's contemporaries are reasonably described; historically sound, geographically positive, the account is vivid and vital. It may be for the first time that emphasis has been so adequately placed on small and varying localities, to the extent that the reader can carry his clue with confidence through the mazes of unknown milieux, — say that of Burgundy or of the Ile de France. He can quite comprehend where he is going. This is a most satisfactory state of affairs. No less skill is displayed in testing the data regarding such eminent actors as La Tremoille and Regnault of Chartres. Unfortunately, it is not possible to accept the tolal book quite so cheerfully. There are, indeed, not many blotches marring the perfect whole, but those few are sufficiently marked to bear down heavily against the author. Monsieur Fabre has himself told thai it is impossible, practically, to stand aloof from partisanship where Joan comes up for appraisal. 104 BOOK REVIEWS105 Nor does Fabre play the historian too well in this respect: he writes with too many exclamations points that indicate a feeling akin to what he might have experienced against the national enemy in 1429. He has given himself the dubious advanlage of a perfervid fifteenth century Frenchman. The book is easily far along the way towards the realizalion of a definitive biography of the Maid of France; but the quick pulse of the author spoils hope for the time being. Feeling appears to have led Monsieur Fabre to a few conclusions. If that is too strong, it has at least provided him scope for some rich rhetoric. The case against Bedford and the English occupation does not rest — nor does Monsieur Fabre so rest it — on the regent's nose. But thai unfortunate member is a good accounting index for nearly every odious characteristic. Although Bedford is but one of three bêtes farouches, he is easily the mosl poisonous. Charles VII, a second, is excused from the tale his own unprepossessing physiognomy might tell. Yet the case for Charles VII in the process of rehabilitation is at least debatable. Monsieur Fabre finds his silence in Joan's plight "as admirable as it was needful", the result of an understanding of lhe deep lhings of political craftsmanship. It may have been so, but proof might not come easily. It is difficult to bolster up a sound, round argument for his devotion to Joan. Charles had everything to gain from the restoration of her good name. Many thought he owed his throne to witchcraft. If that first iniquitous travesty of juslice had nol been repudiaied, Charles would have slayed personally untouched by lhe effort: the plea, it is remembered, was arranged as emanating from the Arc's. But the most serious flaw is the author's apotheosis of Jean Gerson . In high regard as an ascetical theologian, Gerson may have been. May his reputation not have...