Helen Castor’s biography of Joan of Arc is a good account of The Maid’s life that doesn’t get too lost in the weeds and stands out in part as a result of her interesting choice of framing for the narrative. I enjoyed reading it but at the same time I think I may have somewhat ruined books like this for myself by digging a little too deep into the mines of history. As a result it left me a little unsatisfied in ways that will probably not affect most readers.
This is a fairly straightforward narrative history of the life of Joan of Arc and the times in which she lived. Castor does a good job establishing the necessary context of the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War that is crucial to understanding Joan of Arc and her importance which makes this a reasonably approachable book for people not already familiar with the Hundred YearsWar. What makes the narrative particularly interesting, though, is in how Castor engages with the sources for Joan’s life. Joan was famously burned at the stake in English-ruled France, but that followed a very lengthy and involved trial of her for heresy and sorcery. The records of that trial survive, as do records from a posthumous re-trial ordered by King Charles VII after the English had been driven from France. The evidence from these trials has traditionally been used to explore Joan’s early life, which is missing from other sources, as well as providing more context to what Joan thought as well as how she was remembered by those who met her. This is not unreasonable, but as Castor points out the trials were looking back on Joan’s legacy after the fact and thus can lead us into a teleological view of her life and personality - i.e. one defined by what we already know she did. Instead, Castor takes a framework based on the chronology of the sources - so after establishing appropriate context she begins when Joan first appears in the chronicles and only describes Joan’s early life at the end of the book when covering the trial. This is a novel approach and one that works very well.
That said, the problem I have with this book, and it is a personal problem, is that except for the trials there is very little source criticism in it. The thing I love most about Anne Curry’s books is when she gets into the nitty gritty of what the chronicles and other sources are, their strengths, weakness, when they were written, and their life since their writing. I love this kind of deep dive into source material and Castor is not doing that in this book. Now, she is not doing it for understandable reasons: most popular history readers don’t want that. This is what I mean when I say I may have slightly ruined these kinds of books for myself. I don’t always want to be reading academic history, but when I’m reading popular history I miss some of that more academic analysis.
A more serious criticism of the book would be that Castor owes a non-zero amount to Shakespeare in her characterization of Charles VII and his reign. The book falls into a portrayal of the French king as adrift between his advisors, in this case Castor places emphasis on his mother-in-law as the primary mover. I think that M.G.A. Vale’s biography of the king, written way back in the 1970s, did a great job of disproving the idea of Charles as man controlled by those around him, but Shakespeare is hard to overcome and I found it a bit frustrating to see in this book. I know from the bibliography that Castor is not unfamiliar with Vale’s work, so this is not an oversight but I would suspect more the result of how including a bit of that Shakespeare makes for a more interesting narrative that better fits the kind of book this is. It’s not a deal breaker, and hardly unique to Castor, but it is a bit of a personal bugbear of mine.
Overall, as a popular history of Joan of Arc this is a good read especially for people who aren’t already familiar with the Hundred Years War. For me, I think I prefer Kelly DeVries’ biography, but that is more of a pure military history and thus appeals to my military historian tendencies. I suspect that most people would get more out of Castor’s book than DeVries’.