Jean de Meung
Jean de Meung owes his celebrity to his poetical genius rather than his alchemical powers; to his Roman de la Rose, rather than to his rhyming treatise upon the hermetic philosophy. He was born about 1280, and flourished through the reigns of Louis X., Philip the Long, Charles IV., and Philip de Valois. He appears to have possessed a light and railing wit, and a keen appreciation of a jest; and it may well be doubted whether he was altogether sincere in his praises of alchemy. Having composed a quatrain on woman, which stigmatized her in the strongest terms, the ladies of Charies VI.'s court resolved to revenge their affronted honour, and surrounding him in the royal antechanber, desired the courtiers present to strip him preparatory to their inflicting a sound flagellation. Jean solicited to be heard before he was condemned and punished; and having obtained an interval of grace, set forth, with fluent eloquence, that he was certainly the author of the calumnious verses, but that they were not intended to vilipend all womankind. He referred only to the vicious and debased, and not to such models of purity as he saw around him. Nevertheless, if any lady present felt that the verses really applied to her, he was her very humble servant, and would submit to a well-deserved chastisement. Like most of the medieval poets, Jean de Meung was a bitter enemy of the priesthood, and he contrived with great ingenuity a posthumous satire upon their inordinate greed. He bequeathed in his will, as a gift to the Cordeliers, a chest of immense weight. As his fame as an alchemist was wide-spread, the brotherhood accepted the legacy in the belief that the chest contained the golden results of his quest of the Philosopher's Stone. But when they opened it, their dismayed eyes rested only on a pile of slates, covered with the most unintelligible hieroglyphics and cabalistic characters. The perpetrator of this practical joke was hardly, we think, a very sincere believer in the wonders of alchemy. (See Devon, Witchcraft in.) Jeanne, D'Arc : Jeanne d'Arc was born in the village of Domrémy, near Vaucouleurs, on the border of Champagne and Lorraine, on Jan. 6th, 1412. She was taught to spin and sew, but not to read or write, these accomplishments being unusual and unnecessary to people in her station of life. Her parents were devout, and she was brought up piously. Her nature was gentle, modest, and religious; but with no physical weakness or morbidity; on the contrary, she was exceptionally strong, as her later history shows.
At or about the age of thirteen, Jeanne began to experience what psychology now calls " auditory hallucinations." In other words, she heard "voices "-usually accompanied by a bright light-when no visible person was present. This, of course, is a common symptom of impending mental disorder; but no insanity developed in Jeanne d'Arc. Startled she naturally was at first, but continuation led to familiarity and trust. The voices gave good counsel of a very commonplace kind, as, for instance, that she "must be a good girl and go often to church." Soon, however, she began to have visions; saw St. Michael, St. Catharine, and St. Margaret; was given instructions as to her mission; eventually made her way to the Dauphin, put herself at the head of 6,000 men, and advanced to the relief of Orleans, which was surrounded by the victorious English. After a fortnight of hard fighting, the siege was raised, and the enemy driven off. The tide of war had turned, and in three months the Dauphin was crowned king at Rheims as Charles the Seventh.
At this point, Jeanne felt that her mission was accomplished. But her wish to return to her family was over- Jeanne, D'Arc ruled by king and archbishop, and she took part in the further fighting against the allied English and Burgundian forces, showing great bravery and tactical skill. But in November, 1430, in a desperate sally from Compiegnewhich was besieged by the Duke of Burgundy-she fell into the enemy's hands, was sold to the English, and thrown into a dungeon at their headquarters in Rouen. 66
After a year's imprisonment she was brought to trial before the Bishop of Beauvais, in an ecclesiastical court. The charges were heresy and sorcery. Learned doctors of the Church, subtle lawyers, did their best to entangle the simple girl in their dialectical toils; but she showed a remarkable power of keeping to her affirmations and of avoiding heretical statements. God has always been my Lord in all that I have done," she said. But the trial was only pretence, for her fate was already decided. She was condemned to the stake. To the end, she solemnly affirmed the reality of her "voices," and the truth of her depositions. Her last word, as the smoke and flame rolled round her, was "Jesus." Said an English soldier, awestruck by the manner of her passing : "We are lost; we have burned a Saint." The idea was corroborated in popular opinion by events which followed, for speedy death-as if by Heaven's anger-overtook her judges and accusers. Inspired by her example and claims, and helped by dissension and weakening on the side of the enemy, the French took heart once more; and the English were allbut swept out of the country.
Jeanne's family was rewarded by ennoblement, under the name of De Lys. Twenty-five years after her death, the Pope acceded to a petition that the procés by which she was condemned should be re-examined. The result was that the judgment was reversed, and her innocence established and proclaimed.
The life of the Maid supplies a problem which orthodox science cannot solve. She was a simple peasant girl, with no ambitious hankering after a career. She rebelled pathetically against her mission. "I had far rather rest and spin by my mother's side, for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." She cannot be dismissed on the "simple idiot" theory of Voltaire, for her genius in war and her aptitude in repartee undoubtedly prove exceptional mental powers, unschooled though she was in what we call education. We cannot call her a mere hysteric, for her health and strength were superb. It is on record that a man of science said to an Abbé :- "Come to the Salpétrière Hospital, and I will show you twenty Jeannes d'Arc." To which the Abbé responded: "Has one of them given us back Alsace and Lorraine ?" The retort was certainly neat. Still, though the Salpétrière hysterics have not won back Alsace and Lorraine, it is nevertheless true that many great movements have sprung from fraud or hallucination. May it not have been so with Jeanne? She delivered France, and her importance in history is great; but may not her mission and her doings have been the outcome of merely subjective hallucinations, induced by the brooding of her specially religious and patriotic mind on the woes of her country? The army, being ignorant and superstitious, would readily believe in the supernatural nature of her mission, and great energy and valour would result-for a man fights well when he feels that Providence is on his side.
This is the most usual kind of theory in explanation of the facts. But it is not fully satisfactory. How came it-one may ask that this untutored peasant girl could persuade not only the rude soldiery, but also the Dauphin and the Court, of her Divine appointment? How came she to be given the command of an army ? Surely a post of such responsibility and power would not be given to an ignorant girl of eighteen, on the mere strength of her own Jinn claim to inspiration. It seems, at least, very improbable. Now it so happens (though the materialistic school of historians conveniently ignore or belittle it) that there is strong evidence in support of the idea that Jeanne gave the Dauphin some proof of the possession of supernormal faculties. In fact, the evidence is so strong that Mr. Andrew Lang called it unimpeachable "-and Mr. Lang did not usually err on the side of credulity in these matters. Among other curious things, Jeanne seems to have repeated to Charles the words of a prayer which he had made mentally; and she also made some kind of clairvoyant discovery of a sword hidden behind the altar of Fierbois church. Schiller's magnificent dramatic poem-" Die Jungfrau von Orleans "-though unhistorical in some details, is substantially accurate on these points concerning clairvoyance and mind-reading.
The best books on the Maid are those of Mr. Anatole France (two vols.), and Mr. Andrew Lang, giving respectively the sceptical and the believing side as to the explanation of her experiences. There is also a very useful little book by Miss C. M. Antony, with preface by Father R. H. Benson.
Jelaleddin, Rumi: A Sufi poet of the thirteenth century, A.D. He teaches the Sufi doctrine that the chief end of man is so to emancipate himself from human thoughts and wishes, human needs and the outward impressions of the senses, that he may become a mere mirror for the Deity. So refined an essence does his mind become that it is as nearly as possible nothing; yet while in this state it can, by a union with the Divine Essence, mysteriously become the All. In his teachings he declares that names and words must not be taken for the things they represent:- "Names thou mayst know; go, seek the truth they name Search not the brook, but heaven, for the moon."
Jennings, Hargrave: (See Rosicrucians.)