“Joan of Arc, A History” by historian Helen Castor: Joan heard one voice always, another intermittently, and a third whom the other two consulted

“…a peasant girl hears heavenly voices bringing a message of salvation for France, which lies broken at the hands of the invading English. Against all the odds, she reaches the dauphin Charles, the disinherited heir to the French throne, and convinces him that God has made it her mission to drive the English from his kingdom. Dressed in armour as though she were a man, with her hair cut short, she leads an army to rescue the town of Orléans from an English siege…But soon she is captured by allies of the English, to whom she is handed over for trial as a heretic…She is burned to death in the market square in Rouen, but her legend proves much harder to kill. Nearly five hundred years later, the Catholic Church recognizes her not only as a heroine, but as a saint…

“There seems little purpose…in attempting to diagnose in her a physical or psychological disorder that might, to us, explain her voices…Joan and the people around her knew that it was entirely possible for otherworldly beings to communicate with men and women of sound mind; Joan was not the first or last person in France in the first half of the fifteenth century to have visions or hear voices…Similarly…in medieval minds, war was always interpreted as an expression of divine will…” (1, pp. 1-5).

“She first heard it [her voice from God] at the height of a summer day in her father’s garden when she was thirteen years old…she was speaking sometimes of a voice, and sometimes of ‘voices’. But when Beaupère asked who had told her to wear men’s clothes, she refused to say…” (1, pp. 170-171).

“Her squire Jean d’ Aulon recalled that, when he had asked about her revelations, she told him she had three counsellors — one who was with her always, another who came and went, and a third whom the other two consulted. But when he begged to be allowed to see them, she said he was not worthy or virtuous enough. He did not ask again” (1, p. 238).

Comment: I will see what other sources say.

Added July 20: The voices cited in the title look like a typical constellation of alternate personalities.

1. Helen Castor. Joan of Arc, A History. New York, Harper Perennial, 2016.