Hi! I'm really sorry to do this, but, could you please supply a little more information? I don't have either Beaune book in front of me. What year(s) are the registers from, and what is the context of the reference to Joan hearing St. Margaret's voice?

(St. Margaret of Antioch is the patron saint of women in childbirth, so I see where her argument is going. But I'd like to read the whole bit. Particularly, does Beaune mention St. Katherine at all?)

All right. I've been down a very fun rabbit hole of medieval demographic research I can find online (thanks, apocalypse). And I have some comments on the Margaret/Catherine matter as well.

The most basic theory, I think, is that Beaune (who is a fine, fine scholar) or someone along the way mixed up 1/40 and 1/4. That would yield 2.5%, which is in line with other statistics.

On the other hand, that number might be a little low for this particular era. The fourteenth century in particular, through the early 15th, was a rough demographic time for western Europe. It more or less kicks off in northwestern Europe, including Burgundy especially (so, Givry in particular), with the 1315-1322 Great Famine, and follows with a whole bunch of epidemics of various severities. Nutritional deficiency in infancy and childhood leads to lifelong health problems, including some that can increase possibility of mortality in childbirth overall; probably first birth in particular. Also, following major environmental crises like famines and epidemics, people tend to marry earlier and start having children earlier, which can also lead to higher maternal mortality/first-child mortality. (Jordan, The Great Famine)

Beaune might also be looking to what seem to be the major studies of medieval French demographics: Mols, Introduction à la démographie historique des villes d’Europe du 14e au 18e siècle (1954) and Bautier, "Haut Moyen Age" in Histoire de la population française 1: Des origines à la Renaissance (1988). Unfortunately, I can't access these. But their older publication dates are in line with times where maternal mortality was assumed to be much higher, based especially on anecdotes and straightforward analysis of available evidence and lacking more recent archaeological studies.

There are some sets of statistics, such as the cemetery at St. Mark's in Lincoln, that show a very high percentage of women buried there who probably died between 25-34 (see Grauer, "Where Are the Women"). But Grauer points out a number of problematic factors, most prominently: 25-34 is also a leading cohort of men's mortality in many cemetery studies. A high percentage of 25-34 year old women/people compared to other age cohorts might be buried there in the first place. The assumption that the difference between 25-34 mortality rates between women and men is entirely due to childbirth. Clashing results from different studies. (See the varying results of DeWitte & Yaussy's various articles as they try out different algorithms and data sets). The cemetery covers the 12th-15th centuries.

Kowaleski ("Gendering Demographic Change in the Middle Ages," in the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe) emphasizing, along with Grauer, the way earlier studies (Benedictow; Herlihy & Klapisch-Zuber--very respected scholars) have manipulated mortality data to conclude higher female mortality rates in the late Middle Ages)(it's still pretty accepted that women had higher maternal mortality rates in the early Middle Ages).

As far as Scandinavian studies go, Weise & Boldsen ("The Dangerous Fertile Ages") postulate a very small difference between female and male mortality in all age cohorts by the end of the 15th century.

Kowaleski, publishing in 2013 in a major publisher's "overview" book, notes that scholars including straightforward paleoarchaeologists have been moving more and more towards seeing lower maternal mortality rates in recent years.

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So, with just a few hours of research, very incomplete sources, little access to the actual data, and no real background knowledge of how to calculate mortality rates from said data anyway, that's the best I got. I think it's probably most likely that Beaune is going for "a lot."

And trying to connect everything (at least from what you've copied here; thank you so much) to trauma from Joan's sister's death. Which--at least from the evidence of the saints whose voices she heard--is...rather tenuous.

It's a very romantic and emotional idea, I agree. The problem is, if you're going to pick two saints whose voices you're going to hear as Joan, it's Katherine and Margaret. Katherine and Margaret were two of the "Holy Helpers," essentially the most popular saints in the late Middle Ages. The Holy Helpers were particularly known for their intercession in healing and comfort, which is primarily how Joan seeks them out.

They're part of another same grouping of major saints: the virgin martyrs. (Hmm.) I've never blinked for one second at those two showing up in Joan's testimony.

I'm guessing (hoping) that Beaune's reference to Katherine and the fifty "judges" is her own after-the-fact commentary rather than analysis of Joan. The biggest problem, of course, being that if we trust Joan, she would have been hearing St. Katherine long before she was tried. But Beaune's presentation doesn't line up with either the hagiography or its presentation in the late Middle Ages.

The story is pretty clearly that Joan faced fifty scholars or philosophers in intellectual combat, with the king as more or less the judge. (There could be a translation issue here, to be perfectly fair). On the other hand, this particular scene was evidently hardly emphasized in medieval presentation of the legend. It's almost never depicted in art, for one thing. But for another, Katherine was one of the virgin martyrs. That's what people heard about and emphasized.

Finally...yes, Joan's sister was named Catherine. But let's see: she got her sword in a church named St. Catherine's; one of her judges was William (Guillame) of Saint Catherine, and the woman whose visions Joan claimed to debunk was Catherine de la Rochelle. I study a woman named Katharina Tucher, who named her daughter Katharina, retired to the monastery of St. Katharine's in Nuremberg (which was in close collaboration with the monastery of St. Katherine's in St. Gall), and owned a copy of the hagiography of St. Catherine of Siena. In Walter Simons' studies of the patron saints of beguinages (women's religious communities), 15 out of 78 took St. Katherine, topped only by the Virgin Mary (21). Not that this is historical evidence, but, Katherine's popularity was enough that I used "too many Katharinas" as the major joke in my April Fool's post from 2017.

St. Margaret was #6, with 3. Plenty of Margarets, Margarethas, Margerys, Marguerites...Even just among the major medieval religious women writers, you've got Marguerite Porete, Margaretha Ebner, Margery Kempe...

So. Without reading the entire context--which admittedly, could be far better than it appears from the excerpts (sorry)--I'm skeptical. It's a romantic idea, but I'm skeptical.

My apologies for the delayed response!