Saint Joan of Arc (Jeanne la Pucelle)

Saint Joan of Arc called herself, Jeanne la Pucelle, meaning "Jean the Maid." Also known as "Joan of Orleans," for her miraculous intervention in the One Hundred Years War, the turning point of which was the "Siege of Orleans," ended by Joan's brilliant military command.

Portion of the frieze, "The Life of Joan of Arc," at the Panthéon, Paris.

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Why? Why Joan? Why her suffering?

It confounds the honest reader the betrayals, denials, and injustices that Joan suffered.

I have a theory. I developed this theory before I knew much about Saint Joan, the Maiden of Orleans.

Most people would look upon the Hundred Years War as, and the language of the day, a war between the English and the French. Indeed, the French called their enemy the English, and the English called their enemy the French. They were all French. The war was between the French, and was thus a civil war, which makes it especially brutal.

In my theory, had the "English," whose rulers spoke French at home, won and reclaimed France on top of England, then both England and France, a hundred years later, would have under Henry VIII left the Catholic church. Sure, lots of conditions may have prevented that, but we can draw a straight line from the Church of England to the Church of England/France. This would not have pleased God.

Whatever the value of my theory that God meant to keep France Catholic, I am intrigued by this excerpt from Mark Twain's account of the trial of St. Joan:

And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic named Nicholas Midi preached a sermon, wherein he explained that when a branch of the vine — which is the Church — becomes diseased and corrupt, it must be cut away or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine.

Whereas the English partisian, Father Midi, saw the destruction of Joan the pruning of a dead branch of the Church (the vine, as Twain correctly explains), by cutting her off, he and Bishop Cauchon were instead pruning themselves from the vine of France. The dead vine cut off was England!

> Henry VIII

Historical sources

Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

Few people know that Twain wrote about Joan of Arc. There is a story that as a child he encountered a stray page with the story of her trial, and the young Samuel Clemens took great offense at her interrogators. Whether true or not, he became fascinated by her story and yearned to tell it:

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.

Modern academics who study Twain consider it unworthy of his canon. They can't deny that he thought it was his greatest work, and also that it contains classic Twain wit, but they just can't stand that he was "infatuated" with the Maiden of Orleans.

Some critics complain that in writing the book, Twain succumbed to Catholicism. I have no words to express how stupid that is. It's got to be their animosity for Christianity in general, and for Catholicism in particular, when expressed as profoundly by Saint Joan. Worse, one actually claims that Twain was infatuated by cross-dressing (such as one hilarious scene in Huck Finn and two examples from minor short stories) and his interpretation of the trial of Joan was entirely focused on her male dress. It's even stupider than the accusation of Twain as overly Catholic.

As for Twain's Catholicism, let's just say he falls short. Across this narrative of the life of a devout Catholic, he says next to nothing of the Mother of God, whereas the historical record affirms Joan's devotion to Our Lady. Twain mentions but fails to illuminate the crucial role of Joan's despair over denial of the Sacraments in her coerced "abjuration" (a kind of renunciation, but short of full admission) seven days before her execution. Her longing for the Eucharist must have pained her as much as any other injustice she suffered, and one can be sure that Luke 2:34, "(and you yourself a sword will pierce)" was her regular companion. There are other examples, but none detract from Twain\'s marvelous work. I mention it to show how idiotic it is to criticize Twain for succumbing to either Catholicism or Medieval mysticism, or that he was infatuated with transvestitism - a shameful accusation!

Twain indeed fell in love with the story of Joan of Arch, and he dedicated himself to telling it. And not wonder he worked so hard on it: it's not an easy story to tell, and the lines he draws between his fictionalized characters and the true history are narrow, while never leading the reader astray from actual events. It's a grand project.

A final note: Twain wrote the book before Joan was canonized, thus "Saint Joan" does not appear in the work. Twain does describe her as a saint:

She was not solely a saint, an angel, she was a clay-made girl also — as human a girl as any in the world, and full of a human girl's sensitivenesses and tendernesses and delicacies.

Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

Not much to say about this one. Shaw was early in adulthood an atheist and seems to have wanted into Deism and perhaps belief if not in Christ but in Jesus. The play is considered one of Shaw's greatest works, and it has been repeated on stage through the 2000s and in film. Shaw wrote it after Joan's canonization, thus the title. But he wasn't celebrating it. He tries to humanize Saint Joan, whom he said was romanticized while her accusers were villainized. For Shaw, Joan's tormenters were motivated by the facts and situations before them; you know, it's just a matter of perspective. I can only say that to frame Bishop Cauchon as honestly motivated is akin to Andrew Lloyd Weber's sympathetic portrayal of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. Both did wrong, knew it, and did it anyway. And, worse, Shaw portrays Joan as Weber does Jesus, as an anti-establishment pop star. For Shaw, Joan is a rebel against authority, like his female ubermensch in Man and Superman. Meh.

Jeanne D'Arc (1895) by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel

In 1896, Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel illustrated a children's book of the life of Joan of Arc. Through the early 1900s, he expanded several of the images into full paintings, a collection of which are held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, per here:

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  La Vision (Vision of the Archangel St. Michael)

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  Appeal to the Dauphin (the Dauphin had someone else sit on the throne and hid amidst the Court; Joan identified him immediately)

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  The Maid in Armor on Horseback (now Commander of the French Armies, Joan marches the army to free Orleans from the English siege)

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  The Turmoil of Conflict (the Battle of Orleans, which is nearly lost after Joan is hit in the shoulder and neck by a bolt, but she returns to the field and leads the French to victory)

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  The Crowning at Rheims of the Dauphin (Joan's mission was to have the Dauphin properly crowned King by French custom and in the form of Charlemagne; the leadership thought it was unnecessary, but Joan understood that the people of France needed the ceremony)

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  The Trial of Joan of Arc (The King and his councilors betray Joan, leaving her to fight with a small army; she is captured by the French ally of the English. The French King refuses to pay a ransom for her, and she is tried in an illegitimate ecclesiastic court)

Sources

see

• Joan of Arc: Her Prophecies (saint-joan-of-arc.com)
• The origin of Jeanne's voices and visions (jeanne-darc.info)
• Materials on Joan of Arc (iu.edu)
• At Her Trial, St. Joan of Arc Faced Her Accusers Alone| National Catholic Register (ncregister.com)