Halos or Horns?

My last blog covered the half-way to being canonized as a saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother claimed to have received a special message from Jesus during a train ride telling her to leave the safety of the school in which she taught for over 20 years to live and work among the sick and homeless. According to the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center's website, Jesus "asked Mother Teresa to establish a religious community dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor". She was/is revered the world over in both the Catholic and Protestant Christian world as the epitome of compassion and mercy. She even won a Noble Peace Price (among many other awards and accolades) for her work with the poor in the slums of Calcutta India.

This week I present to you:

Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc, A.K.A. Jeanne d'Arc, A.K.A. La Pucelle, A.K.A the Maid of Domremy, A.K.A the Maid of Orleans, was born in the small French village Domremy in the year 1412 to well do to farmers. She was known in her early childhood for her kindness and compassion towards other people and her religious piety. When she was thirteen she began to hear voices which she believed to be messengers from God. Her voices became so insistent that at the age of 16 she left her beloved parents and her home to venture out into France to find someone that could help her reach the ear of Charles VII, the heir to the French throne.

 France during this time was busy fighting with England in a little thing known as The Hundred Years War (which actually lasted longer than 100 years). The English were trying (and pretty well succeeding) to take over all of the French Provinces. Joan was convinced that her voices (God) wanted her to help Charles finally take control of his throne and of France. Joan persuaded a cousin to help her with her plan to meet Charles. She underwent many hours of questioning and examinations including being subjected to a physical examination to determine if she was still a virgin and to make sure she wasn't sent by the devil. Joan was found to be what she claimed. She must have been sent by God because Satan could not make pacts with virgins. The people of France loved her and rallied around her and pretty soon she had convinced Charles to move forward with efforts to take back provinces lost to England. This goal was achieved after about two years of hard fighting in which Joan herself fought in armor at the front of the French army and was wounded at least twice. Charles was finally crowned as King of France when Joan and her army took Reims back from the English. Although the only thing the Maid asked as reward was that the taxes be lifted from her native village, Joan was raised to the equivalent of rank as a Count and given her own household. Eventually Joan's winning streak came to an end. This was what her enemies in the French court had been waiting for; a chance to get rid of her. They used her failed efforts to take Paris as an example of God's displeasure with her. Charles, who was being manipulated by his administration, sent her out on a doomed mission in which she was captured and sold to the English. There is much ado about a conspiracy between the University of Paris (pretty much THE authority right under the Catholic Church), the Duke of Burgundy (who was in alliance with the English), the English Regent Bedford and a Bishop of the Church who was in the pocket of the English Regent; but I won't go into all that. You can read it for yourself later if you want.

Now the English have always been a superstitious lot. I think it comes from breeding with the Celts, or maybe from fighting them. Anywho, the English had condemned Joan as a witch since she had first appeared on the scene. They finally had their hands on her! But what do you do with her? The English kept rumors spreading about witchcraft and heresy and pretty soon a man with the fancy title of Vicar-General of the Oder of the Inquisition got wind of her capture. This was just want the English wanted. Now she could be tried by the Church Court and the English wouldn't get the bad press for killing a prisoner of war; especially someone as well loved among the people as Joan. What is really sad is that the French King took no steps to rescue Joan; not even to exchange her for another prisoner. I don't think the English would have given her up anyway because the historian Monstrelet, a contemporary of Joan's, tells us that the English viewed her capture as equal to the capture of 500 prisoners. 

 Her trial began in February of 1431. She was tried on 70 charges and of course convicted. 
Here are some of the things she was charged/condemned with:

• Being born in too low a rank in life to have been inspired by God
• Going about in "male" attire is listed in 6 of the 70 Articles 
• A charge of magic to which no evidence was found so the charge was altered to one of heresy.
• Being loved and adored by the people

Throughout the whole trial her examiners were trying to trick her into saying something that would construe her voices as being from the devil instead of from God. She was forced to sign a document admitting to the charges but a week later recanted her confession. She was then immediately sentenced to death and on May 30 1431 Joan of Arc was publicly excommunicated from the Church and burned at the stake at the age of 19. She died as firm in her beliefs at the end as she had been at the beginning. Maitre Jean Massieu, a priest and clerk during the Maid's trial and execution had this to say about her death. "When she was given over by the Church, I was still with her; and with great devotion she asked to have a Cross: and, hearing this, an Englishman, who was there present, made a little cross of wood with the ends of a stick, which he gave her, and devoutly she received and kissed it, making piteous lamentations and acknowledgments to God, Our Redeemer, Who had suffered on the Cross for our Redemption, of Whose Cross she had the sign and symbol; and she put the said Cross in her bosom, between her person and her clothing. ... And immediately, without any form or proof of judgment, they sent her to the fire, saying to the executioner "Do your office!" And thus she was led and fastened [to the stake], continuing her praises and devout lamentations to God and His Saints, and with her last word, in dying, she cried, with a loud voice: "Jesus!" An English soldier is said to have reported seeing a dove fly from her mouth as she breathed her last breath.


Why was Joan condemned to such a horrible fate? Why was she accused of witchcraft and of being sent by the devil? All because she believed she heard the voice of God? Mother Teresa also believed God spoke to her. Both women were dedicated to helping people weaker than they were. Both were committed to carrying out the tasks they believed God had set for them. Mother Teresa was never condemned as a witch by her contemporaries. Why was Joan different? One simple fact; Joan worked outside of the confines of what was normal behavior for a woman. Mother Teresa helped the poor, established hospitals, fed and cared for sick people; all actions associated with a woman and a mother. She never questioned her place as a woman; she never rose up against the male authority of the Catholic Church.  Joan also cared for the sick and wounded, especially during her fighting years. Yet she was burned as a witch because of it. Why? Because she rejected her submissive role as a farmer's daughter. She dressed like a man during her battles with the English armies. She led and fought alongside the men of her army. She questioned male authority AND she had the ear of the King of France. Because of this she made many enemies in the French court which proved to be her downfall. Some of the charges laid against her at her trial were based mainly on the view that her behavior had been "immodest and presumptuous" and that "putting aside the modesty of her sex, she acted not only against all feminine decency, but even against the reserve which men of good morals, wearing ornaments and garments which only profligate men are accustomed to use, and going so far as to carry arms of offense." She refused to submit to the confines of her world and those who were in positions of power feared her power. Thus she had to die. Perhaps if Joan had been the "Savior of France" during another time she would have met with a more peaceful fate. If the time periods had been reversed would Mother have been feared and condemned as a heretic? I don't believe so.

I would like to point out that in 1456 there was a trial conducted by the Church (at the insistence of King Charles VII no less) for the rehabilitation of Joan's memory in which Joan's name and reputation were redeemed. Some of the men who participated in her trial testified on her behalf. In May of 1920 she was canonized.

There are no portraits of Joan either in sculpture or painting. There are many statues honoring her memory but we don't have a clear idea of what she looked like. Perhaps she appears like Mila Jovovich's portayal of her in the Hollywood movie The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, or Leelee Sobieski's Made for TV. Apparently there is also a 1948 version starring Ingrid Bergman. (Thanks IMBd)

If you don't want to read the books I have listed at the end you can watch these three movies or you can always play the video game!

Suggested Reading:

• Joan of Arc - Ronald Sutherland Gower
• The Trial and Execution of Joan of Arc - Jules Michelet
• The Saint Joan of Arc Center

You can also find many primary source documents including her trial transcripts at Internet History SorceBook Project