La Pucelle, Sainte Jeanne d’Arc

Thérèse de Lisieux portraying Jeanne d’Arc

Many are the images of this french teenager. She, that saved France from the anglais, and was so treacherously, dastardly, wickedly and cruelly martyred by her captors. Two centuries later, even Shakespeare blasphemed her. But again and again, she inspired France.

We have always lived in a biased world. It is nearing six hundred years from time she walked the world. One can say, that, it was just an episode of mediæval dynastic war, perhaps a bit more interesting than most, but apparently, immediately after her initial public appearance, her presence was real celebrity. Quickly, the english were unnerved, apoplectic and desperate. Agincourt was not in the distant past. Most of non-burgundian France was either occupied by [or in proximately pending] the english. France would be as Poland in the century prior the first world war. The french nation would exist, but the state gone. France was desperate

Even in doing the most un-christian, and anti-christian acts, people thought in christian terms. The english had a remarkable reversal. Either God, or the devil conspired against England, and the agent was Jeanne. The english needed to demonize Jeanne, otherwise they were damned.

Charles VII, the french king, who owed his crown to Jeanne was despicably aloof and negligent. The burgundians, who captured Jeanne, were avaricious. Jeane was sold by the burgundians to the english, for the price of king, a king’s ransom, ₤ 10,000.

The trial and conditions under which she was held were illegal and criminal, and everyone, whom, brought this up was either, ignored, dismissed, dispatched and endangered. The english wanted her tried as a witch, no evidence was available. She was to be tried as an heretic. Her persecutor in charge was Peter (no longer Pierre) Cauchon, the bishop driven from Beauvais, and desirous of Rouen, a lackey of Cardinal Winchester. Cauchon had not jurisdiction, but ambition. Winchester was the wealthiest, and most powerful, man in England. He was uncle to the regents of England, and the occupied possessions in France. Jeanne had no chance to survive. Michelet wrote, “Never were the Jews filled with such hatred against Jesus as the English against the Maid.” The english wanted her shamed, recanting and burnt.
an idealised martial statue

“Jeanne’s mission was on the surface warlike, but it really had the effect of ending a century of war, and her love and charity were so broad, that they could only be matched by Him who prayed for His murderers.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle, who translated a french biography of our heroine in 1924.

People have found in Jehanne, or presented, what they want. She is used for noble purposes, and base. She is loved and respected; and she is used to promote inanities. There have come out theories concerning her as varied as the causes of dinosaur extinction. Do not be so gullible to run with the next one that appears in the press.

Some great writers have fell in love with her: Schiller, Shaw, Twain. One of the best silent films ever made was that on her trial, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928). It was on her trial testimony, which the original is extant, that her strength, spirit and sanctity was shown. All the marvel and gallantry of her campaigns for France were not central. In her interrogations, she was caught by the church militant, the visible church, and she maintained that the church triumphant, the invisible church smiled on her. She was soldier and martyr. Her martyrdom trial confirmed her sanctity.

Michelet ends with:

A secretary of the king of England, as he returned, said aloud, “We are lost, we have burnt a saint.” ⚜⚜⚜

Sainte Jeanne
*Domremy ............1412
†Rouen..................1431
rehabilitated ..........1456
cause introduced 1869; Actor Causae: Félix A.P. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orléans
nulla osta...............1894
declared venerable 1904
beatified................1908
canonised..............1920