| JOAN OF ARC, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about I412 ;burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431 ; rehabilitated aftera fashion in I456; designated Venerable in I9O4; declared Blessedin 19o8; and finally canonized in 192o. She is the most notableWarrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fishamong the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though aprofessed and most pious Catholic, and the projector of a Crusadeagainst the Husites, she was in fact one of the first Protestantmartyrs. She was also one of the first apostles of Nationalism, andthe first French practitioner of Napoleonic realism in warfare asdistinguished from the sporting ransom-gambling chivalry of hertime. She was the pioneer of rational dressing for women, and, likeQueen Christina of Sweden two centuries later, to say nothing ofCatalina de Erauso and innumerable obscure heroines who havedisguised themselves as men to serve as soldiers and sailors, sherefused to accept the specific woman s lot, and dressed and foughtand lived as men did. As she contrived to assert herself in all these ways with such forcethat she was famous throughout western Europe before she was outof her teens (indeed she never got out of them), it is hardly surprisingthat she was judicially burnt, ostensibly for a number of capitalcrimes which we no longer punish as such, but essentially for whatwe call unwomanly and insufferable presumption. At eighteenJoan s pretensions were beyond those of the proudest Pope or thehaughtiest emperor. She claimed to be the ambassador and pleni-potentiary of God, and to be, in effect, a member of the ChurchTriumphant whilst still in the flesh on earth. She patronized herown king, and summoned the English king to repentance and obedi-ence to her commands. She lectured, talked down, and overruledstatesmen and prelates. She pooh-poohed the plans of generals,leading their troops to victory on plans of her own. She had anunbounded and quite unconcealed contempt for official opinion,judgment, and authority, and for War Office tactics and strategy.Had she been a sage and monarch in whom the most venerablehierarchy and the most illustrious dynasty converged, her preten-sions and proceedings would have been as trying to the officialmind as the pretensions of Caesar were to Cassius. As her actualcondition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about her.One was that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable. |
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