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She was a 17-year-old French peasant girl who claimed to have heard divine voices.  She was instructed by God, she believed, to rise and defend her country against English invaders and their French collaborators.  She went to the authorities, convinced the skeptical nobles, and was given command of French forces.

She fought valiantly and successfully, particularly in releasing the siege of Orleans.  With her help, Charles of Valois was finally coronated as the French king, five years after his father's death.  

This was year 1429, during the violent Hundred Years War between England and France.  The young woman was Joan of Arc.

Was she divinely inspired?  Stories of miraculous force about her were told--for instance, that she knew a battle was taking place at a certain place without being informed of it.  Such things we cannot verify.  She greatly inspired her compatriots to fight for their country, that much we know for sure.

In the end, however, it was still her claim for direct communications with the divine that resulted in her execution.  She was captured while fighting a rearguard battle;  the good ecclesiastics at the University of Paris quickly asked for an inquisition of her faith.  Her efforts to escape from her capturers failed--she once jumped off a castle, falling in the moat below--and she was found blasphemous.

Still she wouldn't have been executed but for the fact that sometime after her sentence of life-long imprisonment, her enemies found her wearing man's clothes again and openly regretting her signing the repentance papers that spared her life.  They declared her a hopeless case and burned her.  That was 1431 and she was 19.

But Charles was winning the war, and the Church itself soon reversed its verdict on Joan.  Eventually, in 1920, the Church canonized her, declaring her a saint.

It is not surprising that Joan of Arc 

became a great legend; her story is fascinating on account of many important human interests--religion, patriotism, war/politics, gender, class, and youth.

The recently released movie, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, was not the first time that the French heroine was featured on the screen; indeed there had been quite a few earlier cinematic productions.

Mark Twain, fascinated by the legend in his own way, authored Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.  What did the comic writer have to say on such a subject?

 

 

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