Joan of Arc: Visionary & Child

The story of Jeanne d’Arc (anglicized as Joan of Arc) is a complicated one. We commemorate her as a Visionary, as she quite literally relied on the visions and voices she experienced early in her life to propel her military campaigns to defeat the English who claimed France. Reading her story with modern eyes, these voices, which she attributed to Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch, are a complex legacy.

What we know for sure is that she was a 13-year-old girl in rural France who believed saints and archangels instructed her to liberate France from the English. Her testimony was so powerful it convinced local aristocrats to supply her with an army and eventually, through battles won, she similarly persuaded the man who would be Charles VII of France of her divine mission to restore him to his throne. After many successes, she fell at the siege of Paris. Her fortunes faltered as she was taken prisoner on the battlefield, abandoned by her French protectors, and convicted of sorcery and heresy by the English religious authorities. 

Joan was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, aged 19 years old. When Charles was eventually crowned king of France, he moved to have her conviction annulled. This annulment of her status as a heretic was completed in 1456, and is viewed by historians as a political maneuver to shore up the legitimacy of his crown since it would not have been seemly for a sorceress to have been instrumental in the restoration of his kingdom. In death, Joan quickly became a French national hero. She was eventually regarded as a national saint, though she was not canonized until the early 20^th century. 

It is difficult in 2024, to read the story of a 13-year-old girl driven by voices into battle, used carelessly by the powers and principalities of her time, abandoned to death when she was no longer useful and redeemed only when it suited them. In light of this, she is included in our Episcopal Church commemorations not for her military prowess, nor for her mystical sight, but because “being persuaded of the will of God for her life, she responded in faith and obedience to that will as she understood it.”

Joan’s story as girl soldier and saint is an easy one to sentimentalize, as it lends itself to cheerful depictions in coloring pages and nursery room walls. We reduce her as such to our peril. Instead, in an age when once again those determined to achieve political power by whatever means necessary wrap themselves too comfortably in the cloak of religion, perhaps we should remember Joan and her story as a cautionary tale. In her life and death we are given a warning against the destructive power of religious nationalism, of making sacrifices of our lives or our children’s lives to the insatiable idol of political leaders, no matter with which group or party we identify ourselves. Remembering the life of Joan of Arc helps us to see the danger in this of doing violence to others and to ourselves. 

To take liberties with a quote from Anne Lamott, we can be sure we have created God in our own image when that god hates the same people, culture, or state we do, and if that god is calling us to violence and destruction. We can be sure we are no longer on the side of the true God of Love.  

We will never know exactly where the voices came from that goaded a 13-year old-girl in the French countryside to take up arms, lead men into battle, and fight for the throne for an earthly king. Maybe they were the voices of angels and saints or maybe they were the ruminations of a child born into war, raised in the trauma of violence and loss, searching for meaning and seeing God where only an empty throne stood. Perhaps in her we can see the faces of children around the world today, born into wars they have no power over, their lives broken and hope lost due to the struggles of people far removed from their daily existence. When we gaze upon the countless paintings and icons of Joan, hair shorn, impossibly young and brave, flames just starting to catch at her feet, let us remember her not as a victor, but as the child that she was, sacrificed to the greed and ambitions of conquerors.