CHAPTER I 

 THE FRENCH SPIRIT 



JOAN OF ARC stands foremost among the renowned joanof Arc 

 and remarkable figures of history. Every French- 

 man is proud of her name and fame. Wherever pa- 

 triotism, valour, consecration and faith are honoured, the 

 Maid of Orleans finds veneration. It is fitting that she 

 should have first place in this work, which undertakes to 

 trace the French blood in America and tell of its achieve- 

 ments as represented by the Protestant element that came 

 from the Old World to the New. To understand the na- 

 tm^e of this element it is necessary to go back to the 

 mother countiy and learn what it was there ; to trace the 

 beginning and rise of the independent reform spirit in 

 religion which led to the Huguenot faith, persecutions 

 and exile. 



In this study one is led back further than Luther and 

 Calvin, the great Protestant Reformers whose names 

 overshadow all others. The forerunner of the Protes- 

 tants is found in Joan of Arc. She was a martyr to her 

 faith, as dauntless as any that ever died rather than deny 

 and recant religious belief. She refused to consider her- 

 self unchurched, in spite of ecclesiastical oppression and 

 cruelty, which relentlessly encompassed her death at the 

 stake ; so that she may fairly be called an unconscious 

 Protestant — a true leader upholding the right of the in- An 

 dividual conscience in matters of religion. The same Protestant 

 spirit was in Joan of Arc that moved Calvin and Coligny 

 and the tens of thousands of brave and noble French 

 who were willing to suffer, to leave homes and posses- 

 sions, to endure exile, but would not surrender their 

 rights of conscience and their religious liberty. 



25 



The Fore- 

 runner of the 

 Reformers 



