moonet] JOAN OF ARC 933 



beatiticil ;is the patron saint of France. Naturally of a contemplative 

 disposition, she was accustomed from earliest childhood to long fasts 

 and solitary communings, in which she brooded over the miserable 

 condition of her country, then overrun by English armies. When 13 

 years of age, she had a vision in winch a voice spoke to her from out 

 of a great light, telling her that God had chosen her to restore France. 

 She immediately fell on her knees and made a vow of virginity and 

 entire devotion to the cause, and from that day to the time of her cruel 

 death she believed herself inspired and guided by supernatural voices 

 to lead her countrymen against the invader. A simple peasant girl, 

 she sought out the royal court and boldly announced to the king her 

 divine mission. Her manner made such an impression that she was 

 assigned a command, mid putting on a soldier's dress and carrying a 

 sword which she claimed had come to her through miraculous means, 

 she led the armies of France, performing superhuman feats of courage 

 and endurance and winning victory after victory for three years uutil 

 she was finally captured. After a long and harassing mockery of a 

 trial, in which the whole machinery of the law and the church was 

 brought into action for the destruction of one poor girl bandy 111 years 

 of age, she was finally condemned and burned at Rouen, ostensibly 

 as a witch and a heretic, but really as the most dangerous enemy of 

 English tyranny in France. 



She was forever hearing these spirit voices, which she called "her 

 voices » or " her counsel." They spoke to her with articulate words in 

 the ripple of the village fountain, in the vesper bells, in the rustling of 

 the leaves, and in the sighing of the wind. Sometimes it was the war- 

 like archangel Michael, but oftener it was the gentle Saint Katherine, 

 who appeared to her as a beautiful woman wearing a crown. Her 

 visions must lie ascribed to the effect of the troubled times in which 

 she lived, acting on an enthusiastic, unquestioning religious temper- 

 ament. She is described as physically robust and intellectually keen, 

 aside from her hallucination, as was proven in her trial, and there is 

 no evidence that she was subject to epilepsy or other abnormal condi- 

 tions such as belonged to Mohammed and most others of the same 

 class. Her long and frequent fasts unquestionably aided the result. 

 She claimed no supernatural powers outside of her peculiar mission, and 

 in every public undertaking relied entirely on the guidance of her voices. 



Toward the end these voices were accompanied by other hallucina- 

 tions, together with presentiments of her coining death. On one 

 occasion, while assaulting a garrison, her men fled, leaving her stand 

 ing on the moat with only four or five soldiers. Seeing her danger, a 

 French officer galloped up to rescue her and impatiently asked her why 

 she stood there alone. Lifting her helmet from her face she looked at 

 him with astonishment and replied that she was not alone — that she 

 had 50,000 men with her — and then, despite his entreaties, she turned to 

 her phantom army and shouted out her commands to bring logs to 

 bridge the moat. It was in April, while standing alone on the ram- 



