Joan of Arc and Spirituality

Abstract

Politics, piety, and militancy are often intermingled. We observe this in our own time (often to our pain), just as we note it in figures from the past. This intermingling is one of the more unusual and widely noted characteristics of Joan of Arc (1412?—31). Joan of Arc is an unusual saint. Canonized in 1920 as a virgin, she died in 1431 as a condemned heretic. Uneducated and youthful, she obeyed “voices” that counseled her to pursue an unprecedented militant vocation. This collection explores multiple facets of Joan s prayerful life. Two-thirds of our chapters consider Joan in her own time. Her various trial documents provide a rich and tantalizing range of evidence about ways in which Joan understood her spiritual life as well as ways in which it was understood by others. Joan also figures in lively late medieval debates about spiritual discernment and about the expression and control of popular religion, and the middle chapters consider these matters. The later chapters merely hint at the broad spectrum of postmedieval receptions of La Pucelle by women writers, artists, and saints, while the final chapter presents responses by contemporary women who find Joan a force in their own lives. Taken together, these essays offer new perspectives on the heroism of Joan’s original way of sanctity.