Joan of Arc

I always preferred the Maid of Orleans name instead, I find it mind blowing that she was only canonized in 1920 and that the Saint name became so prominent.

Joan is one of the best-documented people from that era, and her story isn't crazier than anything else that was happening at that time. As I understand it, R1, the Church was never comfortable with her, for any number of reasons; she ultimately was canonized after World War I as a favor to France.

Cunt of Arc

No more implausible than the story of the man who led the Taiping Rebellion. He basically failed the Chinese SATs too many times, had a nervous breakdown, claimed he was Jesus' Chinese brother, and led a rebellion that almost brought down the ruling Chinese imperial dynasty. Napoleon's life story was inconceivable until it happened, as well.

Bitch was crazy AF but effective.

OP would rewrite history to remove all the parts he disikes, e.g. role of the Catholic Church. I love it!

I always figured she was a high functioning schizo.

I believe the men followed her because they thought she was a man. She dressed very masculine and people thought she was just a thin man.

R8, she was effective because she was a young innocent girl. Everyone who fought for her knew she was female.

I loved her on Knots Landing

R8, isn’t that basically the same storyline that Mulan follows?

LESBIAN!!!

Milan was the Maid of Orleans of China.

Is it only me or does anyone else think the story of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States is total bullshit?

Incompetent malignant narcissistic sociopath who let a pandemic kill thousands. He lied constantly and his rabid followers still supported him. First Lady had nude photos widely published. Family of grifter kids bled the country for everything it is worth. Can't be true.

Yes, but he "owned the libs" so half the country don't care.

R14 is pointing out that improbable and strange things do occur.

[quote]Joan is one of the best-documented people from that era,

This is absolutely untrue. There are no contemporary portraits of Joan or descriptions of her as a personality.

[quote]No more implausible than the story of the man who led the Taiping Rebellion. He basically failed the Chinese SATs too many times, had a nervous breakdown, claimed he was Jesus' Chinese brother, and led a rebellion that almost brought down the ruling Chinese imperial dynasty.

Hard disagree. Fruitcakes and outcasts taking on a mythical identity and causing ruin to the powers that be is something that has happened repeatedly in history (cf the Pugachev Rebellion).

A young girl hearing voices and amassing an army under their command to beat back a foreign occupation of her country is something that has only happened once in history -- if it happened at all.

I think she was a handy tool used by the weak monarchy to try to attain power. They succeeded at least in making it hot for the Brits in France, hence her fame. I would love to go back in time and meet her--her, Napoleon, and a host of other improbably effective game-changers.

She was a sister who really cooked.

Have the trans tried to claim her as one of them yet?

Clearly the Catholic church thought the same way, OP.

The transcripts of her trial before the Inquisition are readily available. She was very smart, savvy, and talked rings around the fools sent to give her a kangaroo court and burn her ass. Kind of heart-breaking--they made her wear a dress so her guards could more readily rape her nightly--something she complained of explicitly.

Fucking religion. A great dodge.

This thread reminds me of cartoonist Branson Reese's insistence that sharks have very smooth skin.

[quote]She was very smart, savvy, and talked rings around the fools sent to give her a kangaroo court and burn her ass.

All the more reason to believe she was a literary creation of some old, bearded writer.

I don't think the exploits of Joan of Arc are fiction. Hers was an incredible story, but history has plenty of incredible stories.

R17, don't you see how disingenuous and fallacious your argument is? You generalize the Taiping Rebellion, papering over all the specifics that make it a unique historical event, so that you can say it is no different than the Pugachev Rebellion (which you also reduce to an abstract generality). On the other hand, when you come to Joan of Arc, you essentialize each of the most specific features of her story so as to characterize it as a virtually unrepeatable historical anomaly. If you were even an ounce self aware or fair minded, you would have realized that "a young girl hearing voices" can just as easily be absorbed into the category of "fruitcakes and outcasts"; that "amassing an army under [her] command" is precisely what happened in the Taiping Rebellion; and that "beat[ing] back a foreign occupation of her country" is in fact "causing ruin to the powers that be" and, again, is what happened in the Taiping Rebellion given that the ruling family was a foreign minority in China.

R20

Yes. They say she must have actually identified as a man. They say that about every strong woman in history.

Men described her as attractive enough with nice breasts but not sexually desirable. She was strong and athletic.

Lesbian.

Its not too bizarre a story. England is overstretched Henry V is dead, Henry VI and his regents are famously terrible (see the Wars of the Roses). Suddenly a suitable focus point to raise French morale appears and the war starts to turn.

[quote]don't you see how disingenuous and fallacious your argument is? You generalize the Taiping Rebellion, papering over all the specifics that make it a unique historical event, so that you can say it is no different than the Pugachev Rebellion (which you also reduce to an abstract generality).

I was literally picking on the elements of the story that you gave out.

[quote]On the other hand, when you come to Joan of Arc, you essentialize each of the most specific features of her story so as to characterize it as a virtually unrepeatable historical anomaly.

I'm only "essentializing" them as unique because they're unique. Teenagers don't lead professional armies to war, especially ones that are female and non-aristocratic and came out of nowhere saying she was hearing voices.

Please, show me a story that remotely resembles that of Joan of Arc.

Twenty years after Joan’s death, her mother and surviving brothers secured a posthumous retrial, which was authorized by the Pope. At the retrial many people who had known Joan, including childhood friends and soldiers who had fought along side her, testified in detail about her. She was, of course, cleared of all charges.

I remember when Helen Lawson was interviewed during the run of Joan! The Musical and was asked what it was like to play a Saint.

"Dyke, ya know. They should have offered it to Mary."

[quote]Its not too bizarre a story. England is overstretched Henry V is dead, Henry VI and his regents are famously terrible (see the Wars of the Roses). Suddenly a suitable focus point to raise French morale appears and the war starts to turn.

Imagine a teen girl who came out of nowhere to give a pep talk to an armed force. The soldiers might think she is cute, and they might appreciate her feelings, but they're not going to be encouraged by some small fail creature to take up arms and fight. And it is even less likely that they're going to volunteer to fight under her command. Would you feel safe in their stead? Going to war under the command of a rosy-cheeked kid? A military leader needs to convey power, and no kid can manage to transmit that feeling to a group of SOLDIERS.

Soldiers don't even enjoy it when civilian adult men try to boss them around - can you imagine if they witnessed a teen girl doing so? This is not something that happens, and if a girl today tried to do what Joan supposedly did, I don't think it would lead to the same outcome as the Joan of Arc story.

R30, give it a rest you tiresome cunt

r33 Its a much more religious time though. Virgin girls claiming to speak from God could wield large amounts of power over the population. Look at ones like Elizabeth Barton who even scared tyrants like Henry VIII (at least for a bit the he gave her the old Anne Boleyn treatment).

I read in a Hadleigh book that French actress Capucine said to the author that JdA was gay, had a gf and that the Catholic Church canonized her to make her seem asexual.

She was a figurehead only and was bat shit crazy.

Probably bipolar. It's like Jesus, probably existed but the mythology is mostly fiction.

[quote]Its a much more religious time though. Virgin girls claiming to speak from God could wield large amounts of power over the population.

That sounds too easy. And I'm not aware of virgins with saintly pretensions inciting political (let alone military) strife even in the superstitious Middle Ages.

In matters of life and death, even fanatics tend to be sensible and cautious. And when it comes to war and survival, our cultural beliefs are often set aside; it is our reptilian brain, our most basic human impulses, that take command.

I mean she’s basically like the Greta or Malala of her century, it pretty amazing what she was able to do without the easy access of social media.

Yes, it happened. A fluke, as the medieval religious world was dying and the formation nations was occurring.

[quote]Unheralded, the courage came from society’s most unlikely source—a woman of the commoners’ class.

[quote]The phenomenon of Jeanne d’Arc—the voices from God who told her she must expel the English and have the Dauphin crowned King, the quality that dominated those who would normally have despised her, the strength that raised the siege of Orléans and carried the Dauphin to Reims—belongs to no category. Perhaps it can only be explained as the answer called forth by an exigent historic need. The moment required her and she rose. Her strength came from the fact that in her were combined for the first time the old religious faith and the new force of patriotism. God spoke to her through the voices of St. Catherine, St. Michael, and St. Margaret, but what He commanded was not chastity nor humility nor the life of the spirit but political action to rescue her country from foreign tyrants.

Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim . A Distant Mirror . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

"Joan Of Arc" by Stevie Nicks!

Her name wasn't actually "of Arc." Her family name was d'Arc, which might translate kind of to "of Arc," but it's not like, say, Catherine of Aragon. It's just a surname, and one she probably wouldn't have used. You might as well start calling Patti D'Arbanville "Patti of Arbanville."

[quote]Apostrophes were never used in fifteenth-century French surnames, which sometimes leads to confusion between place names and other names that begin with the letter D. Based on Latin records, which do reflect a difference, her father's name was more likely Darc. Spelling was also phonetic and original records produce his surname in at least nine different forms, such as Dars, Day, Darx, Dare, Tarc, Tart or Dart.

More at the link.