![]() ![]() The Joan of traditional narratives had a life trajectory like a shooting star: brief, brilliant and destined for a fiery demise. She is a worthy patron saint of France, a country that on Joan’s canonisation in 1920 badly needed a heroine. The latter Joan, according to the popular mythology that has seen her immortalised in song, wartime propaganda posters and even the packaging for an American brand of butter beans, was implacable in pursuit of her mission, unshakeable in her faith, untouchable in her virginal purity. The motivations and desires of the historic Joan – peasant girl, French woman and 15th-century human being – have been cast into shadow by the blinding light cast by Joan, warrior-saint. But although stars may be brilliant, celestial bodies have no agency: their function is to shine, not to want or to think. ![]() As Helen Castor writes in this illuminating new biography, in the history of 15th-century France the woman known as the Maid of Orleans “shines brighter than that of any other figure”. She was undoubtedly echoing the words of Pope Pius X, who 90 years earlier had described the soon-to-be beatified Joan as “a new star destined to be the glory not only of France but of the universal Church as well”. ![]() ![]() A star and a saint shine forever”, concluded Josephine Poole in her 1998 children’s book Joan of Arc. ![]()
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