DESPERATELY SEEKING JOAN Joan of Arc's virtues were much contested but the genius of her personality cannot be disputed.
Gordon, Mary
DESPERATELY SEEKING JOAN Woman behind the hype Mary Gordon A favorite of Charles de Gaulle and Charles Peguy, not to mention new shores for the gospel and enter into their...
...rather the patroness of the vivid life, prized not for military "Saint" connects immediately to "goodness...
...The greater irony is that this More serious for Joan's admirers, they insist, that her woman, who insisted upon the primacy of her individual throwing herself out of a seven-story tower was an act either experience, who has been called by some, the first Protestant, of attempted suicide, or presumption, or at best, a lack of would be seen as the curb by which the faithful could be submission to her unjust judges, thereby refusing the exbrought to obedient, communal heel...
...In order to be named a saint, the tors and resistance figures alike...
...None of them suggests that she is not remarkable, but tempt to recapture the larger public imagination for itself...
...her in the clear light of her words and actions creates an 1'~ RN 0-86716-348-8 512.95 image not of singleness, but of fascinating complexity...
...dressed, and it is difficult not to sympathize with their reser- They question her faith and her fortitude, saying that vations...
...For she inspires spending, where what needs to be done, what is compelling in those whom she compels a response which the word and desirable, all come together for more than isolated mo- "hero" is too distant properly to serve...
...Commonweal I I March 10, 2000 tellectual and social phenomenon that the church, begin- peccable morals, still her virtues do not seem to be such as to ning with Pope Pius IX and continuing to the present pa- make her worthy of being proposed by a decree of the Holy pacy, considered one of the greatest-ever threats to its power...
...she speaks to our need, passionate, beyond or prior tense, in which cost is uncalculated and the future someone perhaps to reason, to feel that we are hers...
...The emphasis is placed upon the three theological and four They repeatedly assert that because of her stubborn remoral virtues...
...leaves behind her a record which if we look at it closely, Is our willingness to still keep the word "saint" in our hops and leaps, moves not in a smooth glissade, but in a selexicon a crack in the matte wall of one of our important ries of fits and starts...
...They are worried that so many difunmistakably loyal, daughter of the church...
...She provides inspiration...
...multaneously folded into the life of the devoted and worn as Perhaps we should look first at what associations come a cloak and talisman...
...But a look at ,n his earn' LC-hut Is Cunrcmlrlcrro n? to later iirrks and iiiurnah...
...loge tlur the lite and work of Thomas ton...
...Which are the virtues that ridiculous odds, for the grace of holding nothing back...
...they fault the perfection of her chastity because of her the boat piloted by Peter's heirs to the papacy...
...A saint is canonized to help the living, and the nature of the help that the living ven centuries as the angel of men's imagina- need is often determined by the contemporary pressures of tion did not make it easy for Joan of Arc the world upon the church...
...This was only one of the indicative of the holiness of the visions: They cite the case of I problems with Joan as a saint that they ad- Savonarola...
...boastful, resistant, implacable, she is like all great saints, a 8:00 AM to 5:C0 I'M EST NIP i.g~_:~ga.p+886j FAX 1.51.3.241-1191 14 h~iur, personality of genius...
...Not, perhaps the patroness of France, but may have no interest...
...from the Old Testament heroines-Judith and Esther-with the four moral are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temper- whom she was compared, because their works were a diance...
...A passionate economy of sheer stantly demand new visions, new revisions...
...As with Columbus, it required a certain amount of er's 1928 silent masterpiece La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, most quickstepping to interpret Joan's goal of uniting France recently in last year's thoroughly contemporary The Messenger under the scepter of Charles VII as a sacred mission...
...ready achieved eternal salvation...
...Copyright Mary Gordon, 2000...
...or "Why did it happen at all...
...DESPERATELY SEEKING JOAN Woman behind the hype Mary Gordon A favorite of Charles de Gaulle and Charles Peguy, not to mention new shores for the gospel and enter into their possession in Bernard Shaw, Joan of Arc has long been a historical figure whose the name of Jesus Christ...
...This transformation of Columpopularity tells us perhaps more about those who revere her than bus's career as an explorer into one of evangelization indiabout the martryed saint herself...
...They charge her with intractableness in refusing to church was sentenced to death by an ecclesiastical court, answer the judges at her trial, ignoring the fact that this was but this irony was passed over for the greater good of a her judicial right...
...Perhaps the The Lay Contemplative true miracle of Joan's canonization is that the church, in its Y Testimonies, Perspectives, Resources CONTEMPLATIVE desire to create a saint who would bring the wandering Edited by Virginia Manss and Mary Frohlich sheep back into the fold, who would provide a simple and ": L'•• ( 'jnEel )Ipu?fii'C Jr:1R-s tcu~LcrhO1' unassailable enough force to counteract the lure of modern 11, 1ut star-, rheum' and prictic iI help fitr many people who feel called to pursue a pleasure seeking and free thought, put aside their narrow nrcmplative prayer life while living an standards...
...In truth, Joan's remarkable personality did not 1859...
...Joan's curiously malleable legend cates the problems for someone like Joan or Columbus, has been championed by secular French republicans and Catholic someone whose fame was achieved by exploits not specifimonarchists, Dreyfusites and anti-Dreyfusites, Nazi collabora- cally religious in nature...
...She asks to be made ments in a human life...
...Is it possible for us now to prize any virtue, be- was canonized for the wrong reasons, but her words and lieving, (all of us necessarily post-Darwinian if not post- actions are stronger than the seal set on her by Rome...
...Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc...
...Some of ical thought, particularly powerful at the end of the First their objections are easy to dismiss...
...It is a story that clearly has captivated novelist make a point about what it considers, at that period, an exMary Gordon, and below she writes on how the multifarious na- emplary life...
...Perhaps the most fitting tribute we understandings of the world...
...O Commonweal 1 3 March 10, 2000...
...clearly legible symbolic truth...
...Keeping the commandments is or a nationalist hero...
...The dread when she was brought to the stake, although underchurch's criteria for sainthood are based on a person's hav- standable and even poignant in human terms, are evidence ing lived an exceptional, in fact unimpeachable, life of virtue...
...New Books on the Contemplative Life But Pope Pius X and the College of Cardinals wanted Joan...
...It they note her radical shifts...
...One consultor wonders that, since only paying membership dues in the club of potential sal- France has been such a source of poisonous ideas and so vation...
...They forgot their devotion to obedience and con- ^~ .:i%'c life in the worki...
...it is assumed that the candidate would have fusal to submit the question of her voices' validity to the kept the Ten Commandments of Moses and the six com- church fathers who were judging her, she is not a model for mandments of the church-the latter having to do with ques- the faithful...
...those for whom it is a merely recognizable one, denoting With all these considerations in mind, what kind of saint something to which they have no access and in which they could Joan be...
...E (1412-31) to be named a saint by the Roman Although the first and most natural of questions regardCatholic church...
...She we prize...
...The devil's advocates, unlike the ad- ISBN 0-86716-370-4 S 10.95 miring artists who did their part to insure for Joan a differ- Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey ent kind of immortality, understood her changeability and Tfii?' Paradise Paradise writings on Contemplation its implications...
...a cuntem...
...They say that she is different The three theological virtues are faith, hope, and charity...
...But his case was dropped in 1892 on the ground that he had an illegitimate son...
...They note that she lied by her own admission about the details of an angel bringing the king's crown...
...Many in the church believed that this tide, obedience to her parents in not telling them about her voicwhose source was clearly in France, could potentially capsize es...
...See an exemplar to be imitated by the Christian faithful...
...and imperfections that make, if not a saint, then a great and lovable human being...
...They suggest that, had those saints behaved like Joan, Avenues of Grace in the World we would have no models of perfect martyrdom...
...was begun, and she was not declared a saint for another The process that resulted in Joan's canonization began in fifty years...
...Does the word "saint" create can give her is to acknowledge that any understanding of her the possibility, glimpsed, and urging a quick discard, of ac- will be partial, and that so compelling a figure will contion beyond self-interest...
...This was a series of impulses over which the church spread Of all those who have tried to understand Joan's life and the linguistic tarpaulin of the word "modernism," a habit career, it is only the devil's advocates who have focused in of mind that was secular, rationalist, and anti-hierarchical...
...they dismissed any negative evidence...
...it implies only the minimum compliance (however much trouble to the church, maybe her cause wasn't a good rare that might be in reality), not the distinction that saint- one...
...What for devotion, there is the sense of being singled out by the category of human activity does the word "saint" still mean- saint, or being part of the saint's small elect...
...Thomas ,%Iertnn's Paradise Journey: Their understanding was silenced, and the church, like -icfotas on Cc nternglauan maces the develeveryone else who was to use Joan for his or her own needs, r:nent of &Ierton's thought On the subject presented us with another oversimplification...
...Whereas none of her devil's advocates questioned rect preparation for the coming of Christ whereas hers were whether Joan was an admirable person, they asserted again only rooted in the fate of one country...
...They revirtues...
...In examining Joan's history of resistance to her cler- these were present only when things were going well for ical judges, they raised the question of whether this consti- her...
...only air the church's historical dirty laundry), but they conIt is important to understand what is in the mind of the tend that her desire to escape from prison, the complaints church when it names someone a saint and in this context to with which she received her sentence of death, her tears and explore the differences between a saint and a hero...
...They understand that she was badly treated by those tuted a model of faithful obedience, whether, in presenting who condemned her (some of the consultors use this as an her for emulation by the faithful, the church was backing argument against proceeding with Joan's case, since it will the wrong horse, or filly...
...One of the devil's advocates, Jean Baptist Lugari, peat the evidence that she did not want to die, that she in fact said of her: "Even though she was a most noble heroine, tried to prevent her death, particularly by her abjuration...
...This lx-Ark provides formity and created a saint who is full of the contradictions Ell .'.iriery of reawrcea that will :assist the ..: ~..: i rhnan lavperm in in deepen ins...
...This essay is excerpted from Joan of Arc: A Penguin Life...
...and again that she was imperfect in the practice of the Most important, they say that she is not a martyr...
...else's to regard...
...ut what is marked by the word saint, and of Those who have treasured saints have done so because what use is such a word to those of us who are they provide a dream of accompaniment, a hope of advoskeptical about, or may have ceased to believe cacy, a special connection based on something particular: B in, the certifying power of a group of men, ap- shared traits, a profession, a name, a date of birth...
...A saint is made a saint not because canonization ture of loan's legend and the elusiveness of her personality can does anything for him or her...
...They bring up several events in was one response to the powerful tide of socialist, anticler- her life which they determine to be less than saintly...
...if France had ceased to exist...
...ferent men seem to have mentioned, and therefore seen, her There is a certain irony that this loyal daughter of the breasts...
...In return pointed in the name of the Roman Catholic church...
...They t was an irony not unregarded by the devil's suggest that her voices might have been the result of a hysadvocates charged with disproving Joan's qual- terical delusion, and remark that even correct prophecy isn't ifications for sanctity...
...that she did not possess saintly fortitude...
...the hundred and fifty years after her excommunication and more fruitful and interesting ones are "Why did it happen death at the stake, that the process of formal canonization when it did...
...see Richard Alleva,"Dames at War," December 17, 1999...
...The France of that period was at the center of the inconform to the traditional categories the church used to judge individual sanctity...
...At any historical moment, to be betrayed and condemned for heresy and witchcraft, that never the church canonizes people whom it needs to canonize to fails to fascinate...
...a concerted way on Joan's inconsistencies and erratic beJoan's canonization in 1920 can be seen as the church's at- havior...
...Above all, she with the word, both to those for whom it is a living term, and is someone to whom the votary bows...
...They question whether she isn't just a military tions of fidelity to worship...
...But what victories but for the gift of passionate action taken against does goodness mean to us now...
...The popular imagination seems candidate has to be understood to have been acting for the never to tire of her, and the story of the maid of Orleans has been greater good of the church and in ways that conformed to the the subject of at least twenty films, most effectively in Carl Drey- gospel...
...even though she was pious and endowed with the most im- They compare her to the earlier Christian martyrs, who emCommonweal 12 March 10, 2000 braced death and wouldn't have lifted a finger to keep it back...
...It was in 1869, nearly three ing Joan's canonization is "Why did it take so long...
...At the same time that Joan's cause was being discussed in the Vatican, the question of Christopher Columbus's sanctity was also up for debate...
...She Freudian) that we act as we do from self-interest...
...But she will not stand still for us...
...Wouldn't the church, he suggests, have been better off hood implies...
...She was a virgin and she died for what she believed, but she Available ar your lock ST_AHTRORY MESSENGER PRESS huoksrore or call: COHM,P.~cer~0 5 does not fit the type of the virgin martyr...
...This seemed to be an insurmountable problem, overcoming the glory that he earned because, as the records of the Congregation of Rites (now the Congregation for the Causes of Saints) tell us, "He did not hesitate to conquer the dark sea and to thrust himself into every kind of vicissitude in order to acquire Mary Gordon, professor of English at Barnard College, is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, and a memoir...
...They accuse her of disWorld War...
...The saint is siingfully describe...
...ample of Jesus...
...Ardent, impatient, 1,800-488-0488...
...There That this was done for Joan and not for Columbus points is something about the story of the teen-age girl who led an army to an aspect of the church's canonization process that is alagainst English invaders and helped to crown a French king, only ways present, if not dominant...
...presumably, he or she has alexpand our ideas about sainthood...
...A way of life lived in a radical present our own...
...In this they honored her complexity with a Jounu William H. Shannon clear gaze, clearer than many of those who loved her for t : il.cnti lati1111 iI Ehe MM-:fe strand th.ft their own reasons...
...What was boasting about it and her willingness to undergo physical exneeded was the ballast of Joan's image: the popular, and aminations to verify it...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 5
