I commend you to God; may God watch over you and grant you grace so that you can maintain the good cause of the Kingdom of France.
Joan of Arc
Something for the weekend. Joan of Arc, They Are Calling You. A hit song a hundred years ago in the US. Music by Jack Wells and lyrics by Al Bryan and Willie Weston. Although the Maid of Orleans would not be canonized until 1920, the French had regarded her as a saint since her death. In World War I French soldiers would usually have an image of Joan of Arc on them as they went into battle in a War most of them regarded as a Crusade to save France.
St. Joan of Arc pray for us.
“[T]he French had regarded her as a saint since her death…”
And not only the French. As the Scottish historian, Andrew Lang recounts, “It is said by some who were present, that even the English Cardinal, Beaufort, wept when he saw the Maid die: “crocodiles’ tears!” One of the secretaries of Henry VI. (who himself was only a little boy) said, “We are all lost. We have burned a Saint!”
They were all lost. The curse of their cruelty did not depart from them. Driven by the French and Scots from province to province, and from town to town, the English returned home, tore and rent each other; murdering their princes and nobles on the scaffold, and slaying them as prisoners of war on the field; and stabbing and smothering them in chambers of the Tower; York and Lancaster devouring each other; the mad Henry VI. was driven from home to wander by the waves at St. Andrews, before he wandered back to England and the dagger stroke—these things were the reward the English won, after they had burned a Saint. They ate the bread and drank the cup of their own greed and cruelty all through the Wars of the Roses. They brought shame upon their name which Time can never wash away; they did the Devil’s work, and took the Devil’s wages. Soon Henry VIII. was butchering his wives and burning Catholics and Protestants, now one, now the other, as the humour seized him.”
Her trial was an evil travesty, and her execution hard to contemplate. God will judge us each alone but I wonder if the judgment of nations is sometimes collective.