Joan of Arc Asks If She Shall Rise from the Dead and Come Back to Life

The familiar conventional view of Joan of Arc (1412-1431) pictures her as a romantic heroic soldier- saint done to death by cruelly unjust religious fanatics.

Shaw's Joan of Arc is still a simple unlettered country lass in her teens, a virgin soldier-saint, still the called-of God, still the martyred-by-man. Also, she is singularly devoid of anything that suggests the romantic. She seemingly is ordinary-looking, with no physical charms, and romantic love never entered her thoughts. And to repress her femininity she donned male army uniform when she moved amongst soldiers. She was particularly interested in military affairs and in military encounters she showed extraordinary insight. Indeed, Shaw again and again refers to her commonsense as the root cause of her military successes. And, at her Trial, it is the stupidity of her ecclesiastical and feudal accusers that appals her, not any wickedness.

But what Joan dismisses as stupidity was, in the eyes of her accusers, no more than an act of self-preservation. The Church could not concede to Joan the right to obey the "voices" of, what she claimed, Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret and the Archangel Michael, because the Church feared, the "voices" could quite possibly be of the devil's as of God's. On the other hand, to Joan, the Church's claim to infallibility was unacceptable, because she cannot obey an ordinance that is not an inner bidding, which she believes to emanate from God. Here is a conflict between an institution of constituted authority hardened into routine formulas and the unfettered heavenly promptings within the individual. In setting up the heavenly calls she has heard against the age-long collective judgment of the monolithic Church vindicates the freedom of the living soul.

For this reason, to Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, Joan is just a heretic and witch and represents a menace to the Church. Likewise, to the Earl of Warwick, she is a menace to the feudal system. She is eventually martyred by being burnt at the stake.