Saint Joan of Arc

I would have given this book at least four stars, but instead it's two and a request for a refund. It's a classic work about Joan and I used it in high school as my number one source for a history assignment about Joan of Arc. So the nostalgia factor was high to begin with, and I needed it for my electronic collection of Joan of Arc books.Unfortunately, the formatting of this ebook was screwed up. Half of the first three chapters were indented to the right, as if they were quotations or some such. And then when a new chapter began the text would be normal again ... for some paragraphs.I'm really disappointed that such a great book receives such a poor formatting from presumably professional publishing outlet. What the h* is going on? Do you think you can get away with selling this to people who'll just keep it and not want their money back?

What drew me to this book is that Vita was not afraid to use the word SAINT in the title of her biography, thus honoring St. Joan's religious convictions, which St. Joan went to the stake defending. Titles that do not explicitly say SAINT Joan of Arc, are unlikely to honor her deeply held religious beliefs and convictions. I have no interest in reading biographies of saints that do not honor or discuss at depth the religions of their subjects. They are likely written by atheists and Liberal morons who expect to remake their subjects and the world into narcissistic versions of themselves and their non-beliefs.

Vita Sackville-West (March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962) was a successful novelist, poet, and journalis who is most remembered now for her close friendship and relationship with Virginia Wolff. She was the inspiration for Wolff's androgynous Orlando.She published this book 15 years after Joan of Arc was declared a saint in the Catholic Church. So it is probably the first major biography of Joan published after her sainthood. In her Foreword she says "that Joan of Arc presented fundamental problem of the deepest importance" and whose "strange career... remains a story whose conclusion is as yet unfound."What the author attempts to do is to gather all the first hand accounts, and to arrange Joan's story in roughly chronological order. When contemporary narratives differ on a point, she speculates as to what might be the truth. What I found most difficult in reading the book is that she quotes many of the sources in the original French, assuming her readers have a more than passing knowledge of the language. She also relates the story of Joan's guiding voices in a straightforward manner, not giving them a Divine or medical explanation.I found the author related Joan's life in a sympathetic way that a female author could better provide than some of the male efforts to tell her story.

Historians have rejected this book as erroneous on many points. While the material is relatively balanced, it nevertheless makes far too many baseless claims which have given rise to several profound falsifications of the subject.In some cases, the book misquotes or misrepresents 15th century documents. For example, eyewitness accounts describing Joan as "beautiful and shapely", very feminine, and "short", are here distorted or glossed over to make precisely the opposite claims about her appearance. The book also seems to have been responsible for inventing the absurd notion that Joan undressed in front of her troops, again by distorting or misinterpreting the accounts. Likewise, it gave rise to another falsehood by indirectly implying that Joan was a lesbian. This was achieved by irresponsibly citing out of context - while nevertheless simultaneously admitting the genuine facts of the matter - the testimony concerning the 9-year old Charlotte Boucher, the (then) 12 or 13-year old Hauviette de Sionne, and Marguerite La Touroulde, with whom Joan was sometimes placed in bed for various reasons, usually as a then-common means of coping with a lack of adequate bedspace in a household. The author admits that this was in fact the custom and does not imply lesbian sexual activity (or pedophilia, in the case of the young girls), but the book nevertheless delights in making sly innuendoes to the contrary which later authors then adopted in order to make more direct claims.Other errors are numerous. Martin Ladvenu's testimony was misquoted by alleging that she was raped by her English guards, although Ladvenu instead described only attempted rape, as did the other eyewitnesses. Several scurrilous allegations about her family are invented or repeated, without basis. Modern political ideology is introduced by misinterpreting Joan of Arc's role: she was given a position in the army after being accepted as a genuine mystic or visionary by the theologians at Poitiers; her role had nothing to do with feminism, as many feminists themselves have pointed out.In summary, this book cannot be recommended as a reliable history of Joan of Arc. The only general biographies on the subject widely accepted by historians are those by Regine Pernoud (a prominent medieval historian and founder of the Centre Jeanne d'Arc at Orleans, France).

Many years ago my cousin lent me a hardback copy which contained the records of her trial in Latin & Old French. It was a challenge and a delight to read. The cousin promised to bequeath that book to me but it could not be found after he died. This modernpublication may be more easiy readable but I am afreaid it disappointed me.