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The strange story of Joan of Arc, the obscure peasant girl who became the national saint of France, is retold in this celebrated, classic biography. Saint Joan lives for the reader on every page, as a shepherd girl in a remote part of fifteenth-century rural France, visited by visions of saints and angels; as the avenging virgin who regenerated the soul of a torn and wretched France and led her troops to victory; and as a condemned heretic and witch, burned at the stake and, five hundred years later, canonised as a saint.
Vita Sackville-West wrote Saint Joan of Arc in 1936 at the age of forty-four, and had, at that point, already been writing for thirty years. At fourteen, Sackville-West published her first book, and at fourteen Joan of Arc first heard the voices. Joan was seventeen when she took command of the armies of France -- a peasant girl in the early fifteenth century in charge of a nation's forces. At nineteen she was captured by the British and tried as a witch by a church court. Before her twentieth birthday she was burned at the stake. In 1920 she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint. In a clever, brisk voice, Vita Sackville-West tells the triumphant story of a French peasant girl raised in a country torn apart by the Hundred Years' War who rose from poverty to military greatness. With dazzling insight and clarity, Sackville-West breathes new life into Joan of Arc's beautiful and tragic story.
Written in a straight-forward, concise, and at times humorous manner, Nash-Marshall's Joan of Arc acquaints the reader with a historical character who became a legend during her lifetime legend. Joan is presented to us as a brave young girl who received a mission and who courageously used all of her faculties and gifts to accomplish it. Nash Marshall's approach is refreshingly honest. The narrative is centered on Joan, her mission, her work to fulfill it, her betrayal. The author gives us the facts and allows us readers to draw our own conclusions. Lovers of history will find the author's thesis on the connection between the resurgence of France, the betrayal of Joan, and the fall of Byzantium very interesting.
There are volumes on the story of Saint Joan of Arc (even by famous Protestant authors), but can you imagine a better version than the documentation by one of the greatest Catholic authors of this century, Hilaire Belloc. In his characteristic style, Belloc carefully tells the complete story in the most compelling manner. A great story, a great saint, a great author. You won't be able to set it down, a Catholic treasure. Gold embossed cloth.
A biography of the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led a French army to victory against the English, witnessed the crowning of King Charles VII, and was later burned at the stake for witchcraft.
Dramatizes the trial, career, and execution of Joan of Arc.
Acclaimed historian Helen Castor brings us afresh a gripping life of Joan of Arc. Instead of the icon, she gives us a living, breathing young woman; a roaring girl fighting the English, and taking sides in a bloody civil war that was tearing fifteenth century France apart. Here is a portrait of a 19-year-old peasant who hears voices from God; a teenager transformed into a warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believed women should not fight. And it is also the story behind the myth we all know, a myth which began to take hold at her trial: that of the Maid of Orleans, the saviour of France, a young woman burned at the stake as a heretic, a woman who five hundred years later would be declared a saint. Joan and her world are brought vividly to life in this refreshing new take on the medieval world. Helen Castor brings us to the heart of the action, to a woman and a country in turmoil, a world where no-one - not Joan herself, nor the people around her, princes, bishops, soldiers or peasants - knew what would happen next.
"Originally published in French under the title Jehanne d'Arc: gagner la paix, by EDIFA-MAME ... Paris, c2008"--T.p. verso.