Joan’s Voices spoke to her more especially when the church bells were ringing; they were mild and very kind; they always spoke soothingly. When their music stilled she lay prostrate upon the ground and wept because they had left her behind; because she had not been able to ascend with them and go home to that waiting Heaven. Joan’s Voices urged her to become the saviour of France. And when the child remonstrated that she was only a poor peasant girl and did not know how to ride a horse or handle a sword, the Voices insistently replied, “It is God who commands.” And then the Maid arose and went forth on that mighty mission.
Orleans, Jargeau, Troyes, Patay, Rheims, Laon, Soissons, Compeigne, Beauvais were her victories. Then came the rapid flame-way of her own emancipation.
As Joan stood bound to the stake, and as the smoke and flames were hiding her from the vulgus profanum, a wild-eyed monk advanced to the pyre. He held aloft a large iron cross having upon it an ivory figure of the tortured Christ. A look of infinite sympathy and love lit up the eyes of Joan as they rested upon the Christ. Her lips parted in prayer. Blessings upon Charles VII., prayerful petitions for her beloved France were heard thro’ the crackling flames. Not once did her eyes turn from the tortured form upon the cross; thence was coming the strength that enabled her to bear the pangs of death, thence, too, the grace which urged her to pray for her murderers.
Round her rolled the fire; her long black hair was blazing, her head, her face, her wondrous eyes were flooded in flame. All was ending. But the monk held aloft the Crucifix. A gust of wind parted the fire, again the charred eyes rested upon the tortured form on the cross, her lips moved in prayer; and again she was lost in flames. Thus perished Joan of Arc, aged nineteen, virgin and martyr.
Take not the ivory Christ away. ’Tis sorrow’s mutual friend; ’tis the strength of strong agony; ’tis the sympathizing consoler of the rack, the stake, the prison house of pain, the dim valley of the Shadow, the Rouen sea of flames. The Crucifix understands.
Pan? Well, yes, for the bright blue Arcadian hour in young-heart Arcady. But for the gray every day and the solemn night; for the hours of pain and loss and parting and change, sickness, old age, sorrow; for the crucial crises of life as they come in bitter pangs to us of a lost Arcady; for the mother whose boy fell at Vera Cruz; for a Joan of Arc in the flames—ah! take your grinning Pan away; we want the Crucifix, we want the thorny crowned Christ who has suffered and understands.
Ten years after the death of Joan, there was a judicial reversal of her sentence of condemnation. Twenty-five years later the Church instituted a thorough investigation of Joan’s claims, deeds, trial, condemnation, and death. The process and results of this inquiry may be found in detail in the work “Proces de Condemnation et de Rehabilitation de Jeanne D’Arc,” published in five volumes, by the Société de L’Histoire de France.
Many eminent English authors, besides innumerable French biographers, have written in deep sympathy with Joan of Arc; among them may be mentioned Southey, Hallam, Carlyle, Landor, de Quincy, Lang, and our own Mark Twain. Voltaire’s vulgar burlesque-epic is now generally regarded as an insult to France and a superficial satiric calumny. Schiller in The “Maid of Orleans” distorts well known historical facts.
In 1869 Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans presented at the Vatican his petition and claims for the beatification of Joan of Arc. The trial proceeded slowly, but on April 11, 1909, Pius X., the present reigning pontiff, pronounced the decree which raised Joan to the first step in the process of canonization. She was solemnly declared Blessed. “A Mass and Office of Blessed Joan taken from the Commune Virginum with ‘proper’ prayers have been approved of by the Holy See for use in the diocese of Orleans.” Joan’s canonization is now under active consideration.