Joan of Arc: A History

Summary

We all know the story of Joan of Arc. A peasant girl who hears voices from God. A warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believes women cannot fight. The Maid of Orléans, and the savior of France. Burned at the stake as a heretic at the age of just nineteen. Five hundred years later, a saint. We know Joan so well because her case was heard in court twice over. One trial, in 1431, condemned her; the other, twenty-five years after her death, cleared her name. In the transcripts, we hear testimony from Joan herself, her family and her friends: a rare survival from the medieval world. What could be more revealing? But all is not as simple as it seems. It's a life told backwards, in hindsight- a story already shaped by the knowledge of what Joan would become. In JOAN OF ARC: A HISTORY, Helen Castor tells this gripping story afresh: forwards, not backwards. Instead of an icon, she gives us a living, breathing woman confronting the challenges of faith and doubt, a roaring girl who, in fighting the English, was also taking sides in a bloody civil war. We meet this extraordinary girl amid the tumultuous events of her extraordinary world where no one-not Joan herself, nor the people around her, princes, bishops, soldiers or peasants-knew what would happen next.