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Weird Things About Joan Of Arc You lot Didn't Know

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Today we remember Joan of Arc generally from novels and actually bad movies starring John Malkovich (equally Charles 7, non every bit Joan). Joan of Arc doesn't become much airtime in not-French textbooks, so most of what Americans know about her boils down to this: She was a rare female military leader, she talked to God, she was burned at the stake, and she looked good in shiny armor.

There really is no doubt, though, that Joan of Arc was a remarkable woman. Mark Twain called her "hands and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced." She achieved things no other woman had ever accomplished, and you lot could even say she made great things possible for all the women leaders who followed her. Still, much of what we know about Joan of Arc is embellished, totally made up, or hardly talked about, so hither are some of the more than obscure details from the not bad heroine's short life.

Joan of Arc wasn't from 'Arc' and her name wasn't Joan

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We call her "Joan of Arc" today, but that's not what she called herself. For a start, she was French, and "Joan" isn't a French name. Her given name was actually "Jehanne," and she called herself "Jehanne la Pucelle" or "Joan the maid."

And so the English translation of "Jehanne" is "Joan," which is why nosotros English speakers don't refer to her as "Jehanne." Then that makes sense, but what about "Arc"? Did Joan/Jehanne come from a boondocks chosen Arc? Nope. According to the St. Joan Heart, her begetter used that proper name — he was (possibly) from a identify called Arc-en-Barrois, hence the surname d'Arc. And since modern people take a really difficult time fathoming daughters who don't inherit their fathers' last names, nosotros employ "Arc" as Joan's concluding proper name, too.

But "Joan of Arc" never used her father'southward surname. She wasn't born in Arc-en-Barrois merely in a village called Domremy, which is where her male parent married her mother, Isabelle Romee. In French republic at that time it was the custom for girls to take their mothers' names, and so Jehanne/Joan really would have done that if information technology weren't for the whole wearing armor and getting burned at the pale matter.

She may accept suffered from epilepsy or schizophrenia

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These days, when someone says "I'g hearing voices," the usual response is "Um ... oh-kay." In Joan's day, hearing voices meant you were either talking to God or to the devil, and either way information technology wasn't really great news for you. If you talked to the devil you were a witch, which meant you lot'd become burned at the stake. If you talked to God y'all were a Very Of import Person, which meant that eventually someone would decide you were actually talking to the devil, which meant you'd get burned at the stake.

Joan grew up devout, so when she started to hear voices she truly believed she was talking to God, who'd called her for a swell and noble purpose. But God may not have been behind those voices — according to LiveScience, at least two modern neurologists take posthumously diagnosed Joan with "idiopathic partial epilepsy with auditory features," a genetic form of epilepsy that affects only one part of the brain and can crusade auditory hallucinations. Other historians have speculated that Joan suffered from schizophrenia.

Of grade, those theories can never really be proven, unless historians are successful in locating the messages that Joan supposedly sealed with wax and "the imprint of a finger and a hair." If Joan's hair could be establish, her Dna could maybe prove or disprove the epilepsy theory. But nosotros probably don't take to tell y'all how unlikely that is.

Her family wasn't poor

Joan of Arc is often portrayed as a peasant daughter who became a great military leader and champion for France, but those stories don't actually tell the whole truth. Co-ordinate to writer Ronald Gower, there's bear witness that Joan's family was not actually poor. Later her expiry, neighbors testified that Joan's father was a "doyden" or senior inhabitant of the village, which means he was next to the mayor in importance. The family were landholders — they had 20 acres, including farmland, meadow, and forest. They as well had money stashed away for emergencies, which is a lot more than many modern families tin claim to accept.

In fact Joan's family doesn't appear to accept been suffering at all — their annual income was said to be the equivalent of roughly 200 pounds, which was kind of a lot of money in those days — plenty to alive comfortably, raise kids, and give a picayune scrap to the actual poor.

So what gives with the "poor peasant" stuff? Information technology might have something to do with the whole underdog thing — information technology's much nicer to imagine a poor daughter becoming the heroine of France than it is to imagine a well-off girl doing the same thing. Information technology'due south definitely ameliorate for public morale, also, especially when the average family in those days tended to be more poor than not.

She was probably more than like a figurehead than a soldier

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We love to imagine Joan of Arc riding into battle at the caput of her army, taking down English soldiers with one arm and praising God with the other. That's probably non exactly how it happened, though, depending on who you enquire.

Some of the people who knew Joan of Arc claimed she did all that — charged the British with a lance, fought alongside her men — only not everyone thinks those accounts are accurate. Historian Desmond Seward, who wrote The Hundred Years State of war: The English language in France, said "Joan of Arc merely checked the English advance by reviving Dauphinist morale," and French historian Edouard Perroy basically said she was just a figurehead: "She was content to exhort the combatants, say what advice her voices gave, step into the breach at critical moments and rally the infantry."

On the other hand, it does seem hard to discount all the testimony from soldiers who knew her, though those stories probably were somewhat embellished. Let'due south confront it, if you're going to brag about your close personal human relationship with the hero of France, you lot're probably going to tell people she was way more awesome than she actually was. However, one should never underestimate daughter ability.

She was a cross-dresser, but not for the reasons you think

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One of Joan'south nearly famous quirks had to practice with her manner of dress. Today, with a few idiotic holdouts, most people recognize the lame-osity of caring whether a woman chooses to wearable a dress, a pair of jeans, or a suit of armor — merely during Joan'southward time it was super, super important. In fact it was so of import that information technology was really illegal for a woman to dress like a human being.

Joan didn't dress the mode she did to be more comfortable in battle or because she wanted to be a man (both perfectly valid reasons). Instead, it's likely that Joan wore men's clothing because she was agape she'd exist raped if she didn't. According to the Joan of Arc Annal, while being held by the English she attached her hose to her tunic with 20 cords, and her boots went all the way upwards to her waist and were also attached to her tunic, presumably considering all that stuff would take forever for an aggressor to remove. The fact that she had to practice this at all was pretty repulsive since female prisoners were mostly placed in the custody of nuns, but the English made an exception for her and left in the hands of soldiers instead. That was fine for them, since they could so indicate to her cross-dressing every bit evidence of heresy.

Ultimately, she was executed for wearing men's clothing

When she was captured in 1430, the English charged Joan of Arc with a bunch of seriously lame crimes that we would never dream of charging anyone with today, including witchcraft, heresy, and cross-dressing. The 70 charges were eventually reduced downwards to 12, though they still included cross-dressing, possibly because that was easier to testify.

Anyway, and then came a long trial that would accept been humiliating, except for the part where Joan was so well-spoken and clever that her inquisitors decided to make her public trial a individual i considering she was making them all look stupid. After that, Joan was forced to sign a document denying that her visions were existent and like-minded not to wear men'southward wearable anymore. Because remember, that last bit was super important.

According to Mental Floss, in one case her life imprisonment judgement was handed down, she went dorsum to wearing men'south clothing again. She told interrogators that she did so to protect herself from the guards, aka exactly what she'd been saying all along. She also told interrogators she wasn't being totally honest when she said she didn't actually hear voices, and though that certainly contributed to her ultimate fate, it seems the cross-dressing was what set everyone off again. So and then the bishop in charge decided she was a relapsed heretic, and she was sentenced to decease.

She probably died from rut stroke

If you lot're e'er unlucky enough to be sentenced to decease at the stake, you may hope to die of smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion, both much less painful than burning to expiry. If published accounts of Joan of Arc's decease are to exist believed, she was spared the final agony of death past burn. According to the St. Joan Center, she probably died from heat burnout.

As it turns out, even medieval people weren't necessarily so bloodthirsty and cruel that they always enjoyed watching the agonizing last moments of someone who was condemned to dice in the nigh horrible way possible. Executioners were sometimes given broad authority to ease the pain of the convicted, either by slitting the unfortunate person'south throat, strangling them, or piling a lot of green wood effectually their anxiety so they'd die from the fume. In that location isn't any evidence that the get-go 2 things happened, but Joan almost certainly didn't dice from the flames — there wasn't a unmarried witness who said she screamed in agony, which is impossible to avoid when your skin is called-for. Instead, she cried out "Jesus! Jesus!" and and so she bowed her head and didn't make another sound. That's not exactly consistent with painful agony, so that'due south some alleviation for her untimely death, simply not much.

Let's burn down her, then burn down her ashes, and then fire her over again

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Considering i burning was conspicuously not plenty, Joan of Arc was burned a second time — and and then a third fourth dimension. Why? Well, according to The Guardian information technology was peculiarly of import to the Cardinal of Winchester, who ordered the second burning, maybe because you wouldn't want anyone climbing up on the pyre and collecting souvenirs or anything.

But that wasn't enough, then she was burned a third time — although the legends about the third burning are somewhat in disagreement. Some accounts say the soldiers who were tasked with cleaning up the post-execution mess plant her intact heart, still full of blood, untouched among the ashes. They desperately tried to go rid of it past dumping sulfur, oil, and charcoal on it in the hope they could go information technology to burn down, only information technology stubbornly refused to get anything but a actually morbid and gross symbol of its quondam owner'due south innocence. The soldiers cried out that they'd burned a saint and were doomed, and that's when they dumped her middle and her ashes into the Seine River. And and so endeth the tale of Joan the Maid, except of class that's not where information technology ended.

Joan of Arc didn't really die, see? At present give u.s. gifts.

Siblings are super-annoying because that'south a prerequisite for sharing someone's genetics. According to the St. Joan Center, Joan had brothers, and after her death they sat around musing about how they might be able to keep a adept thing going despite the tragic death of that good thing's primal figure. In 1434, iii years later on their sis's death, a woman came forwards challenge to exist Joan of Arc (her existent name was Claude), which was of grade patently ridiculous since Joan had died in front of a huge crowd and had never once said the words, "You've got the wrong girl!" Merely her brothers Pierre and Jean d'Arc accepted it, and Joan of Arc lived again.

At present y'all might imagine they had political reasons, but no. No, Pierre and Jean were in information technology for the money. For six years, they traveled France and presented the imposter as the real Joan of Arc, and then happily accepted all the gifts that were lavished upon the imitation heroine by an admiring population. Their ruse went all the way to the king, Charles VII, which was stupid since he'd actually known the real Joan of Arc. When Claude couldn't repeat a "hole-and-corner" the existent Joan had once shared with Charles, she was forced to confess.

Joan of Arc gets cleared of wrongdoing — 20 years too belatedly

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Joan'south brothers might have been less than honorable, only Joan'south mother came from different stock ... sort of. Anyhow, Joan'due south mother wanted her daughter's name cleared. In 1455, she presented herself on her knees in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and formally requested a rehabilitation for Joan of Arc.

At present you might think this emotional brandish opened upwards the hearts of all those who heard it, but not actually. The whole thing was really more about making Charles VII feel better nigh himself. According to the St. Joan Heart, several years before this he'd captured Rouen, where Joan was tried, and had decided he didn't desire the stigma of heresy fastened to his throne. Plus, it was pretty tough to deny that Joan of Arc was a big part of the reason why he was sitting on that throne in the outset place.

Any the reasons, Joan got her retrial more than 20 years later her decease and was finally given a formal sentence of rehabilitation. In other words, the court admitted that its predecessors, led by the English, had murdered an innocent person.

Carbon dating poops all over the relic party

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Long ago, before carbon dating, you could call pretty much anything a relic. Yous could dig upward a finger from the local cemetery and say it belonged to St. Frankenfurter, or you could soak a scrap of cloth in coffee and burn its edges and tell anybody it came from St. Charcoal-broil. No one could really definitively disprove that your relic was real, as long equally you could brand a convincing argument.

According to Fourth dimension, in 1867 someone was rifling around in the attic of a Paris chemist's shop and found a jar of Joan of Arc relics, and for a while the Church building accepted them as authentic.

But because scientists are fun-wreckers, eventually someone had to become and debunk the relics of St. Joan. Carbon-xiv dating determined that the basic were from sometime between the seventh and third centuries B.C. — way, way before Joan of Arc. They also found traces of a tree resin used to embalm Egyptian mummies. The last boom in the sarcophagus was the cat bones mixed in with the human bones — black cats were sometimes thrown on the pyres of people burned at the stake, but this cat was not of European origin. So basically, the scientists figured out that Joan of Arc's relics were actually the remains of an Egyptian mummy and an Egyptian cat. That's its ain kind of fun.

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