Hearing From God

Of all the women I’ve written about that have left their mark on politics or politicians, Joan of Arc is the most admirable. She made political and royal figures nervous and questioning their beliefs. The fifteenth century woman became a much talked about figure when she made public that she was hearing voices. To her, God had a message of insider military information, instructing her to drive the English out of France. She dressed for battle and showed up for war, and by her conviction (others called it madness) she rallied the troops and achieved a long sought victory of a key occupied city in just nine days. French King Charles VII, his own lineage rife with frequent bouts of insanity, dubbed her and her family nobility. A year later she was captured by the English, tried for heresy by the clergy of the Inquisition, and burned at the stake at age nineteen in 1431. Charles VII made no effort to free her. Five hundred years later she was canonized as a saint. Between 1450 and 1600, records indicate at least 30,000 were burned or executed as heretics or witches. The torture devises used during this period go beyond what the cruelest of masochistic minds could imagine, including water torture, racks, fingernail pullers, skull-and-limb crushing vices, burning feet machines, and metal chambers shaped like statues of the Virgin Mary lined with spikes in which the accused was enclosed to elicit a confession of heresy. The instruments were blessed prior to use; however in 2002, Pope John Paul II issued a general apology for this and for the “errors of his church for the last 2000 years.”