Author: Mark Twain
Publisher:
Published: 2015-05-13
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9780988323094
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This exclusive publication contains more than 200 pages of "bonus material," including extensive excerpts from the transcripts of Joan of Arc's trial that focus on her mystical experiences, her adamant defense of her right to wear men's clothes, and the abusive treatment she experienced at the hands of her clerical judges. The transcripts were abridged, translated and edited for readability in modern English by Emilia Philomena Sanguinetti.Joan of Arc first heard a Voice from God when she was 13, and at the age of 15, she began to have frequent encounters with St. Michael the Archangel, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret of Antioch. Her Voices, as she called them, were not only interior locutions, but were almost always accompanied by a visible light. She saw a "great light" coming from the side where the Voices originated, and the light "comes in the name of the Voice." (All quotes here are from the official transcripts of her trial, where she was ultimately found guilty and condemned to death because "the judges found this woman superstitious, a witch, idolatrous, a conjurer of demons, blasphemous towards God and His saints, a schismatic and greatly erring in the faith of Jesus Christ.")On May 30, 1431, when she was 19 years old, Joan of Arc was chained to a tall pillar surrounded by wooden planks and burned to death. She was later found to be an innocent victim of clerics who were hungry for secular power and motivated by political factors that arose during the Hundred Years War between France and England.Incredibly, as a 17 year old teenage girl, Joan of Arc led thousands of men in military battles that were decisive in ending the Hundred Years War. She was officially appointed as commander-in-chief of the French army by King Charles VII, but he later abandoned her when he could have intervened to save her from execution.Of all the crimes that Joan was charged with during her trial, she was executed solely on the basis of only one of those crimes: wearing men's clothes.
