Born a shepherdess in an obscure town in a region considered secondary, St. Joan of Arc was a prophet, virgin, queen, warrior, and martyr. And to adorn her with the glory of resembling Him, Our Lord also willed that the Pucelle suffer defamation and betrayal from the clergy of her time, the nobles of her nation, and the people she had come to save.
The centuries, however, did her justice, and from the heights of the firmament where the splendour of her holiness raised her, she contemplated her adversaries being swept away by history and buried, some in oblivion and others in infamy. Finally, St. Pius X recognized the heroicness of her virtue, raising her to the honours of the altar.
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In her virginal and enchanting fragility, the holy shepherdess was called to live in a military camp where, sadly, the language is so often impure, and disreputable company is seldom missing. However, she shone there like a candle of purest wax in the depths of night. Her figure seems to radiate a brightness that dazzles the eye like newly fallen snow struck by the sun. According to testimonies from the time, she shone with such glowing virginity that her mere presence bolstered the practice of chastity.
Delicate as a flower, she was nevertheless intolerant of any kind of sin or vice: the virgin of Orléans is numbered among those uncontaminated souls in whom compromise, accord, or complicity with evil was never found. In fact, the only serious form of chastity is that which despises and rejects impurity; otherwise, it soon betrays itself as false and ephemeral.
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Her virginal delicacy, however, seemed fated to a state of contradiction.
Indeed, one of the most intense activities that man can engage in is undoubtedly combat, which demands maximum agility and strength – physical, and above all, moral. To uphold the rights of God and of justice, it becomes necessary to bend the vigour of evil and finally overcome it. Thus, fragility proves to be incompatible with the warrior state.
Now, history tells us of the virtually impossible feats of arms that St. Joan of Arc accomplished. Military heroism shone in her with extraordinary intensity because it was allied with innocence: she showed gallantry among her people, gallantry on the battlefield, gallantry in the face of the enemy, and finally, gallantry before the tribunal of betrayal during the interrogations of her infamous judges. This is gallantry taken to its fullest extreme.
Thus, we find in her the fragile virgin, shepherdess and warrior, who changes the course of European history to fulfil God’s plans and save France.
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How, then, can the apparent contradiction be resolved, which stems from the fact that combativeness is often presented as synonymous with brutality, and purity regarded as a companion of weakness?
In St. Joan of Arc, the entire warrior ideal of the Middle Ages dwells alongside the ideal of the Christian virgin. It is contrary to the fragility of a virgin to be a warrior, but, when it comes to an unblemished virginity, this confers such strength upon the woman that, without making her masculine, it equals her to man in the capacity to subdue evil and execute divine designs.
In the liberator of France, virginity, being linked to the heroism of fire and blood, attracts the attention of the imagination and the senses more than any other form of virginity; on the other hand, allying itself with feminine weakness and arms, this virginity lends an entirely new brilliance to the military condition. Amidst the devastation, dust, and smoke, her armour made her purity gleam all the more brightly during combat, because she lived spotlessly among men.
St. Joan of Arc is the example of the Catholic virgin, so chaste that she could live in that environment without being contaminated, and could be a warrior – the specific office of a man – while remaining a virgin and feminine, haloed with that pearly virginity, which possesses such pugnacity, courage, daring, and self-assurance that it makes impurity cower. Before someone like her, impropriety has no better chance of resistance than a tumour awaiting the surgical knife.
Her virginal fortitude proclaims, from the heights of Heaven where she now dwells, that purity is only authentic when capable of fighting with entire ardour, and that only the pure soul is equipped for true combativity.
Sanctity is one, and within it, a single virtue cannot exist without the others… ◊
