What a Woman
I have a side project, a blog where I review movies, called The Legionnaire. Recently I was asked by one of my adoring fans (okay, it was my sister) to look at Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). Now there was a blast from the past. It had been a while since I had seen it, but what I did recall mostly involved surfer-dude speak. Oh, yeah, there are some historical figures too. One of these is the “Maid of Orléans,” St. Joan of Arc to us Catholics. In my younger years I watched this film and thought nothing of seeing the famous French saint in the film. I mean, why not? But in seeing it recently, I could not get rid of one nagging question: why?
If you were to ask your average Sunday pew dweller to list five saints off the top of their head, I am willing to bet that St. Joan of Arc would be among nearly everyone’s choices. She was famous in her own time, and she became even more so as the centuries went on from her martyr’s death in 1431. Interest in her was renewed, broadly speaking, when original documents surfaced in the nineteenth century of her trial and life. She is perhaps the most well-known person from the fifteenth century, and she accomplished this all by the age of nineteen. Such is her notoriety that she has transcended any titles bestowed on her by our Mother Church and is widely referred to as simply “Joan of Arc.” For those that take issue with Catholicism, I guess leaving off the “St.” helps them sleep at night. When her popularity began to reemerge in the nineteenth century, it was at a time when the Western World was in the throes of Romanticism and the Victorian Age. But, to borrow from Bob Dylan, times they were a-changin’. So, when the woman’s suffrage movement picked up momentum in the 1890s, St. Joan of Arc went from being the kind of romantic figure adored in that age to a hard-nosed heroine that showed that women could successfully get along in a man’s world. This was also around the time when she was beatified in 1909, and subsequently canonized in 1920, a sign that the Church does occasionally pay attention to trends. There have been darker uses of her as a symbol since she finally “officially” joined the Heavenly host.
Vichy France, the puppet fascist regime controlled by Nazi Germany, put her image on money. Most recently she has become a rallying point for French nationalists. She has also been the subject of many films, plays, books, and other forms of art. Again, not bad for someone who did not make it to twenty.
Clearly, rightly or wrongly, people love St. Joan of Arc. But why her and not, say, St.
Catherine Labouré? Enough French saints? What about St. Kateri Tekakwitha? Not into Canadians? There is always St. Elizabeth Ann Seton? Too patriotic since she is the first American born saint? Of course, the nationality of these holy people does not matter, nor does it completely explain St. Joan of Arc’s popularity. Something must account for why she stands out among so many other outstanding examples of our Faith. Perhaps me saying “our Faith” is the first clue? St. Joan of Arc, as the most basic, stereotypical rendering of her story goes, helped free France from the English. Certainly, that was part of her original mission, which she always maintained had been Divinely inspired. But it initially extended only so far as the key city of Orléans, hence her nickname. After that, it appears that the French king she helped along got tired of her, which partially explains her eventual capture and martyrdom. Interestingly, though there were clergy loyal to the English involved in the trial that led to her being burned at the stake, the Church later recanted of the actions of those few bad apples as a whole. Still, outside of a few local venerations in the proceeding centuries, the Church largely forgot about her even if the French did not. It was not until about the time when the primary documents regarding her life reemerged that the Church began to codify the process for becoming a saint.
Timing has accounted for a lot of major historical happenings since the beginning of time, and her cause was helped by more modern times. Yet it is the kind of issues that she has become attached to, arising at the beginning of the nineteenth century and forward, that are clearly why she would end up featured in a movie like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. She became a cause celebre onto herself, appearing in the 1989 film more like hip teenage girl of the 1980s rather than a messenger of God. For young Catholics, that is cool on one level. Having a saint be so popular can be an indication of how people are sometimes attracted examples of holiness. Yet that is rarely why she is looked up to by so many, Christians and non-Christians alike.
As a practicing Catholic, I wish society could honor St. Joan of Arc for the real reasons that made her remarkable. Yes, she was an amazing woman, and the French should look at her as a heroine. She was brave and what the English did was wrong. But she was so much more than being a proto-feminist model or national celebrity. One of my favorite quotes by her came doing her trial when she was asked whether or not she was in God’s Grace. Those examining her were trying to understand what led her to do what she did. Now, Catholic teaching has maintained that we can never know whether or not we are truly in God’s Grace. But she replies, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” Never mind all of her visions. Never mind all of her campaigns. Never mind swords appearing out of thin air. What she cared first and foremost about was obeying God’s will. There is Grace in doing so for anyone who follows that path, as she did.
I get it. Our culture today does not make it easy to stick to the principles of our Faith as St. Joan of Arc, or any of her fellow saints, did. And who can honestly say they are willing to die for those principles? But seeing the “Maid of Orléans” in a silly movie like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure should give you pause. Hooray for one of our own being out there, boo for it being a dumb caricature. I suppose, if nothing else, seeing such a depiction can help people become interested in her beyond the silver screen, or painting, or visage on some bit of nationalistic propaganda. Beyond that, who knows? I may have my doubts, but maybe seeing the bass player of the Go-Go’s portray one of the more prominent saints of all time can lead people closer to God?
