[Ansteorra] Joan of Arc's Call to Arms

[Tim McDaniel]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Celestria leDragon <celestria.ledragon at gmail.com> wrote:
> The English and the "Church" deemed her a heretic cause they where
> afraid of a mere women therefore burnt her at the stake as they did
> many. Much latter the "Church" regretting their ways and turned her
> into a Saint.

To descend into seriousness, in case anyone is interested in small
details:

- the Catholic Church was indeed a church.  If there should be any
   'sneer quotes', the word "the" is more questionable than "Church".

   C.f. Robin of Gilwell's comment about the SCA:
       The problem with the phrase "the Dream" is not "Dream", but "the".

- The causes of her execution can't just be explained by "the Church",
   because the Church in France enthusiatically cleared her name in a
   Church rehabilitation trial 24 years later, under papal authority.

- The Catholic Church could not burn someone themselves, but they
   pronounced her an obstinate and relapsed heretic, and ordered her to
   be "given over to the secular power".
   <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/joanofarc-trial.html>

- In Catholic theology, saints are all those who are saved, either in
   this life or after it. [1] The standard term is that the Catholic
   Church beatifies or canonizes a saint.  Those are formal recognition
   of pre-existing salvation.

   C.f. the debate about whether an SCA king and queen make someone a
   peer (the sacerdotal model), or whether they just recognize existing
   peeritude in someone (the recognition model).

- Beatification: may venerate.  Canonization: venerated universally.
   Those were the things that happened much later.  I gather that it
   was largely due to 19th Century French nationalism -- that it was
   not "'the' Church" pushing it.

Danihel de Lindicolino

[1] I think only God, not the Church, has power to make or unmake a
saint, though someone more familiar with the theology of St. Peter's
keys might be able to thereby convict me of heresy.

-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com