|WHEN Joan was about thirteen a very wonderful thing happened to her.
One day she and the other girls and boys were running a race for a crown
of flowers. Joan was easily the winner, and as she was running, a
child who was looking on cried, “Joan. I see you flying along without
touching the ground.” After the race Joan had a curious feeling as if
she did not know where she was and then heard a young man’s voice near
her bidding her go home, for her mother needed her. She did not know who
spoke; she thought it might be her brother, or one of her neighbours,
so she ran home. She found that her mother had not sent for her, and she
was going back to her friends, when a bright light like a shining cloud
appeared to her, and a Voice told her to go and save France from the
English. Till that hour she had been sorry for the sorrows in France,
but as she was only a little girl, she had never thought that she could
lead an army against the English.
This is the first account that people heard of the coming of the
mysterious Voices to Jeanne: it was written down about four years after
the Voices first came, and six weeks after Jean’s first great defeat of
the English (in May 1429). Two years later, after Joan was a prisoner
of the English, the French priests and lawyers who took the English side
asked her thousands of questions about everything that she had done in
her life, and the answers were written down in a hook, word for word.
They asked her about these wonderful Voices. There were things that she
refused to tell these priests and lawyers, but she did say this:--
“When I was about thirteen there came to me a Voice from God, teaching
me how I was to behave and what I was to do. And the first time that
Voice came, I was afraid. I was standing about the middle of the day, in
summer, in my father’s garden. The Voice came from the right hand, from
where the church stands, and when it came I usually saw a great light on
the side from which it spoke. The Voice told me to be a good girl and
go to church, and go to save France. I said that I was only a poor girl,
who could not ride or lead the soldiers in the wars,” but the Voice kept
on for years, telling her that she must go.
She not only heard Voices, but she saw shining figures of the Saints
in heaven. She never would tell the lawyers much about how the Saints
appeared to her, but said, “I saw them as clearly as I see you, and I
used to cry when they went away. And I wished that they would take me
with them where they went.”
These Saints were St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and the Archangel St.
Michael. When Joan spoke to her own friends about what she saw and
heard they say that “she seemed marvelously happy, lifting her eyes to
heaven.” This is all that we know about these wonderful things which
kept Joan company from the time when she was thirteen to the day of her
death, when she was nineteen, advising her about what she was to do for
the saving of France. If the Voices had not spoken to her often, she
would never have gone to the wars, and for some years she told nobody
about the Voices, and stayed at home in her village. Even when she went
to the wars, her friends could not persuade her to say more than I have
told you about these strange things. She said that she had a “council”
which advised her in everything. If there was much noise in a room where
she might be, she could not hear the Voices distinctly. Only one person
said that he saw angels’ faces in her company; none of her friends
who knew her best saw or heard anything extraordinary. She very much
disliked to speak about the Saints and Voices.