Mark Twain: Joan of Arc
What's this? Mark Twain writing about a Catholic saint? Twain himself says "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years in preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none." Twain considered himself an historian of 15th century Europe. Indeed, Twain studied the text of Joan's trials, which contained all of the details of her life, from childhood on. Here is the writing of an expert.
St. Joan, at 17, commanded the 15th-century French army and drove the English from France, helping to end the 100-years war. The book follows her life from early childhood to her being burned at the stake for heresy. The homey childhood stories illustrate her natural bravery (Pg 59). Her honesty and humility are contrasted to the hypocrisy of others (Pg 60). Her bravery continues onto the battlefield and into her persecution and execution at 19, at the hands of her English captors and a traitorous French bishop. Her faithfulness was constant; only unknowingly did she sign a confession of guilt. Her faith in, hope in and love for her God, her Church and her pope never wavered.
That Twain should write about St. Joan is, in some ways, not surprising. She was a simple person, like Pudd'nhead Wilson and Nigger Jim, the kind who are best and happiest (Pg 275). She fights the establishment. "The common people flocked in crowds to look at her and speak with her, and her fair young loveliness won the half of their belief, and her deep earnestness and transparent sincerity won the other half. The well-to-do remained away and scoffed, but that is their way." (Pg 89)
Twain repeatedly chastises that venerable old establishment, the Catholic Church, contrasting its bureaucracy to her simplicity. "They sent a committee of priests... You see how fastidious they were." (Pg 120) "They set a company of holy hair-splitters and phrasemongers to work ..." (Pg 136) "The sly Dominican began ..." (Pg 137) But Twain displays some ignorance of the Church. Joan was not disturbed. ... she answered: "He helps who help themselves" (Pg 138), a quote which Twain thinks is a proverb (Pg 370) but Bartlett attributes to Benjamin Franklin. The bishops' investigation resulted in the declaration that Joan was "a good Christian and good Catholic" (Pg 140), as if these were distinct categories in the 15th century. Twain could not understand how the Church was so cautious in concluding what was so evident to him. Would he so quickly accept today's visions of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in Yugoslavia? We can wonder why Twain studied Joan so thoroughly without studying nearly so thoroughly the Catholic faith and its teachings that were the foundation to her heroics. He did not even check with his local priest concerning the seal of confession; he has Bishop Cauchon boring a hole into Joan's confessional to overhear it without being bound by the seal (Pg 321). Twain doesn't realize that the seal holds for those who overhear also.
What people write about saints differs greatly from what saints write about themselves. Hagiographies are usually scorned for their adulation, as evident from the authors’ supposedly unrealistic recanting of their life histories. But would you expect such adulation from the satirist Twain? Though untrained, Joan was the best equestrian; though untrained, she was the best military strategist. She was beautiful. At her trial "how profound the wisdom and how luminous the intellect of Joan of Arc, ... Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere ..." (Pg 399) Even as a child she avoided Twain's, and Hollywood's, stereotype of a saint: "being deeply religious ... sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person's countenance, but it was not so in her case" (Pg 63). Such adoration stands in stark contrast to Joan's self effacement.
The saintly way that Joan faced the very problems we face today inspires the thoughtful reader. Joan must balance conscience against obedience to erroneous and sometimes evil Churchmen and civil authority. She is unjustly accused. She is condemned with lies. Her brilliantly reasoned responses are to no avail as her prosecutors replace reason with repetition (Pg 400). The extreme selfishness of the king and the bishops results in her martyrdom.
After twelve years of research, Twain remained at the superficial level of understanding of Joan's life. "She went on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to give the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it." Twain was touched by Joan but not by God. Like Camus in The Plague, he was mystified by "perfect" unselfishness, which contradicted what Twain saw as the motivating force for all other humans (Pg 15, the Introduction, by Andrew Tadie). And, like Camus, he never sought to understand the Person behind her motivating faith. She ... "is the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced" (Pg 452). "Joan of Arc, the wonder of the time, and destined to be the wonder of all times!" Apparently more so than Jesus Christ, whom she followed and whom Twain chooses to ignore. Joan gives God the credit; Twain gives Joan the credit.
The book can be read as a bit of history or as a simple biography of an heroic person; its more profound value is the insight into the soul-searching Twain. He chose St. Joan over St. Bernadette, whom he could have interviewed. He marveled at the unselfishness he could have found in any saint. Did he choose St. Joan because members of the establishment were so blatantly wrong, fitting his concept that people were always selfish? Why did he fail to check the Bible, the history of the Church in its dealings with sainthood, and the laws concerning the seal of confession? Was Twain on a witch hunt, hoping to pin the title on the Catholic Church? Or, after twelve years of research, was Twain just superficial, a gadfly, a good story teller? Twain completed this book in 1895, after he had amassed his fortune, built his spectacular house in Hartford, Connecticut -- the act of not-so-simple a folk, lost his fortune, and was regaining much of it. Was he realizing the emptiness of his own materialism, and perhaps his hypocrisy in honoring the simple folk? The great humorist had turned tragic. He doubted the existence of God and denied the free will of man. He was a robot on his way to extinction, like an automobile to a junk yard. How Joan must have haunted him, so confident was she in her faith in Jesus Christ and in eternal life!
Religious books are certainly the most appealing to me, because such books deal with the most important issues of life. I found the searching of Camus and Hesse and Frankl fascinating. Twain's is that of another who fails to receive the faith that he seemingly unconsciously so desires. Bishop Fulton Sheen recommended that the search start with acting unselfishly, doing good for others. Perhaps none of these started properly.
This book, ignored in most Twain bibliographies, is worth reading if only for the curious pairing of Mark Twain, a deist, and Joan of Arc, an official Saint of the Catholic Church, which Twain disdained. She is held in such esteem by both! This is not the ordinary search for meaning in life. It is the encounter between someone far from the faith with someone imbued with the
faith. From Twain's biography, but not from the book, do we find that his
search ends in failure.
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