I was conflicted about WHICH saint to meditate on today: Joan of Arc, one of my favorite female saints, or King Ferdinand III of Castille, my 25th great grandfather. Complicating it is my relationship to King Charles VII of France, my 11th cousin, 15 times removed, for whom Joan of Arc went to war and whose monarchy she was instructed to save by saints and angels who appeared to her and spoke to her when she was a young teen.
Knowing my relationships to the saints has helped me tremendously in my spiritual life. It is always a good thing when history can be made to "come to life" for us.
Anyway, I am devoting some time to each of these saints.
The thing that strikes me as being relevant to our time is that Joan of Arc was executed primarily because she wore men's clothing to save herself from being raped by her jailers. Previously, she had been tried for this and for heresy and witchcraft but had avoided execution with a life sentence instead. Then, after the first trial, she had to wear men's clothing again, to protect her modesty, but they decided to kill her for it. That's the given reason, but we all know that women who wield power terrify men and they'll do anything they can to disrupt it. Who knows which reason was primary? People really DID believe in witchcraft in those days.
Joan, a French citizen, was put into the hands of the English by the government of Burgundy, who captured and sold her. That girl just could not catch a break.
Welcome to the era when the Church ruled the land and women were burnt alive by supposedly holy men because they wore pants. This is how crazy it can get when church and state coalesce.
Saint Joan is only one of thousands of women who were executed in horrific ways by The Catholic Church for ridiculous reasons, such as wearing pants, witchcraft, and the like. They were burned alive - usually after being tortured.
Elevating supposedly moral flaws to the level of an offense worthy of execution is what happened when government control was was wielded by The Church in England, which is why the founders of our country were keen to keep religion out of politics. But here we are again - fighting off a hostile takeover of the government by a religion.
Don't get me wrong. I am Catholic and I love the faith. I am a believer, but I am not enthusiastic about repeating the errors of the past because I have "met" a lot of people on the internet who appear to be proponents of force and punishment whose language is so extreme that I could easily picture them putting people to death for voting for a Democrat.
There is SO much written about Saint Joan of Arc, I am not going to reinvent the wheel. I just wanted to make that comment about how that very holy, very pure and very young girl was put to death by religious = authorities when she was only 19. She had been 13 when she started hearing the voices and seeing visions. She was about 17 when she went to war to help establish my cousin, Charles VII, on the French throne.
I also want to add that, in addition to all of that, she had to endure the humiliation of being poked and prodded in her nether regions by nuns tasked with determining if she was a virgin or not!
From the vantage point of a woman born and raised in the U.S., without ever having to answer to any government official about the condition of my hymen or whether or not I wear PANTS, I feel renewed gratitude for all my freedoms, but I DO remember what a big deal it was to be allowed to wear pants to school when I was in my teens....a vestige of the controls that government authorities have typically exerted over women throughout the ages.
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