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George Bernard ShawSaint Joan
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was born around 1412 in Domrémy, France, during a period of conflict with England known as the Hundred Years’ War. When Joan was a child, King Henry V of England invaded France and married Catherine of Valois, daughter to King Charles VI of France, signing a treaty that would give their children control of both the French and English throne. However, war continued as many French nobles, calling themselves Armagnacs, supported the claim of Charles VII to the throne of France. When Joan was 13 years old, her village was attacked by English soldiers, and she began to experience visions of the Archangel Saint Michael. The visions continued, also incorporating messages from Saint Margaret of Antioch and Saint Catherine of Alexandria. French popular folklore prophesized that a virgin would save France, and Joan took on the moniker of The Maiden in order to affiliate herself with that prophecy. By the time that Joan was 17, she had made her way to the French royal court at Chinon and persuaded the Dauphin to send her with the relief troops to liberate the city of Orléans. Joan fought in the battle and was wounded by an arrow, but the English were forced to retreat from Orléans. After Charles VII’s coronation in the retaken city of Reims, the Armagnac forces attempted to besiege Paris, but were repelled. Famously uncompromising, Joan favored continuing the assault rather than making a treaty, and as a result she lost the support of the French court. On May 23, 1430, Joan was captured at the city of Compiègne while leading an attack against the forces of the Duke of Burgundy, who was allied with the English. After her capture, the Burgundians sold her to the English at ransom. She was put on trial for heresy—accused of blasphemy for wearing men’s clothes, acting upon demonic visions, and refusing to submit to the authority of the church. While Joan eventually signed an abjuration document that required her to cease wearing men’s clothing and fighting in battles, she continued to wear men’s clothing in prison and claimed that her voices had admonished her for denying them. The court declared that Joan had relapsed into her heresy and Joan was executed by burning on May 30, 1431, at the age of 19.
After her death, Joan was posthumously retried and found innocent by a French ecclesiastical court in 1456. Joan remained a national symbol in France, particularly after the loss of territory that France suffered in the Franco-Prussian War. In the late 19th century, the Bishop of Orléans petitioned Rome to have Joan beatified—the first step in the process of attaining sainthood. Joan was beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909 and canonized as a saint in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. She is considered to be the patron saint of France for her role in its liberation from English control.
Authorial Context: George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was a playwright and critic who wrote over 60 plays throughout his life from 1856-1950. He was born in Ireland to English Protestant parents but spent most of his life in London and in the English village of Ayot St. Lawrence, in Hertfordshire. Shaw considered himself a realist playwright, using drama to express his political beliefs and encourage social reform. In 1884, Shaw joined the Fabian society, a group of British activists advocating for democratic socialism through gradual reforms, rather than revolution. Shaw’s numerous dramatic works often explore middle-class British society at the turn of the century, satirizing inequality while advocating for women’s rights and social equality. For example, one of his most notable plays is Pygmalion (1913), a play about a cockney flower girl who is taken in by phonetics professor called Henry Higgins and transformed into an upper-class lady. This play, which was later adapted into the 1956 musical My Fair Lady, makes clear the arbitrary nature and inherent meaninglessness of the signifiers used to distinguish between social classes. Shaw’s works generally have a comedic tone, despite their ideological motivations. Saint Joan is considered to be his only tragic work.
Shaw wrote Saint Joan in 1923, and in 1925 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature as the leading dramatist of his generation. However, by the 1930s, Shaw’s influence was fading. He became disillusioned with the gradualist methods of the Fabian society and expressed support for dictators such as Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, and Adolph Hitler, although he opposed racial discrimination. He also expressed controversial beliefs such as an opposition to smallpox vaccination. Shaw died in 1950 at the age of 94, continuing to write plays up to the year of his death.
Ideological Context: Medieval Heresy
Many religious movements of the later Middle Ages were condemned by the Catholic Church as heretical and persecuted in ecclesiastical courts. From the 12th century onward, laypeople became increasingly interested in religious education, and many began to perceive discrepancies between the ideals of Christianity and the behavior of the Catholic clergy. Due to this sense of deviation from the biblical doctrine of Jesus Christ, religious sects appeared that advocated for a return to “apostolic” Christianity—meaning the version of Christianity practiced by the 12 original followers of Christ in the New Testament.
Three of these new religious groups became popular and were eventually persecuted in Catholic ecclesiastical courts as heretical: the Waldensians, the Lollards, and the Hussites. The Waldensians were followers of Peter Waldo, a wealthy 12th-century merchant from France who gave away all of his money to the poor and began to preach about the benefits of poverty and simplicity. Because he was not an ordained priest, the Catholic Church attempted to limit his preaching, and they condemned his attempts to translate the Bible into his native language. Many of his followers denied Catholic doctrine that was not mentioned in the bible, such as the existence of purgatory and the need for a priest to administer sacraments such as marriage and last rites. Founded in 14th-century England by the priest and Oxford theologian John Wycliff, the Lollards believed that the bible should be translated from Latin into English so that anyone could read it and interpret it for themselves. They also criticized the doctrine of clerical celibacy, the Church’s interference in worldly political affairs, and the veneration of saints’ relics. Finally, the Hussites were a 15th-century heretical group who followed Czech theologian Jan Hus. Hus was inspired by Wycliff’s writings and also condemned the Catholic Church’s practice of selling “indulgences,” meaning that a person could pay the Church to have their time in purgatory reduced.
All three of these heretical groups shared a belief that aspects of Catholic doctrine that did not appear in the Bible should not be followed. They advocated for laypeople to be able to read the Bible, allowing them to judge for themselves whether the clergy were accurately representing the word of God. This ideology anticipates the main concerns of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began in the 1500s and radically reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in Europe. Protestantism advocated for salvation based on faith alone, reducing the role of the clergy and emphasizing that every individual should interpret the Bible and form their own direct relationship with God.
Related Titles
By George Bernard Shaw
