Herrick: The Smiths were wrong, you don’t ‘know how Joan of Arc felt’

St. Joan of Arc is one of the most well-known saints of the Catholic faith. For over a century, she has been venerated by the Catholic church as the patron saint of soldiers and of France.

However, the use of her image and story in popular media and music, an uptick in videos on social apps and performances by musical artists have indicated that the modern populace has a profound misunderstanding of who St. Joan was and the ideals she stood for. They instead use her image to project their own ideals and draw their own meanings.

St. Joan of Arc was made famous for her efforts in lifting the Siege of Orleans, where she inspired the French troops to take several English encampments surrounding the city and liberate the besieged city. This action was marked as a turning point in the Hundred Years’ War, pushing the English forces back from the city and beginning a series of liberations.

Here, at the head of an army placed under her command by Charles VII, Joan marched to numerous other cities and recaptured them in the name of the French crown.

Ultimately, this campaign ended when Joan was ambushed by John of Luxembourg and his Burgundian forces and then held for ransom until she was sold to English forces. What followed was a falsified and heavily biased trial of heresy against her, whereupon the theologians of the University of Paris sought to undermine the standing of Charles VII as king by proving he owed his coronation to a witch, thus removing his legitimacy.

The trial was conducted by English sympathizers who had reason to condemn a French heroine. Throughout her captivity, she was held in secular prisons and asserted that a member of the English court had attempted to rape her, where she continued to wear men’s clothing to deter further attempts. The trial ultimately ended with Joan being found guilty and sentenced to burning at the stake.

Upon her death, her ashes were dumped into the river Seine. Twenty-five years later, an appellate church court found that her trial had been improperly handled and carried out. She was posthumously granted an appeal and found innocent in 1456, later being canonized as a Catholic saint in 1920.

Fast forward to the modern day, and the common perception of Joan of Arc has shifted. Most famously, The Smiths hit song “Bigmouth Strikes Again” contains lines in which the singer explicitly states, “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt / As the flames rose to her Roman nose.”

Why does the singer feel he is similar to the saint? He apologizes to a loved one for threatening and wishing violence upon them, comparing implied backlash at his threats to the persecution faced by the saint.

More recently, apps, such as TikTok, are filled with accounts heralding Joan as transgender for her dressing as a man and cosplays of the saint, claiming to like her “aesthetic.” At the same time, Chappell Roan received massive applause for her performance at the VMAs, where she dressed as a sexualized version of Joan of Arc for her performance in front of a pyrotechnics display of a burning castle.

These views are inherently contradictory to who Joan of Arc was and what she stood for. Joan of Arc did not dress in men’s clothing due to any gender identity or personal belief. Rather, her male clothing and famously short hair were adopted to deter assault during the medieval period, which even her inquisition dismissed as an understandable reason to do so.

Reports state that when able, Joan still dressed in women’s clothing, including occasions in the field while traveling during her campaign. The performance in front of the burning castle is even more tone-deaf, using the method of her execution for a backdrop at a music awards event.

St. Joan of Arc is a venerated saint of the Catholic Church, a heroine of the French people and a source of inspiration to Christians the world over. The world should remember her true legacy rather than equating her persecution to a lovers spat, shoehorning ideas of gender identity into her story and using her death as a backdrop for an awards show.

Matt Herrick is a freshman history major. Matt can be reached at [email protected].