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Larissa Juliet Taylor, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. Pp. xxv + 251. $20.00.
Early in the twentieth century a large number of theologians and church officials who were investigating Joan of Arc for possible sainthood insisted she was unworthy. She was vain, and her martyrdom was for political rather than religious reasons. The pope rejected their judgment, however, and even dispensed with one of the required miracles for the very reason that Joan "had saved France." This spiritual and earthly duality attributed to her has left many over the years, including scholars, to interpret France's most celebrated heroine according to their own devices, thus weaving a legend that has grown and been difficult to unravel since the time of her death in 1431. In this engrossing new biography, Larissa Juliet Taylor offers a stirring narrative that successfully strips away much of the myth and leaves us with the most realistic and balanced account of Joan to date.
Taylor's previous research was focused on heresy and preaching in late medieval and early Reformation France and touched on Joan of Arc indirectly. But only after teaching a course on her did she fully realize how easy it was to fall into simplistic commonplaces about Joan's historical significance. In her attempt to correct this, Taylor has produced a beautifully-written, eminently accessible account of the Maid of Lorraine, one that offers the best in current scholarship while including informative enhancements such as detailed maps, a chronology, dozens of illustrations, and appendices that lay out the Arc family tree, discuss sources, list witnesses interviewed during the nullification hearings of 1456, and provide short biographies of the major characters. Taking a chronological approach, Taylor puts Joan fully within...