Who is the greatest female character in human history?
I think Joan of Arc is a very string contendent. Specialy considering the fact that she was only 19, when killed.
I agree she is a strong contendent. Elizabeth I I think is another strong contendent.
shareMargaret Thatcher or Boudicca.
All Joan of Arc did was make the French FINALLY realise that they were getting utterly bum raped by a nation with a population 5x smaller than their own.
Still at it tenki ?
Let nationalism aside and give to people the credit they deserve, especially when talking about a 17 yrs old peasant girl coming from nowhere, litterally saving her country from death.
As for the population differences, this is middle-age, we are not talking conscription armies here.
Plus several regions (duchies) of France were siding with the English (Burgundians, Bretons, and others) and the "free" France was, at this time a little bit of France. Most of it was either English or allied to the English.
She and bodica are mine as well,a amazing girl,blessed by god or not,she was what the french army needed at that moment,she was the inspiration they needed to fight back and win.
shareElizebeth I:
Elizebeth I was a great queen. But With all due respect, I think she is a little behind Joan of Arc. She was BORN into royality, trained from her childhood to be a queen, and ruled over a great and a powerful nation. Joan of Arc was an illiterate peasent girl who concinced the royality to make her head of the army and inspired a defeated nation.
The East is Red.......
The Virgin Mary? I understand "all" she did was give birth to Jesus, but I'm just throwing it out there.
shareI have huge respect for virgin Mary, but then we have to consider all the mothers of all the important figures of history, don't we?
The East is Red.......
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Mother Theresa or Florence Nightingale.....at least their actions were pure.
Lets not forget that whether Joan or Arc had real visions from god or not she still fought on the battlefield maming and killing in the same manner as the English she fought against.
D
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Oh please, stop acting like the French were saints in this war.
France were raiding England's shores at the start of the war, it was only because of English naval dominance later on that France had no way of invading England.
France would've treated the English the same way the English treated the French, it was medieval times after all.
It's not like England had no right to invade anyway, France failed to recognise Edward III as the heir to the French throne, France broke the rules so to speak and set off the hundred years war.
Joan of Arc saved Frances ass big time as England were on the verge of taking France (just think if England did, all the wars England and France have had... no Napoleon!)
Another thing, England had the Scots to fight on another front, the hundred years war is mostly embarrassing to France especially when you look at some of the battles.
... "brutally evil and tyrant merciless army like English" The savages!! lmao
Jaguar_987, at least you have a balanced view on things it's very refreshing and i think you are correct in the points you say.
sachinchandra_dubey, yes the english were horrible in their fighting, but the french were no better. take your finger off the caps lock key and try and get a balanced view. the english killed french people, and it was undoubtedly horrific, but the french killed people too. I don't think you can pretend they didn't.
Joan of Arc is a true inspiration to anyone who believes that anything can happen. she provided encouragement and will, and was willing to die for her cause. But let's not forget, she was also a cold blooded murderer. Yes, she will be remembered for the first one, but I try to have an unbiased view of people.
RIP Audrey Hepburn, I hope you are entertaining everyone up in heaven
In the book The Re-trial Of Joan Of Arc, it states that she was very reluctant to kill, and that she chose her banner over a sword,a standard bearer whose primary effect was on morale, and several soldiers testified that she even comforted wounded British soldiers and even took confessions from them if they thought that they were dying. I've no doubt that she may have taken some lives in battle, but from what I understand she took no joy in it and would reprimand her own soldiers if she saw them mistreating English prisoners or women. Men were not allowed to consort with women unless they were going to take them for their wives, or something like that. She certainly didn't receive a fair trial at the hands of the English, and to be judged a relapsed heretic, because she was still wearing men's clothing to protect herself from being raped by her jailers.
Had she been kept in the church prison for religous crimes, as she had been accused of, and looked after by women there, I've no doubt that she would have put women's clothing on.
was like a religious scholar who believes the Bible is divinely inspired. She was so biased in favor of Christianity in general and Joan in particular that she gave extraordinary prominence to highly repetitive (obviously coached) "testimony" during the state-sponsored whitewash a generation after Joan's death, and ridicules as irrelevant unfavorable direct commentary while Joan was alive.
Far from being a dispassionate scholar, she founded an institution in praise of Joan. The only reason Pernoud's work still stands as among the best is that no scholar with any common sense wants to be known for attacking a very brave teenager. Joan is just insignificant enough (along with her fictional saints Catherine and Margaret), that few scholars want to spend time picking apart the truth behind her story. Who is going to care or listen? They might as well write a scholarly study proving that George Washington never chopped down a cherry tree.
In terms of religious scholars and the Bible, very good scholars had questioned its relationship with history over a thousand years ago. We knew a substantial amount about fallacies, lies, and deliberate borrowings from older near eastern texts over one hundred years ago. Despite the huge body of evidence collected, religious scholars still act like Pernoud and rationalize, condemn, and evade unpleasant facts and most still can find more books about the Bible as truth than about the evidence against that likelihood.
Pernoud has never faced a determined analysis, though there are new works cutting down her bias bit by bit http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151137/board/thread/99280982.
I can't argue with that. But what of claims that she was not given a fair trial, and should have been kept in a different jail? I'm only just getting into reading about her after having been moved by a viewing of La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, and being impressed by the performance of Maria Falconetti.
Your statements very much echo some of the sentiments in Donald Spoto's book , Joan: The Mysterious Life Of The Heretic Who Became A Saint. Which so far, has been an excellent read. Thank you for your extremely intelligent and insightful posts, DFC-2.
You're right about her not getting a fair trial, but few politically-motivated trials at that time were fair and her prosecutors knew the whole world was watching so they took great pains to have lots of witnesses to their proceedings and published the results. That is why we have testimony from those who dissented as well as from those who supported the proceedings.
Thanks for your kind remarks. I love it when people cite their sources and was encouraged to reply because you had done so. I have several books by Pernoud and there is no one better than her at sifting out many of the details.
Joan was a fascinating strong-willed and intelligent person, regardless of how people answer questions about her visions. I also love Falconetti's performance in Dreyer's film, though I think she was a little too much of a submissive martyr figure compared to the real Joan.
The second part of Jacques Rivette's film about her (Jeanne la Pucelle II - Les prisons http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107260/) is my favorite version of the story as it has great acting as well as great respect for historical accuracy.
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You are actually talking about things that happened at the start of the 100 years war. By the time Joan of Arc came, English were the bad guys. They no longer had any valid claims on the French territory, the dynasty of Plantagents was dead, so under those times, they lost the mandate of God.
I do not know wether Joan was a saint or a crazy girl. I also do not believe that there are enough evidence to proved either one of these. The trials in the medieval times can't be considered sources of evidence since those were organized to convict someone not to prove their guilt or innocence. Joan was dead from the moment she was handed over to English. No trial could have changed that.
The facts that remain are that she was the catalyst for the France revival, she inspired French soldiers with fanaticism, in effect turning the war into a crusade against the English. Her victories (and I am not talking about Besson's version)proved that. After those victories, Burgundy left the English side, English were finally removed from almost all the France (they still held Calais for about 100 years) and then the succumbed in a civil war of their own.
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elton john
shareMrs Satre (as portrayed on Monty Python)
You wanna f * * k with me? Okay. Say hello to my little friend! (Tony Montana)
Well, I have a fondness for Boudicca of the Iceni (just look at my signature, LOL!!!). Joan of Arc has also been inspiring to me. I am Catholic and during that brief childhood phase so many Catholic girls have where they want to become nuns, her story really inspired me, to the point where I took Joan as my confirmation name.
This morning I saw this movie for the first time. It wasn't bad, could have been a lot worse, actually, but it's inspired me to go back to my history books and start reading again. I enjoy medieval history and ironically, of late have been reading up about the Valois dynasty, but during the Catherine de Medici interval through to Henri IV (King of Navarre/House of Bourbon). Time to lug out the heavy-duty books again!!!!
"...truth against the world..." - attributed to Boudicca of the Iceni
ooooh, Jane Austen, Catherine the Great, and ... ... Eva Peron.
oh, and just so you know, there's no such word as 'contendent'. The word is 'CONTENDER'
>Elizebeth I.... was BORN into royality, trained from her
>childhood to be a queen, and ruled over a great and a powerful nation.
Actually she was ignored by her father, her mother was executed. She was imprisoned by her half sister Mary. She was not trained to be Queen because Daddy dearest kept trying to get a male heir.
I'm not dissing Joan, but lets be fair to Lizzy.
RIGOLETTO: I'm denied that common human right, to weep.
You're over-stating this a bit, yes Elizabeth was badly mistreated by her half-sister Mary but she was NOT neglected by her father King Henry VIII, I have no idea where you're getting this myth from. Henry made sure that Elizabeth got the best education she could (and that she would be raised Protestant), she had personal tutors teaching her all kinds of subjects and an enormous support in the King's household. Yes of course Henry had been hoping to have a prince succeed him, that was the case all throughout Europe, but he knew that Edward VI (his son who was eventually born) was pretty sick, and he in general looked after his kids. It's not clear entirely why, but people aren't simple caricatures, Henry was a ruthless bastard in many ways but he did care a lot for all his kids, Edward Mary and Elizabeth, and he treated them well.
Let's put it this way, things were turbulent in the household for Henry VIII's children, but overall they were extremely wealthy, protected with enormous security, given great education and food and the finest services the kingdom had to offer. And ultimately Elizabeth I did not have to fight to gain the throne of England, while things were scary for a while given Queen Mary's hostility towards Elizabeth, ultimately Elizabeth inherited the throne in an orderly, fully legal fashion based on King Henry's will after Mary died of sickness. Whatever difficulties Elizabeth, Mary and Edward might have had, they had it better than 99.99% of the English population (or of Europe in general), they never had to struggle for work or worry about going broke, and they inherited a lot of power.
So in other words the OP is basically right, Joan of Arc had it much, much tougher in every way compared to Queen Elizabeth I. While Elizabeth may have had her challenges, she inherited her kingdom, a lot of power and solvent kingdom (and strong navy) from Henry VII her grandfather and Henry VIII her father. She was born a princess and became queen by natural succession. Whereas Joan of Arc was born a peasant and had to struggle just to survive, let alone get any power or lead an army. Joan wins hands down in terms of being impressive, she had it 100X tougher than Elizabeth and had to face much greater challenges to accomplish anything, let alone to gain power or to gain the training to exercise it. Not to mention that Joan of Arc actually fought as a battlefield commander-- Elizabeth did not do that, she had able commanders but did not do so herself. And remember, after the Armada the war with Spain and Ireland went very sour and basically bankrupted England, although of course since Elizabeth was not a field commander she can't really be blamed for that too much either, except wherever she didn't provide enough support for the missions of her officers.
Hmm, Elizabeth I didn't start out ruling over a powerful nation. England was at the time of her coronation bankrupt and weak, pandering to France and Spain for support. Elizabeth changed all that and by the time of her death England was the richest and strongest of the western European nations.
However, you are correct with the rest.
Huh? You're getting Tudor history pretty mixed up. England was in no way "bankrupt and weak" at Elizabeth's coronation, Henry VIII had actually given England a very strong navy, and remember, Elizabeth's grandfather (Henry VII) had balanced the books and given England a surplus by the early 1500's. So Elizabeth I in fact did inherit a lot of good things from her father and grandfather.
As for this part: "Elizabeth changed all that and by the time of her death England was the richest and strongest of the western European nations."
No, not even close. Remember England and Spain fought a long and nasty war and the Armada was just a very early battle, after the Armada England lost practically every battle, at sea and on land. Look up "England invasion of Corunna" for example, basically England sent out it's own Armada or whatever they called it after Spain's and it got battered even worse, more by actual fighting than weather. And England was basically bankrupt at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, not at the start of it-- when the war with Spain went sour England indeed went basically broke, was financially strapped and was very, very weak. This is why the first long term settlement in North America for England (Jamestown, 1607) came after Elizabeth's reign, not during it, because England was too drained by the war with Spain to start any effective colonies. It's also why England wound up in a nasty civil war not long after Elizabeth's reign, it was in part because the Crown was too drained of revenues from the war with Spain and Charles had to depend so much on Parliament. By the end of Elizabeth's reign Spain was the head honcho of the European powers while England was barely an afterthought. Spain controlled the oceans a good ways into the 1600's but got undercut eventually by its own wasteful economic practices. But even then England didn't take over, IIRC the Dutch were then the big naval power after Spain-- they whipped England pretty good in a bunch of naval wars-- and the French were the big power on land.
Not saying Elizabeth was a bad ruler, she was pretty darn good overall, but it's amusing how some get the history mixed up and way over-state England's strength and power at the end of Elizabeth's reign. England was worn down by the ongoing unsuccessful wars against Spain and also against Ireland, and was in no way strong or rich. That's just a laughable inaccurate description.
Thank you for the clarification. I basically repeated the "legends" about Elizabeth I and not the true historical account.
I've read several books on the subject, some also repeat the legends as facts and tout her as a great ruler, others are very critical of her and in fact describe her as an indecisive ruler that made many mistakes. It is also said that many of the advancements credited to her was actually implemented by James I, her successor and not by her. There is in truth, much disagreement amongst academic historians about Elizabeth's effectiveness as ruler.
Yeah it's easy to get caught up in the legends about a particular period as opposed to the facts, I myself have been guilty of this w/ respect to some parts of Indian history (e.g. the Gupta Dynasty) that I was less informed about than I thought I was, or around the American Revolution for that matter. (For example the Colonists actually lost nearly every battle against the British but managed to hold on and win a couple crucial ones-- which I guess in some ways is even more impressive for a guerrilla army like the Continentals I guess). And you're right that a big part of this is that sometimes the historians we're supposed to rely on haven't done their jobs as well as they could, at least up until the more hard nosed treatments recently. My first test is to see if a historian reports the facts first-- all of the facts, not just cherry picking-- and then form their conclusions later. Indian historians have been doing a better job of this lately with the Gupta Dynasty, which was still very brilliant but we've been getting a more accurate and more realistic picture than before.
I get some sense that a lot of the myth making around the Tudors was worse than other periods simply becuz even some sober historians got caught up sometimes in dyed in wool academic traditions that they didn't do their homework enough on, and then after they got called out on it by the fact-checkers, a few doubled down hoping to hide their earlier errors (which never really works). Thankfully I think the Tudor histories in past decade have been more even handed esp. about the Elizabethan period. Elizabeth did a lot of amazing things and overall was a pretty good monarch, I think that's a fair assessment, esp with the whole religious division issues and the budget up until the Spanish war. But Elizabeth's reign really fell apart after about 1580, when the English sent that counterattacking-Armada or whatever it was called against Corunna against Spain, and then got plastered in just about every other battle after. (Spain even did have a successful Spanish Armada, 1594 or something, I think the admiral's name was Amezzola or close to that-- I heard of him on a tour to western England a couple years back, they actually showed us the burn marks from all the towns the Spaniards burned down then!) Even Elizabeth's top commanders eventually got killed by Spain's soldiers, and England went bankrupt from the war not just against Spain but against Ireland. So overall she did pretty well for 2/3 of her reign-- she lost some English territory in France (failed to recapture Calais) but that was minor-- but she just got overwhelmed by the Spain war, and the Irish were nasty opponents back then.
And you're right about James I, the more comprehensive histories now are coming to realize how essential he was to England's real power-- he just didn't have much personal charisma and so didn't attract that association from before. Just looking at the facts though-- England's sustained overseas settlement (what became the British Empire) began with James not with the Tudors, with Jamestown. This is partly because James was smart enough to stop fighting the Spanish and go early for a peace treaty, even though it was very unfavorable to England it stopped the financial drain of the war and allowed England to focus on settlement overseas. It was James who produced the first English Bible which was very important for literacy at the time, and he did a decent job of promoting broader education. On flip-side, James didn't do so well with England's finances either, and he, like Elizabeth I, lost pretty badly in his own war with Spain. (Forgot what it was called but Spain basically beat up England repeatedly back in those days).
Maybe another less credited figure is the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He was the one who gave England a good economy to begin with, little debt, built up the navy after the Wars of the Roses disasters, sent Cabott on that expedition to Canada, they didn't settle but I imagine all the maps and sea experience were pretty important to the English sailors later. Just don't know a whole lot about Henry in general though, seems like his son was so flamboyant that he hogged all the attention away from his Dad who did real work without much credit for it.
Well, another way to look at it is that Elizabeth had dedicated a lifetime to running a country, and keeping it at peace during a time when religious antipathy ran high. Joan had a lucky month when her fervor was needed. After that she did nothing but lose battles and interfere with peace negotiations.
shareEva Braun and Amelia Earhart.
share... Joan was a teenage Jesus freak that took part in vicious and bloody battles because "god wanted it".
shareShe may have been, but it took that kind of determination to fight and defeat the English against such incredible odds. It's really amusing how some people try to impose their prejudices of the 21st century onto a radically different time. What matters is the facts as they played out on the ground, and whatever drove her to do what she did, Joan had the toughness and motivation to achieve what not other commander managed to do on either side. She won where the other's failed.
shareSurely one cannot forget Salma Hayek, with breasts that are a divine miracle in themselves. It is said that drinking milk from Salmas busom is known to cure leprosy and genital warts. Merely looking at them is known to clear cataracts.
Like Matrix, I fight for love.
One of them for sure.
http://i39.tinypic.com/2qi2reh.jpg
I think that the Blessed Virgin Mary is, because she Gave Birth to the Son Of God. However, St. Joan of Arc is definitely up there too.
If you love Jesus Christ and are 100% proud of it copy this and make your signature!
The argument that she was young and you would not see that kind of action in a girl today is wrong. Tibetan girls self immolate all the time in protest of the Chinese occupation and the capture of the Dhali-Lama
http://www.voanews.com/tibetan-english/news/Tibetan-School-Girl-Dies-i n-Self-Immolation-Protest---141427633.html
Myra Hindley or Linda Lovelace.
Who gives a feck about some religiously delusional frog wench ?
Joan of Arc was hysterical. I agree she was ill used. First by the Armagnacs, and then by the Burgundians. In modern times, she would not have been executed, and would have been sent to a hospital, where she would have been pumped full of tranx until she turned into a zombie.
In life, she was just a figurehead who turned into a bighead. She was at a few Armagnac victories. She did not command the army. That was all down to Jean, Comte de Dunois, who was a professional soldier. Meanwhile, she was fool enough to think she was in command, and started doing things that she should not have done.
She turned up at Paris, which, at the time, was in English hands. She begged the English to get out of there, and the French to rise up. All that happened was that the garrison shot a few bolts at them. She got a bolt in the leg, and her standard bearer was killed.
I think a lot of Americans would think that Joan of Arc, who heard voices in her head, would be the greatest woman in history. And here is why. In the USA, you have candidates who say: "God told me to run for President." And people think he's great, and go out and vote for him, whereas in any other country, such a candidate would be taken to hospital.
The greatest female in history would be Marie Antoinette, because she changed my life. I used to eat far too much bread.
You're simply wrong here, Joan's own contemporaries including those professional soldiers praised her skill in battle and specifically credited her for taking command of soldiers and winning battles. It was Joan who won many crucial battles and ended sieges pushed by the English. She was very good with the weapons of the time and she knew how to lead soldiers in battle. And she won most of her battles. She was not a figurehead, no way.
Again I'm just amused the way people try to project 21st century values onto the Middle Ages like that. Look, I'm not a fan of the Christian fundamentalists in the 21st century either, but Joan's time was radically different. The kind of religious conviction she had was just part of the culture, and it motivated her to do amazing things and to be incredibly brave in the face of danger, where her contemporaries were too scared to fight. Maybe she went too far in some of her battles, but her success rate was incredible and she was bale to energize her soldiers to her cause, even her enemies recognized that. What matters is what she accomplished, not whether her motivations were religious or not, and she did amazing things.
I don't know about the greatest (there are SO many female saints to choose from), but her story is probably more well known than some others who are equally deserving.
I look forward to hearing Joan's story from her own mouth when I get to heaven.