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Helen Castor is a media `` Midi veal `` medieval historian. Her latest | :00:10. | :00:25. | |
work is Joan of Arc. She retells the story of the made in man's clothing | :00:26. | :00:34. | |
who led the French to an lovable series of victories against English | :00:35. | :00:37. | |
invaders until she was captured, tried and burnt at the stake by the | :00:38. | :00:40. | |
English. Helen Castor, for those who have | :00:41. | :00:59. | |
perhaps only the hideous notion of who Joan of Arc was what she did, | :01:00. | :01:03. | |
with their remainders of the arc of her career. | :01:04. | :01:06. | |
Joan of Arc was one of the most extraordinary figures in medieval | :01:07. | :01:10. | |
history. Early France was experiencing an appalling period of | :01:11. | :01:15. | |
crisis at war with England and also divided with itself in a civil war. | :01:16. | :01:22. | |
In 1429, Joan of Arc appeared as if from nowhere, a peasant girl, | :01:23. | :01:26. | |
probably about 17 years old, declaring that she had been sent by | :01:27. | :01:31. | |
God to drive the English out of France and restorer the king to his | :01:32. | :01:39. | |
throne. What she did, soft top. She let her cane, the leader of one half | :01:40. | :01:45. | |
of the French, to the coronation. After that the wheels came off. | :01:46. | :01:52. | |
Yes, she was captured, charged with heresy and burned. | :01:53. | :01:58. | |
The historian today is fortunate because she is one of the few people | :01:59. | :02:05. | |
in the middle ages about whom there is a considerable written record. | :02:06. | :02:10. | |
The English tried her and took copious notes of all the trials and | :02:11. | :02:15. | |
proceedings. And then the French staged a sort of anti`trial and | :02:16. | :02:21. | |
recorded that. We have pages and pages of | :02:22. | :02:26. | |
testimony, including from Joan herself. | :02:27. | :02:31. | |
It is extraordinary. She went on to become an legendary figure in | :02:32. | :02:37. | |
France. What we found was all romantic imagery is `` imagery. She | :02:38. | :02:50. | |
is a national heroine but the real drama gets lost on that. | :02:51. | :02:54. | |
The real Joan gets lost in that. It is extraordinary. Myth`making again | :02:55. | :02:59. | |
almost as soon as she appeared and then gathered pace after she left. | :03:00. | :03:04. | |
Every age has remade as Jordan and SMH for her own ends. | :03:05. | :03:10. | |
She was a difficult and spiky character who had immense charisma. | :03:11. | :03:15. | |
A tremendous impact on her contemporaries, including the King | :03:16. | :03:18. | |
of France. But she is difficult for us to get a handle on because, | :03:19. | :03:25. | |
absolutely central to her story is a religious visions which drove her | :03:26. | :03:29. | |
own hands of the way society in which she was operating responded to | :03:30. | :03:34. | |
that. The medieval approach to religion is something we have | :03:35. | :03:37. | |
difficulty as modern people understanding. | :03:38. | :03:39. | |
I think we do and sometimes it is seen as if Joan brought God into | :03:40. | :03:44. | |
this war and that was one of her great powers. She said, I am | :03:45. | :03:52. | |
bringing God's will to work here. One of the things we have to | :03:53. | :03:55. | |
understand is that France was struggling with its sense of itself | :03:56. | :04:02. | |
as God's chosen people, the great Christian kingdom, and yet it was | :04:03. | :04:06. | |
riven with the vision and bore. How could these things be? So for John | :04:07. | :04:12. | |
to bring a question from God that he might intervene in the world when | :04:13. | :04:18. | |
all was lost was very powerful. One of the things that happened since I | :04:19. | :04:21. | |
finished writing the book at the beginning of the year is that a | :04:22. | :04:28. | |
resonance in watching the news that actually the power of unbending | :04:29. | :04:31. | |
religious faith, uncompromising religious faith in warfare, is | :04:32. | :04:37. | |
something that is beginning to see more directly real to us even here | :04:38. | :04:42. | |
in our secular ways. I was going to ask, it is not too | :04:43. | :04:54. | |
symbol to draw comparisons. Not at all. If someone lives in a | :04:55. | :04:59. | |
world where God's hand intervenes and there is no room for | :05:00. | :05:08. | |
compromise. Joan sees the truth of God on her side and the prosecutors | :05:09. | :05:14. | |
say that he cannot be on her side because he is on the side. Something | :05:15. | :05:19. | |
has got together and Joan has to die. | :05:20. | :05:23. | |
Used to be an academic and `` academic. You switched. You are | :05:24. | :05:32. | |
still a professional historian but you write books for a general | :05:33. | :05:36. | |
audience. Why did you do that? I found I wanted to write books in a | :05:37. | :05:41. | |
rather different way. I didn't want to abandon any of the regular, the | :05:42. | :05:50. | |
discipline and the training that I got from academic life but I wanted | :05:51. | :05:52. | |
to write narrative history. Another popular historian wrote | :05:53. | :05:55. | |
recently that you have to make a choice between telling a really good | :05:56. | :06:01. | |
tale but possibly finessing some of the complexities and being someone | :06:02. | :06:11. | |
who sets out the clues by which they reached their conclusion. The first | :06:12. | :06:16. | |
of that appeals to us but the latter is surely more honest to the | :06:17. | :06:21. | |
difficulties of writing history. That is certainly true but what I am | :06:22. | :06:25. | |
aiming for is to do both. There are extensive pages of notes were I am | :06:26. | :06:35. | |
doing my Hercule Poirot that, showing the comparisons I have come | :06:36. | :06:39. | |
to. I hope there is an honesty to the narrative part of the book | :06:40. | :06:43. | |
because I as a historian have to make those decisions and decide | :06:44. | :06:48. | |
which sources to follow, which accounts. Which balancing of | :06:49. | :06:51. | |
evidence I find most convincing. Briefly, your last project was | :06:52. | :07:02. | |
She`Wolves which was explicitly feminist. About women in the middle | :07:03. | :07:06. | |
ages that tried to rule England as Queens. This is a book about another | :07:07. | :07:15. | |
medieval women. To what extent it all is Joan of Arc a model for | :07:16. | :07:19. | |
someone who modern feminists are to know about? | :07:20. | :07:22. | |
I think it is someone that modern people ought to know about. Her role | :07:23. | :07:27. | |
as a feminist icon is extraordinarily interesting. As in | :07:28. | :07:33. | |
almost any other area of life, she is being used as a role model by | :07:34. | :07:41. | |
both sides. Some will say she is a scourge of modern feminism. And yet | :07:42. | :07:52. | |
suffragettes stressed like her. She is not unlike other figures like | :07:53. | :07:58. | |
Elizabeth the first and Margaret Thatcher in that she didn't like | :07:59. | :08:02. | |
other women around her. She is keen on being the exception rather than | :08:03. | :08:10. | |
the start of a wave. But a woman who did the impossible is always worth | :08:11. | :08:12. | |
looking at. Thank you very much. | :08:13. | :08:22. | |
Still some rain to come. It would be totally dry. This weather front has | :08:23. | :08:31. | |
introduced Lott a lot workload during the day. Temperatures have | :08:32. | :08:36. | |
been in the low 20s when we | :08:37. | :08:37. |