|


Even
before she was canonized, Joan was venerated, especially in France. The
Church requires that no religious honor be paid to person who have not
been officially beatified, and in fact such honor can interfere with the
process of canonization. Public
opinion is hard to contain, however, and in this stunning multicolor woodcut
which served as the cover to the Almanach National de Jeanne d'Arc
1891, the artist conflates the Savior of France with the Savior of
the World in an unusually frank depiction of the enthusiasm for Joan of
Arc in the decades around 1900.
Joan was also the subject of formal panegyrics in cathedrals throughout
the nineteenth and century and into the twentieth. Coube's 1908 sermon,
Le Coeur de Jeanne d'Arc, speaks of the
heart of the child, of the warrior, and of the martyr and ends, "Come
again, oh, come again to your sweet France, immortal Dove!" Desgranges'
panegyric, Les Immolés de la Guerre, given under far more
tragic circumstances, entrusts to the Venerable Jeanne the orphans, the
widows, the injured, and the slain.
|
|