The truth about Joan of Arc’s heavenly visions

In 1857, Queen Victoria presented Prince Albert with a statuette of a naked lady perched on a thoroughbred stallion.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you associate with the famously ­buttoned-up Victoria.

The naked lady was Lady Godiva, who, according to legend, streaked through medieval Coventry on horseback in return for her husband Earl Leofric agreeing not to impose heavy taxes on the local peasants.

Lady Godiva riding through Coventry 

Prince Albert was said to be delighted with his saucy gift, not least because it contained a ­personal message from his wife: while Victoria might be Queen, when it came to their home life, she was prepared to ride through the streets naked for him (luckily, he never asked).

This wasn’t the first time that ­Victoria, and indeed Albert, had ransacked the medieval dressing-up box (or, in the case of Godiva, the undressing-up box).

Fifteen years earlier, they had attended a big costume ball as Edward III and his queen Philippa of Hainault.

The idea was to divert attention away from Victoria and Albert’s Germanic roots by aligning with an ancient power couple who had successfully waged war upon England’s continental enemies, creating a newly confident island nation in the process.

Ramirez’s purpose in this lively book is to point out how legendary female figures have been routinely hijacked down the ages by royal, national and political interests, some of them extreme.

Take the case of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French politician who long ago declared his ­right-wing National Front party to be ‘under the protection of Joan of Arc’.

At a stroke, the boyish-looking girl soldier who led French troops against the English in the 15th century, had been remade by Le Pen into the patron saint of chauvinism, dedicated to a version of ‘la patrie’ that is fiercely hostile to asylum and immigration.

The real Joan of Arc, says Ramirez, was a much more ­complex – and divisive – figure who was ‘used and abused by different factions’.

Far from being a military leader and clever strategist, she was a ‘divine mascot for disaffected people worn down by war’. Joan’s ­heavenly visions, which may have been symptoms of mental illness or anorexia, were deeply impressive to illiterate but devout ­soldiers steeped in prophecies, romances and divine mystery.

And Joan’s death in 1431 was not some glorious martyrdom (who can forget Ingrid Bergman in the classic 1948 film?) but a squalid humiliation.

Her burned and naked body was displayed to a crowd of 10,000 before her remaining organs were set alight a second, and then third, time before being dumped in the Seine.

Ramirez trawls medieval Europe for queens, warriors, empresses and saints who have been refashioned to suit the modern political moment.

We meet Isabella of Castile, whose 15th-century reputation for building a disciplined and unified kingdom was annexed 300 years later by General Franco in his attempt to impose fascism on Spain.

Similarly, St Catherine of Siena, a Dominican activist from the 14th century, was pressed into service in 1999 by Pope John Paul II as an example of how the modern Catholic church needed more female leaders.

Ramirez’s point is that both Isabella and Catherine, not to mention Joan and Godiva, led lives that were infinitely more complex and nuanced than ­modern-day authorities suggest.

This doesn’t necessarily make Legenda an easy read, but it is an important one.

Ramirez is urging us to become critical thinkers, able to spot those places where history has been rewritten to serve the ­i­deological interests of ­whoever happens to have the largest megaphone.