Thursday, October 13, 2011

Joan's Amazing Leap

During the month October in 1430, Joan of Arc was held prisoner at the Castle of Beaurevoir by the Burgundians who had captured her. Joan had been waiting since the end of May to be ransomed back to her own forces which was the normal custom of the time for military prisoners of war. Unfortunately for Joan the English were not ever going to allow her to again lead armies against them and were negotiating with the Burgundian John of Luxemburg to have Joan sold to them. Joan knew that if she were delivered into English hands she was as good as dead because they had always yelled taunts at her that if they captured her they would burn her.



Joan apparently knew about the negotiations to sell her to the English because she became desperate enough to attempt an escape by jumping from the window of the tower where she was held which was at least sixty feet above the ground. Later at her trial Joan explained about her escape attempt: “I was sold to the English and I preferred to die rather than be in the hands of the English.” Somehow Joan managed to survive the sixty foot drop that would have killed most people but she was knocked unconscious and was later found by her captors ending her escape attempt.

The miraculous feat of Joan surviving such a long fall was recently driven home to me when I had my own fall off of a ladder from about nine feet above the ground. I was very fortunate that I hit on my side and did not break any bones but I was busted up pretty bad with damage to my hand, knees, and face. It is five months later and I am just now getting back to normal with my front teeth still being a little sore. When I think about Joan falling sixty feet with no damage to herself all I can say is amazing, which is the same exclamation that can be used for so much of Joan’s life: AMAZING!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Saint Joan Needs Your Help!

If you have performed a Google search for Joan of Arc lately then you may have noticed that the #1 result returned is for a band named Joan of Arc. This came to my attention about a month ago and after researching this site and band I was able to determine that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the real Saint Joan of Arc. What really disturbs me the most are the offensive and pornographic words used in titles to songs and albums that jumped out at me when I visited this website. I know there have to be millions of school children using Google to research Joan of Arc and instead of finding what they are looking for they are being sent to this website instead. This is terrible and is something Google should deal with if for no other reason than this website has nothing at all to do with the real Joan of Arc and grossly violates their advertised policy to provide the most relevant search results. Below is the letter I sent yesterday to Google complaining about this spam site.

I encourage all of you to complain as well and if you need specific instructions on how to complain to Google online then please visit this special page below:
Page about Spam in Joan of Arc Google Search

Jesus+Maria