Thursday, October 30, 2014

“Our ancestors would think that Europe disavowed Jesus Christ and started worshipping Satan”




Russian Orthodox Church harshly condemns Halloween for its cult of death



The Russian Orthodox Church expressed its concerns in connection with the modern tradition to celebrate Halloween. “Times have changed a lot nowadays. The innocent amusement has been replaced with the entertainment industry, which tends to take dark and mystical coloring,” an article by Mikhail Dudko, a priest of the Uspensky Cathedral in London said.
 
Speaking about the modern tradition to celebrate Halloween, the cleric said that normal piety has been replaced with commercial dismay. “Our ancestors would think that Europe disavowed Jesus Christ and started worshipping Satan,” the priest wrote.
“Old Christian nations of the continent used to entertain themselves with the contrast of their children’s innocent faces and pumpkins which only symbolized the evil defeated by Christ. Nowadays the true evil gradually comes to a reign,” Mikhail Dudko wrote.

To exemplify his point of view, the priest resorts to the film titled Halloween. The film tells of a little boy, who murdered his six-year-old sister on the eve of Halloween and then became a blood-thirsty killer.
“Confessions of mad people have become quite ordinary. They acknowledge that the roots of their pathological aggressiveness lie in their passion for pop culture, computer games and cinema. Who knows how many mentally unstable people this film will push to committing a crime,” the priest wrote in his article.

Mikhail Dudko also said that in Great Britain, where Halloween originally appeared, many people who have not lost their reason, begin to express their deep anxiety because of Halloween. Local clergymen, for example, asked trading networks to make Halloween a kinder holiday. “One has to be aware of the liberalism of the Anglican Church to understand the reason for such an address – the evil has gone too far,” the priest wrote.

In the meantime, spokespeople for the Depart of Education in Moscow say that Russian schools must not organize any events devoted to Halloween. “The position of the department remains unchanged since 2003, when the administration signed a letter to headmasters of Moscow schools asking them not to hold any events devoted to Halloween,” the press secretary of the Department of Education, Alexander Gavrilov said.
The official said that such decision was made in connection with religious aspects of the holiday – the cult of death, gloating over death, the personification of evil spirits, etc. which contradicts to the secular character of education of state-run schools in Russia. “It is destructive for the psychological and moral health of schoolchildren,” Gavrilov said.

The term Halloween (and its alternative rendering Hallowe'en) is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the eve of "All Hallows' Day", which is now also known as All Saints' Day. Some modern Halloween traditions developed out of older pagan traditions, especially surrounding the Irish holiday Samhain, a day associated both with the harvest and otherworldly spirits. Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is now celebrated in several parts of the Western world, most commonly in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom and occasionally in parts of Australia and New Zealand.

Many European cultural traditions, in particular Celtic cultures, hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world, and when magic is most potent, according to Wikipedia.

Halloween did not become a holiday in the United States until the 19th century, where lingering Puritan tradition restricted the observance of many holidays. American almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries do not include Halloween in their lists of holidays. The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) finally brought the holiday to the United States. Scottish emigration from the British Isles, primarily to Canada before 1870 and to the United States thereafter, brought the Scottish version of the holiday to each country.



Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.ru

 
....
 

Sunday, October 26, 2014

These same northern European bishops and theologians have presided over the collapse of western European Catholicism.

George Weigel

….
According to Vatican-speak, a specially scheduled session of the Synod of Bishops is an “Extraordinary Synod,” meaning Not-an-Ordinary Synod, held every three years or so. In the case of the recently-completed Extraordinary Synod of 2014, extraordinary things did happen, in the “Oh, wow!” sense of the word. And if this year’s Extraordinary Synod was a preview of the Synod for which it was to set the agenda, i.e., the Ordinary Synod of 2015, that Synod, too, promises to be, well, extraordinary.

How was the Extraordinary Synod of 2014 extraordinary? With apologies to the Bard, let me count the ways:

1. The 2014 Synod got an extraordinary amount of press attention. Alas, too much of that attention was due to the mass media misperception that The Great Moment of the Long-Awaited Catholic Cave-In was at hand: the moment when the Catholic Church, the last major institutional hold-out against the triumph of the sexual revolution, would finally admit the error of its ways and join the rush into the promised land of sexual liberation, symbolized in this instance by a Catholic cave-in on the nature of marriage. What ought to have gotten the world’s attention—the witness of African bishops to the liberating power of monogamy and lifelong marital fidelity—got sadly short shrift, though Third World women are the principal beneficiaries of the truth about marriage the Church received from its Lord.

2. The 2014 Synod demonstrated the extraordinary self-confidence of bishops from dying local churches who nonetheless feel quite comfortable giving pastoral advice to local churches that are either thriving or holding their own. Many northern European bishops and theologians (and bishop-theologians) acted as if the blissful years when they set the agenda for the world Church at Vatican II had returned. That these same bishops and theologians and bishop-theologians have presided over the collapse of western European Catholicism in the intervening five decades seemed not to matter to them in the slightest. Happy days were here again.

3. The 2014 Synod was extraordinary, or at least the media claimed it was, for an unprecedented public display of discord among cardinals. Perhaps those who found this either unprecedented or unseemly could consult Galatians 2:11, where Paul reports that he “rebuked” Peter “to his face.” Or ponder the fierce arguments among North African bishops during the Donatist controversy. Or look into the quarrel between Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, a doctor of the Church, and Pope Stephen, Bishop of Rome. Or read the debates at the first session of Vatican II. The 2014 controversies were indeed noteworthy, in that otherwise intelligent men whose position had been pretty well demolished by fellow scholars were incapable of admitting that they’d gotten it wrong. But upon further review (as they say in the NFL), that isn’t so new either.

4. The 2014 Synod was extraordinary in that a lot of theological confusion was displayed by elders of the Church who really ought to know better. The idea of the development of doctrine was especially ill-used by some. Of course the Church’s self-understanding develops over time, as does the Church’s pastoral practice. But as Blessed John Henry Newman showed in the classic modern discussion of the subject, all authentic development is in organic continuity with the past; it’s not a rupture with the past. Nor is there any place in a truly Catholic theory of doctrinal development for rewriting the words of the Lord or describing fidelity to the plain text of Scripture as “fundamentalism.”

5. The 2014 Synod was extraordinary in its demonstration that too many bishops and theologians (and bishop-theologians) still have not grasped the Iron Law of Christianity in Modernity: Christian communities that maintain a firm grasp on their doctrinal and moral boundaries can flourish amidst the cultural acids of modernity; Christian communities whose doctrinal and moral boundaries become porous (and then invisible) wither and die.

6. One more thing: why were no representatives of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute on Marriage and the Family invited to a Synod on the family?

Extraordinary, indeed: in both Vatican-speak and plain English.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.



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Thursday, October 23, 2014

Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit



by

 
Damien F. Mackey

 

  

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The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in particular was not lost on

that great student of literature [Saint] Jerome ….

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
 
 
This combined biblical influence upon Homer is, I think, more intelligible in light of my article:

 

Job's Life and Times



 

in which I have identified Job with Tobit’s son, Tobias.
 

Some Compelling Comparisons

 

I need to point out right at the start that it sometimes happens that incidents attributed to the son, in the Book of Tobit, in Job, might, in The Odyssey, be attributed to the son's father, or vice versa (or even be attributed to some less important character).

The same sort of mix occurs with the female characters.

 

 

These are some of the parallels that I have picked up:

 

 

The two chief male characters

 

Tobit and his son, Tobias/Job, equate approximately to Odysseus and his son, Telemachus.

 

Unlike the pious Tobit, though, Odysseus was a crafty and battle-hardened pagan, with a love of strong drink and an eye for women {goddesses}. But he nevertheless pined for his true wife, Penelope.

 

The Suitors

 

These unpleasant and self-serving characters are especially prominent and numerous in Homer’s The Odyssey.

In the Book of Tobit, “seven” suitors in turn meet an unhappy fate in their desire for Sarah.

 

The Sought-After Woman

 

In The Odyssey, she is Penelope.

She is Sarah in the Book of Tobit.

 

The 'Divine' Messenger

 

From whom the son, especially, receives help during his travels.

 

In the Book of Tobit, this messenger is the angel Raphael (in the guise of ‘Azarias’).

In The Odyssey, it is the goddess Athene (in the guise of ‘Mentes’).

 

Satan, or Adversary (Book of Job)

 

He is Poseidon in The Odyssey, the god who hounds down the story’s hero.

He is Asmodeus in the Book of Tobit.

 

According to the following, this Asmodeus is to be identified with the Iranian, Aeshma Daeva (http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=12-02-036-f):

 

Bearing just as obvious a connection with non-biblical literature, I believe, is the demon Asmodeus (Tobit 3:8), who is doubtless to be identified, on purely morphological grounds, with Aeshma Daeva, a figure well known in ancient Iranian religion ….

 

The Friends

 

Whereas, in the Book of Tobit, the young man’s journeying takes him amongst kindred folks (e.g. Raguel and Gabael),

in The Odyssey, it is to the homelands of certain Greek returnées from Troy (e.g. Nestor and Menelaus) that young Telemachus travels.

 

The Dog

 

Yes, even a dog, or dogs, figure in both stories.

P. Reardon, commenting upon this particular parallel in The Wide World of Tobit, follows the typical pattern of thought according to which the pagan mythology has precedence over the Hebrew version:

 

The Larger World

 

….

The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in particular was not lost on that great student of literature, Jerome, as is evident in a single detail of his Latin translation of Tobit in the Vulgate. Intrigued by the literary merit of Tobit, but rejecting its canonicity, the jocose and sometimes prankish Jerome felt free to insert into his version an item straight out of the Odyssey—namely, the wagging of the dog’s tail on arriving home with Tobias in 11:9—Tunc praecucurrit canis, qui simul fuerat in via, et quasi nuntius adveniens blandimento suae caudae gaudebat—“Then the dog, which had been with them in the way, ran before, and coming as if it had brought the news, showed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail.”16 No other ancient version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but Jerome, ever the classicist, was confident his readers would remember the faithful but feeble old hound Argus, as the final act of his life, greeting the return of Odysseus to the home of his father: “he endeavored to wag his tail” (Odyssey 17.302). And to think that we owe this delightful gem to Jerome’s rejection of Tobit’s canonicity!

[End of quote]

 

 

There is space here for only a few more of the many further parallels that I have observed between Tobit/Job and The Odyssey:

 

 

Further Comparisons

 

Only Son

 

Tobias was the only son of Tobit and Anna (cf. Tobit 1:9 and 8:17).

So was Telemachus the only son of Odysseus and Penelope: '[Telemachus] ... you an only son, the apple of your mother's eye...' (II, 47).

Likewise Anna referred to her son, Tobias, as 'the light of my eyes' (Tobit 10:5).

And Telemachus’s uncle will use that identical phrase: 'Telemachus, light of my eyes!' (XVI, 245).

 

Longing for Death

 

The aged Tobit, in his utter misery of blindness, longed for death, and thus he prayed to God: 'Command that I now be released from my distress to go to the eternal abode; do not turn Thy face away from me' (Tobit 3:6).

This theme is treated even more starkly, and in more prolonged fashion, in the Book of Job (esp. Ch. 3).

In The Odyssey, it is said of Laërtes that "every day he prays to Zeus that death may visit his house and release the spirit from his flesh" (XV, 239).

And Odysseus, after having learned from Circe about the wretched existence of the dead in Hades, said: 'This news broke my heart. I sat down on the bed and wept. I had no further use for life, no wish to see the sunshine any more' (X, 168).

 

The Suitors

 

"On the same day" that Tobit had prayed to be released from this life, Sarah - back home in Midian "was reproached by her father's maids, because she had been given to seven husbands, and the evil demon Asmodeus had slain each of them before he had been with her as his wife" (Tobit 3:7, 8). In the Vulgate version of Tobit, we are informed that these seven suitors had lustful intentions towards Sarah (6:17).

The Odyssey also tells about Penelope, who is tormented by the suitors who have invaded Odysseus’s home and are squandering the family's wealth. Penelope has to resort to the ruse of weaving a winding-cloth - ostensibly intending to make the decision to marry once she has completed it. But each night she undoes the cloth, in order to keep the suitors at bay (I, 28-33; II, 38-39).

 

The prediction early in the story, that "there'd be a quick death and a sorry wedding for ... all [the suitors]", once Odysseus returned home (I, 32), was to be fulfilled to the letter when he dealt them all a bloody end.

And indeed these words, a "sorry wedding" and a "quick death", might well have been spoken of Sarah's suitors as well, once the demon Asmodeus had finished with them. This Asmodeus is eventually overcome by Tobias, with great assistance from the angel. Asmodeus then "fled to the remotest parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him" (cf. Tobit 7:16 and 7:8:3). Even this episode might have its 'echo' at the beginning of The Odyssey, when the violent god, Poseidon (legendary father of the Athenian hero Theseus - born of two fathers: Poseidon and Aegeus, king of Athens), is found amongst "the distant Ethiopians, the farthest outposts of mankind ..." (I, 25). Ethiopia could indeed be described as "the remotest parts of Egypt".

 

Heavenly Visitor

 

... she [Athene] bound under her feet her lovely sandals of untarnished gold, which carried her with the speed of the wind.... Thus she flashed down from the heights of Olympus. On reaching Ithaca she took her stand on the threshold of the court in front of Odysseus' house; and to look like a visitor she assumed the appearance of a Taphian chieftain named Mentes… (I, 27-28).

The reader will quickly pick up the similarities between this text and the relevant part of the Book of Tobit if I simply quote directly from the latter:

The prayer of [Tobit and Sarah] was heard in the presence of the glory of the great God. And Raphael was sent (3:16,17). Then Tobias ... found a beautiful young man, standing girded, as it were ready to walk. And not knowing that he was an angel of God, he saluted him.... 'I am Azarias, the son of the great Ananias' (5:5, 6, 18).

 

The Questioning

 

Tobit had interrogated the angel about the latter's identity, asking: 'My brother, to what tribe and family do you belong? Tell me ...', etc., etc. (5:9-12). Raguel exhibited a similar sort of curiosity: 'Where are you from brethren? .... Do you know our brother Tobit? .... Is he in good health?' (7:3, 4).

In The Odyssey, too, this pattern (but with a Greek slant - e.g. the mention of ships) is again most frequent - almost monotonous. Telemachus, for instance, asks Athene: 'However, do tell me who you are and where you come from. What is your native town? Who are your people? And since you certainly cannot have come on foot, what kind of vessel brought you here?' (I, 29).

(For further examples of this pattern of interrogation in The Odyssey, see pp. 72; 118; 164; 175; 208; 220).

 

Athene replied to Telemachus, using a phrase that I suggest may have come straight out of the Book of Tobit - where towards the end of the story Raphael says: 'I will not conceal anything from you' (12:11). Thus:

'I will tell you everything', answered the bright-eyed goddess Athene. 'My father was the wise prince, Anchialus. My own name is Mentes, and I am a chieftain of the sea-faring Taphians'.

 

Delaying One’s Guests

 

Another noticeable tendency in these Israelite writings, as well as in The Odyssey, is for hosts to insist on their guests staying longer than the latter had intended, or had wished. This was perhaps the customary hospitality in ancient Syro-Mesopotamia, because it is common also in Genesis (24:25-26; 29:21-31:41). And it happens in The Book of Tobit, and indeed all the way through The Odyssey as well. For example, Telemachus says to Athene (I, 29): 'Sir, .... I know you are anxious to be on your way, but I beg you to stay a little longer, so that you can bathe and refresh yourself. Then you can go, taking with you as a keepsake from myself something precious and beautiful, the sort of present that one gives to a guest who has become a friend'.

'No', said the bright-eyed goddess. 'I am eager to be on my way; please do not detain me now. As for the gift you kindly suggest, let me take it home with me on my way back. Make it the best you can find, and you won't lose by the exchange'. (Cf. IV, 80; XV, 231-232).

In like manner, Tobias was impatient to leave the sanguine Raguel and return home:

At that time Tobias said to Raguel. 'Send me back, for my father and mother have given up hope of ever seeing me again'.

But his father-in-law said to him, 'Stay with me, and I will send messengers to your father, and they will inform him how things are with you'.

'No, send me back to my father'. So Raguel arose and gave him his wife Sarah and half of his property in slaves, cattle, and money. (10:7, 8-10).

 

The Dog(s)

 

(a) The Leaving

"... Telemachus himself set out for the meeting-place, bronze spear in hand, escorted ... by two dogs that trotted beside him" (II, 37).

Also "[Tobias and the angel] both went out and departed, and the young man's dog was with them" (Tobit 5:16).

 

(b) The Returning

When Telemachus returned home: "The dogs, usually so obstreperous, not only did not bark at the newcomer but greeted him with wagging tails"(XVI, 245).

The dog in the Book of Tobit was equally excited: "Then the dog, which had been with [Tobias and the angel] along the way, ran ahead of them; and coming as if he had brought the news showed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail" (Tobit 11:9).

 

Similarities to Other Pagan Drama

 


 

…. some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus. ….

More convincing, I believe, however, are points of contact with classical Greek theater. Martin Luther observed similarities between Tobit and Greek comedy … but one is even more impressed by resemblances that the Book of Tobit bears to a work of Greek tragedy—the Antigone of Sophocles. In both stories the moral stature of the heroes is chiefly exemplified in their bravely burying the dead in the face of official prohibition and at the risk of official punishment. In both cases a venerable moral tradition is maintained against a political tyranny destructive of piety. That same Greek drama, moreover, provides a further parallel to the blindness of Tobit in the character of blind Teiresias, himself also a man of an inner moral vision important to the theme of the play. ….

 

The widespread panorama of the Book of Tobit has inclined Reardon - who likens it in this regard to the Book of Job - to view the whole thing as a “universal essay”, including similarities with the Book of Jonah:

 

The Apocrypha’s Tobit and Literary Tradition

 

I like to think of the Book of Tobit as a kind of universal essay, in the sense that its author makes considerable effort to place his brief, rather simple narrative within a literary, historical, and moral universe of surprising breadth and diversity, extending through the Fertile Crescent and out both sides. To find comparable dimensions of such large cultural exposure among biblical authors, one would have to go to Ezekiel, Luke, or the narrator of Job.

….

Tobit’s explicit reference to Jonah is of considerable interest in the light of certain affinities between the two books. First and second, both stories take place about the same time [sic] and both in Mesopotamia. Third, both accounts involve a journey. Fourth, the distressed Tobit, like Jonah, prays to die. Fifth and most strikingly, his son Tobias encounters a fish that attempts—with less success than Jonah’s fish—to swallow him! Finally, in each book the fish serves as a special instrument of Divine Providence.

Besides Jonah, Tobit shows several remarkable affinities to the Book of Job, some of which were noted rather early in Christian exegesis. For example, the title characters of both works shared a zeal for purity of life, almsgiving, and other deeds of charity (Job 1 and 31; Tobit 1–2), patient endurance of trials sent by God … a deep weariness of life itself (Job 7:15; Tobit 3:6), a final vindication by the Lord at the end of each book, and perhaps even a common hope of the resurrection. …. As early as Cyprian in the third century, it was also noted that both men were similarly mocked by wives unable to appreciate their virtue and faith in God…..

 

Reardon then expands upon this apparent universalism of the Book of Tobit:

 

The Larger World

 

Even when the Book of Tobit most closely touches the other biblical literature, however, it sometimes does so along lines reminiscent of, and running parallel to, more extensive traditions outside the Bible.

An obvious and rather large example is the “Golden Rule” in Tobit 4:15, “Do not do to anyone what you yourself hate.” Not only does this prohibition substantially contain the biblical command to love one’s neighbor as oneself … not only, furthermore, does it stand in canonical continuity with the more positive formulation of the same Golden Rule preserved in the Gospels … it is also the equivalent to an ideal found in other ethical philosophies. These latter include Greek authors like Herodotus and Isocrates … and even classical Confucianism. …. This use of the Golden Rule thus assured Tobit a featured place in the entire history of religion and moral philosophy…..

A similar assessment is true, I believe, concerning the way that Tobit develops the religious symbolism of the journey. Obviously that motif had long been part of the Bible, particularly in those sections associated with the Exodus wandering and the return from Babylon … but it was a topic not limited to the Bible. Back near the beginning of the second millennium B.C., the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic had inchoatively explored the religious symbolism of the journey, and that exploration would continue down through some of our greatest literature: the Odyssey, of course, diverse accounts of Jason and the Argonauts, the Aeneid, etc., and eventually the Divine Comedy, itself inspired by all of them. In a more secular form the journey imagery continued with such works as the Endymion of Keats … even after it had been assumed within the ascetical literature of the Church as xeneteia, conceived as both exile and pilgrimage. A classical example of the latter use is found in Step 3 of The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John of Mount Sinai.

 

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Judith of Bethulia and Joan of Arc





by

 Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

Introductory: Joan ‘The Maid’: Like An Old Testament Woman

 

This article will be presented along the lines of Plutarch’s parallel lives. The ancient historian Plutarch had taken certain famous characters of antiquity, Greek and Roman, and had paired them, pointing out what he considered to be their common moral virtues or failings.

 

There is no doubt that the Jewish heroine, Judith of Bethulia (c. 700 BC), and St. Joan of Arc (c. 1400 AD) make a special pair; Joan of Arc actually being referred to as a “second Judith”.

 

In some ways, the story of Joan of Arc reads like an ironical, even satirical, version of the Book of Judith.

Here we are interested in the lives of our paired heroines largely from their beginning to their great military victory, comparing and contrasting them.

 

Donald Spoto in Joan. The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007) has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”. Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided military assistance to Israel. Let us read of what Spoto has to say on the subject, starting with comparisons with some ancient pagan women (pp. 73-74):

 

Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give direction to soldiers. The Greek poet Telesilla was famous for saving the city of Argos from attack by Spartan troops in the fifth century B.C. In first-century Britain, Queen Boudicca [Boadicea] led an uprising against the occupying Roman forces. In the third century Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (latter-day Syria), declared her independence of the Roman Empire and seized Egypt and much of Asia Minor. Africa had its rebel queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth century. In the seventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess of Montfort, took up arms after her husband died in order to protect the rights of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and dressed in full armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s rear camps.

Joan [of Arc] was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk of both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her as the prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel with an army of men?

Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy.

[End of quote]

 

Some of these above-mentioned heroines, or amazons, can probably actually be identified with the famous Judith herself – she gradually being transformed from an heroic Old Testament woman into an armour-bearing warrior on horseback, sometimes even suffering capture, torture and death – whose celebrated beauty and/or siege victory I have argued on many occasions was picked up in non-Hebrew ‘history’, or mythologies: e.g. the legendary Helen of Troy is probably based on Judith, at least in relation to her beauty and a famous siege, rather than to any military noĂ¼s on Helen’s part.

And, in the Lindian Chronicle of the Greco-Persian wars, in a siege of the island of Hellas by admiral Darius, also involving a crucial five-day period, as in the Book of Judith, the goddess Athene takes the place of Judith in the rĂ´le of the heroine, to oversee a successful lifting of the siege.

In the name Iodit (Gwedit) above, the name Judith can, I think, be clearly recognised.

And, re the possibility of Judith’s having been represented by the Greeks as a “poet” (with reference to the city-saving “Greek poet Telesilla” above), I have wondered whether the mystical and musical Judith was even the model for the famous ‘Greek’ poet Sappho.

And I have even proposed that the wisdom-filled Judith might even have been the model, too, for the interesting and highly intelligent and philosophically-minded Hypatia of Alexandria. Now I find in the Wikipedia article, “Catherine of Alexandria”, that

 

(i)                 the latter is also likened to Hypatia, and that

 

(ii)               Hypatia is said to have lived 105 years (Judith’s very age: see Book of Judith 16:23) before Hypatia’s death:

 

Historians such as Harold Thayler Davis believe that Catherine (‘the pure one’) may not have existed and that she was more an ideal exemplary figure than a historical one. She did certainly form an exemplary counterpart to the pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the medieval mindset; and it has been suggested that she was invented specifically for that purpose. Like Hypatia, she is said to have been highly learned (in philosophy and theology), very beautiful, sexually pure, and to have been brutally murdered for publicly stating her beliefs. Catherine is placed 105 years before Hypatia’s death, although the first records mentioning her are much later.

Because of the fabulous character of the account of her martyrdom and the lack of reliable documentation, the Catholic Church in 1969 removed her feast day from the General Roman Calendar. But she continued to be commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on November 25. In 2002, her feast was restored to the General Roman Calendar as an optional memorial.

Finally, as according to tradition, she not only remained a virgin by governing her passions and conquered her executioners by wearying their patience, but triumphed in science by closing the mouths of sophists, her intercession was implored by theologians, apologists, pulpit orators, and philosophers. Before studying, writing, or preaching, they besought her to illumine their minds, guide their pens, and impart eloquence to their words. This devotion to St. Catherine which assumed such vast proportions in Europe after the Crusades, received additional Ă©clat in France in the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it was rumored that she had spoken to Joan of Arc and, together with St. Margaret, had been divinely appointed Joan’s adviser.

 

[End of quote]

 

Now, continuing on with Spoto (op. cit., p. 82):

 

It was not [Joan of Arc’s] military expertise that won her the enduring loyalty of her people; it was rather Joan’s utter and complete fidelity toward God that evoked reverence. Thus little time passed before poets and chroniclers compared her to Deborah, Esther and Judith, formidable women in the Hebrew Scriptures who heeded messages from God and brought relief to their people at critical times. Deborah victoriously led a coalition of tribal militias against a Canaanite army. Another threat to the Hebrew people was put down through the intervention of Esther, and Judith was a faithful widow who captivated and then decapitated the Assyrian general Holofernes.

Joan did not share the bloodlust of these ancient heroines, but she was regarded as in their tradition, equally patriotic and just as effective on behalf of her nation. As early as the summer [of 1429], the Hebrew heroines appear in a famous poem about the Maid by Christine de Pisan, written and circulated in July 1429.

 

[End of quote]

 

Joan of Arc: Like An Ironical Version of the Book of Judith

 

Some aspects of the story of Joan of Arc read a bit like an ironical, even caricature, version of the book of Judith. Joan the Maid shows the utmost deference and respect towards the Dauphin, Charles VII, both representing the French. The Dauphin himself, though, seems to be a character most undeserving of any such respect. He is weak, vacillating, vain and treacherous. A similar opinion of the Dauphin Charles can be gauged from the New Advent site (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm) (quoting H. Thurston (1910). St. Joan of Arc. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company):

 

Apathy

 

No words can adequately describe the disgraceful ingratitude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in leaving the Maid to her fate. If military force had not availed, they had prisoners like the Earl of Suffolk in their hands, for whom she could have been exchanged. Joan was sold by John of Luxembourg to the English for a sum which would amount to several hundred thousand dollars in modern money. There can be no doubt that the English, partly because they feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic.

Moreover, they had a tool ready to their hand in Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, an unscrupulous and ambitious man who was the creature of the Burgundian party. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

But Joan was driven by her Divinely-inspired task, according to which the Dauphin was marked out as being the favoured one. The Dauphin, though, is not fully on Joan’s side. He, characteristically, treats her with a mixture of curiosity, interest, contempt and betrayal.

 

Now, in the Book of Judith, all the deference and respect shown by the heroine towards a royal person is entirely faked, part of Judith’s ruse, because it is directed towards the enemy leader, Holofernes. He, somewhat like the Dauphin, was second to the Great King (of Assyria), hence not crowned. Judith in fact has nothing but contempt for Holofernes and the Assyrians (somewhat like Joan’s attitude towards the English). But she will tell Holofernes, very much in Joan of Arc fashion - but with complete irony in Judith’s case - that, after his victory (Judith 11:19): ‘… I will lead you through Judea, until you come to Jerusalem; there I will set your throne. You will drive them like sheep that have no shepherd, and no dog will so much as growl at you’.

Judith claimed before Holofernes to be a messenger from God who was now supposedly favouring the Assyrians (v. 19): ‘For this was told me to give me foreknowledge; it was announced to me and I was sent to tell you’.

In Joan’s case, the ruse was on the part of the Dauphin, not her. “To test her, the king had disguised himself, but she at once saluted him without hesitation amidst a group of attendants” (New Advent). Her opening words to him were direct and to the point just like Judith’s had been to Holofernes (Spoto, p. 48): ‘My most eminent lord Dauphin, I have come, sent by God, to bring help to you and to the kingdom’.

Spoto adds: “It was as direct and unadorned a summary as the Dauphin – and anyone else before or since – could ask. Help for him and for France: that was her message and her vocation”. But her reverence for the Dauphin was completely honest.

 

Judith, on the other hand, had nothing but contempt and irony in her heart when she had similarly, with all customary protocol, greeted Holofernes, who was – just like the Dauphin – assembled with his impressive entourage (Judith 10:23): “When Judith came into the presence of Holofernes and his servants, they all marvelled at the beauty of her face. She prostrated herself and did obeisance to him, but his slaves raised her up”.

The pressure upon the young girl at the time must have been enormous.

 

Spoto says of Joan that (ibid., p. 49): “Charles was fascinated by the seventeen-year old girl who stood calmly and confidently before him … after a brief but apparently intense private conversation, he seemed to one member of his court to be “radiant””.

 

Certainly ‘fascination’ is one word that could also be used to describe Holofernes’ impression of the young Judith, though the biblical text uses “passion”, as well as “greatly pleased with her”, and it has “[being] merry” rather than being “radiant (Judith 12:16-17, 20):

 

Holofernes’ heart was ravished with her and his passion was aroused, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to seduce her from the day he first saw her. So Holofernes said to her, ‘Have a drink and be merry with us!’

…. Holofernes was greatly pleased with her, and drank a great quantity of wine, much more than he had ever drunk in one day since he was born.

 

Joan [Jehanne], as we read, was regarded by the enemy, the English, as a “prostitute”.

And Holofernes likewise presumed Judith [Jehudith], in a camp full of men, to be fair game, saying to his chief eunuch, Bagoas (Judith 12:12): “ … it would be a disgrace if we let such a woman go without having intercourse with her. If we do not seduce her, she will laugh at us’. This Bagoas had summoned Judith to the tent of his master, Holofernes, with the words (12:13): ‘Let this pretty girl not hesitate to come to my lord to be honoured in his presence …’ .

Similarly had Jean de Metz first addressed Joan (Spoto, p. 37), “M’amie [“Sweetheart” or “Honey”] …”.

 

Whilst Joan will eventually attend the coronation of Charles (New Advent): “…on Sunday, 17 July, 1429, Charles VII was solemnly crowned, the Maid standing by with her standard, for — as she explained — “as it had shared in the toil, it was just that it should share in the victory”,” Judith will not have to suffer the humiliating indignity of attending a victorious Holofernes’ being crowned in Jerusalem.

 

Her Reputation

 

Though the English, who did not know her, regarded Joan as a “prostitute”, a “witch”, and a “heretic”, those who had known her from her early days considered her always to have been a most exemplary girl (New Advent):

 

Her Childhood

 

All the witnesses in the process of rehabilitation spoke of her as a singularly pious child, grave beyond her years, who often knelt in the church absorbed in prayer, and loved the poor tenderly.

Great attempts were made at Joan’s trial to connect her with some superstitious practices supposed to have been performed round a certain tree, popularly known as the “Fairy Tree” (l’Arbre des Dames), but the sincerity of her answers baffled her judges. She had sung and danced there with the other children, and had woven wreaths for Our Lady’s statue, but since she was twelve years old she had held aloof from such diversions.

[End of quote]

 

Rousing praise of Judith even from her childhood is likewise expressed by Uzziah, the chief magistrate of Bethulia - whom I have identified with Isaiah himself in:

 

The Book of Judith Expands the Prophet Isaiah

 


 

Thus (Judith 8:28-29): “Then Uzziah sad to her, ‘All that you have said was spoken out of a true heart, and there is no one who can deny your words. Today is not the first time your wisdom has been shown, but from the beginning of your life all people have recognized your understanding, for your heart’s disposition is right’.”

Judith, too, had danced and sung and had led the women of Israel in a dance, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and being crowned with olive wreaths (15:12-14:16:1-17), though this was not during Judith’s childhood, but after the victory over the Assyrians. It was Judith, a type of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was thus crowned.

 

Her ‘Voices’

 

We read of this fascinating attribution to Joan of Arc in the New Advent article:

 

Her Mysticism: the “Voices”

 

It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her “voices” or her “counsel.” It was at first simply a voice, as if someone had spoken quite close to her, but it seems also clear that a blaze of light accompanied it, and that later on she clearly discerned in some way the appearance of those who spoke to her, recognizing them individually as St. Michael (who was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: “I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you.”

Great efforts have been made by rationalistic historians, such as M. Anatole France, to explain these voices as the result of a condition of religious and hysterical exaltation which had been fostered in Joan by priestly influence, combined with certain prophecies current in the countryside of a maiden from the bois chesnu (oak wood), near which the Fairy Tree was situated, who was to save France by a miracle. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

Re Judith’s undoubted mysticism, I wrote this in my university thesis (A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background, Vol. 2, ch. 3, p. 68):

 

T. Craven (Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith, Society of Biblical Literature, Dissertation Series No. 70, Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1983), following Dancy’s view that the theology presented in Judith’s words to the town officials rivals the theology of the Book of Job … will go on to make this comment: …“Judith plays out her whole story with the kind of faith described in the Prologue of Job (esp. 1:21 and 2:9). Her faith is like that of Job after his experience of God in the whirlwind (cf. 42:1-6), yet in the story she has no special theophanic experience. We can only imagine what happened on her housetop where she was habitually a woman of regular prayer”. ….

[End of quote]

 

Her Virginity

 

Judith, like Joanna, Countess of Montfort above, became military involved on behalf of her people only after her husband had died.

But she, a widow, may also have been a virgin.

In the shorter Hebrew version of the Book of Judith, the heroine Judith is called, not “the widow”, but “the virgin” [Interestingly, regarding one of Joan’s ‘voices’, the beautiful Catherine of Alexandria: “Both Christine de Pizan and Geoffrey de la Tour Landry point to Catherine as a paradigm for young women, emphasizing her model of virginity and "wifely chastity" …. “Catherine of Alexandria”, Wikipedia.]

. “… Joan began to identify herself as “la Pucelle” – the maid, the Virgin” (Spoto, p. 33). Spoto adds on p. 57: “To confirm that Joan was no liar when she called herself la Pucelle, “The Maid”, a group of women, under the supervision of the king’s mother-in-law, was asked to confirm that Joan was indeed a virgin. The examination was performed; she was a virgin”.

Joan’s armor was seen as a defence against any potential attempts on her chastity.

And certainly the guardianship of her chastity (virginity?) is also a strong theme in the Book of Judith. In fact Judith makes a point of telling her townspeople, upon producing the head of Holofernes from her food bag, that (Judith 13:16): ‘…I swear … that he committed no sin with me, to defile and shame me’. Judith, despite her long life, never married again (16:22): “Many desired to marry her, but she gave herself to no man all the days of her life after her husband Manasseh died and was gathered to his people”.

Joan, for her part, had actually been engaged to be married. Her decision on this was equally unusual for her time as was Judith’s, for hers. Spoto tells of it (p. 30):

 

Regarding her engagement, the little that survived on the record is so unusual as to be shocking for its time: she repudiated her parents’ wishes and declined the deal they had made with the boy and his family. Because the agreement to marry was a legal covenant, Joan was sued for breach of contract. Canon law, however, requires a free assent of the will in order to validate a marriage, and because that was lacking, the sacrament of matrimony could not be performed. The local bishop dismissed the case in Joan’s favor, and the rejected suitor receded into the mists of oblivion whence he had briefly emerged. This was, Joan later said, the only time she disobeyed her parents.

[End of quote]

 

Neither Judith nor Joan was in any way intimidated by men.

Spoto (ibid., p. 31): “[Joan] was, in other words, not intimidated by men, whether they were soldiers or bishops”. Cf. Judith 8:10-36; 10:9-10, 11; 10:11-13:11.

 

Her Garments and Her Mission

 

What the heroine wears is a major theme in both stories.

Judith, who customarily “put sackcloth round her waist and dressed in widow’s clothing” (Judith 8:5), undergoes a complete ‘makeover’ in order to captivate the Assyrians. The description of her elaborate washing and dressing with the aid of her maid can be read in Judith 10:2-8. Judith will use all her feminine beauty and appeal to carry through her Divinely-inspired mission. Her beautiful appearance was her passport into the camp of the Assyrians.

Joan, by contrast, will become almost man-like in order to fulfil her mission. Her much-discussed wearing of male attire (“the monstrous dress, difformitate habitus”), will, by contrast to Judith, in many ways complicate matters for her. Thus New Advent:

 

Finally [Joan] was suffered to seek the king at Chinon, and she made her way there with a slender escort of three men-at-arms, she being attired, at her own request, in male costume — undoubtedly as a protection to her modesty in the rough life of the camp. She always slept fully dressed, and all those who were intimate with her declared that there was something about her which repressed every unseemly thought in her regard. ….

[End of quote]

 

And again from the article, “Joan of Arc”:

 

Joan of Arc wore men’s clothing between her departure from Vaucouleurs and her abjuration at Rouen. …. This raised theological questions in her own era and raised other questions in the twentieth century. The technical reason for her execution was a biblical clothing law. …. The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to that stricture.

Doctrinally speaking, she was safe to disguise herself as a page during a journey through enemy territory and she was safe to wear armor during battle. The Chronique de la Pucelle states that it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. Clergy who testified at her rehabilitation trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape. …. Preservation of chastity was another justifiable reason for crossdressing: her apparel would have slowed an assailant, and men would be less likely to think of her as a sex object in any case…..

She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter during her condemnation trial. The Poitiers record no longer survives but circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics approved her practice. In other words, she had a mission to do a man’s work so it was fitting that she dress the part….. She also kept her hair cut short through her military campaigns and while in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Jean Gerson, defended her hairstyle, as did Inquisitor Brehal during the Rehabilitation trial. ….

[End of quote]

 

There is a constant tension in the tale of St. Joan about her wearing male attire or reverting back to women’s clothing.

Moreover, as one of the points upon which she had been condemned was the wearing of male apparel, a resumption of that attire would alone constitute a relapse into heresy, and this within a few days happened, owing, it was afterwards alleged, to a trap deliberately laid by her jailers with the connivance of Cauchon. Joan, either to defend her modesty from outrage, or because her women’s garments were taken from her, or, perhaps, simply because she was weary of the struggle and was convinced that her enemies were determined to have her blood upon some pretext, once more put on the man’s dress which had been purposely left in her way.

Neither Judith nor her ever faithful maid carried any sort of weapon into the Assyrian camp. But Judith does in the end, like Joan, get to wield a sword. It is the sword of Holofernes by which Judith will decapitate the Assyrian commander-in-chief (Judith 13:6-8); just as David had used the sword of Goliath to kill the giant.

The sword of Joan of Arc had mystical value (New Advent):

 

Returning to Chinon, Joan made her preparations for the campaign. Instead of the sword the king offered her, she begged that search might be made for an ancient sword buried, as she averred, behind the altar in the chapel of Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois. It was found in the very spot her voices indicated. There was made for her at the same time a standard bearing the words Jesus, Maria, with a picture of God the Father, and kneeling angels presenting a fleur-de-lis.

[End of quote]

 

Both Joan and Judith sharply divide opinion as to their character and personality. In the case of Joan, for instance, we read (“Joan of Arc”):

 

Documents from her own era and historians prior to the twentieth century generally assume that she was both healthy and sane. A number of more recent scholars attempted to explain her visions in psychiatric or neurological terms. Potential diagnoses have included epilepsy, migraine, tuberculosis, and schizophrenia. …. None of the putative diagnoses have gained consensus support because, although hallucination and religious enthusiasm can be symptomatic of various syndromes, other characteristic symptoms conflict with other known facts of Joan’s life. Two experts who analyze a temporal lobe tuberculoma hypothesis in the medical journal Neuropsychobiology express their misgivings this way:

 

“It is difficult to draw final conclusions, but it would seem unlikely that widespread tuberculosis, a serious disease, was present in this ‘patient’ whose life-style and activities would surely have been impossible had such a serious disease been present.” ….

 

In response to another such theory alleging that she suffered from bovine tuberculosis as a result of drinking unpasteurized milk, historian RĂ©gine Pernoud wrote that if drinking unpasteurized milk could produce such potential benefits for the nation, then the French government should stop mandating the pasteurization of milk. …. Ralph Hoffman, professor of psychology at Yale University, points out that visionary and creative states including “hearing voices” are not necessarily signs of mental illness and names her religious inspiration as a possible exception although he offers no speculation as to alternative causes.

Among the specific challenges that potential diagnoses such as schizophrenia face is the slim likelihood that any person with such a disorder could gain favor in the court of King Charles VII. His own father, Charles VI, was popularly known as “Charles the Mad,” and much of the political and military decline that France had suffered during his reign could be attributed to the power vacuum that his episodes of insanity had produced. The previous king had believed he was made of glass, a delusion no courtier had mistaken for a religious awakening. Fears that King Charles VII would manifest the same insanity may have factored into the attempt to disinherit him at Troyes. This stigma was so persistent that contemporaries of the next generation would attribute to inherited madness the breakdown that England’s King Henry VI was to suffer in 1453: Henry VI was nephew to Charles VII and grandson to Charles VI. Upon her arrival at Chinon the royal counselor Jacques GĂ©lu cautioned, “One should not lightly alter any policy because of conversation with a girl, a peasant… so susceptible to illusions; one should not make oneself ridiculous in the sight of foreign nations…. ”

Contrary to modern stereotypes about the Middle Ages, the court of Charles VII was shrewd and skeptical on the subject of mental health. ….

Besides the physical rigor of her military career, which would seem to exclude many medical hypotheses, Joan of Arc displayed none of the cognitive impairment that can accompany some major mental illnesses when symptoms are present. She remained astute to the end of her life and rehabilitation trial testimony frequently marvels at her astuteness:

 

“Often they [the judges] turned from one question to another, changing about, but, notwithstanding this, she answered prudently, and evinced a wonderful memory. …”.

 

Her subtle replies under interrogation even forced the court to stop holding public sessions. …. If her visions had some medical or psychiatric origin then she would have been an exceptional case.

[End of quote]

 

In the case of Judith, M. Stocker (Judith Sexual Warrior. Women and Power in Western Culture, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998), for instance, who in her comprehensive treatment of the Judith character and her actions, will compare the heroine to, amongst others, the Old Testament’s Jael – a common comparison given that the woman, Jael, had driven a tent peg through the temple of Sisera, an enemy of Israel (Judges 4:17-22) – Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday, who had, during the French Revolution, slain the likewise unsuspecting Marat, will allow for this quite grim picture of Judith (pp. 13-15): “If viewed negatively – from an irreligious perspective, for instance, Judith’s isolation, chastity, widowhood, childlessness, and murderousness would epitomize all that is morbid, nihilistic and abortive”.

This, though, is not how her fellow Bethulians, and fellow Israelites, were to consider Judith, as we learn from their rapturous praise of her and her lasting fame (Judith 15:8-10 and 16).

Craven (op. cit., p. 95), with reference to Ruskin, writes: “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus are counted in art as the female “types” who prefigure the Virgin Mary’s triumph over Satan”.

 

Judith will not take with her any weapon, but will end up killing her enemy with his sword; Joan will take up and wield the sword, but will not kill anyone.

 

The Siege and the Heroine’s Leadership

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc):

 

The historian Kelly DeVries describes the period preceding her appearance with, “If anything could have discouraged her, the state of France in 1429 should have.” The Hundred Years’ War had begun in 1337 as a succession dispute to the French throne with intermittent periods of relative peace. Nearly all the fighting had taken place in France, and the English use of chevauchĂ©e (similar to scorched earth) tactics had devastated the economy.

….

Historian Stephen W. Richey explains her attraction as the only source of hope for a regime that was near collapse (ibid.):

 

“After years of one humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the Dauphin Charles granted Joan’s urgent request to be equipped for war and placed at the head of his army, his decision must have been based in large part on the knowledge that every orthodox, every rational, option had been tried and had failed. Only a regime in the final straits of desperation would pay any heed to an illiterate farm girl who claimed that the voice of God was instructing her to take charge of her country’s army and lead it to victory…. ”.

[End of quote]

 

Similarly Israel, by the time of Judith’s intervention, has suffered from decades of successive invasions and defeats by the Assyrians.

 

Both Orleans (France) and Bethulia (Israel) were strategically placed in the north, so that their fall would mean the eventual loss of the capital city. Thus the strategic importance that New Advent claims for the fort of Orleans:

 

The English had laid siege to OrlĂ©ans, which was the only remaining loyal French city north of the Loire. Its strategic location along the river made it the last obstacle to an assault on the remainder of the French heartland. In the words of one modern historian, “On the fate of OrlĂ©ans hung that of the entire kingdom.” …. No one was optimistic that the city could long withstand the siege. …,

 

is just like that which Judith will claim to her fellow citizens for Bethulia (8:24): ‘Therefore my brothers, let us set an example for our kindred, for their lives depend upon us, and the sanctuary – both the Temple and the altar – rests upon us’.

“Note the importance of Bethulia”, wrote R. Charles. “It was the key of the whole situation”. (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English: with Introductions and Critical and Explanatory Notes to the Several Books, vol. 1, “Apocrypha”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1913, p. 254, n 4).

Both Judith and Joan are represented as having completely taken over from a failed male leadership up to that point, and being stunningly successful due to their total dependence on the power of God. Judith bursts on to the scene with: ‘Listen to me, rulers of Bethulia. What you have said to the people today is not right …’ (Judith 8:11). She will now advise them where they have gone wrong, and she will plan a new strategy, and then carry it right the way through, in the end giving the Israelite militia orders as to how they are to proceed tactically. This is all exactly in harmony with Joan (“Joan of Arc”):

 

She defied the cautious strategy that had characterized French leadership. During the five months of siege before her arrival, the defenders of OrlĂ©ans had attempted only one aggressive move and that had ended in disaster. On 4 May the French attacked and captured the outlying fortress of Saint Loup, which she followed on 5 May with a march to a second fortress called Saint Jean le Blanc. Finding it deserted, this became a bloodless victory. The next day she opposed Jean d’Orleans at a war council where she demanded another assault on the enemy. D’Orleans ordered the city gates locked to prevent another battle, but she summoned the townsmen and common soldiers and forced the mayor to unlock a gate. With the aid of only one captain she rode out and captured the fortress of Saint Augustins. That evening she learned she had been excluded from a war council where the leaders had decided to wait for reinforcements before acting again. Disregarding this decision, she insisted on assaulting the main English stronghold called “les Tourelles” on 7 May. …. Contemporaries acknowledged her as the heroine of the engagement after she sustained an arrow wound to her neck but returned wounded to lead the final charge. ….

 

“…the Maiden lets you know that here, in eight days, she has chased the English out of all the places they held on the river Loire by attack or other means: they are dead or prisoners or discouraged in battle. Believe what you have heard about the earl of Suffolk, the lord la Pole and his brother, the lord Talbot, the lord Scales, and Sir Fastolf; many more knights and captains than these are defeated.”

 

Her Letter to the citizens of Tournai, 25 June 1429; Quicherat V, pp. 125–126, trans. Wikipedia.

 

Even the opening of the city’s gates by the town magistrates is what Judith also had ordered, so that she and her maid could descend into the valley and on into the camp of the Assyrians. The chief magistrate, Uzziah, and, in the case of Joan, Jean D’Orleans, now, for a time, become secondary figures in the drama, full of admiration for Judith, or for Joan.

The force is irresistible.

“The people who came after [Joan] in the five centuries since her death tried to make everything of her: demonic fanatic, spiritual mystic, naive and tragically ill-used tool of the powerful, creator and icon of modern popular nationalism, adored heroine, saint. She insisted, even when threatened with torture and faced with death by fire, that she was guided by voices from God. Voices or no voices, her achievements leave anyone who knows her story shaking his head in amazed wonder.” ….

 

Similarly I wrote of Judith in my thesis (ibid., p 53):

 

Conclusion

 

Judith’s heroic act on behalf of her people, for which she received the greatest praise and adulation from the high priest and other officials – and from the people of Israel in general – is virtually unprecedented as a single act of patriotism and enormous courage. And this by one whom the [Book of Judith] text calls a “young girl”! It can take its place It can take its place amongst the most heroic moments throughout the entire history of the human race.

 

Not to us, but to God give the Glory

 

From beginning to end, Judith recognises herself as a creature and an instrument of an almighty and utterly powerful God. There is never any hesitation or vacillation on her part. In other versions of the Israelite triumph over Assyria (e.g. 2 Kings 19:35), the victory is attributed to an angel of God, which does not contradict the Book of Judith. Indeed, according to the Douay version of Judith, she will say (13:20): ‘But as the same Lord liveth his angel hath been my keeper both going hence [into the camp of the Assyrians], and abiding there, and returning from thence hither’.

That angel may have been Michael the Archangel himself, one of Joan’s apparent ‘voices’, thought to be the protector of the Jewish people (Daniel 10:21).

Joan, too, puts all her trust in God and the same St. Michael. Though she, unlike Judith, sometimes lapses into phases of seeming uncertainty and confusion, often under extreme duress of course; an aspect of Joan of Arc that is exploited in modern film versions of her life. New Advent speaks of both the angel and the sometime confusion of the heroine:

 

Joan, pressed about the secret sign given to the king, declared that an angel brought him a golden crown, but on further questioning she seems to have grown confused and to have contradicted herself. Most authorities (like, e.g., M. Petit de Julleville and Mr. Andrew Lang) are agreed that she was trying to guard the king’s secret behind an allegory, she herself being the angel; but others — for instance P. Ayroles and Canon Dunand — insinuate that the accuracy of the procès-verbal cannot be trusted. On another point she was prejudiced by her lack of education. The judges asked her to submit herself to “the Church Militant.” Joan clearly did not understand the phrase and, though willing and anxious to appeal to the pope, grew puzzled and confused. It was asserted later that Joan’s reluctance to pledge herself to a simple acceptance of the Church’s decisions was due to some insidious advice treacherously imparted to her to work her ruin. But the accounts of this alleged perfidy are contradictory and improbable.

….

Her courage for once failed her. She consented to sign some sort of retraction, but what the precise terms of that retraction were will never be known. In the official record of the process a form of retraction is in inserted which is most humiliating in every particular. It is a long document which would have taken half an hour to read. What was read aloud to Joan and was signed by her must have been something quite different, for five witnesses at the rehabilitation trial, including Jean Massieu, the official who had himself read it aloud, declared that it was only a matter of a few lines. Even so, the poor victim did not sign unconditionally, but plainly declared that she only retracted in so far as it was God’s will. However, in virtue of this concession, Joan was not then burned, but conducted back to prison.

[End of quote]

 

(“Joan of Arc” article):

 

Joan of Arc became a semi-legendary figure for the next four centuries. The main sources of information about her were chronicles. Five original manuscripts of her condemnation trial surfaced in old archives during the 19th century. Soon historians also located the complete records of her rehabilitation trial, which contained sworn testimony from 115 witnesses, and the original French notes for the Latin condemnation trial transcript. Various contemporary letters also emerged, three of which carry the signature “Jehanne” in the unsteady hand of a person learning to write. …. This unusual wealth of primary source material is one reason DeVries declares, “No person of the Middle Ages, male or female, has been the subject of more study”.

….

 

And I have shown now in many articles how the triumphant victory of Judith has dominated both BC and AD literature.

I repeat Judith’s victory over Holofernes and the Assyrians “can take its place amongst the most heroic moments throughout the entire history of the human race”.