Picture a young girl awakening in the dead of night. She’s small, her face dirty, her clothes little more than rags. In short, she looks like the daughter of a 15th century peasant.
This isn’t the first time she’s been woken by a noise in the dead of night. She’s lived her entire young life on the border between warring factions.
She creeps outside from her tiny room and into the rural countryside.
The night is dark. Not dark like you and I know dark. It’s dark in the way mankind used to know before electricity. It is pitch-blackness broken only by pinprick starlight and a sliver of moon.
She walks further, towards the nearby fields, drawn by something. She suspects it might be an angel. After all, hadn’t the Archangel Michael appeared to her last summer in her father’s garden? He’d told her that Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine would come to her, and that she must follow their counsel, for it was the Lord’s command.
She creeps further and, sure enough, two heavenly figures appear in the muddy lane and begin speaking to her. They tell her of a heavy burden she must carry, a heavenly burden. She must liberate her nation and ensure the coronation of the rightful king of France.
This would be one of many angelic visits she would receive over her lifetime.
. . .
For more, listen to the Podcast episode and check out my book, History Stories for Everyone, where I dive deeper into this and some of history’s other most fascinating and relatable human stories:
