Mark Twain believed in the supernatural, apparitions, and he loved a Catholic Saint.
Mark Twain, to the surprise of almost everyone, wrote a biographical novel about the life and times of Joan of Arc. The book is called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and, astonishingly, he called this virtually unknown volume his “best and favorite work.”
There are intriguing reasons why most folks are unaware of the beliefs of Mark Twain, but first here are the remarkable words from Mark Twain about a novel he wrote about a Catholic Saint.
“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.”
Mark Twain admired, maybe even venerated, Joan of Arc and he was transfixed by the amazing spiritual events experienced by the young French virgin who called herself “Joan the Maid.”
Mark Twain spent twelve years researching and writing his book.
Twain went to the National Archives of France and read through the transcripts of the trial that ended in Joan’s martrydom, as well as the inquisition — held 25 years after her death — that cleared her name. He studied both English and French accounts of the French heroine, and concluded, in an essay he wrote in 1904 that Joan was the “Wonder of the Ages,” an individual “stainlessly pure, in mind and heart, in speech and deed and spirit.”
Mark Twain said:
“Taking into account, as I have suggested before, all the circumstances — her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high gifts and made her conquests in the field and before the courts that tried her for her life, — she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.”
source:patheos
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