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Warrior, Witch, and Saint: Exploring the Life and Legend of Joan of Arc with Cultural Historian Jason Lahman, Begins March 15
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, March 15 - April 5, 2026
2:00pm - 4:00pm ET (NYC Time)
$120 Paid Patreon Members / $145 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
In this intensive four-week course one of the most intriguing and controversial figures of the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc, will be brought to life through primary source readings, image rich lectures and works of music and film. We will explore Joan’s formative world in the French countryside of Domrémy, contemporaneous devotion to saints, the lore of fairies and earth spirits, and the anthropology of auditory revelations and prophecies received from higher realms. Joan’s astonishing and sudden emergence as a military leader in the crisis years of the Hundred Years’ War made her a legend in her own lifetime but also triggered anxieties related to gender, heresy and magic. These fears were later used to build a dark narrative and manipulate her as a pawn in the game of royal power. Through close readings of trial records, chronicles, the history of mysticism, and rural folklore we will study how a teenage visionary became a divine instrument of war, then a heretic condemned to the flames. Yet Joan’s story does not end at the stake. This course also examines the centuries-long struggle to claim and utilize her image: as misguided heretic and divinely inspired saint, as Protestant cautionary tale and Romantic freedom fighter, as a symbol of resurgent French nationalism and proto-feminist warrior who followed her own star defying the impossible. Beside Joan, we will also consider her fellow warrior the infamous Baron Gilles de Rais, whose descent into decadence, necromancy and possibly mass murder created a figure who functioned as an archetypal shadow to Joan’s virtue and eventually fueled the perverse legend of Bluebeard. The course aims to help participants understand why Joan of Arc (and likewise Gilles de Rais) remains one of the most potent figures in the Western imagination, an endless source of curiosity and fascination for historians, artists and the public at large.
Week 1 — Joan and the Voices:
We begin in Domrémy, tracing Joan’s childhood world of saints, sacred landscapes, and lingering fairy lore. We’ll examine how her heavenly visitors- St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret- emerged within a culture where folk belief, mysticism, and church authority overlapped and collided. Rival frameworks of saintly vision versus dangerous enchantment set the stage for everything that followed.
Week 2 — Joan in Battle:
We follow Joan’s meteoric ascent from peasant girl to military icon during the siege of Orléans and the coronation campaign. Special focus is given to her martial symbolism, gender nonconformity, and charismatic authority on the field. We’ll explore how Joan transformed French morale and reimagined sanctity as a force of war. Though not a trained knight, she led from the front, banner aloft and sustained multiple wounds. Eyewitnesses repeatedly stated she chose the most dangerous ground. Far from a mere mascot, Joan acted as an inspired field commander whose timing, resolve, and visibility pushed seasoned captains into action.
Week 3 — Joan on Trial:
This week centers on Rouen and the machinery of accusation: cross-dressing, sorcery, disobedience to the Church, and the weaponization of theological interrogation. We read the trial’s most haunting exchanges and consider Joan alongside Gilles de Rais as archetypal mirrors of each other—one sanctified as a saint and emblem of holy truth, one forever connected to perversity and evil. In both cases however, the historian’s quest for clear answers can often turn up empty handed, though the lore and mythology persist.
Week 4 — Joan in Memory:
We trace Joan’s rehabilitation, canonization, and the centuries-long battle to claim her image—from Romantic nationalism and Catholic devotion to feminist, queer, and radical appropriations. Film, painting, and propaganda reveal how Joan becomes a vehicle for each era’s fears and desires. Joan endures not as a static saint, but as a living battleground of meaning; as a site of cultural contention and source of artistic inspiration.
Jeanne d'Arc, ca 1876, by Eugène Thirion. Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc, ca. 1957, Film St. Joan.
Jason Lahman is an artist and cultural historian of science, technology and the occult.
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, March 15 - April 5, 2026
2:00pm - 4:00pm ET (NYC Time)
$120 Paid Patreon Members / $145 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
In this intensive four-week course one of the most intriguing and controversial figures of the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc, will be brought to life through primary source readings, image rich lectures and works of music and film. We will explore Joan’s formative world in the French countryside of Domrémy, contemporaneous devotion to saints, the lore of fairies and earth spirits, and the anthropology of auditory revelations and prophecies received from higher realms. Joan’s astonishing and sudden emergence as a military leader in the crisis years of the Hundred Years’ War made her a legend in her own lifetime but also triggered anxieties related to gender, heresy and magic. These fears were later used to build a dark narrative and manipulate her as a pawn in the game of royal power. Through close readings of trial records, chronicles, the history of mysticism, and rural folklore we will study how a teenage visionary became a divine instrument of war, then a heretic condemned to the flames. Yet Joan’s story does not end at the stake. This course also examines the centuries-long struggle to claim and utilize her image: as misguided heretic and divinely inspired saint, as Protestant cautionary tale and Romantic freedom fighter, as a symbol of resurgent French nationalism and proto-feminist warrior who followed her own star defying the impossible. Beside Joan, we will also consider her fellow warrior the infamous Baron Gilles de Rais, whose descent into decadence, necromancy and possibly mass murder created a figure who functioned as an archetypal shadow to Joan’s virtue and eventually fueled the perverse legend of Bluebeard. The course aims to help participants understand why Joan of Arc (and likewise Gilles de Rais) remains one of the most potent figures in the Western imagination, an endless source of curiosity and fascination for historians, artists and the public at large.
Week 1 — Joan and the Voices:
We begin in Domrémy, tracing Joan’s childhood world of saints, sacred landscapes, and lingering fairy lore. We’ll examine how her heavenly visitors- St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret- emerged within a culture where folk belief, mysticism, and church authority overlapped and collided. Rival frameworks of saintly vision versus dangerous enchantment set the stage for everything that followed.
Week 2 — Joan in Battle:
We follow Joan’s meteoric ascent from peasant girl to military icon during the siege of Orléans and the coronation campaign. Special focus is given to her martial symbolism, gender nonconformity, and charismatic authority on the field. We’ll explore how Joan transformed French morale and reimagined sanctity as a force of war. Though not a trained knight, she led from the front, banner aloft and sustained multiple wounds. Eyewitnesses repeatedly stated she chose the most dangerous ground. Far from a mere mascot, Joan acted as an inspired field commander whose timing, resolve, and visibility pushed seasoned captains into action.
Week 3 — Joan on Trial:
This week centers on Rouen and the machinery of accusation: cross-dressing, sorcery, disobedience to the Church, and the weaponization of theological interrogation. We read the trial’s most haunting exchanges and consider Joan alongside Gilles de Rais as archetypal mirrors of each other—one sanctified as a saint and emblem of holy truth, one forever connected to perversity and evil. In both cases however, the historian’s quest for clear answers can often turn up empty handed, though the lore and mythology persist.
Week 4 — Joan in Memory:
We trace Joan’s rehabilitation, canonization, and the centuries-long battle to claim her image—from Romantic nationalism and Catholic devotion to feminist, queer, and radical appropriations. Film, painting, and propaganda reveal how Joan becomes a vehicle for each era’s fears and desires. Joan endures not as a static saint, but as a living battleground of meaning; as a site of cultural contention and source of artistic inspiration.
Jeanne d'Arc, ca 1876, by Eugène Thirion. Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc, ca. 1957, Film St. Joan.
Jason Lahman is an artist and cultural historian of science, technology and the occult.