Saint Joan of Arc and Missouri's author

On this day, May 23, 1430 -- Saint Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and subsequently sold to the English to be tried as a heretic and burned at the stake. All throughout her persecutions and from an early age, she had spiritual support from her "voices": St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret of Antioch and St. Michael the Archangel. I admire these virtuous women because they showed great fortitude and humility.
I also admire the book "Joan of Arc" by Mark Twain. Reading his introduction, Twain reveals how he chose the process of writing through an 82-year-old fictitious narrator. (Brilliant!) He admitted to six wrong starts, and each time Mrs. Clemens responded with the same deadly criticism of silence. He spent 12 years researching medieval history and said he did not care if the book sold or not.
"Joan is the lone example that history afford of an actual, real embodiment of all the virtues demonstrated by Huck and Jim and of all that he felt to be noble in man. Joan is the ideal toward which mankind strives. Twain had to tell her story because she was the sole concrete argument against his pessimistic, deterministic philosophy." (Robert Wiggins, Univ. of Washington Press, pg. 112) Glad to see how the saints can set a good example for all time -- even in Missouri.