After a lapse of nearly five hundred years since her
death at the stake in 1431, the decree of the beatification of Joan of Arc has been published by the Pope, and the ceremony will be solemnised in St. Peter's on April 18th. Her claim to martyrdom was admitted by Pope Clallistus III. in the middle of the fifteenth century, but the question of beatification was not seriously contemplated until 1876, when Mgr. Dupanloup introduced her " cause " at a trial held at Orleans, of which diocese he was the Bishop. Eighteen years later Pope Leo XIII. sanctioned the "cause," and the three separate inquiries necessary to establish a right to beatifica- tion were then commenced. In June, 1898, it was proved before the Tribunal of the Rota that she had never been an object of public worship. In 1904 the decree of the Congregation of Rites declared that she had practised the cardinal and divine virtues on an heroic scale ; and on November 24th last the third deoree, declaring miracles to have been wrought through her intercession, was read in the presence of the Pope. The above details are summarised from the interesting account given by the Rome correspondent of the Times in last Saturday's issue. Not the least remarkable feature in the attitude of posterity is the fact that Joan of Arc's most devoted champions belong to the non-Latin races,—Mark Twain, perhaps the most fervent of all, being a staunch democrat and Protestant.
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