Overview

This is the moving and improbable story of Claire Ferchaud, a young French shepherdess who had visions of Jesus and gained national fame as a modern-day Joan of Arc at the height of World War I. Claire experienced her first vision after a childhood trauma in which her mother locked her in a closet to break her stubborn willfulness. She developed her visionary gifts with the aid of spiritual directors and, by the age of twenty, she had come to believe that Jesus wanted France consecrated to the Sacred Heart. Claire believed that if France undertook this devotion, symbolized by adding the image of the Sacred Heart to the French flag, it would enjoy rapid victory in the war. From her modest origins to her spectacular ascent, Claire's life and times are deftly related with literary verve and insight in a book that gives a rare view of the French countryside during the Great War.

Full Product Details

9780520242999

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Reviews

"""'This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of spirituality and religion in the modern world. It is especially fine in demonstrating the multiple ways in which gender, religion, and politics have been intertwined in France."" - Judith Stone, author of Sons of the Revolution: Reform Legislation in France, 1890-1914"""

'This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of spirituality and religion in the modern world. It is especially fine in demonstrating the multiple ways in which gender, religion, and politics have been intertwined in France. - Judith Stone, author of Sons of the Revolution: Reform Legislation in France, 1890-1914

Author Information

Raymond Jonas, Professor of History at the University of Washington, is the author of France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times (California, 2000), Industry and Politics in Rural France: Peasants of the Isere, 1870-1914 (1994), and Le Sacre-Coeur; histoire d'une devotion du XVIe au XXe siecle (2004).

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