Saint Joan · Chapter
Variability of Toleration explained
Shaw argues that tolerance is not a fixed moral achievement but a variable condition that rises and falls with the strain on social cohesion.
What happens
Shaw argues that tolerance is not a fixed moral achievement but a variable condition that rises and falls with the strain on social cohesion. He compares modern persecutions—French Revolutionary terror, British actions in Ireland, Italian Fascist violence, and American anti-Russian hysteria—to medieval persecutions, concluding that Joan of Arc received a more lawful and conscientious trial from the Inquisition than any modern victim would receive under emergency laws.
Themes in this chapter
Justice and Injustice
Shaw contrasts the legal rigor of Joan's trial with the lawless persecution of modern political dissidents.
Historical Interpretation
The chapter challenges the Whig narrative of progress, arguing that modern societies are not inherently more tolerant than medieval ones.
Heresy and Sanctity
Joan's execution is framed as a product of its time's legal and religious framework, not as simple bigotry.
Characters to notice
- Joan of Arc
Referenced as the historical figure whose execution Shaw uses to challenge modern self-congratulation about tolerance.
- Peter Cauchon
Mentioned as a trained ecclesiastic whose scruples would seem ridiculous to a modern judge.
Key passages
“The degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on the strain under which society is maintaining its cohesion.”
How tolerant a society can be is determined by how much pressure it is under to hold itself together.
Opening thesis of the chapter.
“there was not the smallest ground for the self-complacent conviction of the nineteenth century that it was more tolerant than the fifteenth, or that such an event as the execution of Joan could not possibly occur in what we call our own more enlightened times.”
The nineteenth century had no reason to feel smugly superior to the fifteenth century, nor to believe that Joan's execution could never happen in modern times.
Shaw's central argument against historical progressivism.
“From us she would have had no trial and no law except a Defence of The Realm Act suspending all law; and for judge she would have had, at best, a bothered major, and at worst a promoted advocate in ermine and scarlet to whom the scruples of a trained ecclesiastic like Cauchon would seem ridiculous and ungentlemanly.”
In modern times, Joan would have been denied any proper trial and would have faced a military officer or a cynical judge, not a conscientious churchman like Cauchon.
Final contrast between medieval legalism and modern emergency justice.