{
  "id": "a_qtd2mnsi",
  "oid": 165044,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 165045,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "France's Joan: sincere testimony, suspected perception",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH03.P027",
      "oid": 65,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH03.P027",
      "exact": "It is called \"Jeanne d'Arc,\" by Anatole France.",
      "start": 1142,
      "end": 1189,
      "prefix": "e of one of them rivets my eye. ",
      "suffix": " I have only glanced at it, but ",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P027#char=1142,1189"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "The book is *Vie de Jeanne d'Arc*, published in 1908. Its French preface gives a more specific target for Chesterton's objection than simple unbelief. France calls Joan's trial answers heroically sincere and generally lucid, yet argues that her continuing hallucinations often prevented her from distinguishing truth from falsehood. He separates honesty from reliability: a witness may sincerely report an experience without correctly identifying its cause. His preface also inventories trial records, chronicles, rehabilitation testimony, and correspondence. Thus Chesterton's charge that natural explanations have 'no foundation' is his polemical judgment, not France's declared indifference to documentary evidence. The disagreement concerns what those documents license an historian to infer about inward experience.\n\nThe inspected French witness is the Calmann-Lévy 1908 volume I, preface pp. I–III. The accessible Winifred Stephens translation is John Lane, 1909: its added English-edition preface and corrections postdate *Orthodoxy*. They should not be attributed to the copy Chesterton glanced through.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33692/pg33692-images.html",
      "title": "Anatole France, Vie de Jeanne d'Arc, tome I (Calmann-Lévy, 1908)",
      "locator": "Title/copyright leaf; Préface, pp. I–III",
      "exact": null
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19488/pg19488-images.html",
      "title": "Anatole France, The Life of Joan of Arc, translated Winifred Stephens (John Lane, 1909)",
      "locator": "Title page; Preface to the English Edition, pp. v–vi, dated January 1909",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [],
  "limits": [
    "The edition or language of Chesterton's own copy has not been established."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-03-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P027",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Interlocutors and historical debates",
        "question": "What does France's 1908 preface actually claim about Joan's voices and historical testimony?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Quotations and attributions",
        "question": "How accurately does 'nervous breakdown' represent Renan's contrast between Galilee and Jerusalem?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Biblical references",
        "question": "Which crucifixion texts supply the closing image of Christ's divided garments and seamless coat?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:4f6e44da321fc799dd5c7b8c74ef6802040075f2d0bd5b41d1ce4c3abc5ab3ad",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:33:55Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_qtd2mnsi",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_qtd2mnsi/r/1",
  "cited_by": [
    {
      "id": "a_mt5b4zsl",
      "revision": 1,
      "title": "What thought and choice need: from scattered virtues to a seamless character",
      "url": "/a/a_mt5b4zsl"
    }
  ]
}