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Joan certainly was a very devoted Christian from an extremely early age. Her friends of course praised her devotion, although sometimes they found it a bit strange. Joan was never late to mass, and she would stop her work in the evening to kneel and pray in the field. Apparently, Joan sometimes confessed more than once a day. This obsession with confessing her sins disturbed some of Joan's friends, who found this excessive faith unnecessary. The priests in Domremy, however, were always impressed with her piety and righteous sense of guilt and sin. Joan claimed that a person could never cleanse his or her soul too often. One has to wonder why Joan was so obsessed with confession, especially given the extremely clean life she was reputed to live. But although her religious devotion marked her as somewhat strange, everyone in Domremy accepted her. People might have looked at her more critically if they knew that at age 13 (as she would later report) she started hearing mysterious "voices." Joan didn't tell anyone about the voices, not her friends, not her parents, and not even the priests.

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