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 Joan of Arc
Joan
of Arc, in French, Jeanne d'Arc, also called the Maid
of Orleans, a patron saint of France and a national
heroine, led the resistance to the English invasion of France
in the Hundred Years War.
She was born the third
of five children to a farmer, Jacques Darc and his
wife Isabelle de Vouthon in the town of Domremy on
the border of provinces of Champagne and Lorraine. Her childhood
was spent attending her father's herds in the fields and
learning religion and housekeeping skills from her mother.
When Joan
was about 12 years old, she began hearing "voices" of
St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to
have been sent by God. These voices told her that
it was her divine mission to free her country from
the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne.
They told her to cut her hair, dress in man's
uniform and to pick up the arms.
By 1429 the
English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris
and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance
was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense
of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the French
throne.
Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin's forces, and
then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an
examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops
to command and the rank of captain.
At the battle
of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to
a miraculous victory over the English. She continued fighting the
enemy in other locations along the Loire. Fear of troops
under her leadership was so formidable that when she approached
Lord Talbot's army at Patay, most of the English troops
and Commander Sir John Fastolfe fled the battlefield. Fastolfe was
later stripped of his Order of the Garter for this
act of cowardice. Although Lord Talbot stood his ground, he
lost the battle and was captured along with a hundred
English noblemen and lost 1800 of his soldiers.
Charles VII
was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in
Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place
of honor next to the king. Later, she was ennobled
for her services to the country.
In 1430 she was
captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and
was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed
her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by
Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried
for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence
on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a
woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God.
Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn't
yet told her to change, as well as for protection
from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance
and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a
fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she was burned
at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen
years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to
her rescue.
In 1456 a second trial was held and
she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She
was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope
Benedict XV.
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