Saint Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, called the Maid of Orléans, was a French peasant girl who at seventeen led the troops of the Dauphin Charles to the relief of Orléans and accompanied him at his coronation in Reims. Captured by her enemies and condemned in an unjust trial, she died at the stake in Rouen. The Church remembers her on May 30.

She was born in 1412 in Domrémy, a village on the border between France and Lorraine, into a family of devout peasants, Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée. She helped at home, spun flax and wool, and tended the cattle. She could neither read nor write, but she often received the sacraments and gladly went to church. According to the bull of canonization, she cared for the sick and the poor and even gave up her own bed to them.

When she was about thirteen, she heard a voice that she recognized as that of the Archangel Michael; later, as she said, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret also spoke to her. She then made a vow of virginity. The voices called her to hasten to the aid of the Dauphin, to free France, and to bring Charles to his coronation. At the beginning of 1429 she presented herself to him. In Poitiers theologians examined her and found nothing in her contrary to the faith.

In March 1429 she wrote to the King of England calling on him to make peace, and when her proposal was rejected, she set out with the army to relieve the besieged city of Orléans. On May 8, 1429, the city was freed, and on July 17 Charles VII was crowned in Reims; Joan stood beside him with her banner. For about a year she lived among the soldiers and tried to improve their conduct.

On May 23, 1430, near Compiègne, she was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. In Rouen she was brought before a church court. It was presided over by the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, and the inquisitor Jean Le Maistre, but in practice it was conducted by a group of theologians from the University of Paris who were prejudiced against her from the start. Joan answered simply and courageously. Asked whether she was in God’s grace, she replied that if she was not, she prayed God to put her there, and if she was, to keep her there. She also said that Jesus Christ and the Church are one. Her appeal to the pope was rejected.

Declared a heretic, she was sentenced to be burned. On the morning of May 30, 1431, she received Holy Communion in prison for the last time and was then led to the Old Market Square in Rouen. She was nineteen years old. She asked a priest to hold a cross before her and died with her eyes fixed on the Crucified, calling on the name of Jesus again and again.

In 1456 a trial opened with the authority of Pope Callixtus III, which heard about one hundred and twenty witnesses, declared the sentence null and void. Pope Pius X beatified Joan in 1909, and Benedict XV canonized her on May 16, 1920. The Church honors her, together with Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, as patroness of France, after the Blessed Virgin Mary.