Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc was born around 1412 in the small frontier village of Domrémy in northeastern France, at a bleak moment in the Hundred Years' War when the English and their Burgundian allies occupied much of the kingdom.The daughter of a prosperous peasant tenant, she grew up tending sheep and learning prayers from her devout mother, Isabelle.

She never learned to read or write, yet her faith was intense and imaginative.The first turning point came around the age of thirteen, when Joan claimed to hear the voices of Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret in her father's garden on a summer afternoon.

Over the next several years the voices grew more insistent, commanding her to leave home, reach the disinherited dauphin Charles, and drive the English from France.Refused at first by the local garrison commander, she persisted until she was finally granted an escort across occupied territory, and in early 1429 she reached Charles at Chinon, identifying him among his courtiers in a test of prophetic recognition.

The second turning point came at the besieged city of Orléans.Clad in white armor provided by the dauphin, Joan rode into the beleaguered city in April 1429 and within nine days lifted the siege that had lasted for over half a year, a feat that electrified France.

She went on to win the Battle of Patay and to stand beside Charles at his coronation in the cathedral of Reims.But her military fortunes soured, and in May 1430 she was captured at Compiègne by Burgundian troops and sold to the English.

Subjected to a rigged ecclesiastical trial in Rouen on charges of heresy and cross-dressing, she defended herself brilliantly before illiterate judges for months, then was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, at the age of nineteen.A posthumous retrial exonerated her in 1456, and in 1920 Pope Benedict XV canonized her.

She remains France's patron saint and an enduring symbol of faith, courage, and defiant conviction.

“I was sent by God. You cannot judge me.”

“Act, and God will act.”