Saint Joan of Arc

Virgin

Feast Day

May 30

Life

1412–1431

Canonized

1920

Born

Domrémy, Duchy of Bar (modern Domrémy-la-Pucelle, France)

Joan was born in 1412 in the village of Domrémy in the duchy of Bar, in a region of northern France caught in the Hundred Years' War between France and England. From the age of about thirteen she heard the voices of Saints Michael the Archangel, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch, who told her she was to deliver Orléans, then under English siege, and to escort the dauphin Charles to be crowned king at Reims.

After repeated insistence she was at last presented to the dauphin at Chinon in February 1429, examined by a panel of theologians at Poitiers, and given command of a relief expedition. She raised the siege of Orléans in nine days, defeated the English at Patay on June 18, 1429, and on July 17, 1429 stood beside Charles VII as he was crowned at Reims. She was eighteen years old.

The following spring she was captured by Burgundian forces at Compiègne, sold to the English, and tried for heresy at Rouen by an ecclesiastical court controlled by partisans of the English occupation. The trial transcript — preserved in full — records her direct, intelligent, and often disarming responses to her judges. She was convicted on the charge of having worn men's clothing in violation of canon law. On May 30, 1431, in the marketplace of Rouen, she was burned alive. She was nineteen.

In 1456, a posthumous appeal initiated by her mother and supported by Pope Callixtus III culminated in a formal annulment of the original trial and a declaration of her innocence. Pope Benedict XV canonised her on May 16, 1920. The French Republic declared her feast a national holiday in the same year.