name Joan of Arc
Born ca. 1412


Domrémy, France

Died 30 May 1431 (aged 19)

Rouen, France (Then England)

Venerated in Roman Catholic Church


Anglican Communion

Beatified 18 April 1909, Notre Dame de Paris by Pope Pius X

Canonized 16 May 1920, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome by Pope Benedict XV

Feast 30 May

Patronage France ; martyrs; captives; militants; people ridiculed for their piety; prisoners; soldiers; Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (U.S. WAVES); U.S. Women's Army Corps -

Saint Joan of Arc or The Maid of Orléans (French: Jeanne d'Arc,[1] IPA: [ʒan daʁk]; ca. 1412[2] – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, claiming divine guidance, and was indirectly responsible for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastical court, and burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old.[3] Twenty-four years later, on the initiative of Charles VII, Pope Callixtus III reviewed the decision of the ecclesiastical court, found her innocent, and declared her a martyr.[3] She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.[2] She is, along with St. Denis, St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis IX, and St. Theresa of Lisieux, one of the patron saints of France.




Joan asserted that she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.



Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who have created works about her include Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 1), Voltaire (La Pucelle d'Orléans), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orléans ), Verdi (Giovanna d'Arco), Tchaikovsky (Орлеанская дева), Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc), Jean Anouilh (L'Alouette), Bertolt Brecht (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe), George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan), and Maxwell Anderson (Joan of Lorraine). Depictions of her continue in film, television, video games, song, and dance.

Background




France at the outset of Joan of Arc's career. The dot that represents Paris is near the centre of the Anglo-Burgundian-controlled region. Reims lies to the northeast of this area.The historian Kelly DeVries describes the period preceding her appearance with, "If anything could have discouraged her, the state of France in 1429 should have." The Hundred Years' War had begun in 1337 as a succession dispute to the French throne with intermittent periods of relative peace. Nearly all the fighting had taken place in France, and the English use of chevauchée (similar to scorched earth) tactics had devastated the economy. The French population had not recovered from the Black Death of the previous century and its merchants were cut off from foreign markets. At the outset of her career, the English had almost achieved their goal of a dual monarchy under English control and the French army had won no major victory for a generation. In DeVries's words, "the kingdom of France was not even a shadow of its thirteenth-century prototype."[4]



The French king at the time of Joan's birth, Charles VI, suffered bouts of insanity[5] and was often unable to rule. The king's brother Duke Louis of Orléans and the king's cousin John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, quarreled over the regency of France and the guardianship of the royal children. This dispute escalated to accusations of an extramarital affair with Queen Isabeau of Bavaria and the kidnappings of the royal children. The matter climaxed with the assassination of the Duke of Orléans in 1407, on the Duke of Burgundy's orders.[6]



The factions loyal to these two men became known as the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. The English king, Henry V, took advantage of this turmoil to invade France, winning a dramatic victory at Agincourt in 1415, and capturing northern French towns.[7] The future French king, Charles VII, assumed the title of Dauphin as heir to the throne at the age of fourteen, after all four of his older brothers died.[8] His first significant official act was to conclude a peace treaty with Burgundy in 1419. This ended in disaster when Armagnac partisans murdered John the Fearless during a meeting under Charles's guarantee of protection. The new duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, blamed Charles and entered into an alliance with the English. Large sections of France were conquered.[9]



In 1420, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria concluded the Treaty of Troyes, which granted the French royal succession to Henry V and his heirs in preference to her son Charles. This agreement revived rumours about her supposed affair with the late duke of Orléans and raised fresh suspicions that the Dauphin was a royal bastard rather than the son of the king.[10] Henry V and Charles VI died within two months of each other in 1422, leaving an infant, Henry VI of England, the nominal monarch of both kingdoms. Henry V's brother, John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, acted as regent.[11]



By the beginning of 1429, nearly all of northern France and some parts of the southwest were under foreign control. The English ruled Paris, while the Burgundians controlled Reims. The latter city was important as the traditional site of French coronations and consecrations, especially since neither claimant to the throne of France had yet been crowned. The English had laid siege to Orléans, which was the only remaining loyal French city north of the Loire. Its strategic location along the river made it the last obstacle to an assault on the remainder of the French heartland. In the words of one modern historian, "On the fate of Orléans hung that of the entire kingdom."[12] No one was optimistic that the city could long withstand the siege.[13]



Life

Further information: Name of Joan of Arc



Her birthplace is now a museum. The village church where she attended Mass is on the right behind the trees.Joan was the daughter of Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée[14] in Domrémy, a village which was then in the duchy of Bar (later annexed to the province of Lorraine and renamed Domrémy-la-Pucelle).[15] Her parents owned about 50 acres (0.2 square kilometres) of land and her father supplemented his farming work with a minor position as a village official, collecting taxes and heading the local watch.[16] They lived in an isolated patch of north-eastern territory that remained loyal to the French crown despite being surrounded by Burgundian lands. Several local raids occurred during her childhood and on one occasion her village was burned.



Joan said she was about nineteen at her trial, so she was born about 1412; she later testified that she experienced her first vision around 1424 at the age of twelve years, when she was out alone in a field and heard voices. She said she cried when they left, as they were so beautiful. She said Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret told her to drive out the English and bring the Dauphin to Reims for his coronation.[17]



At the age of sixteen, she asked a kinsman, Durand Lassois, to bring her to nearby Vaucouleurs where she petitioned the garrison commander, Count Robert de Baudricourt, for permission to visit the royal French court at Chinon. Baudricourt's sarcastic response did not deter her.[18] She returned the following January and gained support from two men of standing: Jean de Metz and Bertrand de Poulengy.[19] Under their auspices, she gained a second interview where she made a remarkable prediction about a military reversal near Orléans.[20]



Rise



Ruin of the great hall at Chinon where she met King Charles VII. The castle's only remaining intact tower has also become a museum dedicated to her.Robert de Baudricourt granted her an escort to visit Chinon after news from the front confirmed her prediction. She made the journey through hostile Burgundian territory in male disguise.[21] Upon arriving at the royal court she impressed Charles VII during a private conference. During this time Charles's mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon was financing a relief expedition to Orléans. Joan petitioned for permission to travel with the army and wear the equipment of a knight. She depended on donated items for her armor, horse, sword, banner, and entourage. Her armor was said to be white. Historian Stephen W. Richey explains her attraction as the only source of hope for a regime that was near collapse:



“ After years of one humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the Dauphin Charles granted Joan’s urgent request to be equipped for war and placed at the head of his army, his decision must have been based in large part on the knowledge that every orthodox, every rational, option had been tried and had failed. Only a regime in the final straits of desperation would pay any heed to an illiterate farm girl who claimed that the voice of God was instructing her to take charge of her country’s army and lead it to victory.[22] ”

"King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the kingdom of France...settle your debt to the king of Heaven; return to the Maiden, who is envoy of the king of Heaven, the keys to all the good towns you took and violated in France."

Her Letter to the English, March–April 1429; Quicherat I, p. 240, trans. Wikipedia.



With Joan's arrival, she effectively turned the long standing Anglo-French conflict into a religious war.[23] But this was not without its risks. Charles' advisers were worried that unless Joan's orthodoxy could be established beyond doubt, that she was not a heretic or a sorceress, Charles' enemies could easily make the claim that his kingdom was a gift from the Devil. To circumvent this possibility, the Dauphin ordered background inquiries and a theological examination at Poitiers to verify her morality. In April 1429, the commission of inquiry "declared her to be of irreproachable life, a good Christian, possessed of the virtues of humility, honesty and simplicity."[23] The theologians at Poitiers did not pass judgement on her divine inspiration; rather, they informed the Dauphin that there was a 'favourable presumption' to be made on the divine nature of her mission. This was enough for Charles, but they put the ball back in his court by stating that he had an obligation to put Joan to the test. 'To doubt or abandon her without suspicion of evil would be to repudiate the Holy Spirit and to become unworthy of God's aid', they declared.[24] The test for the truth of her claims would be the raising of the siege of Orléans.



She arrived at the siege of Orléans on 29 April 1429, but Jean d'Orléans, the acting head of the Orléans ducal family, initially excluded her from war councils and failed to inform her when the army engaged the enemy.[25] This did not prevent her from being present at most councils and battles. The extent of her actual military leadership is a subject of historical debate. Traditional historians such as Édouard Perroy conclude that she was a standard bearer whose primary effect was on morale.[26] This type of analysis usually relies on the condemnation trial testimony, where she stated that she preferred her standard to her sword. Recent scholarship that focuses on the nullification trial testimony asserts that her fellow officers esteemed her as a skilled tactician and a successful strategist. Stephen W. Richey's opinion is one example: "She proceeded to lead the army in an astounding series of victories that reversed the tide of the war enjoyed remarkable success during her brief career-