SAINT JOAN OF ARC
Feast Day - May 30
Lived (January 6, 1412 – May 30, 1431)
Patron Saint of France and Military members
Joan was born of an average peasant couple in Domremy-Greux in Paris. She was twelve years old when she had a vision and heard voices that she later said were Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and Saint Margaret of Antioch.
In the Hundred Years War, Joan led the French troops against the English and recaptured the cities of Orléans and Troyes. This aided the coronation of Charles VII as king in Reims in 1429. Captured near Compiegne the following year, Joan was sold to the English and placed on trial for heresy and witchcraft. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvis was the judge at her trial; Cardinal Henry Beaufort of Winchester, England, participated in the questioning of Joan in prison, including the Professors in the University. At the end of the trial, she was condemned for wearing men’s clothes.
On May 30, 1431, Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen, and her ashes were scattered in the Seine River. Twenty five years later, the Church carried out a second trial 25 years later, the earlier verdict was nulified; a verdict reached under political pressure.
Remembered by most people for her military exploits, Joan had a great love for the sacraments, which strengthened her compassion toward the poor.
Popular devotion to her increased greatly nineteenth-century France and later among French soldiers during World War I. Theologian George Tavard writes that her life “offers a perfect example of the conjunction of contemplation and action” because her spiritual insight is that “heaven and earth should be unified."
Joan of Arc has been the subject of many books, plays, operas and movies. Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.
In the Hundred Years War, Joan led the French troops against the English and recaptured the cities of Orléans and Troyes. This aided the coronation of Charles VII as king in Reims in 1429. Captured near Compiegne the following year, Joan was sold to the English and placed on trial for heresy and witchcraft. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvis was the judge at her trial; Cardinal Henry Beaufort of Winchester, England, participated in the questioning of Joan in prison, including the Professors in the University. At the end of the trial, she was condemned for wearing men’s clothes.
On May 30, 1431, Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen, and her ashes were scattered in the Seine River. Twenty five years later, the Church carried out a second trial 25 years later, the earlier verdict was nulified; a verdict reached under political pressure.
Remembered by most people for her military exploits, Joan had a great love for the sacraments, which strengthened her compassion toward the poor.
Popular devotion to her increased greatly nineteenth-century France and later among French soldiers during World War I. Theologian George Tavard writes that her life “offers a perfect example of the conjunction of contemplation and action” because her spiritual insight is that “heaven and earth should be unified."
Joan of Arc has been the subject of many books, plays, operas and movies. Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.
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