St. Joan of Arc is the patroness of soldiers and of France. On
January 6, 1412, Joan of Arc was born to pious parents of the French peasant
class, at the obscure village of Domremy, near the province of Lorraine. At a
very early age, she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St.
Margaret.
At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last
came the crowning order. In May, 1428, her voices "of St. Michael, St.
Catherine, and St. Margaret" told Joan to go to the King of France and
help him reconquer his kingdom. For at that time the English king was after
the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy, the chief rival of the French
king, was siding with him and gobbling up evermore French territory.
After overcoming opposition from churchmen and courtiers, the
seventeen year old girl was given a small army with which she raised the seige
of Orleans on May 8, 1429. She then enjoyed a series of spectacular military
successes, during which the King was able to enter Rheims and be crowned with
her at his side.
In May 1430, as she was attempting to relieve Compiegne, she
was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the
French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at
Rouen by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become archbishop.
Through her unfamiliarity with the technicalities of theology,
Joan was trapped into making a few damaging statements. When she refused to
retract the assertion that it was the saints of God who had commanded her to
do what she had done, she was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and
adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years
old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was
ultimately canonized in 1920, making official what the people had known for
centuries. Her feast day is May 30.
Joan was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.
