Joan of Arc
Key Facts
- Reçoit ses premières visions à 13 ans à Domrémy et se croit investie d'une mission divine
- Lève le siège d'Orléans en mai 1429, victoire décisive qui lui vaut le titre de Pucelle d'Orléans
- Fait sacrer Charles VII à Reims le 17 juillet 1429, restaurant la légitimité royale
- Capturée par les Bourguignons à Compiègne en mai 1430, vendue aux Anglais
- Condamnée pour hérésie et brûlée vive à Rouen le 30 mai 1431, à moins de 19 ans
- Réhabilitée par procès en révision en 1456, canonisée en 1920 par le pape Benoît XV
Biography
Joan of Arc was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a small village in Lorraine, into a modest peasant family. From the age of thirteen, she claimed to hear the voices of saints — including Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret — who entrusted her with a divine mission: to drive the English out of France and have the Dauphin Charles crowned at Reims. Against the backdrop of the Hundred Years' War, with France devastated and the kingdom fragmented, this young shepherdess with no military training would accomplish one of the most astonishing feats of medieval history.
In 1429, after convincing captain Robert de Baudricourt to take her to the Dauphin at Chinon, Joan obtained command of an army. Within weeks, she lifted the siege of Orléans — a strategic city held for months by the English — in May 1429. This resounding victory earned her the name "the Maid of Orléans." In the following months, she won several decisive battles along the Loire, opening the road to Reims.
On 17 July 1429, Charles VII was crowned King of France at Reims Cathedral, fulfilling the prophecy Joan had proclaimed. This was the pinnacle of her mission: the sovereign's legitimacy was restored in the eyes of the kingdom and of Europe. Joan then sought to retake Paris, but the assault failed and she was gradually sidelined from military decisions by the king's advisers.
In May 1430, during a sortie near Compiègne, Joan was captured by Burgundian soldiers allied with the English. Sold to the English for ten thousand livres, she was tried at an ecclesiastical court in Rouen, presided over by Bishop Pierre Cauchon. Accused of heresy and witchcraft — notably for wearing men's clothing — she was condemned and burned at the stake in Rouen's Vieux-Marché square on 30 May 1431. She was not yet twenty years old.
Her memory was not extinguished with the flames. In 1456, a retrial quashed the 1431 verdict and solemnly rehabilitated her. Beatified in 1909, she was canonised on 16 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV and declared a secondary patron saint of France. Joan of Arc is today one of the most celebrated figures in world history, a universal symbol of courage, faith and resistance against oppression.