Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc was born around 1412 in Domrémy, a village in northeastern France, during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. She grew up in a farming family and had little formal education. At about thirteen, Joan began reporting religious visions in which she said that saints and angels instructed her to help the future French king, Charles, claim his throne.

These experiences became central to her sense of mission, although their religious nature cannot be established as a historical fact. In 1429, after meeting supporters of Charles, Joan was taken to him and questioned by churchmen before being allowed to accompany the French army. Joan became an important symbol during the campaign to lift the English siege of Orléans in 1429.

The siege was broken, and the success strengthened Charles’s position. Joan then accompanied him to Reims, where he was crowned Charles VII in July 1429. In 1430, she was captured near Compiègne by Burgundian forces allied with England and later handed over to the English. Tried for heresy and related charges in Rouen, she was convicted and executed on 30 May 1431, when she was about nineteen.

A later retrial in 1456 declared the earlier judgment unjust. Over the centuries, Joan became a major figure in French history and Catholic tradition. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized by the Catholic Church in 1920.