Daughter of a labourer, Joan of Arc was born in Domrémy, in the Vosges. When she was 13, while she was in the garden, she heard the voices of Saint Margaret, Saint Catherine and the Archangel Saint Michael urging her to free France from the yoke of the English. She obtained an audience in Chinon with the Dauphin Charles VII, who had just been disinherited by his father, King Charles VI, in favor of Henry V of Lancaster, King of England. She convinces him to give her an army. Entering besieged Orléans, she delivered the city and led Charles VII to be crowned in Reims on July 17, 1429. She thus reversed the Hundred Years War and saved the Valois dynasty. Captured in Compiègne in 1430, it was delivered to the English by the Burgundian Jean de Luxembourg. His trial for heresy was conducted by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, in the Bouvreuil fortress in Rouen. Condemned as a relapse, for having again worn men's clothes, she was burned alive on the Place du Vieux-Marché in Rouen, on May 30, 1431. In 1456, a rehabilitation trial found her innocent. She was canonized in 1920.
Around 1412 - May 30, 1431
Status
Holy
Soldier