On June 1st, 1431, Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake…

It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy in Rouen, France. She was an ordinary French peasant girl, living during the Hundred Years War between France and England. When she was still a teenager she heard the voice of God telling her to join the battle and help defeat the English army. She performed a series of apparent miracles and persuaded the French army to let her command a group of soldiers. At the battle of Orleans she led the revitalized French army, bearing a flag with Jesus’ name written across it, and the English were defeated. She continued fighting battles until May 23, 1430, when she was captured by enemy soldiers. They turned her over to the church to be tried as a heretic, idolater, and sorcerer. Her enemies believed that the only way they could have lost in battle to a woman was if she had been using witchcraft.
Her trial lasted for months. Every day she was brought into the interrogation room where she was the only woman among judges, priests, soldiers, and guards. The judges hoped to trick her into saying something that would incriminate her as a witch or an idolater so they asked endless questions about all aspects of her life, in no particular order. They were especially interested in her childhood. And because the transcripts of the trial were recorded, we now know more about her early life than any other common person of her time.
Joan testified that she first started hearing divine voices when she was 13 while working in her father’s garden. When God commanded her to join the battle against the English she told her parents she was going to help her cousin deliver a baby. The judges asked her if she felt guilty for leaving her parents, and she said, “Since God commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, had I been born a king’s daughter, I should have departed.”
When she wasn’t being interrogated she spent her time in prison chained to a wooden block. After months of questioning she was told that if she didn’t sign a confession she would be put to death. She finally signed it but a few days later she renounced the confession and on this day in 1431 she was burned at the stake. She was 19 years old.
She was mostly forgotten for about 400 years and then she was revived as an inspirational national figure during the French revolution. In 1920 she was canonized as a saint by Pope Benedict XV. She is the only person ever burned at the stake for heresy who later became a saint. The file on her at the Vatican is still sealed. She’s been the subject of more than 20 movies, as well as plays by writers such as Voltaire and George Bernard Shaw. More than 20,000 books have been written about her.

from the Poetry Almanac for June 1, 2021

Jeanne d’Arc

t-shirt bought for my Feb 5th Birthday

My Namesake:

It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France. In the centuries that have passed, she’s become a national icon in France. She is to the national identity of France, novelist Julian Barnes notes, what Robin Hood is to England.
Statues of Joan of Arc stand all over parks and churches in France, and nearly every French town has a street named for her, called “Jeanne d’Arc.” One 19th-century historian wrote that Joan of Arc “loved France so much that France began to love itself.”
Joan of Arc was a 13-year-old peasant girl when she began to hear voices in her garden. The voices, she recounted, were those of saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine, and they eventually told her that she needed to save France. At the time, France was engaged in the Hundred Years War, and the English had the French town of Orleans under siege. In April of 1429, Joan of Arc asked the French government for troops that she could lead to liberate the captured Orleans. She’d met with the crown prince and theologians, and they thought she could be of use in the fight against the English, and so Joan of Arc was given an army to command.
She went into battle wearing a white suit of armor and carrying up high a banner depicting an image of the Trinity. An English arrow hit her in the shoulder, but she was OK. Her army succeeded in liberating Orleans: English troops fled, and Joan’s army took over their surrounding forts.
In another battle, Joan of Arc — now known as “the maid of Orleans” — was taken hostage by Burgundian troops and sold to the English. She was imprisoned for over a year, often chained to a wooden block, while interrogators attempted to extract confessions out of her. Then, on February 21, 1431, she was brought to trial under an ecclesiastical court. She stuck to her story that she had heard the voices of saints and it was they who commanded her to serve France. Interrogators demanded that she retract her statements. She was convicted of heresy and brought before a large crowd to be sentenced, condemned, and handed over to secular officials. Then, on this day, when she was 19 years old, she was burned at the stake.
In 1456 (25 years after she died), a posthumous retrial was held at which she was exonerated. In 1920, she was canonized a Catholic saint. Joan of Arc has been portrayed in more than 20 films; the first was made by director Georges Melies in 1899. And she’s the subject of more than 20,000 books.
One of these is by Mark Twain (books by this author), who spent 12 years researching her life and wrote a book called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, first serialized in Harper’s Magazine and then published as a book in 1896. It’s a fictional account and purports to be written by Joan of Arc’s page and personal secretary. But the book is mostly devoid of the humor that Mark Twain is famous for. He genuinely admired Joan of Arc, and wrote an earnest book about her.
Mark Twain later said, “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.”

Jeanne d’Arc

Jeanne d’Arc: Google images

My Namesake:

It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France. In the centuries that have passed, she’s become a national icon in France. She is to the national identity of France, novelist Julian Barnes notes, what Robin Hood is to England.
Statues of Joan of Arc stand all over parks and churches in France, and nearly every French town has a street named for her, called “Jeanne d’Arc.” One 19th-century historian wrote that Joan of Arc “loved France so much that France began to love itself.”
Joan of Arc was a 13-year-old peasant girl when she began to hear voices in her garden. The voices, she recounted, were those of saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine, and they eventually told her that she needed to save France. At the time, France was engaged in the Hundred Years War, and the English had the French town of Orleans under siege. In April of 1429, Joan of Arc asked the French government for troops that she could lead to liberate the captured Orleans. She’d met with the crown prince and theologians, and they thought she could be of use in the fight against the English, and so Joan of Arc was given an army to command.
She went into battle wearing a white suit of armor and carrying up high a banner depicting an image of the Trinity. An English arrow hit her in the shoulder, but she was OK. Her army succeeded in liberating Orleans: English troops fled, and Joan’s army took over their surrounding forts.
In another battle, Joan of Arc — now known as “the maid of Orleans” — was taken hostage by Burgundian troops and sold to the English. She was imprisoned for over a year, often chained to a wooden block, while interrogators attempted to extract confessions out of her. Then, on February 21, 1431, she was brought to trial under an ecclesiastical court. She stuck to her story that she had heard the voices of saints and it was they who commanded her to serve France. Interrogators demanded that she retract her statements. She was convicted of heresy and brought before a large crowd to be sentenced, condemned, and handed over to secular officials. Then, on this day, when she was 19 years old, she was burned at the stake.
In 1456 (25 years after she died), a posthumous retrial was held at which she was exonerated. In 1920, she was canonized a Catholic saint. Joan of Arc has been portrayed in more than 20 films; the first was made by director Georges Melies in 1899. And she’s the subject of more than 20,000 books.
One of these is by Mark Twain (books by this author), who spent 12 years researching her life and wrote a book called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, first serialized in Harper’s Magazine and then published as a book in 1896. It’s a fictional account and purports to be written by Joan of Arc’s page and personal secretary. But the book is mostly devoid of the humor that Mark Twain is famous for. He genuinely admired Joan of Arc, and wrote an earnest book about her.
Mark Twain later said, “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.”