JOAN OF ARC, SAINT

born c. 1412, Domrmy, Bar, France died May 30, 1431, Rouen; canonized May 16, 1920; feast day May 30; French national holiday, second Sunday in May byname The Maid of Orlans, French Sainte Jeanne d'Arc, or La Pucelle d'Orlans national heroine of France, a peasant girl who, believing that she was acting under divine guidance, led the French army in a momentous victory at Orlans that repulsed an English attempt to conquer France during the Hundred Years' War. Captured a year afterward, Joan was burned by the English and their French collaborators as a heretic. She became the greatest national heroine of her compatriots. Her achievement was a decisive factor in the awakening of French national consciousness. Joan was the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domrmy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In her mission of expelling the English and their Burgundian allies from the Valois kingdom of France, she felt herself to be guided by the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. She possessed many attributes characteristic of the female visionaries who were a noted feature of her time. These qualities included extreme personal piety, a claim to direct communication with the saints, and a consequent reliance upon individual experience of God's presence beyond the ministrations of the priesthood and the confines of the institutional church. But to these were added remarkable mental and physical courage, as well as a robust common sense. Known as La Pucelle, or the Maid of Orlans, Joan became in the following centuries a focus of unity for the French people, especially at times of crisis. Additional reading There is an extremely large literature on Joan of Arc but no truly definitive biography. Important works include: Jules Quicherat (ed.), Procs de condamnation et de rhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, 5 vol. (184149, reprinted 1965); Le Procs de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, 2 vol., trans. and annotated by Pierre Tisset (196070); Paul Doncoeur (ed.), La Minute franaise des interrogatoires de Jeanne la Pucelle (1952); La Rhabilitation de Jeanne la Pucelle, 3 vol., trans. and annotated by Paul Doncoeur and Yvonne Lanhers (195661), containing the recorded testimony from the trial of more than 100 witnesses who had known Joan of Arc; and Pierre Lanry d'Arc, Les Mmoires et consultations en faveur de Jeanne d'Arc (1889), dealing with the memoirs of jurists and theologians, intended to facilitate her rehabilitation. In English, Daniel S. Rankin and Claire Quintal (eds. and trans.), The First Biography of Joan of Arc with the Chronicle Record of a Contemporary Account (1964); and Rgine Pernoud, Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses (1964, reissued 1982; originally published in French, 1962), and The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence at the Trial for Her Rehabilitation (1955; originally published in French, 1953), are particularly recommended. Other works include Georges Duby and Andre Duby (eds.), Les Procs de Jeanne d'Arc (1973); John H. Smith, Joan of Arc (1973), which explores her military activities; Henri Guillemin, Joan, Maid of Orlans (1973; originally published in French, 1970); Philippe Wolff, Le Thologien Pierre Cauchon, de sinistre mmoire, in conomies et socits au Moyen ge: Mlanges offerts Edouard Perroy, pp. 553570 (1973); Edward Lucie-Smith, Joan of Arc (1976); Walter S. Scott, Jeanne d'Arc (1974); Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (1981, reprinted 1982), a psychohistorical approach with an important survey of the posthumous history of Joan's legend; Frances Gies, Joan of Arc: The Legend and the Reality (1981), an examination of her life and the literature about her; and Colloque d'Histoire Mdivale. Orlans, France, 1979, Jeanne d'Arc: une poque, un rayonnement (1982), an informative collection of scholarly papers. For the political background to Joan's career see M.G.A. Vale, Charles VII (1974); C.T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 14151450 (1983); and Roger G. Little, The Parlement of Poitiers: War, Government and Politics in France, 14181436 (1984). Yvonne Lanhers Malcolm G.A. Vale