Joan of Arc, St
Joan of Arc, St ( 1412 – 31 ),Jeanne D'Arc , or more correctly Jeanne Darc, as it was spelt in all contemporary documents (Littré), the daughter of Jacques Darc, a farmer of Domrémy in the valley of the Meuse, an illiterate girl who contributed powerfully to liberate France from the English in the reign of Charles VII . Inspired, she claimed, by the voices of Sts Michael , Catherine , and Margaret , her mission was a double one, to raise the siege of Orléans, and to conduct Charles to his coronation at Rheims. She accomplished both these tasks and then wished to return home; but she yielded to the demands of the French patriots and was taken prisoner by the Burgundians, who handed her over to the English. But it was a French court of ecclesiastics (with the help of the Inquisition) who sentenced her as a heretic, and the English who burned her at Rouen. She was canonized in 1920 . She appears in Shakespeare's 1...
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