Saint Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d�Arc (1412-1431), was called the Maid of Orl�ans. She was a national heroine and patron saint of France, who united the nation at a critical time and turned the Hundred Year�s War in France�s favor.
Joan was born into a poor family in Domr�my-la-Pucelle, France in 1412. When she was 13 years old, she believed she heard celestial voices. Sometimes they were accompanied by visions that she believed belonged to St. Michael and the early martyrs, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret. Early in 1429, during the Hundred Year�s War, when the English were about to capture Orl�ans, the �voices� told her to help the Dauphin, later Charles VII, king of France. Joan succeeded in convincing him that she had a divine mission to save France. A board of religious leaders approved her claims, and she was given troops to command. Dressed in armor and carrying a white banner that represented God blessing the French royal emblem, she led the French to victory over the English. In the end, the Dauphin became the king of France, and Joan was given the place of honor beside Charles VII.
Although Joan had united the French behind Charles and had put an end to English dreams of hegemony over France, Charles opposed any further campaigns against the English. Therefore, it was without royal support that Joan conducted a military operation against the English at Compi�gne, near Paris in 1430. She was captured by soldiers, who sold her to English allies. The English then turned her over to a court in Rouen to be tried for heresy and sorcery. After 14 months of question, she was accused of the wrongdoings of wearing men�s clothes and of heresy for believing she was directly responsible to God rather than to the Roman Catholic Church. The court condemned her to death, but when she confessed her crimes, the sentence was changed to life imprisonment. Because she returned to wearing men�s clothes in prison, and still believed that she was directly responsible to God, she was condemned again, and on May 30, 1431, Joan was burned at the stake.
Twenty-five years after her death, the church retried her case, and she was found innocent. In 1920 she was canonized by Pope Benedict XV; her traditional feast day is May 30th .