Joan of Arc

The Maid of Orleans or Saint Joan of Arc was born in 1412 into a common family of a pleasant village of Domremy in the French Province of Lorraine. Joan of Arc is considered as a Catholic saint and a national heroin of France. A beautiful girl born in eastern France who claimed Divine guidance, Joan led the French army to a number of significant victories during the “Hundred Years' War” that paved the way for the coronation of the Charles VII. Burgundians captured Joan of Arc and then sold to the English and she was burnt alive at the stake when she was just 19 years old.  After 25 years later, Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, said about her innocent and stated her martyr. In 1909, Joan of Arc was beatified and in the year 1920, she was canonized.  Joan of Arc is, along with St. Martin of Tours, St. Denis, St. Theresa of Lisieux, and St. Louis IX, one of the patron saints of the France. Joan of Arc declares that she had visions from the God that initiated her to recover her motherland from the English domination during Hundred Years' War.

Joan of Arc is one of the most and important figure in the Western culture even today. From Napoleon onward, the French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Several famous composers and writers who have created works about Joan of Arc  are Voltaire (La Pucelle d'Orléans), Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 1), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orléans ), Tchaikovsky, Verdi (Giovanna d'Arco), Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc), Bertolt Brecht (Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe), Jean Anouilh (L'Alouette),  Maxwell Anderson (Joan of Lorraine) and George Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan).  Several theaters, film, television, video games, performance and music are also made about Joan of Arc.

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