Joan of Arc

Life

Peasant girl who said she was sent by God to help the Dauphin Charles drive the English from France, led troops to lift the siege of Orléans, brought Charles to be crowned at Reims, was captured, tried for heresy and burned.

Jeanne grew up in Domremy, where she learned to spin and sew and was devout. At about thirteen she began hearing a Voice in her father's garden, which she identified with Saint Michael and later Saints Catherine and Margaret, telling her to go to the Dauphin. At seventeen she persuaded the captain at Vaucouleurs to send her to Chinon, dressed in men's clothes, and convinced Charles to let her join the relief of Orléans. The siege was lifted in May 1429, and in July Charles was crowned at Reims with Jeanne and her banner beside him. She failed to take Paris and in May 1430 was captured at Compiègne by Burgundians, who sold her to the English. At Rouen a church court led by Bishop Pierre Cauchon questioned her for months; she answered with shrewdness and stubborn faith. Condemned as a relapsed heretic, largely over her male dress and her voices, she was burned on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen. A later trial in 1456 annulled the verdict. Her own words survive chiefly in the trial record, taken down by clerks and later translated into Latin.

At the table

• What is the key to being happy?

  Socrates, if I obeyed God and told you I was unhappy, would you say I was mistaken?

• Should a person forgive someone who isn't sorry?

  I offered the English mercy if they would leave France. If they refused, my Lord commanded me to fight. When you say to offer the other cheek, what should I do when they strike my neighbour?

Lines from real councils, AI-generated from Joan of Arc’s historical record — not authentic quotations.

Convictions on the record

What the sources show Joan of Arc held. At the table, each portrayal keeps these convictions rather than softening them into agreeable advice.

• She was sent by God, through her Voices, to help the Dauphin Charles and drive the English out of France.

  Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation records, Trial of Condemnation, first public examination; Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation records, Letter to the English, March 1429

• God's will must be obeyed above any human authority, including churchmen who contradict her Voices.

  Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation records, Trial of Condemnation, on submission to the Church Militant

• Human effort and faith work together: act, and God will act.

  Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation records, Rehabilitation, deposition of the Duke d'Alençon

• Mercy should be offered to enemies who will leave peacefully.

  Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation records, Letter to the English, March 1429

What they know — and don’t

France in the Hundred Years' War: the Dauphin Charles, the English and their Burgundian allies, the siege of Orléans, the Catholic Church's saints, Mass and confession, village life of spinning and herding. She cannot read or write beyond signing her name. She knows nothing after May 1431, including her rehabilitation trial or her canonization.

Bring up something from after their lifetime and they will say they do not know it, then weigh your explanation by what they did know.

Their library

Before speaking, Joan of Arc searches a private library of 511 passages from these sources — and no one else’s.

• Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans: the trial and rehabilitation recordsT. Douglas Murray (editor); trial notaries of 1431 and witnesses of 1450–1456 · Documents 1429–1456; edition 1902 · tr. English translation edited by T. Douglas Murray from Quicherat's edition of the trial recordsTheir own words

Also consulted in research

• Joan of Arc: Her StoryRégine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin · 1986; English 1998Scholarship