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Saint Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc–Patronage & Symbols
Born: c. 1412, Domrémy, a village divided between royal French and Barrois jurisdictions, in present-day Domrémy-la-Pucelle, Vosges, France
Died: 30 May 1431, Rouen, Normandy, aged approximately nineteen
Feast Day: 30 May
Beatified: 18 April 1909, by Pope Pius X
Canonized: 16 May 1920, by Pope Benedict XV
Patron Of: France, as secondary patroness, designated by Pope Pius XI on 2 March 1922
Symbols in Art: White banner bearing sacred imagery and the names of Jesus and Mary; armour; sword; cross; Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret; white lilies in later sacred art
Titles: Saint Joan of Arc; Saint Joan of Arc, Virgin; Jeanne d'Arc; La Pucelle; Maid of Orléans; Aurelianensis Puella
Invoked For: Courage, steadfastness in faith, perseverance under persecution, justice and peace. These are devotional associations drawn from her witness and liturgical tradition, not additional formally established patronages.
Formal Liturgical Classification: Virgin (Virgo). Her death has also been described in the language of martyrdom, including by fifteenth-century Catholic writers, but Martyr is not her formal Roman liturgical title.
Jehanne, Jeanne, Ioanna
Saint Joan’s rural childhood has long been associated with the image of a young shepherdess.
Joan's rural upbringing and agricultural responsibilities provide a historical foundation for the shepherdess tradition. During her trial, however, she resisted the suggestion that she had habitually tended flocks.
The image of a solitary shepherdess became particularly familiar through later biographies, devotional literature and sacred art. It expresses the humble rural origins of the Maid of Orléans, although Joan's documented childhood also included domestic work, parish life and responsibilities within a comparatively established agricultural household.
Was Saint Joan of Arc a Shepherdess?
The failure to secure Joan’s release has remained one of the most painful questions surrounding her capture.
The belief that Charles knowingly sacrificed Joan developed in later historical accounts of her capture and imprisonment.
The documents establish that no effective intervention secured her freedom before she entered English custody. They do not establish that Charles personally ordered her sacrifice or knowingly rejected a particular workable opportunity to save her.
His government later supported an inquiry into her condemnation after Rouen returned to French control.
The failure to rescue Joan remains a serious historical fact, while the precise motives and opportunities of those responsible cannot be established with the same certainty.
Was Saint Joan of Arc Abandoned by Charles VII?
The accounts of Joan’s final hours preserve a young woman concerned with prayer, repentance, the sacraments and reconciliation.
During the preliminary inquiry into Joan’s condemnation, the former trial notary Guillaume Manchon testified that Joan asked pardon of the judges, the English, the king of France and the princes of the kingdom.
The surviving wording records a request for pardon rather than an explicit statement forgiving those who condemned her.
The origin of the broader forgiveness tradition has not yet been established securely from the documents examined. Her penitential and reconciling conduct may be remembered with reverence, while the precise words of forgiveness sometimes attributed to her remain uncertain.
Did Saint Joan Forgive Those Who Condemned Her?
A longstanding tradition relates that Joan’s heart resisted the flames after her execution.
In May 1452, the Dominican Isambart de la Pierre recalled that the executioner, Geoffroy Thérage, had come to him and Brother Martin Ladvenu after Joan's death, deeply distressed by what he had done. According to Isambart, the executioner reported that he had been unable to reduce Joan's heart and entrails to ashes, despite further attempts using oil, sulphur and charcoal.
In May 1456, Jean Massieu preserved a related account received through the Rouen clerk Jean Fleury, who had reportedly heard it from the executioner. Massieu also recorded that the remaining ashes and material were gathered and cast into the Seine.
These testimonies form the historical foundation of the tradition of Joan's unburned heart. They preserve accounts attributed to those involved in her execution, although no authenticated bodily relic survives.
Did Saint Joan's Heart Remain Unburned?
A Kingdom Divided
Saint Joan of Arc lived during one of the most troubled periods in medieval French history. By the time of her birth around 1412, the conflict subsequently known as the Hundred Years' War had already endured for generations. A struggle over royal inheritance, territorial rights and feudal obligations had developed into a prolonged contest concerning the government and future of the kingdom of France.
England and France were not modern nation-states. Political identities were shaped by dynastic inheritance, personal allegiance, feudal law, regional loyalties and the religious obligations associated with Christian kingship. English kings possessed lands in France and claimed the French crown. French-speaking nobles and communities could support rival rulers for reasons of inheritance, allegiance, local interest or political necessity.
The war consequently divided French communities as well as bringing English and French armies into conflict. Joan would encounter opposition from Burgundian-aligned forces whose interests were closely connected with those of England.
The French defeat at Agincourt in 1415 weakened the royal cause. The assassination of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, in 1419 deepened the civil conflict, and the Burgundian alliance gave England powerful support within France.
Under the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, Henry V of England was recognized as heir to Charles VI of France, displacing Charles's son, the Dauphin. When Charles VI and Henry V both died in 1422, the infant Henry VI was proclaimed king of England and France by his supporters. The Dauphin continued to assert his claim as Charles VII.
By the late 1420s, the question of legitimate French kingship was contested through warfare, diplomacy, law and religion.
It was into this divided kingdom that Joan came.
Historical Context:
France During the Hundred Years' War
Religion and Royal Authority
For Joan and her contemporaries, the coronation of a king was more than a political inauguration.
The traditional French coronation at Reims included anointing and solemn religious ceremonies expressing the sacred duties of kingship. Bringing Charles to Reims therefore meant more than announcing a military or political victory. It would confirm his position through a ceremony deeply rooted in the religious life of the kingdom.
Joan believed that God had entrusted her with a particular mission concerning France and its king. Her religious convictions and political actions were inseparable in her understanding of that mission.
Her loyalty to Charles VII was genuine. So was her concern for the kingdom and its suffering people. These loyalties belonged to the world of fifteenth-century Christian monarchy, rather than the political nationalism of later centuries.
The Borderlands of Domrémy
Joan grew up in Domrémy, beside the River Meuse, in a region of overlapping jurisdictions and divided political allegiances.
The village itself was divided. Its northern portion, which included the parish church and the d'Arc household, lay within a jurisdiction associated with the French royal domain. The southern portion belonged to the lordship of Bourlémont, held under the Duke of Bar. Domrémy consequently stood in close contact with the neighbouring territories of Lorraine, Bar and Champagne.
This complicated territorial setting explains why the village is sometimes described generally as belonging to the Barrois, although that description does not accurately express the jurisdiction of every household within it.
War reached such communities through raids, military movements, insecurity and the disruption of trade and agriculture. News passed along roads, through markets and between parish communities.
Yet Joan's family life remained grounded in the ordinary responsibilities of a rural household: farming, livestock, domestic labour, religious observance and maintaining a home.
The young woman who would eventually stand before kings and bishops began her life in this familiar setting.
Remembering Saint Joan
Joan was born around 1412 to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, members of an established agricultural household in Domrémy.
Her family was neither aristocratic nor necessarily among the poorest inhabitants of the village. Surviving testimony describes a respectable rural household whose livelihood depended upon agriculture, property and domestic work.
Joan learned to spin and sew and helped with household responsibilities. Witnesses also remembered agricultural tasks and occasional work involving animals.
Faith was at the heart of her upbringing.
She learned the Our Father, Hail Mary and Creed from her mother. She attended Mass, went to confession, received Communion and took part in the religious customs of her parish. Her devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and her attentiveness to church bells appear repeatedly in the surviving accounts.
The faith that would sustain her through the trials of her later life had first been nurtured in her home, her village and her everyday duties.
Her neighbours remembered a girl marked by piety, good conduct and concern for others. Their recollections, gathered during the later inquiry into her condemnation, preserve a moving account of Joan’s character before her public mission began.
Childhood in Domrémy
Joan later testified that she first heard a voice she understood to come from God when she was approximately thirteen.
During her interrogation on 22 February 1431, she placed the first experience in her father's garden, in summer, around midday. She said the voice came from the direction of the church and remembered being frightened when she first heard it.
The setting was ordinary: the familiar ground of her family home.
Joan initially described the voice as guiding her conduct. In later questioning, she identified Saint Michael and subsequently Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret as the heavenly figures associated with her revelations.
She regarded these experiences as divine and central to her vocation. Her testimony was given across repeated interrogations, and particular descriptions belong to particular sessions rather than to one uninterrupted account.
Throughout the proceedings, however, her conviction remained consistent.
She believed that God had called her.
The First Voices
Joan connected her early religious experiences with a personal vow of virginity.
During her trial she stated that she had made this vow around the age of thirteen. She also described opposing a marriage claim brought against her at Toul.
These events reveal a young woman who had already begun making serious decisions about the direction of her life before she became a public figure.
Her title La Pucelle, the Maid, carried this identity into public recognition. It referred to a religious and personal commitment that Joan herself regarded as important.
She remained a laywoman, without entering a monastery or religious order. The vocation she believed she had received would instead lead her away from the protection of household and village life into an extraordinary public mission.
Virginity and Vocation
By 1428, Joan had become convinced that she must seek the Dauphin Charles and assist in the deliverance of France.
She appealed to Robert de Baudricourt, the royal commander at Vaucouleurs. Her first attempts met resistance. A young rural woman claiming a divine commission to influence the course of a kingdom's war was unlikely to receive immediate acceptance.
Joan persisted.
With the assistance of supporters who came to trust her sincerity, she obtained an escort and began the dangerous journey to Chinon in early 1429.
During this transition she adopted male clothing suited to travel and military surroundings. Her short, rounded haircut is securely associated with the period of her public mission. The surviving documents do not establish that she wore her hair this way during her childhood in Domrémy.
She left behind the familiar world of her family and parish.
Ahead lay a royal court, an army and a struggle involving some of the most powerful men in France.
Leaving Home
At Chinon, Joan was received by the Dauphin.
Traditions concerning this encounter include stories of a concealed king, miraculous recognition and private signs. These accounts belong to the long history of Joan's memory and have differing degrees of documentary support.
The essential events are clear. Joan reached the royal court, obtained an audience and underwent examination before being permitted to accompany the royal forces.
Ecclesiastics questioned her at Poitiers. Although the complete original proceedings of that examination have not survived, contemporary evidence confirms that her religious claims were investigated before the royal government accepted her participation.
Joan possessed no hereditary title, military education or recognized governmental office. She was young, female and of rural origin. Yet her conviction, persistence and the impression she made upon those who encountered her secured an extraordinary place in the royal campaign.
Her importance would soon extend beyond the encouragement of soldiers.
Before Charles VII
In the spring of 1429, Orléans was under English siege.
The city's survival was important to the cause of Charles VII. The military situation had become increasingly difficult, and Joan's arrival brought renewed confidence to the defenders.
She entered Orléans on 29 April 1429.
During the following days, French forces attacked English positions surrounding the city. Joan took part in dangerous operations and was wounded during the assault upon Les Tourelles on 7 May. The English withdrew from the siege the following day.
She was not the sole commander of the French forces. Experienced captains retained significant military responsibilities, and the precise division of authority during individual operations is not always recoverable.
Nevertheless, Joan's contribution was substantial. She strengthened morale, pressed for action, accompanied soldiers into danger and helped restore confidence in the possibility of victory.
Her authority was exercised through personal presence as well as through military and political influence.
The relief of Orléans began a remarkable period of French success.
Orléans
Joan's most recognizable military attribute was her white banner.
During her trial she described its religious imagery, including angels, fleurs-de-lis and the names of Jesus and Mary. It expressed the sacred character of the mission she believed God had entrusted to her.
She said that she loved her banner far more than her sword.
She also explained that she carried the banner during attacks partly because she did not wish to kill anyone, and stated that she had never personally killed a man.
Her reluctance to take life with her own hands existed alongside genuine participation in warfare. Joan accompanied armed men into battle, encouraged military action and accepted the dangers and responsibilities of the campaign.
Her courage was real. So was her stated unwillingness to kill.
Both belong to her witness.
The Banner and the Sword
Joan had received no formal education in reading or writing and ordinarily relied upon dictation and scribal assistance for her correspondence. Surviving examples of her signature show that she could sign her name, but the letters issued under her authority should not be mistaken for manuscripts personally written out by Joan.
Several letters and documents associated with her mission survive, either as originals or through contemporary copies and later documentary transmission.
Among the most important is the letter addressed to the English on 22 March 1429, before the relief of Orléans.
Beginning with an invocation of Jesus and Mary, it demanded that the English relinquish their claims and possessions in France and recognize the authority Joan believed God had given to Charles.
The letter also offered the possibility of peace if the English withdrew. Its language combined religious certainty, demands for justice, warnings of military action and a desire to avoid further conflict.
The text survives through more than one documentary tradition. During her trial, Joan challenged three expressions in the version presented to her, explaining that they were not among the words she had dictated.
Her correspondence consequently provides both an important record of her public mission and an example of the care required when interpreting medieval texts transmitted through secretaries and copyists.
Joan could be urgent, commanding and uncompromising. Yet her warnings arose from the same conviction that governed her banner and her conduct in battle: she believed herself responsible for fulfilling a commission from God.
Letters and Surviving Writings
Following the relief of Orléans, French forces won further successes along the Loire.
The victory at Patay on 18 June 1429 helped transform the military and political situation.
Joan continued to urge the Dauphin towards Reims. The royal army advanced through regions of uncertain allegiance, and several towns opened their gates or submitted.
On 17 July 1429, Charles was crowned King Charles VII in Reims Cathedral.
Joan was present with her banner.
The coronation fulfilled a central part of the mission she believed she had received. For the royal cause, it confirmed Charles's position through the traditional religious ceremony of French kingship.
For Joan, it was also deeply personal.
The girl who had first heard a voice in her father's garden had helped bring the king to his anointing.
The war, however, was not over.
Reims and the Coronation
After Reims, Joan continued to press for military action.
The royal government faced strategic and diplomatic concerns that did not always accord with her preference for decisive movement. Negotiation, consolidation and the maintenance of alliances increasingly influenced the direction of the campaign.
The attempted assault upon Paris in September 1429 failed, and Joan was wounded.
The following months brought uncertainty over her position and the future of military operations.
Her achievements had not given her independent command of royal policy. She remained dependent upon military resources, commanders and decisions made by others.
The momentum that had carried her from Orléans to Reims could not be maintained indefinitely.
Joan nevertheless continued to serve.
The Waning of the Campaign
On 23 May 1430, Joan was captured during fighting outside Compiègne.
Her captors belonged to forces aligned with Burgundy, whose rulers were then allied with England against Charles VII. She passed into the custody of the political and military network associated with Jean de Luxembourg before eventually being transferred to English control in return for payment.
Her capture had consequences far beyond the loss of an important military figure.
Joan had become closely associated with Charles VII's legitimacy, the relief of Orléans and the coronation at Reims. English authorities consequently had a powerful interest in discrediting her claim to divine guidance.
Her captivity became the prelude to political and ecclesiastical prosecution.
Capture at Compiègne
The Prisoner at Rouen
Joan was brought to Rouen and held under English military control.
The case against her was conducted by an ecclesiastical tribunal presided over by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, with Jean Le Maistre exercising an inquisitorial role. Clerics associated with the University of Paris and other religious authorities participated in the proceedings or supported the prosecution.
The trial took place within the political conflict concerning the French crown.
Joan's conviction that God had supported Charles VII challenged the legitimacy claimed by the English government for Henry VI. Her religious credibility was therefore closely connected with the political meaning of the French victories.
The judges who examined her were churchmen acting through an ecclesiastical process. At the same time, English custody, political interests and military power shaped the circumstances in which that process occurred.
Joan faced experienced theologians and officials while imprisoned and without comparable institutional authority.
Yet the interrogation records reveal a young woman who was far from helpless before her judges.
The Trial
The surviving interrogation records are among the most remarkable documents of Joan's life.
They preserve her responses to questions about her voices, clothing, military conduct, obedience to the Church, spiritual condition and understanding of God's will.
The proceedings were recorded and organized by clerical officials, frequently involving the translation of her spoken French into Latin. The documents therefore require attention to the circumstances of their composition.
Even so, Joan's individual character repeatedly emerges.
On 24 February 1431, asked whether she knew herself to be in God's grace, she answered in words traditionally translated:
If I am not in it, may God put me there; and if I am, may God keep me there.
Her answer avoided both presuming certain knowledge of her spiritual condition and accepting the implication that she lacked grace.
It remains one of the most memorable examples of her intelligence and presence of mind.
Joan could be firm, impatient, cautious and exceptionally precise. She refused to disclose certain matters and challenged questions she believed improper.
She understood that her words mattered and struggled to preserve their meaning.
A Young Woman Before Her Judges
Joan understood herself as a faithful daughter of the Catholic Church.
Her childhood formation, sacramental practice, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, and repeated appeals to Jesus Christ remained central throughout her public life.
During the trial, she answered that, to her understanding, Our Lord and the Church were one.
Her faith in the Church coexisted with her refusal to accept that the particular tribunal judging her could require her to deny what she believed God had revealed.
She appealed for higher ecclesiastical judgment, including recourse to the Pope, but did not obtain the independent hearing she sought.
The conflict placed Joan in an exceptionally difficult position. Her judges claimed authority to examine her religious obedience, while Joan believed that fidelity to God required her to remain faithful to her vocation.
Her resistance was directed against the demands of the court confronting her. She did not understand herself to be abandoning the Catholic faith.
Joan and the Church
Joan's courage did not mean an absence of fear.
She had been frightened at the first experience of her voice as a child. During imprisonment she faced isolation, illness, physical restraint, repeated interrogation and the threat of death.
She feared burning.
The French liturgical Office of Readings preserves her expressed horror of the stake and her desire to receive the sacraments.
She continued to pray amid these sufferings.
One prayer preserved in the condemnation proceedings begins:
Most sweet God, in honour of your holy Passion, I beseech you…
In this prayer, Joan asked God to guide her in answering the men who examined her.
Her words reveal neither indifference to suffering nor confidence in her own powers alone. She sought divine assistance while facing circumstances that might overwhelm her.
Her courage was the courage of a young woman who knew fear and remained faithful despite it.
Fear, Prayer and Suffering
On 24 May 1431, Joan was brought to the cemetery of Saint-Ouen and confronted with the threat of execution.
Under severe pressure, she agreed to an abjuration.
The circumstances of the act became an important subject of later investigation. In particular, the relationship between the shorter form reportedly presented to Joan and the longer written instrument entered into the trial record remains a serious historical question.
Her agreement took place under the immediate threat of death and cannot be understood apart from that pressure.
Joan was returned to prison.
Within days she resumed male clothing. The tribunal treated this as evidence that she had relapsed into heresy.
Witnesses at the later nullification proceedings described circumstances involving the lack of alternative clothing, fear of sexual violence and the pressures of imprisonment. These testimonies are important, although they were recorded after the events.
The resumption of male clothing became central to the final decision against her.
The tribunal declared her relapsed and handed her over to secular authority for execution.
The Abjuration
Joan was executed by burning in the Old Market of Rouen on 30 May 1431.
She was approximately nineteen years old.
On the morning of her death, she received Holy Communion. Witnesses later recalled her concern for confession, prayer and the presence of a cross.
At the execution site, she asked that a cross be held before her so that she might see it.
The accounts of her final moments were preserved chiefly through testimony collected during the subsequent nullification proceedings. Several witnesses remembered her repeated invocation of the name of Jesus.
Jesus, Jesus.
These words form the most securely attested core of her final speech.
Her final witness was unmistakably Christian.
The girl who had learned her prayers from her mother died invoking the name of Jesus and looking towards the cross.
Rouen, 30 May 1431
Joan's death followed a series of decisions involving identifiable political and ecclesiastical authorities.
Burgundian-aligned forces captured her. The network associated with Jean de Luxembourg controlled her captivity and transfer. English authorities acquired custody and maintained power over her imprisonment.
Pierre Cauchon presided over the ecclesiastical tribunal. Jean Le Maistre and other churchmen participated in the proceedings, and theological authorities associated with the University of Paris supported the prosecution.
The ecclesiastical tribunal pronounced the decisive condemnation, while secular authority carried out the execution.
These responsibilities belong to the history of Joan's trial. They also explain why the subsequent ecclesiastical nullification of her condemnation would be so consequential.
Responsibility for Her Condemnation
The Nullification of the Condemnation
Joan's death did not end the struggle over her memory.
After Rouen returned to the authority of Charles VII, the royal government had the opportunity to investigate the proceedings conducted against her.
In 1450, Charles commissioned Guillaume Bouillé to inquire into the circumstances of the trial. Further investigations followed.
Under the authority of Pope Callixtus III, a formal process of nullification took place in 1455–1456.
Witnesses were called who had known Joan at different stages of her life.
Neighbours from Domrémy recalled her childhood and religious habits. Soldiers and associates described her military conduct. Clerics, notaries and officials testified about her imprisonment, interrogation and death.
Much of this testimony was collected approximately twenty-five years after the events. It preserves individual recollections given for a particular judicial purpose, but it also offers an exceptionally rich picture of Joan's life and character.
The voices of her neighbours and companions are among the reasons so much can still be known about the girl from Domrémy.
The First Inquiries
On 7 July 1456, the court declared Joan's condemnation and its associated sentences null.
The judgment identified grave abuses in the proceedings, including deceit, calumny, iniquity, inconsistencies and manifest errors of fact and law. It also condemned the twelve articles used against her for misrepresenting her testimony through omissions, alterations and misleading translations.
The decision was more than an act of personal pardon.
The court declared that the proceedings, abjuration and sentences themselves were invalid. It removed the judicial disgrace attached to Joan's name and restored her reputation before the law.
The decision also became central to her history within the Church.
The original condemnation had been pronounced by churchmen acting through an ecclesiastical tribunal. Its nullification was accomplished through another ecclesiastical process conducted under papal authority.
This judgment did not constitute canonization.
The formal recognition of Joan among the saints would come centuries later.
The Judgment of 1456
The Cult of Saint Joan of Arc
Joan had become a celebrated and contested figure during her lifetime.
In 1429, Christine de Pizan praised her extraordinary mission in the Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, one of the most important literary testimonies to Joan's contemporary reputation.
Opponents of the royal cause she served challenged the religious claims upon which her authority rested.
After her death, remembrance of Joan endured particularly in places associated with her achievements.
Orléans maintained civic and religious commemorations of its deliverance. These observances belonged to the city's memory of the siege and its liberation before Joan received formal liturgical recognition as a saint.
Her reputation also survived through chronicles, literary works, historical writing and local devotion.
The 1456 judgment had restored her good name, but the establishment of a formal liturgical cult required a separate ecclesiastical process.
Memory Before Canonization
Interest in Joan grew considerably during the nineteenth century.
Historical scholarship returned attention to the condemnation and nullification records, while Catholic devotion and public commemoration of her life gained renewed prominence.
On 27 January 1894, the Sacred Congregation of Rites approved the introduction of her cause under Pope Leo XIII.
The Roman documentation identified her as a virgin and the Maid of Orléans.
The cause examined her life, virtues, documentary testimony, history of devotion and reports of favours attributed to her intercession.
Records of the proceedings include an account of a healing in 1891 associated with prayers seeking Joan's intercession. Such evidence demonstrates that she was invoked devotionally before her beatification.
Pope Pius X beatified Joan on 18 April 1909.
The Church recognized her heroic virtues and the miracles accepted in her cause. Her beatification did not depend upon a formal classification as a martyr.
The Cause of Beatification
Pope Benedict XV canonized Joan on 16 May 1920.
The apostolic document Divina disponente enrolled her among the saints and established her liturgical commemoration on 30 May, the anniversary of her death.
Her official Latin title identifies her as Virgo—Virgin.
Her execution has long inspired devotional comparisons with martyrdom, and Catholic writers had already employed such language in the fifteenth century. Jean Bréhal, closely involved in the examination of her condemnation, could describe her suffering in terms associated with martyrdom.
Her formal Roman liturgical classification, however, remains Virgin.
On 2 March 1922, Pope Pius XI designated Joan a secondary patroness of France, alongside the principal patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Assumption.
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus was subsequently designated another secondary patroness of France by Pope Pius XII in 1944.
Canonization
Joan's authorized liturgical tradition is principally Roman and French.
An older Latin collect recalls her defence of faith and country and asks, through her intercession, that the Church may enjoy lasting peace.
The current French collect likewise remembers her devotion to her country while praying for justice and peace.
These prayers unite her historical mission with the Church's remembrance of her virtues.
The French Office of Readings draws especially upon the surviving trial material.
It recalls her childhood prayers, the voices she believed came from God, her banner, her reluctance to kill, her answer concerning grace, her fidelity to the Church, her fear of death and her final invocation of Jesus.
The liturgy thus returns attention to the young woman preserved in the historical record: the daughter of Domrémy, the prisoner at Rouen and the Catholic who desired the sacraments before her death.
Liturgical Tradition
No bodily relic of Saint Joan is securely authenticated.
Witnesses recalled that the ashes and material remaining after her execution were gathered and disposed of in the River Seine. The circumstances of her death make the identification of later claimed bodily remains particularly difficult.
A group of objects presented in modern times as remains of Joan was scientifically examined. Findings reported in 2007 associated the tested material with an ancient Egyptian mummy rather than with Joan.
The investigation concerned those particular objects, not every article subsequently associated with her memory.
The principal places associated with Joan's veneration therefore preserve her memory through geography, history and devotion rather than through authenticated bodily remains.
They include Domrémy, Vaucouleurs, Chinon, Orléans, Reims, Compiègne and Rouen.
The modern church of Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc stands beside the Old Market in Rouen. Designed by Louis Arretche and completed in 1979, it serves as a parish church and memorial associated with the place of her execution.
Near Domrémy, the basilica of Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc at Bois-Chenu was constructed in stages between 1881 and 1934. Its architecture and decoration belong to the later development of devotion to Joan.
At Orléans, the continuing commemorations of the city's deliverance preserve another aspect of her historical and devotional memory.
These places commemorate different stages of her life: childhood, calling, mission, courage, imprisonment, suffering and vindication.
Their modern appearance need not reproduce the settings Joan herself knew for them to remain significant places of Catholic remembrance.
Relics, Shrines and Places of Devotion
Iconography
No portrait made from life has been authenticated as a likeness of Saint Joan. Yet her appearance has inspired artists from her own century to the present day.
A small drawing made by Clément de Fauquembergue in May 1429 is especially valuable because it was produced during Joan's lifetime.
Fauquembergue had not seen Joan personally.
His drawing therefore preserves a contemporary image of how the Maid was imagined, rather than a likeness taken directly from her appearance.
Later generations depicted Joan in armour, carrying banners, on horseback, before her heavenly visitors, in prayer and at the stake.
Her most familiar attributes arise from identifiable events and testimonies: the white banner bearing sacred imagery, the sword, military clothing, Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret.
White lilies also appear in later artistic representations of Joan, distinctly from the heraldic fleurs-de-lis of her banner.
Albert Lynch's 1897 portrait places white lilies beside the armoured saint. The flowers draw upon the longstanding Christian artistic association of the lily with purity and virginity, making them a fitting later attribute of the woman remembered as La Pucelle.
They belong to the development of Joan's sacred iconography, rather than to an established personal emblem used by her during her lifetime.
Her short hair during the military and prison years is documented in the trial material. The familiar image of a long-haired maiden in polished armour belongs particularly to subsequent artistic convention.
Her exact facial features, eye colour, complexion and childhood appearance remain unknown.
Sacred artists have nevertheless continued to honour Joan through representations shaped by the artistic traditions and material knowledge of their own times.
A historically considered portrayal can respect the evidence concerning dress, setting, age and attributes while recognizing that the individual likeness remains an artistic reconstruction.
The Historical Joan in Sacred Art
Legacy
Over the centuries, Joan of Arc has been remembered through history, literature, painting, music and devotion. Her name has endured through changing kingdoms, governments and generations, and she remains among the most recognizable figures in French history.
Yet before all these things, she was Jehanne of Domrémy—a young woman from the borderlands of Bar and France who loved her neighbours, loved God above all, and remained faithful to what she believed He had asked of her.
Sources
Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, proceedings of 1431, critical edition by Pierre Tisset.
Procès en nullité de la condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc, proceedings of 1450–1456, critical edition by Pierre Duparc.
Jules Quicherat, Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc, five volumes, 1841–1849.
Contemporary royal, Burgundian, English and ecclesiastical documents collected in Craig Taylor, Joan of Arc: La Pucelle.
Joan of Arc, surviving correspondence and related documents issued under her authority, especially the letter to the English of March 1429.
Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc (1429).
Jean Bréhal, Recollectio, concerning the examination and nullification of Joan's condemnation.
Documentary material concerning the jurisdictions of Domrémy and the neighbouring Barrois, including records of the lordship of Bourlémont.
Sacred Congregation of Rites, cause introduction and related documentation, Acta Sanctae Sedis, vols. 26–27.
Pope Pius X, beatification documentation, 1909, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. I.
Pope Benedict XV, Divina disponente, 16 May 1920.
Sacred Congregation of Rites, liturgical decree for Saint Joan, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. XII.
Pope Pius XI, designation of Joan as secondary patroness of France, 2 March 1922.
Pope Pius XII, apostolic letter concerning Saint Thérèse as secondary patroness of France, 3 May 1944.
Older Latin Mass proper for Saint Joan of Arc.
Association Épiscopale Liturgique pour les pays francophones, proper liturgical texts for 30 May.
Primary Sources
Hobbins, Daniel, trans. and intro. The Trial of Joan of Arc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Taylor, Craig, ed. and trans. Joan of Arc: La Pucelle. Manchester Medieval Sources. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. The Trial and Retrial of Joan of Arc: A Judicial Review. The New Middle Ages. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-07887-2.
Le Tourneau, Dominique. ‘Les irrégularités du procès canonique intenté contre Jeanne d'Arc, la Pucelle de France (janvier–mai 1431).’ Prawo Kanoniczne 59, no. 4 (2016): 151–180. https://doi.org/10.21697/pk.2015.59.4.08.
French Ministry of Justice, historical account of Joan's trial.
Archives nationales, documentation concerning the Fauquembergue drawing.
CNRS–IRHT, manuscript catalogue concerning Joan's correspondence.
Historical studies of Domrémy's territorial jurisdictions.
City and Diocese of Rouen, historical documentation concerning the church of Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc.
French Ministry of Culture, Mérimée heritage record PA88000042, basilica at Bois-Chenu.
Pope Pius XII, Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae, 3 May 1944, Vatican text.
Nature, 2007 report concerning alleged relics of Joan of Arc.
Secondary Sources
Clément de Fauquembergue, contemporary drawing of Joan of Arc, 1429.
Albert Lynch, Portrait of Joan of Arc with Flag and Lilies on the Background of Notre-Dame Cathedral, 1897.
Christian artistic tradition concerning white lilies as symbols of purity and virginity.
Artistic and Iconographic References
Honour Saint Joan of Arc with us in prayer and scripture.
This video tribute invites you to reflect on her faithfulness, courage, and perseverance through war, captivity, and suffering.
