Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc was born on January 6th around the year 1412, to Jacques and Isabelle d'Arc in the little village of Domremy, in the Barrois region (now part of "Lorraine") on the border of eastern France.The events in France during these years would set the stage for Joan's later life and the circumstances surrounding her death.

Almanach National de Jeanne d'Arc 1891. Paris: Hachette & Cie., 1891
St.Joan
Even before she was canonized, Joan was venerated, especially in France. The Church requires that no religious honor be paid to person who have not been officially beatified, and in fact such honor can interfere with the process of canonization. Public opinion is hard to contain, however, and in this stunning multicolor woodcut which served as the cover to the Almanach National de Jeanne d'Arc 1891, the artist conflates the Savior of France with the Savior of the World in an unusually frank depiction of the enthusiasm for Joan of Arc in the decades around 1900.Joan was also the subject of formal panegyrics in cathedrals throughout the nineteenth and century and into the twentieth. Coube's 1908 sermon, Le Coeur de Jeanne d'Arc, speaks of the heart of the child, of the warrior, and of the martyr and ends, "Come again, oh, come again to your sweet France, immortal Dove!" Desgranges' panegyric, Les Immolés de la Guerre, given under far more tragic circumstances, entrusts to the Venerable Jeanne the orphans, the widows, the injured, and the slain.

Nicholas Lenglet Dufresnoy. Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, Dite la Pucelle d'Orleans. 3 v. Amsterdam: Par la Compagnie, 1759.


She would call herself "La Pucelle" (the Maiden or Virgin), explaining that she had promised her saints to keep her virginity "for as long as it pleases God", and it is by this nickname that she is usually described in the documents.