2017-01-06 Fri

Joan of Arc – a peasant girl that eventually led France to a smashing victory was born today, on 6th January 1412.

This national heroine of France was born in a small town of France to a poor tenant farmer family. At the time of Joan of Arc’s birth, France was embroiled in a long-running war with England known as the Hundred Years’ War; the dispute began over who would be the heir to the French throne.

Around this time, Joan of Arc – an 18-year-old peasant girl began to have mystical visions, which over the time became more vivid. These visions encouraged her to lead a pious life with the presence of St. Michael and St. Catherine designating her as the saviour of France.

With no military training, Joan convinced the embattled crown prince Charles of Valois to allow her to lead a French army to the besieged city of Orléans, where it achieved a momentous victory over the English and their French allies, the Burgundians. Joan was captured by Anglo-Burgundian forces, tried for witchcraft and heresy and burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of 19.

This peasant girl/warrior/saint of France was depicted on a stamp jointly issued by Vatican City State and France to commemorate her 600th Birth Anniversary. The image chosen for the occasion is taken from a miniature painted twenty years after her death.This € 0.75 stamp depicts St. Joan of Arc in an attire of a warrior with a scroll behind her head.

By the time she was officially canonized in 1920, the Maid of Orléans had long been considered one of the history’s greatest saints, and an enduring symbol of French unity and nationalism.