Pages

Search for your Topic

The Remarkable Maid of Orleans

Saint Jeanne d’Arc, the maid of Orleans, is hailed as patroness of France, their saviour, as the story goes, in the fight for their nationhood, identity, and independence against the land-hungry English in the Hundred Years’ War. The royal house of Plantagenet, which ruled Britain, claimed the right also to rule all of France, then under the declining house of Valois, with inter-marriages, and dynasties and the fact that all the nobles spoke French – as the saying goes, it was complicated, and went on for just over a century, from 1337 to 1453. The Brits nearly took all the marbles – with Agincourt in 1415 under Henry V on Saint Crispin’s Day and all that.

But then fifteen years later, Joan of Arc, inspired by God, in turn inspired the French people and soliders, with the English driven out of most of France by 1453, well after Joan had been burned at the stake as a heretic.

Saint Joan is not commemorated in the universal calendar of the Church, but it is a holiday in France, as one of her numerous patrons. A young peasant girl from Domremy in north-eastern France, born about 1412, Joan, as she is styled en Anglais, as a young teen in 1425, she began receiving visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine of Alexandria – the latter two early virgin martyrs. The heavenly messengers – whom the young girl described a ‘so beautiful’, she cried when they left – asked, nay, commanded her to help the dauphin Charles VII, the uncrowned French king, to defeat the aggression of the English and drive them out of France.

Praise the Lord

Read the Whole Article at https://catholicinsight.com/