St. Joan of Arc is the patroness of soldiers and of France. On January 6, 1412, Joan of Arc was born to pious parents of the French peasant class, at the obscure village of Domremy, near the province of Lorraine. At a very early age, she heard voices: those of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret.

At first the messages were personal and general. Then at last came the crowning order. In May, 1428, her voices “of St. Michael, St. Catherine , and St. Margaret” told Joan to go to the King of France and help him reconquer the kingdom. For at that time, the English king was after the throne of France, and the Duke of Burgundy, the chief rival  of the French king, was siding with him and gobbling up evermore French territory.

After overcoming opposition from churchmen and courtiers, the seventeen year old girl was given a  small army with which she raised the seige of Orleans on May 8, 1429. She then enjoyed  series of spectacular military successes, during which the King was able to enter Rheims and be crowned with her at his side.

On May 1430, as she was attempting to relieve Compiegne she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English when Charles and the French did nothing to save her. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of  Beauvais, who hoped that the English would help him to become archbishop.

Through her unfamiliarity with technicalities of theology, Joan was trapped into making  a few damaging statements. Whe she refused to retract the assertion that it was the saints of God who had commanded her to do what she has done, she was condemed to death as a heretic, sorceres and adulteress, and burned at stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was   ultimately canonized in 1920, making official  what people  had known for  centuries . Her feast day is  May 30.