Today the Church commemorates the 592nd anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Joan of Arc. Endowed by God with a very high calling, the little shepherdess of Domremy spared no effort to fulfill the Divine will, to the point of being, for this reason, persecuted, slandered and martyred.

 Newsroom  (31/05/2022 08:04, Gaudium Press) Saint Joan of Arc was probably born in 1411, or perhaps 1412, in Domremy, a town in the French countryside. According to pious tradition, she was born on the night of the Epiphany, January 6. Daughter of Jacques d’Arc and Isabella, Catholics and people of good reputation, she was educated from her earliest childhood in the practice of the Law of God. According to witnesses of her time, she liked to go to church and to go to confession. Whenever she could, she gave alms to the poor. In general, she spent her childhood herding animals, which she did with great pleasure. She was no different from other girls of her age. Among those closest to her, she was known as Jeannette, the little Jeanne.

But from the age of thirteen, some events would change the life of the little shepherdess: God began to communicate with her through supernatural apparitions. From then on, she saw and heard St. Michael the Archangel, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, who over the course of three years prepared her for the mission that was destined for her: to free France from the power of the English and have Charles VII consecrated as king.

Faithful to God’s call, Jeanne set out in haste to the city of Chinon to fulfill the Divine orders.

She was only 16 years old when King Charles entrusted her with the command of a brigade; to her, who was completely ignorant of the laws of war... In eight days, at the end of May, the young warrior ended the siege of Orleans, a city under siege for seven months, forcing the English to retreat. And in the following month, July, after so many efforts made by her, Charles VII, in Reims, was consecrated King of France.

The Calvary

However, after so many successes, apparently inexplicable events began her “ordeal” that lasted for almost two years: the king, who had protected her so much, abandoned her to the fate of her enemies. If this were not enough, on May 23, 1430, she was captured and taken prisoner, and sold five months later to the English. Then the machinations begin.

They try by all means to kill her, but they need to preserve the appearance of legality, because a prisoner of war cannot be taken by force to death. In this, they agree with the local bishop, Pierre Cauchon, and judge her for “heresy,” “witchcraft,” and “idolatry”.

However, the first illegality: Saint Joan was always held prisoner by the English, and was never placed in a Church prison guarded by women, as a minimum of respect for her feminine condition would demand, and for the type of “trial” they simulated against her.

In fact, countless times the virgin – as she was known even among her enemies – will complain about being chained and watched day and night by groups of five soldiers who hated her. On several occasions, she was beaten by the jailers with the intention of attacking her modesty. None of this, however, moved the ecclesiastics’ compassion.

Thus, betrayed, arrested, and repudiated by those she defended, she is judged “in the name of the Church” by a bishop, assisted by a cardinal and more than 120 clerics, who put themselves at the service of interests alien to the salvation of souls, submitting to the English invaders, in order to lose innocent Joan.

Against Joan of Arc, they used all the resources that imposture can conceive, even going so far as to attack the secrecy of confession, in order to obtain some credible accusation that would allow them to lead the virgin of Domremy to the stake. There was no lack of falsification of documents, machinations to attempt her virginity, threats of torture and other cruelties.

Moreover, in the course of the process, the skirmishers often “mocked” the basics of natural law. On one occasion, Jean Beaupère, one of the most ardent for Joan’s death, appeared before her with Bishop Couchon, and asked her, “Do you know if you are in the Grace of God?” It is worth remembering a famous adage of Holy Mother Church which says: “De internis non iudicat Ecclesia”. That is, not even the Church can judge conscience. In the meantime, inspired by the heavenly voices that always helped her, Jeanne answered: “If I am not, may God grant it to me. If I am, may He keep me there! I would be the most unhappy person in the world if I knew I was not in the Grace of God.”

The execution

But why such hatred aroused against a 19-year-old girl, who, in the eyes of men, as Régine Pernoud describes, “was a simple woman who showed herself more experienced in war than a captain, an ignorant peasant girl who acted as if she knew more than those doctors who possessed the key to science, a young girl of less than twenty years of age who claimed to be faithful to her visions?”

But the thirst for evil spared no effort. Joan was then excommunicated and sentenced to death on May 30, 1430, in the Old Market Square of Rouen (France). Before her death, however, something inexplicable happened: she, who was excommunicated, asked for confession and communion, and both requests were granted.

On the day of her execution, all those who wished to attend her death came to the square. More than 800 soldiers, with spears and hatchets, ensured the tranquility of the execution. The whole crowd witnessed the slow and painful death of the immaculate virgin, on whose candid forehead they placed a hat of derision with the words: “heretic, apostate, relapse, idolater.”

Impertinent, they heard her exclaim several times, “Jesus! Jesus!” and “The voices did not lie!”. After pronouncing the name “Jesus” for the last time, she surrendered her soul to God; and, according to the testimony of an unsuspecting witness (an English soldier who hated her), as she exhaled her last breath, a white dove left her body toward heaven. Her ashes were thrown into the river, along with her heart, still incorrupt and throbbing.

What happened to the persecutors?

However, the hand of God was upon those who had pursued her envoy: those who were blamed for her death, in a few days were called to give account before the Creator.

The three main perpetrators met a tragic end: Cauchon, who died suddenly while being shaved; D’Estivet, a close friend of Cauchon, the promoter of the cause, disappeared mysteriously, and his body was found in a sewer; Nicolas Midy, stricken with leprosy shortly after the trial, had to abandon the benefits that his “devotion” had brought him, and, eaten by his disease, died in a leprosarium.

Sudden death, ignored death, death from leprosy. Tragic earthly end of those who, worldly, thought they had erased the name of the envoy of God from the lines of history. She appears in the catalog of the saints. They, only, in the sinister pages of the Judas’ emulators.

The Holy Church, however, through the hands of her faithful ministers, twenty years later, will declare the inculpability of the virgin of Domremy. And 500 years later, Benedict XV will recognize her sanctity of life, including her in the catalog of the Saints.

By Guilherme Maia