The 100 Years' War (1337-1453) was horrendous. Endless battles continued between English Plantagenets and French Valois, for control of French soil. Late in the 100 Years War, English forces occupied much of northern France, including Normandy’s capital Rouen.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Joan of Arc was a proficient horse rider
and leader of the French soldiers
Meridian Hill Park, Wash DC
At first, teenage Joan of Arc (c1412–1431) was guided by the voice of teenage St Catherine of Alexandria (c287-305), herself martyred. Joan said Catherine led her to her sword, behind the altar of the church bearing the saint’s name.
Joan inspired surprising successes against the English army south along the Loire. But in May 1430, Joan was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian allies of England and was moved to the main English headquarters in France, Rouen.
Joan inspired surprising successes against the English army south along the Loire. But in May 1430, Joan was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian allies of England and was moved to the main English headquarters in France, Rouen.
Joan was tried by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais. Clearly they planned to execute her, but they first needed to prove it was Satan who dictated her actions, and showed that King Charles VII had been ruled by diabolical forces. The Bishop started an Inquisition Tribunal where a clear Political Issue transformed into an Issue of Faith. Joan was burned at the stake in May 1431, in public.
Even when burned at the stake by the English,
Joan of Arc remained a symbol of purity, Catholicism and French nationalism.
history.com
She was exonerated after a 2nd trial in Rouen in 1456. Too late to save Joan of course, but at least French citizens now saw her as a national heroine and religious saint.
Over the centuries, Joan became a symbol of reactionary nationalism, venerated by the Far Right long before she was canonised. In May 1920 the Roman Catholic church ironically canonised the young peasant girl it had burned back in 1431. This heretic had been the armour-plated, sword-waving, horse-riding, French leader and heroine of the 100 Years War.
Joan of Arc dressed like a man
Etsy
To understand Rouen’s role in Joan’s history, modern tourists visit the Joan of Arc Tower in Rouen Castle where she was imprisoned awaiting execution. This imposing tower is all that remains of the medieval castle that King Philippe Auguste built against the English in the C13th. No problem. The English military was back in control of Normandy during Joan’s participation in the 100 Years War.
The city’s C15th archbishop's palace, alongside the Cathedral, was renovated from 2013. This palace complex was perfectly located; Joan was sentenced to death there! And in 2015 the Joan of Arc History Museum opened. Rouen is full of important religious and secular buildings eg Saint-Ouen and Saint-Maclou, and the Gothic Law Courts. The modern Joan of Arc Church was built in 1979.
Joan had become one of the modern patron saints within France. Her brief life started the end of a medieval world of feudal warlords and powerful regional nobles, a task that ended 350 years later in the French Revolution.
So how did the medieval heretic turn into two very different modern symbols? Firstly consider how extreme rightest elements tried to undermine the democratic government and promote a True France, one without Jews, immigrants or academics. Historian Martha Hanna looked at why the extreme-right group Action française venerated St Joan. Action française wanted to smash the secular government of the 3rd Republic from 1870 and bring back the French monarchy. They urged St Joan’s Feast Day as a right-wing alternative to Bastille Day and rewarded brutes who bashed secular academics.
A well orchestrated campaign was conducted by French Catholics in the late 19th-early C20th. If Joan was finally reclaimed as a Catholic saint and martyr, it was primarily because she was represented as the very epitome of religion and nationalism that were powerful forces in the Belle Epoque and WW1. Joan of Arc’s patriotic popularity inside France took off. By the time she was canonised in 1920, Action française and other extreme rightist groups repeatedly used Joan as a symbol of purity, Catholicism and Frenchness.
On the other hand during WW1, there was a strong appetite in France and among its Allies for a figure symbolising an improbable commander of an ordinary army; that Joan was a woman who showed that strength didn’t belong only to men.
The city’s C15th archbishop's palace, alongside the Cathedral, was renovated from 2013. This palace complex was perfectly located; Joan was sentenced to death there! And in 2015 the Joan of Arc History Museum opened. Rouen is full of important religious and secular buildings eg Saint-Ouen and Saint-Maclou, and the Gothic Law Courts. The modern Joan of Arc Church was built in 1979.
Joan had become one of the modern patron saints within France. Her brief life started the end of a medieval world of feudal warlords and powerful regional nobles, a task that ended 350 years later in the French Revolution.
So how did the medieval heretic turn into two very different modern symbols? Firstly consider how extreme rightest elements tried to undermine the democratic government and promote a True France, one without Jews, immigrants or academics. Historian Martha Hanna looked at why the extreme-right group Action française venerated St Joan. Action française wanted to smash the secular government of the 3rd Republic from 1870 and bring back the French monarchy. They urged St Joan’s Feast Day as a right-wing alternative to Bastille Day and rewarded brutes who bashed secular academics.
A well orchestrated campaign was conducted by French Catholics in the late 19th-early C20th. If Joan was finally reclaimed as a Catholic saint and martyr, it was primarily because she was represented as the very epitome of religion and nationalism that were powerful forces in the Belle Epoque and WW1. Joan of Arc’s patriotic popularity inside France took off. By the time she was canonised in 1920, Action française and other extreme rightist groups repeatedly used Joan as a symbol of purity, Catholicism and Frenchness.
On the other hand during WW1, there was a strong appetite in France and among its Allies for a figure symbolising an improbable commander of an ordinary army; that Joan was a woman who showed that strength didn’t belong only to men.
And not just on the right; republicans once suspicious of her cult embraced her too. Joan excited secular figures outside France as a symbol of boundary-violating female power eg in American war posters. But Joan’s image as an ambiguously gendered warrior particularly solidified in The Arts. Note:
1] Cecil B DeMille’s 1916 silent film, Joan the Woman;
2] George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 feminist play, Saint Joan &
3] Berthold Brecht’s 1929 drama with the blue-collar name Saint Joan of the Stockyards.
Joan of Arc Tower in Rouen Castle
French Monuments
When she was canonised, suffrage activists mounted elaborate parades starring costumed equestrian Joans. Literary scholar Karyn Sproles focused on the secular, feminist Joan of Arc: a 1936 biography by Bloomsbury author, cross-dresser and Virginia Woolf lover, Vita Sackville-West. Sproles noted that Sackville-West was a careful researcher of Joan’s life but interpreted the saint in terms relevant to herself: She saw Joan “not as a saint or a visionary, but as an active woman who led the life of a man without becoming male.” Sackville-West loved the way Joan wore masculine armour, noting that Vita herself would often don men’s clothing and call herself by a man’s name to seduce other women.
Joan predicted the modern, independent woman by six centuries! She had became a heroine of feminism and androgyny, especially in Britain and the US. By the time Catholics marked the centennial of Joan’s canonisation in 2020, there were some Joan of Arcs who do not belong exclusively to the church.