Joan was born at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January 1412, to Jacques d'Arc, "a small peasant farmer, poor but not needy." ¹ She could not read or write.

In the summer of 1425, at about thirteen and a half, she became aware of what she called her voices, or her counsel, which she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. ¹² Of them she said simply: "I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you." ¹

By May 1428 she was certain she was called to help the king. She went to Robert Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs, who dismissed her. She persisted, and after she predicted a French defeat that then happened, he let her go. ¹

She reached Chinon on 6 March 1429 and was admitted to Charles VII two days later, picking him out although he was disguised among his courtiers, and telling him something private that convinced him. ¹

Joan entered Orleans on 30 April 1429. By 8 May the English forts had been taken and the siege was lifted; she had been wounded by an arrow on the 7th and returned to the fighting. ¹ On Sunday 17 July 1429 Charles VII was solemnly crowned at Reims, with Joan standing by holding her standard. ¹²

She was seventeen. In under four months she had reversed the strategic position of a war that had run for ninety years.

On 24 May 1430 she was captured at Compiegne when a drawbridge was raised and left her outside. ¹ Her trial opened at Rouen on 21 February 1431, on charges of heresy and witchcraft, orchestrated by Bishop Pierre Cauchon. She was held illegally in a secular castle rather than an ecclesiastical prison. ¹

She was burned at Rouen on 30 May 1431 and her ashes were thrown into the Seine. ¹² She was nineteen. The charge she was finally condemned on was wearing men's clothing. ²

Twenty-four years later a rehabilitation trial opened with papal consent and reversed and annulled the conviction entirely. ¹ She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. ²

Joan of Arc is the patron saint of France and of military members. ² She is also, unavoidably, the patron of anyone condemned by a process that was rigged.

Her feast is celebrated on May 30, the day she was executed. ¹² The Church keeps the date of the killing rather than quietly choosing a nicer one.

When nobody will take you seriously. Baudricourt sent her away. ¹ She went back. Almost every account of Joan skips over the year she spent simply being refused, and that year is the part most people are actually living in.

When you are sure of something you cannot prove. She said of her voices: "I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you." ¹ She never argued anyone into it and never took it back, including under a court that would kill her for it.

When the institution is wrong about you. Joan was condemned by churchmen, in a Church court, on a rigged process, and the Church itself annulled the verdict and later canonized her. ¹² Being failed by people who represent the Church is not the same as being failed by God.

When you are young and being told to wait. She was seventeen at Orleans and dead at nineteen. ¹² Almost everything she is remembered for happened before an age at which most people are consulted about anything.

When vindication comes too late to help. Hers came twenty-four years after they burned her. ¹ It still came. That is a harder consolation than most, and it is a real one.