why is she the patron saint of France?

► An extraordinary destiny

Born around 1412 in Lorraine, Jeanne came from a peasant family, probably less poor than the legend says. This very pious young girl said one day that she heard voices asking her to liberate France from the English occupier and to lead to the coronation the Dauphin Charles VII, disinherited by the Treaty of Troyes between France and England in 1420.

She manages to meet him at the end of February 1429, and persuades him to send her to Orléans, then under siege. She exhorts and encourages the French troops and eight days after her arrival, at the end of April, the siege is lifted. On July 17, Charles VII is crowned King of France in Reims.

After several failures to retake Paris in September, then La-Charité-sur-Loire in November with her own troops, and no longer on behalf of the king, Jeanne was arrested at Compiègne in May 1430 and delivered to the English in November. Her trial – for heresy – was held in Rouen from February 21 to May 23, 1431. She was condemned to the stake and died on May 30.

In 1450, Charles VII, embarrassed to owe his throne to a “heretic”, launched an investigation into the way in which the trial was conducted. Two years later, the Vatican joined in. In 1456, she was rehabilitated after a second trial in Rouen (Seine-Maritime) by Pope Calixte III.

► How did Joan become the patron saint of France?

In the centuries following her death, Joan aroused little interest. But the publication of the minutes of his trial, from 1841, aroused curiosity even in the Vatican. She reveals her intelligence, her temperament, her ardent faith.

With the war of 1870, it appeared in France as a symbol of resistance and national unity. Beatified in April 1909, she was canonized on May 16, 1920 by Benedict XV, who wished for a reconciliation of the Holy See with the French Republic. His feast day is fixed on the day of his death, May 30. In 1922, Pius XI proclaimed Joan “secondary patroness” of France.

► A republican myth

Less than two months after Joan’s canonization, the French Republic promulgated a law in July 1920 which instituted a secular national feast of Joan of Arc and patriotism on the second Sunday in May. This law is still in force.

According to André Larané, historian, Jeanne had the advantage after the First World War of bringing together both the anticlerical left and the Catholics: “Jeanne represented for the left the victory of the little people against the greats of this world. There was also this idea that she was a victim of the Church. On the Catholic side, we especially saw his intense Christian faith (1). »

In Orléans (Loiret), the Johannine festivals, which each year celebrate the liberator of the city during ten days of festivities, are a key event in the life of the people of Orléans. Johannine festivals are also organized each year at the beginning of June in Reims (Marne), to commemorate the coronation of Charles VII. Rouen also celebrates Joan of Arc every year, in the city where she was burned.

From the beginning of the 1980s, the daughter of the people who drove foreigners out of France was gradually taken over by the National Front and the far right. On May 14, the Action Française parade in Paris, initially banned and finally authorized, brought together around 500 people.

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