Feast of St Joan of Arc (1431), canonized in 1920, who claims the distinction among saints of having previously been condemned by the church as a heretic and burned at the stake. Throughout her ordeal she adamantly refused to renounce the angelic “voices” that guided her mission

and she refused to give up her male clothing. On this basis she was convicted. 450 years later she was declared a saint. Not wanting to call her a martyr, the church emphasized her piety and purity. Yet the lessons and mystery of Joan continue.

Her piety was not deployed on behalf of the church but on behalf of national liberation. She represents a kind of political holiness—not the mystical rapture of the convent, but the mysticism of a Moses or Harriet Tubman directed toward justice and deliverance.

Her “purity” was not a matter of safeguarding her “virginity” but her conscience—“le point vierge,” the sacred inner core of the soul, against the all blandishments of the world and the corruptions of power. She represents those blessed “pure of heart.” An illiterate peasant maid

she stood up before princes of the church and state and the most learned authorities of her world and refused to compromise her conscience or deny her special vocation. Patron of holy men and women, vilified in their own time in the hope of eventual vindication.

At the Cathedral of St Pierre in Lisieux, there is a shrine to St Joan of Arc in the South transept. In the north transept, Bishop Pierre Cauchon, who condemned her to death, is buried in an unmarked grave.

Here I look at the life of St. Joan of Arc, who died 590 years ago, and some of the artistic and musical inspiration that has been drawn from her story. onepeterfive.com/st-joan-of-…