
By Sister Marie-Bernard, M.I.C.M.
Saint Joan
Of
Arc
The Final Battle
On Wednesday, May 30, 1431, the day before Corpus Christi, at seven in the morning, the nineteen-year-old prisoner was told of the verdict of the court. “Will they treat me so horribly?” she sobbed, “Must my body which has never been violated be burned by ashes?” I would prefer to be beheaded seven times than to be burned so.” She dressed in a long white robe and a hood, and was permitted to make her Confession and receive Communion from a Dominican. That act alone was proof of the injustice of her accusers. If her judges truly believed her to be a heretic and apostate as they had condemned her, surely they would not have allowed her to receive the Holy Eucharist!
At nine o’clock, accompanied by two Dominicans, she was led in tears out of the castle and placed into a cart. Even in that dreadful hour, she was not alone. Her Voices were very near her then, supporting and encouraging her.
Escorted by eight hundred English soldiers, armed with swords and staves, she was driven through the dreary streets to the place of execution. A sea of faces surrounded her filling the streets and stairways, and even the rooftops – so much like the throngs that had praised her in Orleans, only now her enemies. No one reached out to her, no one held her or helped her, not even those maidens and sisters in her own country.”
She was taken to the marketplace where, on a raised platform stood the stake and the instruments of torture, the pile of wood, and the executioner ready to do his gruesome work. All the dignitaries of church and state, the military officers, the Church’s prelates and notables stood solemnly around the conflagration where her ashes would later be scattered abroad. Then the Bishop of Beauvais read the last words of condemnation to her. “We excommunicate and reject you, Joan, as a rotten member which taints and contaminates the body. We cast you out of the holy church of God, and we commit you to the secular arm. Take her to the place appointed for her execution and let her be burned!”
“Rouen, Rouen, shall I die here? Art thou to be my last home?”
Saint Joan of Arc
Beside her on the platform stood Cauchon and the other prelates in the rich vestments of their sacred office, the civil authorities, and the soldiers of the wood. Tens of thousands watched her when the “Savior of France,” the Maid of Orleans, the heroine they had loved and sought after, was taken to an unjust death. Save for the weeping of women and the sobbing of children, a strange silence reigned through the city. “Rouen, Rouen, shall I die here? Art thou to be my last home?” Her haunting cry must have chilled the onlookers, for there was no doubt that she was one sent by God.
At the Old Marketplace three stages had been erected, one for Joan, one for her judges and the third, the stake. Having reached the dreaded destination, she mounted the platform opposite her accusers. A judge arose and delivered a long and stern exhortation to her. Joan stood unmoved by his speech but with the sight of the terrible stake before her, she lamented the awful death so near. The pharisaical judge ended by saying, “Joan, the Church casts you off; She can defend you no longer; go in peace.”
Finally Bishop Cauchon, the epitome of conceit, political ambition and worldliness, rose and pronounced the sentence condemning and delivering her to the civil authority as, “…a homicidal viper…the poisoned virus of heresy…this pernicious leprosy…for these causes…we declare that you are a relapsed heretic…we denounce thee as a rotten member…cast out from the Unity of the Church…abandoned to the secular power.” Knowing how untrue all the accusations were and having no human appeal, Joan fell to her knees weeping. In a last effort and vindication herself of those crimes she prayed aloud, “Most Holy Trinity, have mercy upon me! I believe in You. Jesus, memory, Mary, help! Saint Michael, help me! Holy Mother of

God! Blessed Saints in Paradise, help me!” She also begged pardon from all and uttered her forgiveness for the injustices done to her and to those who were guilty of her death. Then she was surrounded by the guards and led before the civil judges. By now the crowd had begun to grumble at the obvious injustice and a great confusion spread among the authorities. Joan was hurriedly given over to the executioners before the secular sentence of death had been given. She was therefore illegally condemned. Only three deadly words were then directed to the executioners, “Do your duty.”
Roughly the soldiers hurried her to the pyre where the wood had been piled around the desolate stake. A paper mitre bearing the accusations of her judges was placed mockingly on her head. As she was violently chained to the stake she shouted out to Cauchon, “Bishop, I die through you!” With death now imminent, she cried out in fear for a crucifix. An English soldier made a cross out of two sticks and handed it to her; she kissed it and clasped it to her heart. Meanwhile one of the Dominicans raced to the church to fetch a crucifix. On his return Joan asked him to hold it up before her. As the fire began to crackle and smoke, she told him however, to move away from the flames so he might not be hurt. He fixed the crucifix on the end of a long pole and held it before her eyes above the flames as long as she could see it.
Soon the flames were rising and lashing towards her. For one last time she looked out over the stricken city and sobbing, called out, “Rouen, Rouen, much do I fear you will suffer from my death.” Then from amid the mounting flames, her voice was heard clear and audible in supreme justification of her faith and mission. She declared that she was not a heretic, an enchantress or an idolater, as the writing accused her; that all she had done had been by the command of God. Her words reached the crowd, now on their knees, “My Voices were from God,” she cried, “they have not deceived me!”
Finally the roaring blaze surrounded her, hid her from view. Above the hiss of the fire, and the tears and lamenting cries of the crowd, the last cry of the brave, young Joan of Arc was heard clearly, “Jesus! Jesus!”
“We have burnt a saint!” “We are lost.”
A terrified Soldier
At last the final battle of the warrior girl was over. Her mission was complete, and triumphantly her pure soul sped heavenward to receive the martyr’s crown and her eternal reward. And when the crowd had dispersed, the judges had gone from the Old Marketplace, the soldiers set to disposing of the remains from the smoldering fire. At the base of the stake, mid the ashes, was found the noble heart of the Maid, intact and full of blood. In vain the English soldiers tried to burn it with oil, sulfur and charcoal, but the only remaining relic of the brave young martyr could not be destroyed. “We have burnt a saint!” exclaimed one of the soldiers. “We are lost.” Terrified, they gathered her heart and ashes into a bag, took it to a bridge over the Seine and cast it into the river.
Saint Joan of Arc - The Indestructible Heroine
The story of Saint Joan of Arc is the story of a deeply religious French girl who was called by God to enter politics. She was condemned to death by a bishop who instead of being religious, was deeply political; called by men to disregard God. It is a mystifying story where, almost against her will, Joan enters a public arena at God’s command to restore a procrastinating, weak and corrupt king to his legal throne and to rout the political enemies of her country through gory battles. She was not just a symbol to her armies, she was their strategist, their reformer, their divinely appointed General. She gave an example of religion’s influence and revealed God’s mercy and solicitude for the daily plight of the common man. For although Joan of Arc was solely responsible for the crowning of the Dauphin, liberating the French people from the tyranny of foreigners and unifying France under one rule was the triumph of her mission.
But Saint Joan of Arc life did not end in the pyre of Rouen. Her example lives on even today. Her life shows us that God does not abandon His little people, the common man; that He will confound the strong and the mighty, raising the little and forsaken to do His work; that it does not take money and power to achieve the lasting things of life. It merely takes a willing and simple faith to hear the voices of Divine inspiration and the selflessness to answer them.