St. Joan of Arc — The Saint Officially Burned Over a Change of Clothes

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A 17-year-old peasant girl walked into a royal
court full of grown men in the middle of a

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war and told the future King of France that
God had sent her to save his country. He should

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have laughed her out of the room. Instead, within
a year, she had broken a siege the greatest

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generals in France couldn't break and put a
crown on his head himself. Two years after

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that, the same country she saved burned her
alive. And here's the detail almost nobody

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remembers correctly. By our own sworn testimony,
in our own words, under oath, she never killed

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a single person.

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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints. This is episode 19. If you're new here,

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welcome to the porch. Pull up a chair, grab
a cup of coffee or a lemonade and stick around.

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We look at a new saint every Thursday. Quick
heads up, I am still knee deep in moving boxes,

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so bear with me things sound a little different
around here for just a few more weeks. And

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before we get into it, if you haven't already,
hit follow or subscribe wherever you are listening.

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takes five seconds and means a lot to a show
like this. Stick with me today because before

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we are done, we're going to play another round
of True or Legend and sort out what's actually

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verified about Joan of Arc from what's been
just repeated so many times, it sounds true.

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And then we'll land back on the porch, which
if I'm honest, is my favorite part of doing

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the show every week. You already know this name.
This is the story of St. Joan of Arc. Joan

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was born around 1412 in a small farming village
called Donnerymi in the northeast of France.

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Her father was a tenant farmer. Nobody in that
family had ever touched a sword or sat in a

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royal court or expected to matter to anyone
outside their own village. France, meanwhile,

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was in the middle of falling apart. The Hundred
Years War had been dragging on for generations

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and by the time Joan was a teenager, England...
backed by a powerful fraction of French nobles

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who had turned against their own king, controlled
most of the North, including Paris itself.

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The rightful heir to the French throne, a young
man named Charles, hadn't been officially

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crowned. He was just the dolphin, a king in
name only, hiding out in the parts of France

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the English hadn't taken yet. Around the age
of 13, standing in her father's garden, Joan

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said she heard a voice, then more than one.
She would later testify that the voices belong

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to the St. Michael the Archangel, St. Catherine
of Alexandria, and St. Margaret of Antioch.

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At first, she said the message was simple. Pray
more, go to church, live a good life, ordinary

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advice for a devout peasant girl. But the message
didn't stay simple. Over the next few years,

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it sharpened into something enormous. Go to
the Dauphin. help him drive the English out

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of France, see him properly crowned at Reims,
the city where French kings had been crowned

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for centuries, a city currently sitting deep
inside enemy territory. A 13-year-old girl

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who couldn't read or write was hearing that
she was supposed to fix a war that had already

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broken two generations of professional soldiers.
Here's something the popular image of Joan

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of Arc usually skips right past. Before she
ever picked up a weapon, her hardest fight

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was just getting anyone with power to take her
seriously. She first went to a local garrison

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commander named Robert de Baudricourt and told
him God wanted her to see the Dauphin. His

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answer, according to the record, was to tell
her cousin to take her home and give her a

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good whipping. She went back anyway. This time
she told Baudricourt something specific, that

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the King's army had just suffered a defeat outside
Orleans. Days later, arrived confirming she

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had been right before any messenger could possibly
have reached her with that news first. That's

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what finally got Baudricourt's attention. He
agreed to send her to the Dauphin with an armed

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escort on an 11-day ride through hostile territory.
To make the journey safer, Joan cut her hair

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short and dressed as a man, a practical decision
for travel that would come back around later

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in the story in a much darker way. When she
arrived at the royal court in the town of Shenan,

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the Dauphin decided to test her. According to
multiple accounts from the period, he disguised

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himself among his own courtiers and put someone
else in his place so that if Joan really had

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been sent by God, she would have known the real
king without being told. She walked into that

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crowded room and went straight to Charles, bowing
to him immediately and not to decoy. I want

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to be honest with you about this detail though.
That part of the story comes from later storytellers,

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not from Joan's own sworn trial testimony. Under
oath, she was tight-lipped about it, saying

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only that she'd given the king a private sign
nobody else knew about. So the disguise and

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decoy version is a long-standing historical
tradition. Genuinely old, genuinely widely

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reported, but not something she confirmed herself
under oath in her own words. Whatever actually

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happened in that room, well, it worked and Charles
gave her the troops. In the spring of 1429,

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Joan rode toward the besieged city of Orleans,
the key to whether France would survive as

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an independent country or not. She told the
king ahead of time that she would be wounded

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by an arrow during the fighting and she was.
Within days, the siege that had been going

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on for months was broken. French morale, which
had been collapsing for years, turned almost

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overnight. City after city that had surrendered
to the English began declaring for Charles

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instead. That July, Joan got the things she'd
been promised from the very beginning. Charles

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was crowned King of France in the cathedral
at Reims with Joan standing beside him. A peasant

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girl who couldn't read had walked a broken king
into the one ceremony that made him legitimate

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in the eyes of his own country. Joan's momentum
didn't last. In 1430, during a skirmish outside

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the town of Campion, she was captured by Burgundian
forces, Frenchmen allied with the English.

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And instead of ransoming her back to her own
king the way captured nobility usually were,

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the Burgundians sold her to the English. Now,
the English couldn't simply execute her as

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a prisoner of war. That would have made her
a martyr for the French cause, and worse, it

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would have raised an uncomfortable question.
If Joan was a fraud or a witch, then what did

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that make the king she had crowned? So instead,
they needed her refuted, condemned by the

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church itself, not just by a battlefield enemy.
They arranged a trial for heresy in front of

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a church court-stacked with a pro-English clergy,
led by a bishop named Pierre Cochon, who was,

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not coincidentally, being paid by the English
crown for his trouble. The trial? ran for months.

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Joan, a teenage girl with no formal education,
was interrogated again and again by trained

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theologians trying to trap her into a sacrilegious
statement. Over and over, the record shows

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her answering with a kind of sharpness that
nobody expected. There's a specific exchange

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from the trial worth sitting with for a second.
She was asked, point blank, whether she believed

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she was in a state of grace, meaning roughly,
whether God approved of her. It's a theological

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trap with no safe answer. Say yes, and you have
committed the sin of presumption, claiming

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certainty only God can know. Say no, and you
have just confessed to being outside God's

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favor, exactly the kind of admission her judges
needed to convict her of heresy. A trained

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theologian could spend years being coached on
how to dodge that question. Joan, a teenager,

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who had never spent a second in a classroom
answered, if she wasn't in God's grace, she

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prayed God would put her there. And if she was,
she prayed God would keep her there. Even the

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men trying to convict her reportedly had no
good response to that. Eventually, worn down

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after months of this, she signed a confession
recanting her claims. But then within days,

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she went back to wearing men's clothing. Clothing?
she had been explicitly forbidden from wearing

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again. And that single detail, that specific
relapse, became the official charge that sent

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her to be condemned. On May 30th, 1431, Joan
was led into the marketplace of Rouen and burned

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at the stake. She was around 19 years old. Witnesses
reported that she asked for a cross to hold

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as she died and that she repeatedly called out
the name of Jesus. until she could no longer

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speak. She was 19. She led an army, crowned
a king, and reshaped the outcome of a war that

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had already outlasted her own parents' entire
lifetimes. And it had taken barely two years,

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start to finish. Before we head back to the
porch, let's play our game again. Three claims

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about Joan. Some hold up under real scrutiny,
some do not. Claim number one, in her own sworn

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trial testimony, stated that she had never
personally killed anyone in battle and that

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she carried her banner instead of a weapon specifically
to avoid it. Claim number two, when Charles

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VII first tested Joan by disguising himself
among his courtiers, Joan herself later confirmed

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under oath in detail exactly how she recognized
him. Claim number three, The official charge

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that sent Joan back to be executed was that
she had gone back to wearing a men's clothing

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after her greening to stop. All right, got your
guesses? Here we go. Claim number one is true,

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and it's not even a matter of interpretation.
This is Joan in her own words from the trial

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record itself, and I quote, I loved my banner
40 times better than my sword. And when I went

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against my enemy, I carried my banner myself.
lest I kill any, I have never killed a man."

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The armored warrior swinging a sword through
enemy lines is the image most of us have in

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our heads, but it isn't the one she gave us
herself. Claim number two is legend, or at

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least unconfirmed. The disguise story is old
and told by multiple storytellers close to

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her own lifetime. I'm not saying it's invented
out of nothing, But when Joan herself was asked

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about it under oath at trial, she gave almost
nothing away. She said only that she'd given

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the king a private sign. The vivid specific
version, Joan striding past the decoy straight

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to the real king, comes from secondhand accounts,
not her own sworn words. Claim number three

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is true, and it's the one that should bother
you a little. The official church record really

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does anchor her final condemnation on the technicality
of her clothing. But most historians don't

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think that was really about fabric. They think
the men running the trial wanted her discredited

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and controlled, and the relapse gave them the
excuse they needed. Joan's own reason for putting

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the clothing back on was likely far more practical.
It may have offered real protection from assault.

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Alone in a cell with no other women present.
On paper though, it is the official church

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record. Clothing is what did it. All right,
back to the porch. The thing that keeps catching

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me about Joan isn't the war or even the fire.
It's that one line, I have never killed a man.

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Here's a girl. who did more to turn a war around
than most generals manage in a lifetime. And

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when she finally got to describe herself in
her own words, she didn't reach for the sword,

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she reached for her banner, the thing that let
her fight without killing anyone. That's not

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how we usually tell her story. We want the warrior,
the armor, the sword, the girl who did the

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violent thing and did it better than the men
around her. It's a cleaner story. If it's a

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poster, it's just not the story she told about
herself. I think there's something worth sitting

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within that gap between the story people remember
and the story the person actually lived. Most

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of us aren't going to lead an army or get burned
at a stake for it, but most of us have some

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version of that same gap. The version of you
other people decided on long time ago and the

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quieter, truer version underneath it that only
you actually know. Joan didn't get to correct

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a record in her own lifetime. It took 25 years
and a pope's authority just to get the church

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to admit what she had said all along was true.
Most of us won't wait that long, but I think

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it's the same instinct. When you know what's
true about yourself, you don't need the crowd's

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version to win. You just keep telling the truth.
plainly and let it outlast whoever's got the

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wrong story. And this doesn't show up only in
the big dramatic version. It shows up in smaller

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rooms too. It's the version of you a family
member decided on years ago and never bothered

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updating. It's a bad year at a job that still
follows you around long after you have become

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somebody different. It's getting called the
difficult one or the one who never follows

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through over something that stopped being true
before anybody noticed. Nobody's calling a

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tribunal for that. It just gets corrected quietly
by you being the truer version out loud in

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ordinary rooms for long enough that people can't
keep ignoring it. That's a slower kind of courage

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than standing in front of a bishop who wants
you dead. I don't think it's a smaller one.

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Nobody's writing it down while it's happening,
So here's what I'm sitting with this week.

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Where's the gap? In your own life, between what
people assume about you and what you actually

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know is true. And are you willing to just keep
saying the quieter, truer thing, even if nobody's

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ready to believe it yet? It is now time for
the closing prayer. Lord, thank you for Joan

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and for the courage it took to stand in front
of grown men trying to destroy her and simply

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keep telling the truth. For anyone listening
who feels like the world has decided who they

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are without ever actually asking, give them
Joan's steadiness. Let them keep telling the

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truth about themselves patiently, even if it
takes 25 years for anyone else to believe it.

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Amen. Saint Joan of Arc is recognized as the
patron saint of France, of soldiers and of

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prisoners and those persecuted for their faith.
She was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict

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XV. Her feast day is celebrated on May 30th.
Well, that is episode 19. If this one surprised

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you, the way it surprised me putting it together,
send it to somebody who thinks they already

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know the story of Joan of Arc. Next week, we
are back to an unknown saint, and I promise

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you, once you hear this one, you will wonder
why you never knew the name before. I'm John

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O'Connor, thanks for sitting on the porch with
me, and I will see you next week.