MUSIC from the film: 'The Passion of Joan of Arc'
Joan of Arc
by Gaston Bussiere
by Gaston Bussiere
She asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War.
The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission.
She gained prominence when she overcame the light regard of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.
Joan of Arc, c. 1485.
The only known portrait for which she sat has not survived,
so all depictions of her represent artistic license.
The renewed French confidence outlasted her own brief career. She refused to leave the field when she was wounded during an attempt to recapture Paris that autumn.
Hampered by court intrigues, she led only minor companies from then onward and fell prisoner at a skirmish near Compiègne the following spring. A politically motivated trial convicted her of heresy.
The English regent John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford had her burnt at the stake in Rouen. She had been the heroine of her country at the age of seventeen and died at just nineteen.
Some twenty-four years later Pope Callixtus III reopened the case and a new finding overturned the original conviction. Her piety to the end impressed the retrial court. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 16 May 1920.
Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory.
Major writers and composers who have created works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Schiller, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Twain, Shaw, Brecht and Honegger. Depictions of her continue in film, television, and song.
-->
