St. Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc (c. 1412 – 30 May 1431) was born to a peasant family at Domrémy in Lorraine during the Hundred Years' War. From about the age of thirteen she reported hearing the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret urging her to aid the dauphin Charles and free France from English domination. Gaining an audience with him, she was given troops and, clad in armor, helped lift the siege of Orléans in 1429 and led the French to victory at Patay, opening the way for Charles VII's coronation at Reims.

Captured by Burgundian forces and sold to the English, she was tried by a pro-English ecclesiastical court on charges of heresy and witchcraft, condemned in a gravely irregular proceeding, and burned at the stake at Rouen at about nineteen, dying with the name of Jesus on her lips. A quarter-century later a papal-sanctioned retrial annulled her condemnation and declared her innocent. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 and is a patroness of France and of soldiers, and one of the most beloved saints of Christendom.