Due to inconsistent record keeping and different contemporary customs, the name of Joan of Arc at birth is not known for certain.
Due to inconsistent record keeping and different contemporary customs, the name of Joan of Arc at birth is not known for certain.
Joan of Arc did not hail from a place called Arc, but was born and raised in the village of Domrémy in what was then the northeastern frontier of the Kingdom of France. [1] In the English language her first name has been repeated as Joan since the fifteenth century because that was the only English equivalent for the feminine form of John during her lifetime. Her surviving signatures are all spelled in the middle French form Jehanne without surname. In modern French, her name is always rendered as Jeanne d'Arc, reflecting spelling changes due to the evolution of the language over time. Her given name at birth is also sometimes written as "Jeanneton" [2] [3] or "Jeannette", with Joan of Arc possibly having removed the diminutive suffix -eton or -ette in her teenage years. [4]
The surname of Arc is a translation of d'Arc, which itself is a nineteenth-century French approximation of her father's name. Apostrophes were never used in fifteenth-century French surnames, which sometimes leads to confusion between place names and other names that begin with the letter D. Based on Latin records, which do reflect a difference, her father's name was more likely Darc. [2] [3] Spelling was also phonetic and original records produce his surname in at least nine different forms, such as Dars, Day, Darx, Dare, Tarc, Tart or Dart. [5] [6]
To further complicate matters, surnames were not universal in the fifteenth century and surname inheritance did not necessarily follow modern patterns. Joan of Arc testified at her trial that the local custom in her native region was for girls to use their mothers' surname. Joan's mother was known both as Isabelle Romée and Isabelle de Vouthon, with both having slight variations in spelling the given name and surname in different documents. No surviving record from Joan's lifetime shows that she used either her mother's or her father's surname, but she often referred to herself as la Pucelle, which roughly translates as the Maiden. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, when Jeanne d'Arc and Joan of Arc became standard, literature and artistic works that refer to her often describe her as la Pucelle or the Maid of Orléans. Her native village has been renamed Domrémy-la-Pucelle in reflection of that tradition. [6]
Joan appears, in a negative light, in William Shakespeare's late sixteenth-century play Henry VI, Part 1 . In the play she is referred to mainly as Joan La Pucelle and Joan, but also twice as Joan of Arc.
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"Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling, is–that Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name Darc, in 1612. But what of that? Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by printers: in France, much more so."
—Thomas De Quincey, Joan of Arc [7]
In the bull of her canonization, Divina Disponente of 16 May 1920, Pope Benedict XV consistently gave her name in Latin as "Ioanna de Arc", "Ioanna" being the feminine nominative singular form of Ioannes . [8] Although it has been given elsewhere as "Ioanna Arcensis", "Arcensis" being in the nominative case and denoting "of Arc", Roman Catholic saints denominated toponymically in Latin generally are denominated "de" (which takes the ablative case) followed by the toponym, though, in post-classical Latin usage, "de" was used patronymically on occasion as well. In any case, in translating foreign names that did not have commonly recognized Latin equivalents, the oblique forms of the native names were also used on occasion. Due to the ambiguous meaning of the surname, the Latin "de Arc" is likely not a true toponym, but rather the Latinization of "d'Arc", despite the absence of apostrophes in French surnames during the life of St. Joan.
Joan of Arc is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the Hundred Years' War. Claiming to be acting under divine guidance, she became a military leader who transcended gender roles and gained recognition as a savior of France.
The siege of Orléans was the watershed of the Hundred Years' War between France and England. The siege took place at the pinnacle of English power during the later stages of the war. The city held strategic and symbolic significance to both sides of the conflict. The consensus among contemporaries was that the English regent, John of Lancaster, would have succeeded in realising his brother the English king Henry V's dream of conquering all of France if Orléans fell. For half a year the English and their French allies appeared to be winning, but the siege collapsed nine days after the arrival of Joan of Arc.
Vosges is a department in the Grand Est region, Northeastern France. It covers part of the Vosges mountain range, after which it is named. Vosges consists of three arrondissements, 17 cantons and 507 communes, including Domrémy-la-Pucelle, where Joan of Arc was born. In 2019, it had a population of 364,499 with an area of 5,874 km2 ; its prefecture is Épinal.
Domrémy-la-Pucelle is a commune in the Vosges department in Grand Est in northeastern France.
Joan of Arc (1412–1431) was formally canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on 16 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV in his bull Divina disponente, which concluded the canonization process that the Sacred Congregation of Rites instigated after a petition of 1869 of the French Catholic hierarchy. Although pro-English clergy had Joan burnt at the stake for heresy in 1431, she was rehabilitated in 1456 after a posthumous retrial. Subsequently, she became a folk saint among French Catholics and soldiers inspired by her story of being commanded by God to fight for France against England. Many French regimes encouraged her cult, and the Third Republic was sympathetic to the canonization petition prior to the 1905 separation of church and state.
Étienne de Vignolles, Sieur de Montmorillon, Chatelain de Longueville, also known as La Hire, was a French military commander during the Hundred Years' War.
Domremy or Domrémy is part of the name of several communes in France:
Isabelle Romée, also known as Isabelle de Vouthon and Isabelle d'Arc (1377–1458) and Ysabeau Romee, was the mother of Joan of Arc. She grew up in Vouthon-Bas and later married Jacques d'Arc. The couple moved to Domrémy, where they owned a farm consisting of about 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land. After their daughter's famous exploits in 1429, the family was granted noble status by Charles VII in December of that year. Isabelle moved to Orléans in 1440 after her husband's death and received a pension from the city. She petitioned Pope Nicholas V to reopen the court case that had convicted Joan of heresy, and then, in her seventies, addressed the opening session of the appellate trial at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The appeals court overturned Joan's conviction on 7 July 1456. Isabelle died two years later, probably at Sandillon near Orléans.
Voices of Light is a 1994 musical composition by Richard Einhorn. It was inspired by the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer; live performances of the composition have accompanied screenings of the film. The libretto is based on excerpts from a variety of ancient writings, most of it from medieval female mystics. The text incorporates accusations from Joan of Arc's actual contemporary accusers. The language of this work is a mix of Latin and Middle French.
Jeanne or Joan of France may refer to:
Jean d'Aulon (1390–1458) was a French knight and lord best known for serving alongside Jeanne d'Arc as her soldier, steward, bodyguard, and squire. Some sources incorrectly attribute the role of d'Arc's bodyguard to Gilles de Rais. d'Aulon was an avid and detailed journaler and his records, considered to be honest and straightforward, set the foundation for what we know about Jeanne d'Arc, including her apparent amenorrhea.
Jacquesd'Arc was a farmer from Domrémy, France who was the father of the French military leader and Catholic saint Joan of Arc. D'Arc is most known for being an influence on his daughter Joan's life, developing her leadership abilities through his example as a local government and military leader as well as restricting her ambitions with his controlling behaviour that resulted in a strained relationship between them.
Lionel-Noël Royer was a French painter. He was most famous for painting large scenes of the life of Joan of Arc in the Basilica of Bois-Chenu in Domrémy.
Rouen Castle was a fortified ducal and royal residence in the city of Rouen, capital of the duchy of Normandy, now in France. With the exception of the tower wrongly associated with Joan of Arc, which was restored by Viollet-le-Duc, the castle was destroyed at the end of the 16th century, its stones quarried for other construction.
Agnès Sorel, known by the sobriquet Dame de beauté, was a favourite and chief mistress of King Charles VII of France, by whom she bore four daughters. She is considered the first officially recognized royal mistress of a French king. She was the subject of several contemporary paintings and works of art, including Jean Fouquet's Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels.
The Communauté de communes du Pays de Jeanne is a former administrative association of communes in the Vosges department of eastern France and in the region of Lorraine.
Jeanne d'Arc is an 1874 French gilded bronze equestrian sculpture of Joan of Arc by Emmanuel Frémiet. The outdoor statue is prominently displayed in the Place des Pyramides in Paris.
Joan the Maid is a two-part 1994 French historical film directed by Jacques Rivette. It chronicles the life of Joan of Arc from the French perspective.
Joan of Arc is an 1879 painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage that currently belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; it was previously exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.
Jehanne, or Joan of Arc, is a patron saint of France.