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Photo: Wikimedia Commons · Joan of Arc

Rouen

Joan of Arc · France

Joan was a farm girl from Domrémy who heard voices telling her to save France during the Hundred Years' War. At seventeen she helped lift the siege of Orléans and brought Charles VII to his coronation in Reims. Captured and handed over to the English, she was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in the old market square of Rouen in 1431, aged 19. Today a modern church dedicated to her, with a roof like flames, stands on that square.

Did you know?

Twenty-five years later a new trial declared her innocent. She was made a saint in 1920.

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An inspiring story

The trick question

How do you answer when every answer is a trap?

At her trial in Rouen in 1431, learned judges tried to trap the uneducated Joan with one question: 'Do you know if you are in God's grace?' Saying yes would be pride; saying no would be admitting guilt. The 19-year-old answered: 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God keep me there.' Why did that work? Because she did not claim to be sure of herself, only of God. Those present remembered how stunned her judges were.

They condemned her anyway, and she was burned. Twenty-five years later a new trial declared her innocent.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God keep me there.Joan of Arc, 24 February 1431

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