Joan of arc long biography youtube

Saint Joan of Arc or Jeanne la Pucelle (Joan the Maid) as she preferred to be called lived for only nineteen years but the brilliance of her life continues to inspire and amaze people even today.

Joan was the youngest person in history to lead the armies of a nation at only seventeen and her victories at Orleans and Patay are considered among the greatest in all of military history. Despite her great successes, Joan was captured and put on trial for heresy by her English enemies under the auspices of a Church trial.

She was ultimately convicted and declared a relapsed heretic and burned at the stake on May 30, 1430. Twenty-six years later another trial conducted by the Church (today's Roman Catholic Church) overturned the ruling of the first trial and declared that Joan was a martyr who had been wrongly executed by corrupt partisan clergy who abused a Church trial for secular purposes.

In 1920 Joan was officially canonized a Saint by the Roman Catholic