St. Joan, 13, hears a voice she hides from her father

DOMREMY, summer 1424 or 1425 AD — Saint Joan of Arc was about thirteen when she heard a voice in her father’s garden. It was the middle of a summer day. The voice came from her right, from the direction of the village church. A light nearly always came with it, and usually it was a great one. She was very frightened.

It was 1424 or 1425 AD, in Domremy, a farming village on the river Meuse in the east of France. Only the graveyard lay between the garden and the church. Her father was Jacques d’Arc, and her mother was Isabelle. They weren’t rich.

St. Joan told the story of that noon years later, when she was nineteen. She told it to the churchmen who put her on trial at Rouen.

Three times before she knew

The voice came back. The first time she heard it, St. Joan vowed to stay a virgin for as long as God wished. The third time, she knew it was the voice of an angel. She said the first to come to her was Saint Michael the Archangel. He came with many angels from heaven. When the angels went away, she kissed the ground where they had stood.

At first the voice asked for simple things. It taught her to be good and to go to church often. Then it told her something much harder: she must go into France.

Domremy was in France, but France was at war. The English had taken much of the north of the country. The Burgundians, who followed the Duke of Burgundy, fought on the English side. Domremy stayed loyal to Charles, the son of the last French king. Charles had not yet been crowned.

Going into France meant leaving her village on the border and travelling all the way to Charles. St. Joan later told a relative by marriage, Durand Laxart, why she was going. She wanted to get Charles crowned.

Once or twice a week the voice told her she had to leave. After that, she kept away from the village games and dancing as much as she could. Later the voice told her to go to Robert de Baudricourt, the captain of the nearby town of Vaucouleurs. He would give her men to travel with her. St. Joan answered the voice that she was a poor girl who knew nothing about riding a horse or fighting.

Nobody in Domremy knew

St. Joan didn’t tell any priest about the voices. She was afraid the Burgundians would stop her on the road. Most of all, she was afraid her father would stop her.

More than two years after the voices began, Jacques d’Arc dreamed that his daughter would go off with soldiers. Her mother told St. Joan what her father had said to her brothers: “In truth, if I thought this thing would happen which I have dreamed about my daughter, I should want you to drown her; and if you would not, I would drown her myself.” After that, her parents kept a close watch on her.

The voices left it up to St. Joan whether to tell her parents. She said she wouldn’t have told them for anything.

In the spring of 1428 AD, when she was sixteen, Durand Laxart came to fetch her from her father’s house. She told her father she was going to the village of Burey to look after Durand Laxart’s wife. Six weeks later, Durand Laxart took her to Robert de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs. The captain told Durand Laxart again and again to take her home to her father. He also said Durand Laxart should give her a good slap. She went home.

In October 1428 AD the English surrounded Orleans, a city on the river Loire that was loyal to Charles. The voice told St. Joan she must end the siege. Early in 1429 AD, at seventeen, she left Domremy for Vaucouleurs again. This time she stayed.

Her friend Hauviette found out only after she had gone. Hauviette said years later: “I did not know of Jeanne’s departure: I wept much; I loved her dearly for her goodness and because she was my friend.”

St. Joan’s father and mother were frantic when she left. She said she had obeyed them in everything else. Afterwards she wrote to them, and they forgave her.