Condemned as a Heretic, Canonized as a Saint

Joan of Arc is one of the few figures the Church first burned and later made a saint, and the reversal is the heart of her story. A peasant girl from Domremy, she reported hearing the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret directing her to drive the English from France and see the dauphin crowned. Against every expectation she was given troops, relieved the siege of Orleans in 1429, and stood beside Charles VII at his coronation at Reims, a run of successes that turned the Hundred Years' War.

Captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English, she was tried by a pro-English ecclesiastical court on charges of heresy and witchcraft, the decisive count being her wearing of men's clothing and her claim of direct divine guidance over the Church's authority. She was burned at Rouen in 1431, aged about nineteen. A retrial ordered by the papacy in 1456 annulled the verdict; she was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. The same voices that a court called demonic the Church later recognized as holy, a case study in how heresy and sanctity can be verdicts on the identical life.