(Roughly) Daily

One of Lapham’s Quarterly‘s  amusing– and remedially instructive– collection of elder laments tough the ages… The worrisome fashions of younger generations: “Kids These Days.”

* Hesiod

###

As we Boomers say OK, we might recall that it was on this date in 1430 that then 18 year old Joan of Arc was captured.  A heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years’ War, she had claimed to have received visions of the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination.  In 1429, the unanointed Charles VII sent Joan to the Siege of Orléans as part of a relief army.  She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later, and became both a rallying point and a military leader.  Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII’s consecration at Reims– a boost to French morale that helped pave the way the way for the eventual French victory.

But in the meantime, on this date in 1430, Joan was captured by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English, and handed over to them.  She was tried by the pro-English bishop Pierre Cauchon on a variety of charges.  After Cauchon declared her guilty, she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, dying at nineteen years of age.

In 1456, a Catholic inquisitorial court examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr; Joan was canonized by the Church in 1920.

source