During her life, the medieval personage known as Jeanne d’Arc in French and Joan of Arc in English never called herself by that name. When she was born, about 1412, surnames were still in flux. People were known chiefly by their first names, with the addition of their place of birth, some physical characteristic, or a word associated with an achievement they were proud of. Joan testified that in her part of the country, sons would take the father’s last name and daughters would take the mother’s. Joan’s father was known as Jacques Dart or Darc. Even more spelling variations occur in the original documents: Dars, Day, Dai, Darx, Darc, Tarc, and Tard. The familiar modern form, “d’Arc,” with the apostrophe, is a modern spelling that caught on in the nineteenth century.
Joan’s mother was known by two surnames: Isabeau of Vauthon and Isa-beau Romee. Vauthon was her place of birth. She may have adopted the name Romee to celebrate having completed a pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome. It cannot be proven that she ever traveled the 560 miles from Dom-remy (where Joan was born) to Rome, but while her daughter was being interrogated at Poitiers in 1429, Isabeau was on a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Virgin in the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, about 250 miles from home. When Joan left her family, she broke with local custom by choosing a different surname. She referred to herself as “Jehanne la Pucelle.” Usually translated as “maid/maiden” or “virgin,” the word pucelle as Joan used it meant a young girl who was not quite a woman. Being a pucelle was a temporary state. Unlike other medieval saints, for whom the vow of virginity was for life, Joan was committed to virginity only for the duration of her mission. By calling herself “la Pucelle” Joan implied her virginity but also assumed a special status between childhood and mature womanhood that enabled her to act outside the female sphere.
Joan belonged to the peasant class and is often depicted in art as living in poverty, but her father was not a poor man. He and his family lived in a two-story stone house next to the village church. Joan had one sister, Catherine, and three brothers. The eldest boy, Jacquemin, had already left home by 1429, when Joan took up her mission, and Catherine is thought to have died shortly before. The other brothers, Jean and Pierre, followed Joan into the king’s service and eventually changed their names as well. When the family was ennobled at the end of 1430, Jean and Pierre took the surname du Lys.
Jacques Darc was not only well-to-do, he was a village spokesman who had occasion to convey messages to and from the French military governor stationed in the town of Vaucouleurs, 10 miles from Domremy. His house would have been a frequent meeting place for villagers, travelers, and messengers. Joan would have grown up overhearing discussions of current affairs. When she set off on her mission at the age of 16 or so, she was well-informed as to the political situation in France. For example, she knew quite a lot about the dauphin and his problems. “Dauphin” was a title held by the heir to the French throne. The dauphin Charles had been disinherited in 1420 by the Treaty of Troyes, which transferred the succession to the children of his sister Catherine and King Henry V of England; the dauphin was trying to ensure the support of the Scots by arranging a marriage between his son Louis and a Scots princess; when both Kings Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422, the dauphin Charles retreated south of the river Loire and started signing himself Charles VII. He set up headquarters south of the Loire and relied heavily on Scottish troops. The fact that the dauphin had not been officially crowned troubled Joan.
The ceremonial anointing of a king symbolizes divine approval. In Joan’s mind, and in those of many of her contemporaries, the dauphin would not be the true king of France until he was anointed with sacred oil kept in the cathedral city of Reims. Nearly every French monarch from the time of Clovis (ca. 466-511) had been crowned at Reims. According to a widely believed legend, the oil for the anointing of French kings had come directly from heaven. Guarded between coronations in the Abbey of Saint-Remi in Reims, the oil was stored in an ancient vial called the “Sainte Ampoule” (“Holy Ampulla”) and carried to the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Reims for the ceremony. The city, spelled “Rheims” in Joan’s day, had been named for Saint Remy, the bishop who converted Clovis and his Frankish subjects to Catholic Christianity in 496. Joan’s own church in Domremy was dedicated to Saint Remy, and the village name reflected the saint’s name as well. Not only did Charles need to be crowned, he needed to be crowned at Reims—not an easy proposition because the cathedral city lay deep in enemy territory.
It is not surprising that Joan occupied her adolescent mind with thoughts of the plight of France. She had grown up against a background of war and talk of war. Her oldest relatives would not have been able to remember a time of peace. When Joan was three years old, the disastrous battle of Agincourt inflicted tremendous losses on the French. As many as 10,000 Frenchmen died, and perhaps as many as 2,000 noblemen were taken prisoner and held for ransom, among them Charles duke of Orleans, the dauphin’s first cousin.
Eight-year-old Joan would have heard her family and neighbors talking about the Treaty of Troyes, by which King Charles VI and his queen disinherited their own son, marrying the dauphin’s sister Catherine to the English king Henry V. Upon the death of Charles VI, the child of Henry and Catherine would succeed to the throne of France. Against this background of war and unrest, Joan grew into adolescence.
Joan’s home was located in what were called the “marches” of Lorraine, borderlands between the kingdom of France and the possessions of the duke of Burgundy. Charles VII and Duke Philip of Burgundy, though both members of the French royal family, were enemies because of a blood feud beginning in 1403 when Philip’s father murdered Charles’s uncle, the duke of Orleans. The feud created warring political parties known as the Burgundians (who supported Burgundy) and the Armagnacs (supporters of the duke of Orleans). The feud worsened in 1418 when Philip’s father was murdered by some of Charles’s officers. Philip allied himself with the English, creating an Anglo-Burgundian party that supported the English claim to the French throne.
In Joan’s neighborhood, local landowners such as the dukes of Bar and Lorraine owed their allegiance to the duke of Burgundy, but villagers and townspeople were of mixed loyalties. The sympathies of the villagers of Domremy and the adjacent village of Greux lay with the French king, but just across the River Meuse from Domremy, the villagers of Maxey considered themselves Burgundians. Sometimes the village boys acted out their parents’ political conflicts by getting into fights with one another.
Although not attacked directly until 1428, the village of Domremy was often under the threat of attack by French or Burgundian raiders, and nearby skirmishes affected Joan’s family and friends. In 1412 the duke of Lorraine attempted to seize the French town of Neufchateau, six miles from Domremy. When Joan was about seven years old, a Burgundian raider captured 30 prominent men of the district, among them the husband of one of Joan’s godmothers, and held them for ransom. In 1423 the husband of one of Joan’s cousins was killed in a French action against the town of Sermaize. The captain in charge of the action was a mercenary soldier named Etienne de Vig-noles, better known as “La Hire.” In 1429 La Hire and Joan would lead a charge together against the English at Orleans. At about the same time, another of Joan’s future comrades-in-arms, the mercenary Poton de Xaintrailles, was fighting in the employ of the duke of Burgundy. Joan’s continual awareness of war and her deep religious sensibility combined to create the state of mind that sent her to the aid of the dauphin.
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