FRENCH SAINT Joan’s famous white standard was adorned with lilies, a flower traditionally associated with the French monarchy for whom she was fighting
As the young peasant, Jeanne d’Arc, was led up to the place where she was to be burned at the stake, she cried to the heavens, pleading for God’s good grace. Her crime? Technically, it was the ‘heretical’ offence of cross-dressing, but she had been a marked woman for a while. After all, a woman who humiliated the almighty English during the Hundred Years’ War could not be let off easily.
The daughter of a farmer, Joan spent her childhood in the countryside tending to the animals
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