Today, on the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, Nicholas Sarkozy is travelling to the Meuse and Vosges regions in north eastern France to visit several symbolic places associated with the life of the maid of Orléans.

Joan of Arc was born on January 6th 1412 in the village of Dorémy in the Lorraine region. The village was later renamed Dorémy-la-Pucelle (the maid) after Joan of Arc’s nickname ‘La Pucelle d’Orléans’ (‘the maid of Orléans’). She was only 19 years old when the English burned her at the stake as a heretic in Rouen on May 30th 1431. She soon became a symbol of the French resistance to the British during the Hundred Years War and has been an incarnation of French national identity for the past 600 years. She was canonised in 1920 and there are over 20,000 books about her in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Sarkozy previously glorified Joan of Arc during his presidential campaign in 2007. Today, he will visit both her birthplace in Dorémy as well as Vaucouleurs, where Joan of Arc stayed for several months in 1428 and 1429 while she sought permission to visit the royal court of Charles VII of France. 

The modern French movement that makes most reference to Joan of Arc, however, is the far right National Front party. Tomorrow, the National Front will organise its own commemorative event in Paris attended by Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine Le Pen, who is a candidate for the 2012 presidential elections.

Joan of Arc was, first of all, a symbol of the right-wing Action Française, the French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois during the Dreyfus Affair, until the rise of the National Front in the 1980s. For more than twenty years, the National Front has organised each year on May 1st a commemorative march in her honour, which ends at the Place des Pyramides in the 1st arrondissement of Paris where there is an equestrian statue of Joan of Arc. Tomorrow’s event will also be held at the Place des Pyramides.    

A video in an article published on the website of Liberation shows Joan of Arc's birthplace in Dorémy and features interviews with both the mayor of the village and the curator of the local museum.  

From the archive

Bikinis and Breastplates: Icons of France

What do Joan of Arc, the saint, and Brigitte Bardot, the film star, have in common? Richard Vinen ponders the political significance of two of France’s most potent female icons and finds there is more to them than meets the eye.

The Other Joan of Arc

The turning point in the reconquest of France from the English is traditionally believed to have coincided with the career of Joan of Arc. But an alternative account places the beautiful, clever and determined Queen Yolande of Aragon at the heart of the diplomatic and military campaigns that united 15th-century France. Margaret L. Kekewich charts her career.