A Teenage Girl Saves France
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
May 16, 1920. Tens of thousands of people surround St. Peter’s Basilica to honor Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who died nearly five hundred years before. Joan’s feats in battle—and her visions of God—have become legendary since her heyday during the Hundred Years' War. And today, the Catholic Church is making her a saint. But Joan was a real person – and while many supported her during her lifetime, many others wanted her dead. Who was this curious figure? And how did her faith turn the tides of a seemingly endless age of violence?
Special thanks to Nancy Goldstone, author of The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc; and Charity Urbanski, associate history professor at the University of Washington.
** This episode originally aired May 15, 2023.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.5 | History this week. May 16th, 1920. |
| 0:09.8 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:15.4 | The streets of Rome are crowded with cars, |
| 0:18.8 | as tens of thousands of people make their way towards St. Peter's |
| 0:24.1 | Basilica. A reporter observing the scene says you can spot cardinals behind some of the car windows |
| 0:31.2 | decked out in their crimson robes, plus the occasional Monsignor in purple. On foot, all streaming in the same direction, there are monks and nuns and ordinary people. |
| 0:45.3 | Some of Rome's children have clambered up the colonnades to try and get a look. |
| 0:50.3 | They're all here to honor a person who none of them has ever met, because she lived 500 years ago. |
| 1:00.3 | A French teenager named Joan of Arc. |
| 1:04.8 | Jones' feats in battle and her visions of God are the stuff of legend. |
| 1:11.2 | And today, the Catholic Church will give her its highest honor. |
| 1:16.6 | Joan will be canonized, made a saint. |
| 1:21.9 | The basilica is illuminated by thousands of bulbs and thousands of candles. |
| 1:35.3 | There are tapestries and pictures of Joan, swathes of regal crimson fabric, a choir singing in Latin. Any new saint would merit celebration. |
| 1:38.3 | But the devotion to Joan is different, fervent, and passionate, especially in France, where she is still revered for her bravery. |
| 1:50.0 | Pagents will be held around the world today, children dressed in medieval garb, reenacting scenes from Joan's life. |
| 1:58.0 | While in the basilica, the Pope describes Joan's death. |
| 2:04.1 | Mounted on the stake, he says, whispering in flames in a final scream the names of Jesus and Mary, |
| 2:11.7 | she flew to heaven. |
| 2:15.0 | Today, Joan of Arc. |
| 2:17.7 | Her name is so famous that it's almost hard to remember that she was a real person. |
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