A Saintly Patriotism: Lessons from St. Joan of Arc

On her Feast Day today, May 30, Joan of Arc is remembered as one of the greatest saints of not just her time, but all time. The Maid of Orleans inspires us all with her military victories for France, fearlessness in battle. and extraordinary trial and martyrdom.

And yet, the most important thing about Joan was none of those things, but the fact that she was obsessed with the will of God. As Alexandre Havard writes from her perspective in Coached by Joan of Arc: Lessons in Virtuous Leadership, “my love for France was not the fruit of an extreme patriotism. It is true that my father was a patriot. However, what obsessed me was the will of God. My patriotism did not give birth to my visions; my visions gave birth to my patriotism. My voices advised me to do things I could not imagine; they commanded me to do things I found repugnant. I felt sorry for the French because God felt sorry for them. I loved France for God.”

At her canonization in 1920, Pope Benedict XV’s Divina disponente declared that St. Joan of Arc would be added to “the number of Saints, so that, from her example, all Christians may learn that obedience to the will of God is holy and devout, and obtain from her the grace to convert their fellow citizens to obtain heavenly life.”

At thirteen years old, Joan began receiving visions from God and the saints. France at the time was fractured by the Hundred Years’ War. England had claimed much of northern France, including Paris, and the French throne itself stood empty. As the English laid siege to the city of Orléans along the Loire River, the nation appeared close to collapse.

Illiterate and barely more than a child, eighteen-year-old Joan sought the help of her uncle to bring her to the Dauphin, the future Charles VII. She told him that she had been sent by God “to raise the siege of Orléans and to aid you in recovering your kingdom. God wills it so.”

Against every worldly expectation, Joan helped lead French forces to a series of victories against the English and safely escorted Charles to Reims, where he was crowned at the cathedral King of France in 1429. On May 30, 1431, she was put on trial and burned at the stake for “heresy” in Rouen.

Both in 1431 and now, nearly 600 years after her trial, the distinction between patriotism and obedience matters enormously. Her response to serve God faithfully in the concrete circumstances He placed her in changed the course of history. 

Many devoted faithful are often tempted toward one of two extremes. Some withdraw from public life altogether, convinced that retreat is more noble or exhausted from the civic decline they witness around them. Others immerse themselves in political identity so completely that faith becomes secondary to partisan allegiance. Reading her trial documents or the many accounts of her life, it is clear St. Joan of Arc did not possess a partisan soul, nor did she fight for the nation as an end in itself. 

That is a kind of patriotism that is profoundly Christian, because it does not ignore a nation’s failures, nor does it idolize national identity. Instead, it asks what God’s will is: discerning our duty toward our own (the ones closest to us in our neighbors, our communities, and our country). Saint Joan of Arc understood that love of country could become a form of Christian service when it was ordered properly by a prior love of God. 

St. Joan of Arc’s life also helps us to recover a richer understanding of the virtue of piety. St. Thomas Aquinas describes piety as the virtue by which we render “duty and homage to our parents and country.” 

Patriotism need not be reduced to either ideology or dismissed altogether. Joan presents another way, where Love of country, rightly ordered, can be understood as gratitude toward those who came before us, a kind of inheritance received rather than an identity invented. 

The Christian West was built through centuries of sacrifice, faith, and sanctity. A Christian may love his country not merely for political reasons, but also out of gratitude for those who handed down the institutions, culture, and faith that make us able to live freely today. Love of homeland, then, becomes not an idol but a natural affection elevated toward love of neighbor and ultimately toward love of Christ.

Even the end of Joan’s life reveals the difference between mere nationalism and true Christian fidelity. She was ultimately betrayed by her own countrymen when the Duke of Burgundy yielded to political pressure and handed her over to the English. If Joan’s mission had been rooted only in patriotism, her story would end in tragedy and disappointment. Instead, her witness endured because her loyalty was never finally to political victory, but to God’s will.

Joan thus demonstrates that holiness involves entering into the world’s many difficulties with clarity, humility, and courage. Her magnanimity, or her “greatness of the soul,” calls her to cultivate the gifts God gave her and to use them for the Kingdom. Though young and uneducated, she was entirely confident that God could work through her for purposes larger than herself. 

American Catholics have many meaningful connections as a nation to St. Joan of Arc: one of which is in our nation’s longest church. On May 16, 1920, the day of St Joan of Arc’s canonization, the land for the future Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was blessed. Today, the Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel on the crypt level contains a white marble stone from the dungeon where Joan was imprisoned before her execution. 

This too is a reminder of her Marian devotion and spirituality shaped by trustful obedience: the same disposition we see most perfectly in Our Lady: a simple ‘yes’ to what she believed God was asking of her.