Thirty-three years after the death of Saint Joan of Arc, another saintly Joan—Joan of France and Valois—was born. (This Joan was born with some deformities and a very plain face.) She is not among the great historical figures or at the top of the list of French saints. Although she was the daughter, sister and wife of kings, no child was more deprived of freedom, no wife more rejected than her.

At the age of nine, her father, King Louis XI of France, ordered her to marry the young Duke Louis of Orleans, who ignored her and was unfaithful to her for nearly 30 years. Their marriage was never consummated, and was eventually annulled in 1498 at the request of her husband, who became King Louis XII. Freed from this unwanted marriage, to which she had nevertheless remained devoted and loyal, she followed her heart and chose the consecrated life, entering a convent in Bourges, France.

She founded the congregation of the Annonciades whose specific mission is to serve Christ by imitating the virtues of Mary, according to the wish of the Virgin Mary herself: "Make a rule of what you will find written about me in the Gospel." Thus, Joan drew from Scripture the ten principal virtues of the mother of Christ: "Prudence, purity, humility, truth, praise, obedience, poverty, patience, piety and compassion."

She died of exhaustion on February 4, 1505, at the age of 41. Fifty-six years later, when the Huguenots desecrated her grave and burned her body, it had not decomposed. It was nevertheless reduced to ashes and scattered in the wind like a seed, just like the body of Saint Joan of Arc, the shepherdess of Domremy, whose ashes and intact heart were thrown into the Seine River some decades earlier.

As she freely embraced and accepted all of her successive chains, Saint Joan of France had the same vocation as Mary at the foot of the Cross: she gave up everything, and everything was taken from her. Canonized by Pius XII on May 8, 1950, she is the fourth queen to be canonized in the history of France, after Clotilde, Radegonde and Bathilde.

Adapted and translated from: Marie de Nazareth