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JOAN of ARC Jeanne d’ Arc In the beginning…………………. Joan of Arc was born in Domremy, Champagne, France on January 6, 1412. She was the youngest of five children born to Jacques d’ Arc, who, though a peasant, farmed his own land. She was a child like any other, taught by her mother the skills a woman needed, but untroubled with book-learning; remark- able only for early and intense love of prayer, which did not prevent her playing the usual children’s games round the village “fairy tryee”. She grew up against the chaotic background of the wars between France and the English and Burgundian alliance, and though Domremy lay alongside Burgundian territory it had always been loyal to the French. When she was about thirteen there came the first of those experiences which she was afterwards to call her voices; to begin with, it was a voice, but later, presences manifested themselves who she knew to be St. Michael, St. Margaret and St. Catherine. Like St. Teresa of Avila, she was reluctant to tal