Joan of Arc Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Hundred Years' War

Joan of Arc entered public life during France's lowest ebb in this extended conflict. Within a few months she achieved a string of victories and crowned the French claimant to the throne.

Answer: Domremy

Domremy is a small village in the province of Lorraine. D'Arc was her family name. She became known as The Maid of Orleans only after Friedrich Schiller wrote a play by that title in the early nineteenth century. She liberated the town of Orleans.

Answer: transcript

Joan of Arc had been remembered mostly through legend and chronicles until the rediscovery of her condemnation trial transcripts. She actually underwent two trials: one at the end of her life and a second posthumous trial that cleared her name. Both sets of transcripts have now been recovered.

Answer: war hammer bruise to her ribs

Sworn eyewitness accounts affirm that Joan of Arc not only endured several serious combat wounds, she refused the leave the field until each battle ended. On two of these occasions she even led the next charge.

Answer: Montaigne: essay

Voltaire parodied Joan's legend at a time when little reliable evidence was known about her. Mark Twain considered his novel about her life his best work. Bertolt Brecht made her a character in three of his plays.

Answer: disguising herself as a nun

Joan of Arc nearly escaped from captivity several times. On one occasion she pried away the floorboards from her cell and stole a set of keys. Later she leaped from the top of a seventy foot tower. Finally a servant was caught attempting to smuggle a file to her.

Answer: Patay

Shortly after Orleans, French forces found the English army preparing defenses on the open field at Patay. Heavily armed French infantry surprised the English longbowmen. A rout ensued that decimated the main body of the English army. Some historians consider this battle's consequences as important as Agincourt.

Answer: the French royal crown was locked in the Tower of London

Isabel of Bavaria, Charles VII's mother, ruled France during her husband Charles VI's long bouts with insanity. In 1420 she arranged her daughter Catherine's marriage to Henry V of England and placed Henry V next in line for the French throne. Both Henry V and Charles VI died two years later. Rheims was the traditional site of French coronations. Joan recovered the city.

Answer: the English and the Hussites

Although Joan of Arc was illiterate she dictated letters through scribes. Her unsteady signature indicates that she had just learned to sign her name. She threatened war against both the English and the Hussites.

Answer: the Milanese style of manufacture

National styles of armor began to emerge during the early fifteenth century. The dominant movements were German and Italian. France had no national style of its own. German armor was decorative and lightweight. Milanese "white armor" had unadorned surfaces and better joint protection.

Answer: Agincourt

Henry V's revolutionary use of the longbow might have gained him all of France if he had survived a few years more.

Answer: one year

Her career was remarkably brief.

Answer: Burgundy

Burgundy included the present day low countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. In Joan of Arc's era it was an independent dukedom owing no fealty to any king. The duke of Alencon supported Charles VII. The duke of Brittany was neutral. England held direct rule over Normandy.

Answer: Clovis

With the famous (or infamous) Salic Law, king Clovis had declared that no woman could inherit the throne to his lands. Clovis was silent about whether the right to rule could pass to a royal princess's son. The English claimed this was possible while Charles's supporters insisted the opposite.

Answer: none

Joan of Arc's faith appears to have been completely sincere. However, the saints Margaret and Catherine she identified lost official recognition due to insufficient evidence for having existed historically, although Catherine has been restored. Her third vision, Michael, was not a saint but an archangel.

Answer: The Duke of Bedford

Shortly after Joan of Arc crowned Charles VII king of France, the Duke of Bedford brought his nephew Henry VI to Paris for a coronation ceremony. Paris was still under English control. Henry VI was the King of England at the time - and not a very effective ruler.

Answer: Falstaff and Bluebeard

Sir John Fastolf ordered the English retreat at Patay, a decision that cost him his knighthood and reputation. Gilles de Rais was a nobleman who fought for Charles VII alongside Joan of Arc. He later became one of France's most notorious mass murderers. De Rais is often known by his nickname Bluebeard.

Answer: until the fall of Louis XVI

For centuries afterward the official tax entry for the village of Domremy was, "Nothing: the Maiden."

Answer: du Lys

The lily was a royal symbol. The king showed exceptional gratitude by giving her the right to use this in her name and coat of arms.

Answer: a tax collector's daughter

Her father Jacques d'Arc owned a small farm, collected taxes, and led the local watch. Neither Joan nor anyone from her hometown described her as having herded sheep. Domremy was cattle country. Joan's girlhood home, which still stands today, was more prosperous than a herder's dwelling.

Answer: 17

At her trial two years later she gave her age as "nineteen, or thereabouts."

Answer: No

Written birth records were not kept for peasants during Joan of Arc's time. Instead an infant received numerous godparents who could testify that the baptism had happened. Several of these were among the 114 witnesses who gave sworn statements for the rehabilitation trial. Only one claimed to recall that Joan's birth occurred at dawn on the Epiphany. Joan herself did not know her birthdate.

Answer: she was a virgin

Under church law, in order to have intercourse with the devil a woman must have *intercourse* with the devil. Therefore a virgin could not be a witch. The Duchess of Bedford had declared Joan a virgin. So the trial court could not convict for witchcraft. Joan was not actually a heretic either. The execution was politically motivated.

Answer: Sicily

The queen of Sicily financed a supply mission to Orleans and gave the first of two official pronouncements that Joan was a virgin.

Answer: she told him a secret that only God could know

Charles VII gave Joan a private audience when they first met. She described what she said as a message from God. It had a profound effect on him. No one else heard their conference. One courtier later claimed that it concerned a prayer Charles had made on All Saints' Day.