Joan of Arc, from Domrémy to the pyre at Rouen

A village between two kingdoms

Domrémy is a village of the upper Meuse, some thirty houses between the river and the hillside. It belongs to the duchy of Bar, but to the part of Bar that answers to the King of France; its parish depends on Greux and on the Bishop of Toul, a prince of the Empire; its defence depends on the royal castellany of Vaucouleurs, held by Robert de Baudricourt. Three authorities, three borders, in a land where people know which side they are on. It is there, around 1412, that the daughter of Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Rommée is born. The father is not a poor man: he holds some twenty hectares, he is the village doyen, and in 1420 he leases the old castle of l'Isle, on an arm of the Meuse, which belongs to the lords of Bourlémont. The house where she was born is still there, right beside the church of Saint-Rémy where the child is baptised by the parish priest Jean Minet.