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Summary
- Lorraine is not in the Bible. It descends from Lotharingia, the ninth-century kingdom of Lothair, a grandson of Charlemagne.
- The territory was fought over, partitioned and annexed repeatedly for a thousand years — French, then German, then French again within a single lifetime.
- Joan of Arc was born at Domrémy in Lorraine around 1412, to a farming family, and was illiterate. She said she had heard voices since about thirteen.
- She reached the dauphin, went to Orléans, and saw Charles VII crowned at Reims. Captured the next year, she was tried by a church court and burned at Rouen in 1431 at nineteen.
- The verdict was overturned twenty-five years later and she was canonised in 1920 — a sequence worth remembering whenever institutions are confident.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Behind the Name and standard reference works for Lorraine from Lotharingia, the kingdom of Lothair II, and the region’s repeated partition. The outline of Joan of Arc’s life, trial, the 1456 nullification and the 1920 canonisation follows the surviving trial and rehabilitation records. Scripture quotations from the NIV via BibleGateway (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21; Deuteronomy 18:22; 1 Corinthians 1:27).
