THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: France will mark the reputed 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc with a visit by President Nicolas Sarkozy to her birthplace.
President Sarkozy will travel to Domremy, the village said to have been her birthplace, where he will unveil a plaque in the home where she is thought to have been born.
Mr Sarkozy will also visit Vaucouleurs, also in the Vosges mountains of eastern France, where Joan of Arc began her campaign to push the English out of France and put Charles VII on the throne.
Mr Sarkozy and far-right leader Marine Le Pen are battling over the mantle of the French patron saint Joan of Arc, a surprise player in the upcoming presidential election.
The two leaders are to stage rival celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the birth of the 15th-century Catholic martyr who has been appropriated by the far-right partly for her booting out of medieval English "immigrants".
The teenage peasant led the French army against the English after experiencing religious visions and was later burned at the stake, but her broad appeal to French of all political colours has ensured her immortality.
France is officially a secular state, but the story of Joan's struggle against the English and Burgundians on behalf of the French crown has often served as an inspiration in patriotic causes.
She is regularly wheeled out as a symbol of French unity, alongside such Gallic icons as general Charles de Gaulle or Vercingetorix, who defied the Romans like a real-life Asterix. » | Telegraph’s Foreign Staff | Friday, January 06, 2012
LE FIGARO: Sarkozy honore Jeanne d'Arc : Nicolas Sarkozy a célébré aujourd'hui la mémoire de Jeanne d'Arc érigée en symbole de la "résistance" de la France dans l'épreuve et de son "unité nationale" en dénonçant, à quelque cent jours de la présidentielle, "ceux qui voudraient s'en servir pour diviser". En s'invitant sur le terrain des exploits de la "pucelle d'Orléans", le chef de l'État se savait dans le collimateur de ses futurs rivaux électoraux, prêts à rouvrir son procès en détournement politique de l'Histoire, ouvert avec Jean Jaurès ou Guy Môquet. Surtout à la veille de l'hommage que le Front national doit rendre demain à celle qui a "bouté les Anglais hors de France". » | AFP | vendredi 06 janvier 2012
