Patronage
3 saints are venerated as patrons of France, led by Joan of Arc (feast day May 30).
1412 — 1431 · Feast day: May 30
Joan of Arc, a peasant girl from Domrémy, claimed the voices of saints commanded her to save France. At seventeen she led French forces to lift the Siege of Orléans in nine days, then escorted the Dauphin to his coronation at Reims. Captured in 1430 and burned for heresy in 1431, she died calling out the name of Jesus.
Approx. 316 AD — November 8, 397 AD · Feast day: November 11
A Roman cavalry officer who cut his military cloak in half to clothe a freezing beggar outside Amiens — and dreamed that night of Christ wearing the cloth — Martin of Tours became the Father of Monasticism in Gaul and patron of France. He died in 397 after thirty years as Bishop of Tours, an office the people of Gaul forced on a man who wanted only a monastery cell.
c. 437 AD — January 13, 533 AD · Feast day: October 1
Remigius of Reims became bishop of the ecclesiastical capital of the Frankish region at twenty-one, and served that same see for seventy years — long enough to baptize a king. On Christmas Day 496, he poured water over Clovis I, King of the Franks, and watched roughly three thousand barbarian warriors follow their king into the font, laying the foundation for Catholic France.