Joan of Arc and Gabriela Silang, women freedom fighters

Dateline : April 18,1909  – Joan of Arc was beatified in Rome. . The 19-year-old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake   in Rouen, France on May 30, 1431  by an English-dominated tribunal. She was canonized in  1920. May 30   is her feast day.

Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: Jeanne d'Arc)  is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in what is now eastern France, who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, transferred to the English in exchange for money, put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon for charges of "insubordination and heterodoxy,"and burned at the stake as a heretic when she was only 19 years old. Twenty-five years after the execution, an Inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, pronounced her innocent and declared her a martyr. Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.

In the Philippines, more than being the wife of revolutionary Diego Silang, Gabriela Silang is regarded as the country’s “Joan of Arc” and the first Filipina general who fought Spanish invaders in the 18th century. As the wife of the famous Diego Silang, Ilocandia’s liberator, Maria Josefa Gabriela was popularly known as Mrs. Diego Silang. By her own right, she was equally great as her husband. After her husband’s assassination, she continued his libertarian movement, fighting valiantly on the bloody battlefields and died with heroic courage at the hands of the Spanish enemy.

On September 10, 1873, the fierce battle between Gabriela's troops and the Spanish occured in Vigan. They faced a larger army of the enemy with the help of Tagalogs, Kapampangans and some Ilocano conspirators. Many was killed on her side. She escaped along with her Uncle Nicolas and seven remaining members. They were later caught in Santa on September 29, 1763. They were summarily hanged in the plaza of Vigan with Gabriela being the last to die.

While most would consider Diego and Gabriela Silang’s effort as a futile attempt to rid of Spanish rule, it should be noted that they already imagined freeing the Philippines from colonial rule some 130 years before the Gomburza, Jose Rizal or Andres Bonifacio. This is the reason that the husband and wife were sometimes referred to as the precursors of Filipino nationalism as they fought for the same ideals penned by Rizal and which Bonifacio took into armed revolution,

More than anything else, Gabriela and Joan's contribution to history shows “that women are indispensable partners of in the great task of nation building,”