The Trial of Joan of Arc
by Douglas O. Linder (2017) Bishop Pierre Cauchon questions Joan (painting by Paul Delaroche) THIS TRIAL SITE WILL BE CONSTRUCTED IN 2017 The
story of Joan of Arc, the peasant girl whose religious
visions altered the history of France, has been told
often. And
like so many stories in history, things do not end
well for Joan. On
May 30, 1431, after a lengthy and highly unusual trial
process, Joan is bound to a wooden stake in the market
square of Rouen.
High above a crowd of spectators, crying
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” she is consumed by flames. What
is remarkable about the trial of Joan of Arc,
especially for a Medieval trial, is how thoroughly
documented it is.
Through Joan’s own words, and the pointed
questions of her accusers, history comes alive as it
never could for any other trial now nearly 700 years
in the past. We
could begin our story in the village of Domremy,
France, where Joan, in her father’s garden at the age
of 13, Joan saw a light and first heard the voice of
an angel. But
instead, following the lead of Helen Castor in her
fine book, Joan
of Arc: A History, we will begin a decade
earlier, in 1415. France Divided In
the summer of 1415, King Henry V of England invaded
France, hoping to reclaim a kingdom he said was
rightfully his. After
Henry’s army landed in Normandy and captured the port
city of Harfleur, French authorities sounded the
alarm. King
Charles VI of France (who suffered from episodes of
paranoia and derangement) and his 18-year-old son, the
dauphin Louis, rushed to Normandy’s capitol of Rouen
where preparations were made to block the progress of
the English army along the banks of the river Somme. In
the early morning of October 25, the battle began. The French
had superior numbers.
French men and horses attacked the English. Razor-tipped
arrows rained down upon the charging French, cutting
through breastplates and flesh. The
survivors—many of them—impaled themselves on sharpened
stakes that the English had been placed in front of
the English archers.
When two hours of fighting ended, many of the
great military leaders of France lay dead or were
captured. The
English took their prizes of dukes and counts
(including the influential Charles, duke of Orleans)
to Calais. From
there, they would go on to London, and become
prisoners. That
fall day, after the battle the English called
“Agincourt,” France lay, as Helen Castor describes it,
“in a field of blood.” In
fifteenth century Christendom, victories in battles
were taken as signs that an army was waging a just
war—that God was on their side. So King
Henry concluded from the victory at Agincourt that his
cause was just. He
rightfully should rule over France by virtue of his
ancestor, Edward III, having a French mother. (France saw
Henry’s claim to the French throne as outrageous;
claims through the female line lacked validity in
their view.) France
itself, in 1415, found itself divided into two groups
of countrymen, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Each side
called the other “traitors” and could tick off a long
list of wrongs committed by the other side. In fact,
France was experiencing a civil war. Henry V
undoubtedly understood that the civil war made it an
opportune time for his invasion. The division
among the French traced back to the murder by John,
the duke of Burgundy of his cousin, Louis, the duke of
Orleans in 1407, after a power struggle for influence
with the king.
Although they could unite to fight against
their mutual invading enemy, the English, any sense of
unity would be fleeting. Within
a month after the battle of Agincourt, the Duke of
Burgundy fixed his efforts on taking control of the
government of France, which remained largely in
Armagnac hands as it controlled Paris and with it the
king. In
July 1416, the Duke of Burgundy entered into an
agreement with King Henry. Neither side
would make war against each other in the northern
territories of France that lay under Burgundian
control. Unfortunately
for the Burgundians, a couple of royal deaths by 1417
made the new heir to the throne of France the king’s
youngest son, 14-year-old Charles, a boy who was
betrothed at the time to a young woman whose father
was counted among the Armagnacs closest confederates. Charles’s
mother, however, had fallen out of favor with the
Armagnacs and had been exiled in Tours. So when the
Burgundians captured Tours, they could claim authority
to the throne of France through the queen, who they
said spoke for her husband the king. In short,
France was a country with two governments, one
Armagnac-controlled and one run by Burgundians. Over
the next couple of years, things went from bad to
worse. Henry
returned to France with an army that swept inland from
the coast. Burgundians
managed to make it through the gates of Paris and
seize the royal residence of the king. Bloody
fighting between Burgundians and Armagnacs in Paris
left corpses stacked “like sides of bacon,” blood
streaming into the city’s gutters. Buildings
were set on fire.
Within a month, the Burgundians brought the
exiled Queen Isabeau back to Paris. The
only consolation for the Armagnacs was their success
in getting 15-year-old Charles, son of the king and
heir to the throne, out of Paris—the dauphin still
wearing his night clothes as they fled the city. The Armagnac
loyalists set up a new capital in Bourges, 100 miles
to the south of Paris.
The
English, meanwhile, had took Rouen and marched towards
Paris from the west.
With the English only 20 miles from Paris, and
in September 1419 a meeting was arranged between John
of Burgundy and the dauphin Charles. The meeting
was set to take place at Montereau, on a bridge that
spanned a river separating Burgundian and Armagnac
held land. With
only ten men each accompanying them, and after
swearing oaths to not harm each other, the men faced
each other in a wooden building constructed just for
the meeting on the bridge. But when
John of Burgundy knelt before his prince, a axe was
driven into his skull.
With the assassination of the duke, any hope of
a reconciliation between Burgundians and Armagnac
supporters was lost.
To the Burgundians, the dauphin Charles was a
murderer and they could never owe him their
allegiance. As
between the dauphin and King Henry V of England, the
Burgundians chose Henry—it was no longer a matter for
debate. In
1420, England and Burgundian-controlled France sealed
a treaty. At
the altar of the cathedral of Troyes, Charles
recognized Henry as the rightful heir to his throne. Power over
France’s government shifted to Henry’s control. Now, Charles
and Henry, his heir and regent of France, could
together get rid of the dauphin and those pesky
Armagnacs—or so it seemed. Endless War The
Burgundians held a trial—of sorts—of the dauphin in
January 1421. The
dauphin, of course, failed to appear to answer the
charges against him, including the murder of John of
Burgundy. But he was found guilty, disinherited from
the crown, and sentenced to exile from the realm. The
following year saw a series of battles and skirmishes
between the English and Burgundian forces and the
Armagnac rebels.
As the fighting waged, lives went on and lives
ended. The
dauphin married in 1422, and within months the
dauphine was pregnant.
That same year, King Henry died and was buried
in Wesminster. So
did King Charles, at his royal residence outside of
Paris. The
deaths made Henry’s nine-month-old son (and grandson
of Charles), Henry VI, the new king of France and
England—or so he was proclaimed in London. Babies
cannot run kingdoms, and so in France Henry’s brother,
John the duke of Bedford, was named regent. For the
dauphin, the death of his father, King Charles VI,
meant something else: at that moment, he became
Charles VII, the rightful new king of France. Burgundians
and other detractors took to calling him “Charles, the
Ill-Advised.” In
French practice, the coronation of a king could only
happen with a sacred rite, involving anointing the new
king with the sacred oil of Clovis, at the cathedral
at Reims. The
Holy Ampulla was housed there, eighty miles northeast
of Paris. Getting
to Reims meant travelling through hostile territory. The trip
seemed impossible. The
fighting dragged on between the France of the north,
ruled from Rouen by the regent Bedford, and the France
of the south, ruled from Bourges by Charles. The natural
boundary between the two Frances was the river Loire. In the fall
of 1428, the Armagnac-controlled city of Orleans, the
northernmost town along the river Loire, came under
siege. Taking
Orleans would mean for the English a gateway into
Armagnac France.
The siege went on for months and, for historian
Helen Castor, “seemed to encapsulate the plight of the
whole kingdom,” one of “scorched earth, torched homes,
and lives and livelihoods destroyed.” To the
extent either side had any momentum, it belonged to
the English. In
early February of 1429, they won a major battle near
the village of Rouvray, thirteen miles from Orleans. The battle
left over 400 Armagnac soldiers dead and reopened
supply lines to English soldiers mounting the siege of
Orleans. Joan of Arc to
the Rescue The
previous year, a young maid of about 16 years of age
showed up in the Armagnac-controlled town of
Vaucouleurs. The
maid, of course, would become known as Joan of Arc. Joan told
the captain of the garrison that God had spoken to her
and that she needed to share her message with the
dauphin. At
first she was sent away, but Joan came back. On the
second trip, in January 1429, the duke of Lorraine
agreed to listen to her story. Her story
had spread and people were open to a visionary who
could give hope of a way out of their current
quagmire. Town
inhabitants chipped in and provided a horse, riding
clothes, and an escort to allow Joan to undertake the
perilous 270-mile journey through Burgundian-held
lands from Vaucoulers to the royal court in Chinon. The
trip to Chinon could hardly have happened without the
backing of Charles’s mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon,
a believer both in visionaries and in the dream of
reuniting France under the kingship of Charles. What Joan
told Charles’s key counselors was this: if given the
money and the opportunity, God had told her she had
the power to oust the English from France and secure
the coronation of Charles in Reims. The
king and his court were intrigued. Put could
Joan’s vision be trusted? They put the
question to leading Armagnac theologians. The first
step was to test her virginity, because virgins—or so
it was believed—were less likely to be recruited by
the Devil. A
private examination by two women confirmed her
virginity. Questioned
about her faith and behavior by clerics, Joan appeared
to be both a devout and a model of integrity. But still
there were concerns, especially given her youth. Joan was
moved to a town forty miles away and subjected to
three more weeks of questioning under the leadership
of the king’s chancellor. Joan handled
the process well.
The clerics found “no evil in her” but rather
only “goodness, humility, virginity, piety, and
integrity.” In
the end, it was decided that the best way to test
Joan’s claim was to charge her with the mission of
relieving the English siege of Orleans. If
she—against all odds—succeeded, that would be strong
evidence that God had spoken to her as she claimed. If she
failed—well, nice try.
It was a practical test. The clerics
suggested that the king provide an escort for Joan to
Orleans, “placing his faith in God.” Before
setting off on her mission, Joan dictated a letter to
Henry and his regent.
She demanded the return of “the keys of all the
fine towns that you have taken and violated in
France.” If
he did not, Joan warned, she will make his men
“leave,…and if they will not obey, I will have them
all killed. I
am sent here by God, the king of heaven, to face you
head to head and drive you from all of France.” Joan
was outfitted with a custom-made suit of armour,
presented with a specially prepared banner with the
golden fleurs-de-lis France sown on a white
background. She
carried a holy sword and rode a topnotch horse given
to her by the duke of Alencon. On April 26,
1429, Joan rode into battle. She was joined by
soldiers that Joan had insisted first take confession
and promise neither to pillage, rape, nor engage in
prostitution. On
May 4, she sent a message on an arrow to soldiers in
the English encampment warning that unless they ended
their siege she would “make a war cry that will be
remembered forever.” She signed “Jeanne la Pucelle”
(Joan the Maid).
The English soldiers announced the arrival of
the message-bearing arrow: “News from the Armagnac
whore!” It took four
days, and Joan received a superficial wound from an
English arrow, but Orleans was freed. The
half-year-long siege was over. The
powers-that-be took it as a sure sign that Joan—and
France—had God on their side. Joan went on
to rack up other victories. Her acclaim
spread. Even
Burgundians were impressed. One knight
wrote, “By the renown of Joan the Maid the hearts of
the English were greatly changed and weakened.” But
Joan’s larger mission was to coronate Charles and then
reunite France under his leadership. At the end
of June 1429, the king set out with a royal party and
an army that numbered in the thousands for Reims, site
of the holy oil deemed essential to his coronation. With the now
almost mystical Joan causing enemy-controlled city
gates to open along the way, Charles made it to Reims. And on July
17, holy oil was placed on his head, shoulders, chest,
and arms. The
archbishop positioned the crown on Charles’s head to
cries and trumpet sounds. Joan knelt
before her king and wept. “Noble king,
God’s will is done,” she said. Captured Joan’s
reversal of fortune began in September 1429, just
outside of Paris.
Urging her men on in an assault on the walls of
France’s largest city, she was hit in the thigh with a
crossbow bolt. Her
men were no match for the barrage of arrows fired from
above, and they were forced to retreat. Joan was
lifted from a ditch and carried to safety. The
assault’s failure raised a question: if Joan was
really God’s chosen warrior, why couldn’t she take
Paris? When
she again was well enough to lead men into battle,
Joan chomped at the bit.
She wanted a smashing victory to show skeptics
she still had God on her side. Meanwhile,
perhaps in response to the crowning of Charles in
Reims, the duke of Bedford decided it was time that
young Henry (he was only 8 years old) receive his
crown in Westminster Abbey, with plans made for a
second coronation in France. In
May 1430, Joan was focused on the town of Compiegne
and relieving it from a Burgundian siege. Joan ordered
a nighttime attack.
She rode across the bridge and straight into
the heart of the enemy’s position. But then
another group of Burgundian and English soldiers moved
in behind her, cutting her off from the bridge and
possible safety.
The city gates closed behind her, Joan found
herself surrounded and was captured. Duke Phillip,
leader of the Burgundians, was mightily pleased. He wrote
that the capture “will demonstrate the error and
foolish credulity of all those who have let themselves
be convinced by the deeds of this woman.” Under
the laws of war, Joan was technically a prisoner of
Jean de Luxembourg, commander of the Burgundian forces
who made the capture.
Joan was taken to a castle twenty miles away to
await a decision as to what should be done with her. Three days
later, theologians of the University of Paris and the
vicar-general of the faith asked the Duke of Burgundy
to surrender Joan to them, so that they might try her
in an ecclesiastical court for various alleged crimes
against God. But
the theologians got no answer. Jean of
Luxembourg was hoping to win a ransom for his famous
prisoner. Eventually,
Jean got his price for his prize. The king’s
council, on behalf of King Henry VI, bought Joan from
her Burgundian captors in November. They moved
Joan to Rouen, the capital of English Normandy. On January
3, 1431, young King Henry (or, more accurately, his
key advisors) issued an edict charging Joan with a
long list religious crimes and ordering officers to
deliver her to the bishop of Beauvais. She would be
tried by Church authorities, but still held prisoner
each night in the royal castle. The
charges listed in the edict included wearing men’s
clothes, in violation of a prohibition found in the
Book of Deuteronomy, falsely leading people to believe
she was sent by God, and murder. The Trial At
eight o’clock on the morning of February 21, 1431
executor Jean Massieu led Joan into the royal
fortress. There
she would meet Bishop Pierre Cauchon and 42 clerics. In the
preceding weeks, Cauchon and his advisors had reviewed
the evidence, created a list of articles of
accusation, and prepared a series of question they
intended to ask the defendant. Joan
appeared dressed in male clothing, with her dark hair
cut short. Prior
to her appearance, she had again been examined and
found to be a virgin.
The
proceeding was to begin with Joan touching the Bible
and taking a sacred oath to tell the truth. But Joan
hesitated. “I
don’t know what you wish to ask me. Perhaps you
might ask me things I cannot tell you.” Bishop
Cauchon pressed her, but Joan insisted that though she
would gladly answer questions about what she had done,
she could not reveal her revelations from God—even if
she were to be threatened with beheading. Finally,
Joan knelt and took an oath agreeing to tell the truth
about her faith and her doings—but making no promise
to reveal those messages God did not mean for her to
share with anyone but her king, Charles. Questions
about her background were asked, and Joan answered. She was 19,
from the village of Domremy. Her father
was Jacques d’Arc, her mother Isabelle. She was
baptized into the Catholic faith. Before returning her
to her cell, Cauchon warned Joan not to attempt an
escape, as she had once before, jumping from her tower
cell. In
the interrogation of the following day, Joan answered
questions about her letter to the English at Orleans,
her assault on Paris, and other military actions. She also,
despite her protest of the previous day, spoke of the
messages she had received from God. The first,
she said, came at age 13 in her father’s garden, the
voice of an angel, telling her to be good and to go to
church. She
also testified that a voice from God had revealed her
king to her when she arrived at Chinon. The “voice”
or “voices” were also the subject of questions the
next day. Joan
said she had heard the voice that very day, telling
her to answer boldly.
Joan also had a warning for her questioner,
“You say that you are my judge. Take care
what you do, for in truth I am sent by God, and you
put yourself in grave danger.” Asked how
she knew for certain she was in God’s grace, Joan
said, “If I’m not, may God put me there; and if I am,
may God keep me in it.
I would be the most wretched person in the
world if I knew I were not in the grace of God.” The last
question of the day concerned her practice of wearing
male clothing. Asked
if she wanted a woman’s dress, Joan said, “If you will
let me, give me one, and I will take it and go. Otherwise,
I’m content with this, since it pleases God that I
wear it.” In
her third interrogation session, Joan revealed that
the voices she heard were those of St. Catherine and
St. Margaret. She
told those in the assembly that on their forms were
jeweled crowns. She had also heard from St.
Michael—and saw the saints and the angels as real
physical presences.
“I saw them with my bodily eyes, just as well
as I see you. When
they left me, I wept and truly wished they had taken
me with them.” She
also said that she carried a banner so as to avoid
killing anyone in battle herself. She never used her
precious sword. After
a final round of questions, Bishop Cauchon announced
that Joan’s answers would be studied. If
necessary, more questions would be answered later. And sure
enough, a week later, Bishop Cauchon and seven other
inquisitors visited her in her royal cell. The main
focus of the questions was the specific sign she had
produced for Charles to convince him that she was
indeed sent by God.
Joan first revealed that the sign could last
for a thousand or more years and at that moment lay in
the king’s treasury.
It was brought to the kind by an angel, but she
could say no more about it. Finally, the
following day, she said the sign was a beautiful crown
of pure gold. The
angel, surrounded by many others of his kind, bowed
before Charles and said, “Sire, here is your sign. Take it.” At
the end of the final interrogation, Joan was asked if
she would submit to the decision of the Church on the
question of whether she had committed mortal sins. She said she
would submit to God—that “God and the Church are one
and the same, and there should be no difficulty about
that. Why
do you make this difficulty?” The
next step was to draft formal articles of accusation
based on Joan’s testimony. An original
list of seventy articles was produced, but that was
deemed too many.
The seventy were, over the course of a few
days, boiled down to twelve. The
days awaiting trial were not pleasant for Joan. She was
seriously ill some of the time; at other times she had
to cope with a pawing, taunting guard. Joan feared
she might be dying and begged that she might be given
the sacrament and buried on sacred ground. Only if she
submitted to the Church, the bishop answered. On
May 2, weary though she was, Joan faced her judges in
a room near the great hall of the castle of Rouen. Things began
with a lecture in which Joan was told that although
the Church had “tried the best we can to lead her back
to the path of knowledge and truth,” the “wiles of the
devil have triumphed.”
Jean de Chatilllon, an old master of theology,
explained to Joan the errors of her ways and beliefs. She had, he
said, worn men’s clothes in violation of God’s
commandment in Deuteronomy, she had made false claims
about her revelations, and invented a story about an
angel presenting a crown to Charles. She had,
despite the best efforts of those concerned about her
soul, stubbornly refused to admit her sins. Did she
understand that while the Church would never take a
life, it could turn her over to secular arm which
could punish her with fire? Joan
answered, “If I saw the fire, I would say all that I
am saying to you now, and would not act differently.” She added a
warning: if the Church did allow her to be put to
death, “evil will seize upon you, body and soul.” The defiant
Joan was led back to her cell. A
week later Joan was brought to the great tower in the
castle of Rouen.
This time she was threatened with torture. She was
shown the instruments of torture ready to aid in
straightening her thinking. Officers
were standing by ready to use them. Joan was
unmoved: “In truth, if you tear my limbs apart and
separate my soul from my body, I still won’t tell you
anything else. And
if I tell you anything, later I will say that you
forced it out of me.”
The judges decided against applying torture. The
culmination of the trial in a room close to her
prison. Bishop
Cauchon presided, but was joined by his
vice-inquisitor, theologians and priests. Cauchon told
Joan that in the two weeks since their last session,
the theologians of Paris had weighed in on her case. With the
benefit of their insights, the decision in her case
was announced by the theologian Pierre Maurice. He went
through the articles of accusation one by one, showing
Joan’s errors. Her
visions were either made up or diabolical in nature. The story
about the angel bringing a crown to Charles was “not
plausible,” her believe that she could foretell the
future was pure superstition, her jump from her tower
cell showed her willingness to commit the sin of
suicide, her wearing of men’s clothes was blasphemy. The list
went on, none worse than her refusal to submit to the
judgement of the Church. Even
now, “at the end of your trial,” the theologian asked
Joan to “think carefully about what has been said” and
save her soul. Joan
replied, “As for my words and deeds that I spoke of in
the trial, I refer to them and wish to stand by them.” Bishop
Cauchon declared an end to the trial and announced
that Joan would be sentenced the next day. The
next morning Joan was escorted to an abbey in the
center of Rouen.
She saw a scaffold erected in a nearby open
space. Henry
Beaufort, the Cardinal of England, was there. Joan heard
once again a familiar plea, submit to the Church’s
judgement and admit your sins. This time
Joan had a new answer. Yes,
she would submit, but only if the conclusions reached
in her case were affirmed by none other than the Holy
Father in Rome. The
gathered authorities were in no mood to accept this
challenge to their authority. The pope was
too far away; they spoke for the Church. Bishop
Cauchon said that Joan’s obstinacy left him no choice
but to turn her over to the secular authorities for
punishment. Then
Joan began to speak.
She would obey the Church after all. She would
submit. Members
of the crowd began to shout. There was
confusion. But
then Bishop Cauchon asked the executor of the court to
present to Joan a statement of abjuration, which he
read to her. Joan
agreed to renounce her crimes and she marked the
document with a quill.
Cauchon announced that Joan would be welcomed
back to the Church, her soul would be saved—but she
would live the rest of her days in prison in penance
for her sins. Joan
was escorted away, given a dress to wear, and her hair
was shaved. But
Joan’s imprisonment would not last a lifetime—only
four days. The
call came to Bishop Cauchon on May 28 that he should
come to Joan’s cell.
Joan, once again, was dressed in men’s clothes,
not the dress she had been given after her abjuration. Joan
explained that she did not understand she had promised
not to wear men’s clothes and that they were more
practical living as she did among men. Besides, she
thought that wearing a dress meant she could attend
mass—but that had not happened. Move me to a
better prison, among females, and allow me to attend
mass—if that could be promised, she would gladly put
her dress back on.
But Cauchon and the judges were in no mood to
bargain. Especially
so after Joan informed them that voices had told her
she had damned her so in making her abjuration. She took
back everything she had said at the scaffold. Cauchon
and the judges left to discuss their next action. Meeting the
next day with forty or so clerics, the conclusion was
made that Joan was a relapsed heretic—and there was
only one thing to do with relapsed heretics. The
next morning, in her cell, Joan was asked for a final
time whether she truly had seen visions. Yes, she
said. “Whether
they are good spirits or evil spirits, they appeared
to me.” Did
an angel really carry a crown to Charles? No, there
was no angel—the crown was the promise to lead Charles
to his coronation and it was brought by her. Bishop
Cauchon signaled for a friar to come to hear Joan’s
confession and administer the Eucharist. Joan
was led to a cart and taken through Rouen’s streets.
She wore a cap with the words “relapsed heretic,
apostate, idolater.”
By the pyre and platform that had been built in
the market square, Bishop Cauchon read her list of
sins. Like
the dog in the Book of Proverbs that returned to her
vomit, she returned to her sins and must be separated
from the Church and turned over to secular power. Joan
was bound to the wooden stake. She prayed
until the fire did its work. After her
last breath, with her clothes burnt off completely,
the executioner raked back the fire so the crowd could
see she was indeed a woman. Then he
again stoked the fire until all that remained of Joan
of Arc were her ashes.
They were tossed into the Seine. Aftermath and
Analysis Once
Jean made clear to her captors that she believed it
was God’s will that the French drive the English out
of France, she was doomed. The only
real question was whether her ultimate punishment
would be death; that choice would be Joan’s. Joan
represented a challenge to the legitimacy of the
English-Burgundian regime, and authorities would never
tolerate such a challenge. But
political fortunes change and so would Joan’s—at least
with respect to the validity of the judgement against
her. In
1435, the Duke of Burgundy and King Charles signed the
Treaty of Arras in which the Burgundians were granted
territorial concessions and restitution for the murder
of the duke’s father in return for Duke Phillip
recognizing King Charles as his sovereign lord. The treaty
changed everything.
In 1437, King Charles was welcomed into Paris,
a city he had last seen at age 15. The English
were on the run.
There would be short-lived truces, but the
inevitable came in 1450, when the last English holdout
in France, the fortress of Cherbourg, was abandoned. The
year the last English soldiers were driven from France
was also the first time in years King Charles spoke
publicly of Joan.
In his statement, the king said Joan had tried
by our enemy “that had great hatred against her” and
that she “had been put to death very cruelly,
iniquitously and against reason.” He asked a
theologian, Guillaume Bouille, to look into the
matter. Bouille
interviewed persons who had participated in the trial
nineteen years earlier.
He found witnesses who said that Bishop Cauchon
took orders from the English and that English pressure
caused the denial of an appeal to the pope. More
damning, one witness who should know said Cauchon sent
a spy to Joan—a spy who suggested he had Armagnac
sympathies and acted as her confessor and counsellor
while she was in prison.
While the spy and Joan talked, the witness
said, officials listened in a nearby room through a
secret hole. Another
witness reported that Joan’s relapse was met with
celebration, Cauchon declaring, “Farewell it is done!” (Although
later another witness would report that Cauchon became
angry when an English cleric criticized him for
accepting Joan’s abjuration, telling his critic that
it was his job to save souls, not kill people.) There
was also testimony that Joan had been sexually
assaulted by guards.
She had earlier experience with lustful men. A nobleman,
testifying years later on Joan’s behalf, recalled that
when he encountered Joan shortly after her capture he
had grabbed at her breasts and tried to put his hands
up her clothes. The
fight she put up against him, he testified, was proof
of her virtue. Three
witnesses to Joan’s execution described how impressed
they were with Joan’s piety, even as the flames swept
up around her. Almost
everyone present—including Cardinal Beaufort—wept as
they heard her call to Christ and his saints. Two of the
witnesses claimed to have dashed off and grabbed a
crucifix to hold before Joan until she became blinded
by the flames. The
investigation into Joan’s trial stalled for a while as
various political difficulties worked themselves out,
but eventually a list of articles by which Joan’s
trial might be condemned were drawn up. The document
noted the prejudice of the English against Joan,
threats by the English against various trial
participants, the denial to Joan of any legal advice,
and the length and difficulty of her interrogations. In
June 1455, Pope Calixtus II issued a papal declaration
authorizing a new trial, to be overseen by three papal
commissioners, and with Joan’s surviving family as
plaintiffs. The
proceeding opened on November 7, 1455 before a great
crowd in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. Venue
shifted later to the episcopal court of Paris where
commissioners listened to stories of Joan’s early
life—spinning with her mother, ploughing fields,
tending animals, falling to the ground to pray
whenever she heard church bells. They heard
battlefield stories of Joan’s insistence that her
soldiers not pillage, plunder, consort with
prostitutes, or even swear. Other
witnesses argued that Joan’s battlefield successes
proved the truth of her visions, and that near
miraculous things seemed to happen when Joan was
around (winds suddenly becoming favorable; water
rising to float their boats). The
verdict came as no surprise, when it finally did on
July 7, 1456. The
judges declared that the twelve articles on which Joan
was condemned were drafted “corruptly, deceitfully,
slanderously, fraudulently, and maliciously.” Joan’s
sentence was null and void. Moreover, a
cross should be erected at the spot in Rouen where she
died. But
Joan’s story was not yet over. In May 1920,
before a large crowd gathered outside St. Peter’s
Basilica, the Roman Catholic Church declared Joan of
Arc to be a saint.
The feast day of St. Joan is May 30, the day of
her execution. |