(The curator said he and his nasty jacks burned the resurrected Magistrate alive MANY times, they stripped her of her honor over and over again … this could very well have been one of her lives. Spirit Divine stated this woman, and these women, the Roses, were the sacrifices the church and their savior have been operating on. The Rose has finally been emancipated. These are bad days for those who have burned the Divine Daughters and Mothers for centuries).
The 19-year-old peasant girl who had turned the tide of the Hundred Years’ War now sat chained to a wooden block in an English fortress, guarded by the same soldiers whose army she had defeated. The woman who had crowned a king would be destroyed by men determined to prove she was no messenger of God, but a heretic deserving only fire. When Burgundian forces captured Joan at Compiègne on May 23, 1430, they held the most valuable prisoner in France. In November, the English paid 10,000 francs to her Burgundian captors and transferred her to Rouen, the administrative capital of English-occupied France. By December, Joan was imprisoned in the castle of Bouvreuil, a fortress controlled by the Earl of Warwick; the English had purchased the means to destroy the legitimacy of Charles VII himself.
Joan’s Interrogation by English Clergy
On January 3, 1431, an edict charged Joan with religious crimes to be tried by an ecclesiastical court headed by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, long an adviser to the English occupation government. The accusations included wearing men’s clothing in violation of biblical law, claiming to receive divine visions, and refusing to submit to church authority. The trial would decide whether Joan’s victories were acts of divine will or the work of a heretic guided by demons. Formal interrogations began on February 21, 1431. Joan was led into the castle chapel to face Bishop Cauchon and forty-two clerics assembled to judge her.
She agreed to swear an oath to answer truthfully but refused to reveal anything that might compromise King Charles VII. Between February 21 and March 24, she endured nearly a dozen sessions. The clerics pressed her relentlessly on three issues: the nature of her visions, her refusal to submit to church authority, and her wearing of men’s clothing. Their questions were traps designed to expose heresy no matter the answer. When asked whether she believed she was in a state of grace, Joan saw the snare.
Church doctrine held that no person could know with certainty whether they possessed God’s grace. If she answered yes, she would contradict doctrine; if no, she would admit her visions could not be from God. Joan replied that if she was not in a state of grace, she prayed God would place her there, and if she was, she prayed God would keep her there. Even her interrogators found no fault with the answer. The initial seventy charges were reduced to twelve articles of accusation.
Joan defended herself with such intelligence that some clerics began questioning the proceedings. One tribunal member stepped down, stating the testimony was being coerced to entrap Joan rather than seek truth. Another challenged Cauchon’s right to judge and was immediately imprisoned. Throughout, the court’s irregularities mounted.
Imprisonment in a Male Military Jail
During the trial, Joan was held under conditions that violated ecclesiastical law. Canon law required that female prisoners accused of heresy be guarded by women—typically nuns—in church prisons. Joan was confined in a secular military fortress under direct English control, guarded by common soldiers who viewed her as an enemy. She was chained to a heavy wooden block even in her cell; iron shackles were sometimes fastened to her feet.
Guards were assigned to remain inside her cell at all hours—three inside continuously, with two posted outside, according to later testimony. Joan had no privacy and no respite from the gaze of men who despised her. The guards taunted her mercilessly; she lived in constant fear. When she fell gravely ill with fever and believed she might die, she begged for the sacrament and burial on sacred ground—requests denied.
The Earl of Warwick restrained the guards somewhat, not from compassion but because the English had paid the equivalent of a thousand horses for her and intended to extract full political value from her condemnation. Yet the danger went beyond harassment. Testimony at the 1456 rehabilitation trial reported repeated physical threats and attempted violations during her imprisonment. One witness stated that a great English lord tried to assault her.
This helps explain Joan’s insistence on wearing men’s clothing despite the charge. Men’s garments, tightly laced and bound, offered protection that a dress could not. Joan argued repeatedly that it was more proper to dress as a man when surrounded by male guards than to wear clothing that left her vulnerable. The judges dismissed her reasoning, but the danger was real. The trial itself was riddled with procedural breaches.
Joan was interrogated for weeks before being formally read the charges. She was given no legal counsel. The procedures fell below even minimal inquisitorial standards. The trial occurred in Rouen rather than in her home diocese, breaching canon law. Evidence suggests transcripts were falsified at crucial points to render Joan’s statements more incriminating.
The Heresy Verdict and Execution at Rouen
On May 23, 1431, Joan was informed that theologians from the University of Paris had reviewed her case. Their verdict was unambiguous: her claimed voices were judged demonic; her men’s clothing unnatural and wicked; her refusal to submit marked her as a heretic. If she would not recant, she would be handed to secular authorities for burning. The next day, Joan was taken to the cemetery of Saint-Ouen and placed beside a stake.
Terrified by the sight, weakened by months of imprisonment, and abandoned by the king she had crowned, Joan broke. She agreed to sign a form of abjuration, recanting her claims and admitting she had deceived the people of France. Her sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and she was ordered to wear women’s dress. She complied—briefly.
When Cauchon and other judges visited her cell days later, they found her again in men’s clothing. Joan stated she had changed back of her own free will, saying the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for denying truth to save her life. But witnesses at the 1456 rehabilitation trial offered another account: guards had stolen her dress at night and left only men’s clothing, forcing her to put it on.
Whatever the precise circumstances, the outcome was predetermined. On May 28, Cauchon and seven other judges interrogated Joan in her cell. She told them she had resumed men’s clothing because it was necessary for protection among male guards and that her voices had censured her for recanting. Returning to male attire after swearing to abandon it was deemed proof of relapse.
Under canon law, a relapsed heretic could not be given a second chance. On May 29, the judges unanimously agreed to hand her over to secular authorities. The sentence was death by burning. On the morning of May 30, 1431, Joan was allowed to receive the sacraments—an act of mercy that technically violated church law. She was then led from her cell to the Place du Vieux-Marché, the old marketplace at Rouen.
A tall plastered pillar had been erected in the center of the square; Joan was tied to it. She should have been formally handed to the bailiff of Rouen for secular sentencing, but instead the English took direct control. Joan asked to see a cross as she died. An English soldier, moved by her plea, fashioned a simple cross from two sticks and gave it to her. She kissed it and held it to her chest.
A processional crucifix was then brought from the Church of Saint-Sauveur. Joan embraced it before her hands were bound, and it was held before her eyes as the flames were lit. As the fire rose around her, witnesses heard her cry out repeatedly. Her final word, shouted above the roar, was the name “Jesus.” At nineteen, the peasant girl who had changed a war’s course died in Rouen’s marketplace.
After her death, executioners burned her remains twice more to ensure nothing was left. Her ashes were thrown into the Seine to prevent relics. The English believed they had erased Joan of Arc from history. Instead, they created a martyr whose story would endure for centuries. Twenty-five years later, a rehabilitation trial convened at her mother’s request.
The court heard testimony from 115 witnesses and declared the 1431 verdict invalid—tainted by bias and riddled with procedural errors. In 1920, the Catholic Church canonized her as St. Joan of Arc. The woman burned as a heretic became a patron saint of France. If you had stood in that Rouen marketplace on May 30, 1431, watching a nineteen-year-old girl call out to God as flames rose, would you have recognized judicial murder dressed in the robes of religious authority?
The trial that condemned Joan was never truly about heresy. It was about destroying the symbol that made French victory possible and English occupation untenable. Her judges could twist canon law, falsify records, and break procedure—but they could not erase what she had already changed. That is why her name still burns brighter than their verdict.
opensenseme 