Jeanne was the daughter of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée in Domrémy, they owned about 50 acres (20 hectares) of land and her father supplemented his farming work with a minor position as a village official, collecting taxes and heading the local watch.
Domrémy, a small village in northeastern France near the border of the lands controlled by the English, during the 100 yrs war.
Back Ground : The Hundred Years War
The Hundred Years’ War was fought between France and England during the late Middle Ages. It lasted 116 years from 1337 to 1453.
The war started because Charles IV of France died in 1328 without a son. Edward III of England then believed he had the right to become the new king of France through his mother.
The French did not want a foreign king, so Philip VI of France said he ought to be king because by the Salic law women could not rule or transmit the right to rule to their sons.
The two countries went to war because of this disagreement.
At the beginning of the war France was the stronger of the two countries.
France had about 17 million people while England had only about 4 million people.
France also had an alliance with Scotland against England, and England tried to ally with parts of the Low Countries.
The English won a great victory at sea in the Battle of Sluys in 1340 which prevented France from invading England. After that the war was fought almost totally in France.
England won again at the Battle of Crécy in 1346: the English however, had better weapon technology such as, the longbow which was part of the reason for the victory.
From 1348 to 1356 there was very little fighting because of the Black Death.
Then Edward, the Black Prince won the Battle of Poitiers for England.
King John II of France was captured during the battle, he was forced to sign the disastrous treaties of 1360 during the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) between France and England.
The English invaded France again but were not able to take any more cities.
A truce gave England about one quarter of France.
The new king Charles V of France was more successful, with Bertrand du Guesclin as his best knight.
The Black Prince was busy at another war in Spain, and Edward III was too old to lead an army again.
So France allied with Castile against England and Portugal. France won back many French towns from the English during this time.
A peace followed from 1389-1415.
The most famous part of the war began in 1415. Henry the V of England invaded France and won the Battle of Agincourt with many bowmen.
King Charles VI of France was insane and unable to rule, and nearly all his sons died young.
August 1392 en route to Brittany with his army in the forest of Le Mans, Charles suddenly went mad and slew four knights and almost killed his brother, Louis I, Duke of Orléans.
From then on, Charles’ bouts of insanity became more frequent and of longer duration. During these attacks, he had delusions, believing he was made of glass or denying he had a wife and children.
His long-suffering subjects referred euphemistically to his usual state of incapability as his “absences”, and his wretched reign illustrates the fact that history, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Ambitious relatives in the Valois family jostled to rule on Charles’s behalf, and so in the end did Henry V, with miserable results for both kingdoms.
Not content that his father had usurped the English throne, Henry’s distinctive brand of self-righteousness impelled him to try an even greater usurpation and create a dual monarchy spanning the Channel.
When he died he seemed to have triumphed in this unlikely ambition, but it took the next quarter century for reality to seep into English consciousness, with a little help from Joan of Arc and her supernatural visions ..
The queen of France, Isabeau of Bavaria, married one of her daughters to Henry the V and signed the Treaty of Troyes to make Henry V the next king of France.
Both Henry V and Charles VI died at almost the same time.
So the English believed Henry VI of England was the new king of France and many French people agreed.
Charles VI’s last son Charles VII of France said he ought to be the new king, but many people said he did not deserve to be king because somebody else had probably been his father.
1425-1428.
Jeanne herself seldom spoke of her visions; like many of the deepest religious experiences, they were much too sacred for common conversation.
For several years she said not a word to any one.
Afterwards, when it became absolutely necessary to say something in order to establish her divine mission, she spoke of what she had seen, but always with reluctance and reserve; with still greater reluctance she spoke to her judges at her trial, and yet from her own story all our real knowledge of her visions has come.
- This image depicts the church in Greux, France where Joan of Arc saw statues of saints. It is called the Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Bermont.
That she both saw and heard the saints we know, but precisely what she saw, or how she heard them speak, she never told any one.
Two things only are certain: first, that she was sincere, and second, no trick was played upon her by others.
It appears, moreover, by very strong evidence, that in all other respects she was quite healthy, both in body and in mind.
Further than this, history cannot go, and the choice between insanity and inspiration must be made by another science.
The English continued to capture land in France until Jeanne of Arc led the army to success at the Siege of Orleans and the Battle of Patay in 1429.
- Jeanne D’arc war banner
However, Despite being known as a warrior, Jeanne of Arc never actually participated in active combat, and instead worked behind the scenes to outline strategy and direction for French troops as well as lead them into battle.
In 1429, As an illiterate girl, Joan dictated her letters.
How many letters in all were sent cannot be known, but about twenty are referred to in various documents, of which this letter to the English is the first complete letter to survive.
It survived because it must have so incensed the recipients that it was kept and cited as evidence against Joan at her trial in Rouen.
Her tone was preceived as peremptory and arrogant.
The King of England must render account to the King of Heaven and return the keys of the cities he has seized.
If he does not, as ‘commander of the military’, she will force his men to flee; and if they do not obey, ‘the Maid’ (Jeanne) will have them all killed.
She is sent by the King of Heaven ‘to take you out of France’.
‘The King of Heaven has sent her so much power that you will not be able to harm her or her brave army.’
“The Maid promises and certifies that if you do not leave France she and her troops will raise a mighty outcry as has not been heard in France in a thousand years,” she wrote. By early May, Orleans was hers.
But that was just a warm-up. “During the next five weeks, Joan led French forces into a number of stunning victories over the English,” and Reims, the traditional city of coronation, was captured in July.
Later that month, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan of Arc kneeling at his feet.”
She regained many cities and brought Charles VII to his coronation, but she did not recover Paris.
The Parisian defenses, under the responsibility of the Governor and the Provost, were determined. Joan was wounded in the thigh by a crossbow bolt.
The attempt to take back Paris failed.
“Jeanne became a prize of war,” he writes, paraded through the English-occupied parts of France before being sold to the English by her captors the Burgundians, who were also French but from a part that was allied with England (things got complicated during the Hundred Years War).
Jeanne was arrested on more than 70 charges, including horse theft, and sorcery.
She was primarily on trial for heresy conducted by Pierre Cauchon, bishop of Beauvais, who was allied to the English.
Because Jeanne’s use of men’s clothes partakes of her self-proclaimed identity as “la Pucelle;’ the maiden sent by God to save France from the English, scholars have generally considered her choice of clothes to be an attribute of her military and religious mission, a strategically useful behavior without implications for sexuality.
Other accounts state she was not given a choice, by the gaoler (jailer).
At 9 a.m. on May 30, 1431, 19-year-old Joan walked toward the market square.
She knelt and prayed for her enemies, then mounted the prepared pyre.
As the flames leapt upward, Joan asked for a cross to be held before her. Gazing upon it, her final word was “Jesus.”
After she was burned at the stake, the English cleared away the coals to display her charred body, thus preventing anyone from claiming that she’d somehow escaped.
Then they burned the body twice more to completely obliterate it and prevent anyone from taking any souvenirs.
After her body was reduced to ashes, the remains were tossed into the Seine River, which famously flows through Paris to this day.
On May 29, 1431, the tribunal announced Joan of Arc was guilty of heresy.
On the morning of May 30, she was taken to the marketplace in Rouen and burned at the stake, before an estimated crowd of 10,000 people.
As part of a plan devised by her own brothers, several women posed as Joan of Arc after her execution and received warm receptions and countless gifts while fooling the people of Orleans.
After her death, the French continued to take back territory, although more slowly. France had a diplomatic win in 1435 with the Treaty of Arras.
The war ended in 1453
But the posthumous reassessment began much earlier.
In 1456, the trial that had condemned her as a heretic was reviewed and declared null and void. She was innocent.
A cross was set up in the marketplace of Rouen where she had died, “to preserve her memory for ever”.
To any other mother in the village of Domrémy, Jeanne would have been considered a difficult child. Even before the visions started she argued her views loudly and displayed a stubbornness bordering on the unfeminine.
But Jeanne d’Arc ‘s mother was Isabelle Romée, wife of farmer Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle was not an ordinary medieval wife.
Her commitment to her faith and to God was usual for the times and her beliefs shaped her daily thoughts.
Where Isabelle differed was her longing to make the hazardous pilgrimage to Rome for the chance to be close to Gods representative on earth.
Isabelle did not consider herself brave, simply unworthy as she made her pilgrimage from Lorraine across the Alps and through Italy to Rome.
It was a treacherous time of civil unrest as the Armagnacs and Burgundians fought for control of France.
The challenges she faced were more than bad roads as the highways had become the unlawful playground for bands of desperate robbers.
Travel was dangerous for anyone and especially a woman but Isabelle did reach Rome. Her thoughts are not recorded but can be imagined.
To mark her achievement in Domrémy she was given the name ‘Romée’.
She relentlessly petitioned Pope Nicholas V to reopen the court case that had convicted Jeanne of heresy. 
Two months after the election of Pope Calixtus III, Isabelle Romée and her two sons appealed for justice concerning Jeanne’s case.
Finally an inquiry was opened in 1449. The Pope authorized the investigation and appointed the judges.
Isabelle was now over seventy years old but her faith and her cause kept her mind clear and her body young.
The process to right the wrongs done to Jeanne was begun on November 7, 1455.
Isabelle Romée, her two sons and a group of friends from Orleans, came to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.
Tearfully and filled with emotion, Isabelle approached the Pope’s representative judges and began to recite her request for justice for her daughter.
The Court heard the request with some emotion.
When Isabelle threw herself at the feet of the Commissioners, showing the Papal Legit Rescript and weeping aloud, while her Advocate, Pierre Maugier, and his assistants prayed for justice for her and for the memory of her martyred daughter, so many of those present joined aloud in the petition, that at last, we are told, it seemed that one great cry for justice broke from the multitude.
Jeanne’s mother, Isabelle Romée:
“I had a daughter born in lawful wedlock who grew up amid the fields and pastures. I had her baptized and confirmed and brought her up in the fear of God.
I taught her respect for the traditions of the Church as much as I was able to do given her age and simplicity of her condition.
I succeeded so well that she spent much of her time in church and after having gone to confession she received the sacrament of the Eucharist every month.
Because the people suffered so much, she had a great compassion for them in her heart and despite her youth she would fast and pray for them with great devotion and fervor.
She never thought, spoke or did anything against the faith. Certain enemies had her arraigned in a religious trial.
Despite her disclaimers and appeals, both tacit and expressed, and without any help given to her defense, she was put through a perfidious, violent, iniquitous and sinful trial.
The judges condemned her falsely, damnably and criminally, and put her to death in a cruel manner by fire.
For the damnation of their souls and in notorious, infamous and irreparable loss to me, Isabelle, and mine… I demand that her name be restored.”
Overcome with grief, she had to be escorted to the sacristy of the cathedral and thus began Jeanne’s Trial of Nullification in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris.
Prior to 1449, a number of factors stood in the way of any possible review of Jeanne’s condemnation.
Firstly, the English were still in possession of Paris. The University of Paris had provided assessors for the trial of condemnation at Rouen.
In May 1430, Paris had been held by the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, and the theologians and masters of the university had written to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy asking that Jeanne be transferred to the English so she could be placed on trial.
Since the university had played an active part in the proceedings, they could only be brought to account once Paris was captured on 13 April 1436.
Secondly, Rouen – the site of the trial – was also still held by the English.
The documents relating to the original trial were kept in Rouen, and the town did not fall into Charles VII’s hands until November 1449.
Historian Regine Pernoud makes the point that “So long as the English were masters of Rouen, the mere fact that they held the papers in the case, they had managed themselves, maintained their version of what the trial had been”.
Several years later, when Charles VII reconquered Normandy and expelled the English from France, he made it his business to annul Jeanne’s trial, with the help and support of the papacy.
This was as much a political act as a religious act, a way for Charles VII to ratify his legitimacy as a king designated by God—just as the Maid herself had declared.
Bouillé’s review of 1450
On 15 February 1450, Charles ordered the clergyman Guillaume Bouillé, theologian of the University of Paris, to inquire into the ‘faults and abuses’ committed by Jeanne’s judges and assessors at Rouen, whom Charles accused of having “brought about her death iniquitously and against right reason, very cruelly”.
This could potentially cause some difficulties, as a member of the University of Paris was being asked to investigate the verdict based on advice given by other members of the same university, some of whom were still alive and holding prominent positions within Church and State.
Charles therefore was very cautious, limiting Bouillé’s brief to a preliminary investigation in order to ascertain ‘the truth about the said process and in what manner it was conducted.’
Although there was a suspicion of an unjust condemnation, there was no suggestion at this stage of an inquiry leading to the Inquisition revoking its own sentence.
Yet there were too many prominent people who had been willing collaborators in 1430 that had changed their allegiance once Charles had regained Paris and Rouen that had too much to lose for the proceedings against Jeanne to be reopened.
They included men such as Jean de Mailly, now the Bishop of Noyon, who had converted to Charles’ cause in 1443, but in 1431 had signed letters in the name of King Henry VI of England, guaranteeing English protection to all those who had participated in the case against Jeanne.
Mid-15th-century depiction of Henry being crowned King of France. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
An even greater obstacle was Raoul Roussel, archbishop of Rouen, who had been a fervent supporter of the English cause in Normandy and had participated in Jeanne’s trial, until he too took an oath of loyalty to Charles in 1450.
Bouillé only managed to summon seven witnesses – Guillaume Manchon, Isambart de la Pierre, Martin Ladvenu, Guillaume Duval, Jean Toutmouillé, Jean Massieu, and Jean Beaupere – when his inquiry was suddenly broken off in March 1450.
He had not even managed to review the dossiers and minutes of the trial of condemnation.
Of the seven witnesses, most denounced the English for their desire for revenge against Jeanne, and their attempt to dishonor Charles VII’s title by associating him with a finding of heresy against Jeanne. Only one was hostile against Jeanne – Jean Beaupere, the Canon of Rouen.
Interviewed by Bouillé, he refused to answer questions about the procedure at the trial of condemnation.
He stated that Jeanne was a fraud, believing that if Jeanne ‘had wise and frank teachers, she would have said many things serving to justify her, and withheld many which led to her condemnation.’
His testimony was not included in the report which Bouillé wrote up for Charles written later that year after Charles had closed down the inquiry.
Circumstances had changed – the war against the retreating English was still occupying much of his attention, and there was trouble brewing with the Papacy over the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
Charles could afford to wait, but Bouillé made it clear that it was in the king’s interest to clear up the matter once and for all.
This argument, that the condemnation of Jeanne had stained the king’s honor, was enthusiastically taken up two years later with a man keen to make a good impression of Charles VII – the cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville.
d’Estouteville was the Papal legate in France appointed by Pope Nicholas V in 1451 to negotiate an Anglo-French peace.
His commission was hampered by two things: the ongoing success of the French army in throwing the English out of Normandy, and the ongoing debates about the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.
d’Estouteville had a number of reasons to take up the cause of Jeanne’s rehabilitation.
Firstly, his family had been devoted partisans in the cause of Charles VII in Normandy, losing land during the English occupation.
Secondly, he desired to clear the king’s name through any association with a convicted heretic. Finally, he was very anxious to demonstrate his loyalty to his homeland, and to support his sovereign in any matter that did not impact upon the pope’s traditional rights.
Even so, it wasn’t until February 1452 that Charles finally consented to see d’Estouteville. In his capacity as papal legate, he handed over the inquiry to the Inquisitor of France, Jean Bréhal.
On 2 May 1452, the inquisitor questioned witnesses connected with the case, followed by more thorough testimony beginning on May 8th.
This inquiry included most of the former tribunal members who were still living.
Though Charles was keen to know the facts behind the case, he was not enamored of the thought of the Inquisition running a high-profile case in France outside of royal control.
But through d’Estouteville’s intervention, by December 1452 the case had taken on a life of its own, independent of Charles.
But still the problems of the collaborators would not go away. At d’Estouteville’s inquiry of May 1452, two vital but highly placed witnesses were not called – Raoul Roussel, archbishop of Rouen and Jean Le Maître, vicar of the Inquisition in 1431.
Though new testimonies were taken from two canons of Rouen cathedral, neither of them remembered very much about the events of 1431.
By January 1453, d’Estouteville had returned to Rome, his principal mission to negotiate a peace having been unsuccessful. However, the Inquisitor Bréhal had been busy collecting information and learned opinions from canonists and theologians on the case.
Even more importantly, the month before saw the death of the Archbishop Roussel, removing a substantial obstacle to the reopening of the trial and the rehabilitation of Jeanne.
Retrial and rehabilitation – 1455/56
Joan of Arc drawing by Clément de Fauquembergue, 1429.
Nevertheless, almost two years were to elapse before a new push emerged to clear Jeanne’s name.
War with the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453 distracted the Church with attempts to organize a crusade.
Impetus for renewed attention to Jeanne’s case came from the surviving members of Jeanne’s family, her mother Isabelle and two of her brothers, Jean and Pierre.
Addressing a petition to the new pope, Callixtus III, with help from d’Estouteville who was the family’s representative in Rome, they demanded the reparation of Jeanne’s honor, a redress of the injustice she suffered and the citation of her judges to appear before a tribunal.
Inquisitor Bréhal took up their cause and traveled to Rome in 1454 to meet with the Pope “touching the trial of the late Jeanne the Maid”.
In response to this plea, Callixtus appointed three members of the French higher clergy to act in concert with Inquisitor Bréhal to review the case and pass judgment as required.
The three men were Jean Juvenal des Ursins, archbishop of Rheims, Richard Olivier de Longueil, bishop of Coutances, and Guillaume Chartier, bishop of Paris.
Of the three, the Archbishop of Rheims was the most prestigious, occupying the highest ecclesiastical seat in France. He also demonstrated a great deal of reticence towards the case and Jeanne’s memory, going so far as to advise Jeanne’s mother in 1455 not to proceed with her claim.
There were reasons for this. He had held the see of the Diocese of Beauvais from 1432, which had been the diocese where Jeanne had been condemned just the year before.
He was also a supporter of Gallicanism, and was very concerned with Pope Callixtus’ and d’Estouteville’s interference in the affairs of the French Church.
He was however, concerned about the claims that Charles had recovered his kingdom by using a heretic and a sorceress, and thus by default he too was a heretic.
The appellate process included clergy from throughout Europe and observed standard court procedure.
A panel of theologians analyzed testimony from some 115 witnesses, most of whom had more or less unanimously testified to her purity, integrity and courage.
The witnesses included many of the tribunal members who had placed her on trial;
a couple dozen of the villagers who had known her during her childhood; a number of the soldiers who had served during her campaigns; citizens of Orleans who had met her during the lifting of the siege; and many others who provided vivid and emotional details of Jeanne’s life.
Some of the former tribunal members were less forthcoming under examination, repeatedly claiming not to remember the details of the 1431 proceedings, especially regarding whether Jeanne had been tortured.
After the final depositions had been taken and the theologians had given their verdicts, Inquisitor Bréhal drew up his final analysis in June 1456, which described Jeanne as a martyr and implicated the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of a secular vendetta.
The court declared her innocent on 7 July 1456 by annulling her sentence.
They declared that Jeanne had been tried as a result of ‘false articles of accusation’.
Those articles and Cauchon’s sentence were to be torn out of a copy of the proceedings and burnt by the public executioner at Rouen.
The Archbishop of Rheims read out the appellate court’s verdict:
“In consideration of the request of the d’Arc family against the Bishop of Beauvais, the promoter of criminal proceedings, and the inquisitor of Rouen…
in consideration of the facts…. We, in session of our court and having God only before our eyes, say, pronounce, decree and declare that the said trial and sentence (of condemnation) being tainted with fraud (dolus malus), calumny, iniquity and contradiction, and manifest errors of fact and of law… to have been and to be null, invalid, worthless, without effect and annihilated… We proclaim that Jeanne did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such”.
Jeanne’s elderly mother lived to see the final verdict announced, and was present when the city of Orleans celebrated the event by giving a banquet for Inquisitor Bréhal on 27 July 1456.
Although Isabelle’s request for punishment against the tribunal members did not materialize, nonetheless the appellate verdict cleared her daughter of the charges that had hung over her name.
The official records of the Great Trial of 1431, and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish with remarkable fullness the facts of her life.
The history of no other life from that time is known with either the certainty or the comprehensiveness that attaches to hers.
Sixteenth-century France named her Jeanne d’Arc and made her a national heroine. The men of subsequent centuries took her story for their plays and poems, her image for their statues.
She became the spirit of France, the maiden, the holy warrior, the Republican and Napoleonic symbol for opposition to the English and for those who would protect France from foreign domination.
In the Second World War Charles de Gaulle used her standard, the Cross of Lorraine, as the symbol of Free France.
