Captured by Burgundian forces and sold to the English, Joan of Arc faced a tribunal engineered to discredit the French monarchy she had helped crown. Presided over by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, the proceedings combined religious inquisition with political vendetta, ultimately condemning her to death by burning that May — a verdict later annulled by the Catholic Church.
By January 1431 Joan had already spent months in English captivity, shuttled between prisons and interrogated repeatedly, chained even at night in a cell guarded by English soldiers rather than churchmen, an irregularity her defenders later cited as proof of the trial's illegitimacy. Bishop Cauchon, a Burgundian sympathizer beholden to English interests, assembled a court of some 131 clergymen and academics, many pressured or handpicked to reach a predetermined conclusion.
The interrogations, which formally intensified through February and March, probed her visions, her decision to wear men's clothing, and her claims of direct divine guidance — all recorded meticulously by notaries whose transcripts survive today as an extraordinarily detailed window into a medieval woman's own words defending herself against powerful men.
Joan's calm, often sharp responses under relentless questioning ('I fear nothing, for God is with me') startled the tribunal. She was burned at the stake in Rouen's marketplace on May 30, 1431, at about nineteen years old. Twenty-five years later, a posthumous retrial declared her innocent, and in 1920 the Catholic Church canonized her as a saint, transforming a political execution into an enduring symbol of French national identity and religious martyrdom.
Key people: Joan of Arc, Pierre Cauchon