During her imprisonment at Rouen, church judges loyal to English interests interrogated Joan of Arc on charges of heresy and cross-dressing, seeking to discredit the visions that had rallied French forces against English occupation. The proceedings, held in a fortress cell rather than open court, culminated weeks later in her execution by burning, transforming a teenage peasant girl into an enduring symbol of French national identity and religious conviction.
By May 1431, Joan of Arc had already changed the course of the Hundred Years' War, leading French troops to lift the siege of Orléans and securing Charles VII's coronation at Reims. Captured by Burgundian forces the previous year and sold to the English, she now sat imprisoned in Rouen's castle, facing an ecclesiastical trial engineered by pro-English clergy determined to prove her divine visions were diabolical fraud.
Her interrogators, led by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, pressed her relentlessly on theological technicalities—whether she believed she was in a state of grace, why she wore men's armor, whether her voices came from God or the Devil. Joan, unable to read or write, defended herself with startling composure and sharp wit, famously replying to the trap question about being in God's grace: 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.'
The interrogations in the days around May 19 focused heavily on her clothing and claims of visions, building toward the charges that would condemn her. She was burned at the stake in Rouen's marketplace on May 30, 1431, at around nineteen years old. Twenty-five years later a posthumous retrial nullified the verdict, and in 1920 the Catholic Church canonized her as a saint.
Key people: Joan of Arc, Pierre Cauchon