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—— ON THIS DAY ——
MAY 30, 1431
Rouen, English-occupied France
594 years ago
Joan of Arc — a 1903 illustration by Albert Lynch, depicting the nineteen-year-old who commanded French armies and was burned at the stake by an English-controlled court for heresy and witchcraft.
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the Place du Vieux-Marché in Rouen on May 30, 1431. She was approximately nineteen years old. She had been tried by an ecclesiastical court controlled by the English and their French Burgundian allies on charges of heresy, witchcraft, and wearing men's clothing. The trial lasted three months and produced a verdict that has been recognized as a judicial murder for nearly six centuries. In 1456, a retrial ordered by Pope Calixtus III overturned all the charges and declared her innocent. In 1920, she was canonized as a saint.
Joan's story is extraordinary even before the execution. Born in 1412 in Domrémy, a village in northeastern France, she began experiencing visions and hearing voices at around thirteen — voices she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, commanding her to drive the English from France and see the Dauphin crowned king. At seventeen, she persuaded the Dauphin (the future Charles VII) to give her command of French forces. Within months, she had relieved the Siege of Orléans, which had been ongoing for seven months. She was eighteen.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
Joan of Arc on horseback — a depiction of the warrior saint whose military campaigns reversed the course of the Hundred Years' War, who was captured, sold to the English, tried, and executed.
Joan's military career lasted about a year. She was wounded by an arrow at Les Tourelles, participated in the coronation of Charles VII at Reims in July 1429, attempted unsuccessfully to take Paris, and was captured at Compiègne in May 1430 by Burgundian forces, who sold her to the English for 10,000 livres. She made multiple escape attempts during her imprisonment. During her trial, she conducted her own defense with a theological sophistication that impressed and frustrated her examiners. When asked a trick question — whether she believed she was in a state of grace — she replied: 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.' The examiners were left speechless.
The question of why Charles VII did not ransom or rescue her is one of history's persistent uncomfortable questions. He could have negotiated for her; the English price was not impossibly high. He did not. Historians have suggested various reasons: political calculation, the threat that her popular prestige posed to his own authority, simple ingratitude. Whatever the reason, the king who owed his crown to her allowed her to be burned by his enemies without significant effort to save her.
Joan of Arc has been claimed by more different political and cultural movements than almost any other historical figure. She has been a symbol of French nationalism, of Catholic piety, of feminism, of royalism, of republicanism, of the French right, and of the French left. Her image appears on everything from government seals to protest banners. The girl who heard voices in a village in Lorraine at thirteen has been reinterpreted so many times that the historical person has been almost entirely subsumed by the symbol — which is perhaps the most enduring form of martyrdom.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Joan of Arc's military leadership changed the course of the Hundred Years' War. The Siege of Orléans, which she broke in 1429, was a turning point. Before it, France was losing. After it, and through the coronation at Reims that followed, the momentum shifted. The English eventually lost all their French territories except Calais, and the Hundred Years' War ended in 1453.
Her trial and execution are the defining example of a political judicial murder. The charges against her were instruments of political suppression, not genuine theological inquiry. The speed with which they were overturned after political conditions changed — twenty-five years later — demonstrates that the court that condemned her knew what it was doing.
Her afterlife as a symbol has been as consequential as her actual career. The French nationalist movement of the nineteenth century, the Vichy regime, the Resistance, and modern French political parties of every stripe have all invoked Joan of Arc. The ability of a historical figure to be claimed by contradictory causes simultaneously is one of the defining features of political mythology.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On May 30, 1431, a nineteen-year-old was burned at the stake in Rouen for hearing voices and winning a war. The king she had crowned did not try to save her. Twenty-five years later, she was declared innocent. Five centuries later, she was made a saint. The voices she heard have been debated ever since.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"I am not afraid. I was born to do this."
— Attributed to Joan of Arc; exact phrasing contested but consistent with documented statements during her trial
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Joan of Arc's military campaigns, her trial and execution, the retrial that declared her innocent, and the extraordinary range of movements that have claimed her as their symbol?
