# Clerical examiners at Poitiers allow Joan to proceed with the Valois forces

Date: 1429

## The fact

In 1429 a clerical examination at Poitiers authorised Joan’s participation with Charles’s forces.

## Context

Armagnac clergy had an interest in a usable captain. That interest does not erase the examination. It also does not make Poitiers a supreme court over Rouen.

[Joan of Arc](/people/joan-of-arc) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Archives nationales as a French public-records portal and Britannica independently treat the Poitiers examination as part of the 1429 sequence.

Official or archival record: Archives nationales (France) (https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/; Archives nationales).

## Significance

High confidence that an examination occurred before Orléans; medium on the full Latin text as a 1429 file.

Poitiers is not the 1456 nullification. Split the courts.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Poitiers clerical clearance in 1429. Not established: that this was an impartial modern trial, or that it legally bound English Rouen.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Joan of Arc: https://factrail.ai/people/joan-of-arc

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc
- https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-poitiers-1429