# Joan of Arc

The first fact about Joan of Arc is a limit on evidence. This catalog does not store voices as verified supernatural Facts. It stores a 1429 Chinon and Poitiers examination, the 8 May Orléans relief, the 17 July Reims coronation of Charles VII, the 23 May 1430 capture, the 1431 Rouen process and 30 May burning, the 1456 rehabilitation, and the 16 May 1920 canonization, using later public carriers when a 1429 file cabinet is not the object.

Those carriers include the independent biography at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc, the French public-records portal https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/, the Rouen officiality museum at https://www.historial-jeannedarc.fr/en/, the Chinon fortress at https://www.forteressechinon.fr/, the Reims World Heritage file at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/601/, Gallica at https://gallica.bnf.fr/, the Holy See at https://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html and Benedict XV’s portal https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/en.html, and the Folger text of Henry VI, Part 1 at https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/henry-vi-part-1/.

Rouen is an occupation inquisition under Pierre Cauchon, not a seminar. Interrogatories extracted speech. Bodily examinations and clothing articles made a prisoner’s body and dress into capital tools. The 24 May 1431 abjuration sits under a pyre threat. The 30 May fire ends a combatant by heresy theatre rather than by ordinary ransom. Later, the same name is a Third Republic sword, a colonial mission emblem, a Vichy national-revolution saint, a far-right May brand, a 1914 recruitment poster, and a wartime endurance slogan around coal and grain. Those later captures are not 1429. They are still facts about the usable past.

Offsets are also documents. Orléans on 8 May 1429 is a siege lifted, which is food and movement. The Loire corridor and Patay made Reims reachable. 17 July 1429 is a coronation against the Treaty of Troyes claim. 1456 quashes 1431 without unburning anyone. Quicherat from 1841 and later Gallica make the minutes copyable. 1909 and 1920 are Vatican legal-memory, not physics of voices. The 2015 Historial puts the officiality on a public tour that includes myth. Later women’s legal-memory uses an executed woman whose sentence was nullified; that is not a suffrage clause she drafted.

Shared names matter. Charles VII takes the crown. Dunois and La Hire fight. Yolande of Aragon has a court interest. Philip the Good sells. Henry VI’s English regime pays. Cauchon presides. Shakespeare later stages a hostile Maid in Henry VI. Luther is a later religious-trial reception, not a 1431 colleague. A European Commission president is a later memory of continental crisis politics, not a sitting at Chinon.

What this does not say: that visions are proven; that Joan uniquely won France; that 1456 is a modern rights code; that 1920 cancelled empire; that a 1988 march is the procès. Confidence is high on 8 May 1429, 17 July 1429, 23 May 1430, 9 January and 30 May 1431, 1456, 1909 and 1920 as public dates. It is medium on coefficients for later party and colonial uses. It is null on private revelation as a measured event.

Orléans is not Paris. Paris is not Rouen. Rouen is not 1941. 1941 is not 1920. Official and independent URLs differ. If those distinctions feel pedantic, they are the alternative to a holy statue and the alternative to a unique-national-genius pamphlet.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different death date or a different accused name; a 1429 autograph command roll that removed Dunois; a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of one of these instruments rather than of later states. Until then the dossier refuses fake miracles and refuses fake innocence of later militarisation.

The live related people are court, captors, later stage and later church-political users. Some are stubs. That is how a graph grows without inventing a 1429 meeting with a 1521 friar. Keep Chinon, Orléans, Reims, Rouen, 1456 and 1920 on separate paths. A captain is famous enough to own those files. She is not the author of Vichy or of a party fête and this page should keep that line visible without deleting the later captures of the name.

### War leadership, religious prosecution, and posthumous rehabilitation

Joan of Arc's execution was the culmination of a political and religious prosecution, not a straightforward military battlefield death. On 30 May 1431 she was burned in Rouen following proceedings in territory controlled by England and its allies. Joan had earlier been captured at Compiègne in 1430 and transferred into English custody. The tribunal scrutinised her reported visions, dress and obedience to church authorities. Those proceedings were shaped by the Hundred Years' War and rival claims to the French throne. Their legal form should not obscure how strongly the military conflict affected the incentives of the parties. It is a historical example of the vulnerabilities faced by people placed under [judicial authority](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion) in a conflict environment.

The 1429 campaign is also more precise than the legend of a teenager single-handedly liberating France. Joan contributed to the revival of morale and supported the French campaign to lift the siege of Orléans. Military success depended on commanders, troops, logistics and an already developing political coalition. Her participation helped legitimise the claim of Charles VII, whose coronation at Reims on 17 July 1429 became a symbol of renewed royal authority. The Archives nationales exhibition on the earliest representation of Joan situates the figure in contemporary documentary and visual sources. Evidence of public recognition in 1429 is significant; it is not proof that every later portrayal accurately records her appearance or private thoughts.

A later inquiry in 1456 nullified the condemnation, showing that the 1431 outcome did not remain the last institutional word. Rehabilitation, however, came after her death and under different political conditions. That sequence allows two independent assessments: how the original tribunal used its power and how a subsequent authority reassessed the process. It should not be compressed into the claim that she was legally vindicated in her own lifetime. For [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion), national memory of Joan became a means of mobilising people long after her actions, with competing ideological interpretations that belong to those later actors.

William Shakespeare portrayed Joan centuries later in a dramatic historical setting. His character is evidence about an English literary tradition, not an eyewitness source for her conduct. The disparity matters because accusations of witchcraft, nationalist celebration and later sainthood can all distort a fifteenth-century record when introduced without dates. She was canonised in 1920, nearly five hundred years after her execution. A careful chronology keeps the military campaign, captivity, condemnation, nullification and modern commemoration separate. It can recognise genuine leadership without erasing the soldiers around her, and denounce procedural injustice without inventing courtroom details absent from surviving records.

## Dated facts

- 2015: The Historial Jeanne d’Arc opens in Rouen’s archbishop’s palace on the officiality site. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-historial-2015. Sources: https://www.historial-jeannedarc.fr/en/historial/about-the-historial/, https://www.historial-jeannedarc.fr/en/.
- 2000: The royal fortress of Chinon is interpreted to the public as the 1429 reception site. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-chinon-public. Sources: https://www.monuments-nationaux.fr/, https://www.forteressechinon.fr/.
- 1997: Gallica and later digital libraries put Joan trial editions on a public URL. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-gallica-proces. Sources: https://www.bnf.fr/en, https://gallica.bnf.fr/.
- 1991: UNESCO lists the Reims cathedral complex that staged the 1429 coronation. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-unesco-reims-1991. Sources: https://www.unesco.org/en, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/601/.
- 1988: The French far right makes an annual Joan of Arc May ritual a party brand. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-fn-may-fete. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/, https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/.
- 1941: Vichy and collaborationist culture conscript Joan as a national-revolution emblem. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-vichy-cult-1940s. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/, https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/.
- Later women’s legal-memory uses Joan’s 1431 trial and 1456/1920 reversals as a public example. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-womens-legal-memory. Sources: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/en.html, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc.
- 1920: Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-canonization-1920. Sources: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/en.html, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc.
- 1918: French state-industrial war memory keeps Joan as a brand for armed national production. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-industrial-military-brand. Sources: https://www.cambridge.org/, https://www.loc.gov/.
- 1916: Wartime French resource rhetoric uses Joan as a figure of national energy and endurance. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-wwi-energy-rhetoric. Sources: https://www.loc.gov/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc.
- 1914: Twentieth-century French military recruitment uses Joan on mobilisation paper. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-recruitment-labour. Sources: https://www.loc.gov/, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc.
- 1909: Pius X beatifies Joan of Arc. https://factrail.ai/facts/joa-beatification-1909. Sources: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc, https://www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html.

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/joan-of-arc