Trial of Condemnation

On January 9, 1431, Judges' investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government. From the article:

"The Trial of Condemnation
Of no other trial of the fifteenth century have we a report approaching this in detail and accuracy
This trail, which took place before an English-backed church court in Rouen, France in the first half of the year 1431 was, in the minds of many people, one of the most significant and moving trials ever conducted in human history.
The world had seen nothing like her since Christ.

January 9, 1431, opened in Rouen before a church tribunal chaired by the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, the “trial in matters of faith” that would lead Jeanne at the stake on 30 May of the same year. The text of the “Minute française” (register which were recorded from day to day, notaries, interrogations and deliberations) has disappeared, there remains a partial copy (the “manuscrit d’Urfé”) deposited at the National Library.

Around 1435, two members of the court, Thomas de Courcelles and the notary Guillaume Manchon, drafted a report in Latin. According to the original text – which is also lost -. Five expeditions (literal copies) were written and authenticated by notaries, the bishop and the Vice-Inquisitor.

Of these five expeditions, there remain only two copies on paper located at the National Library and a copy on vellum, which came to the Library of the National Assembly in 1811 with the purchase of the library of President de Cotte. It bears the stamp of Pierre Cauchon to whom it was originally intended.

Subsequent Examinations (Not included in the Official Text of the Trial.)
The 1903 English translation was updated into modern English usage by
Mathias Gabel of Trebur Germany and Carlyn Iuzzolino.


Documentary record
The life of Jeanne d’Arc is one of the best documented of her era. This is especially remarkable when one considers that she was not an aristocrat but rather a peasant girl. In one of history’s genuine ironies, this fact is due partly to the trial record kept by the same individuals who attempted to eradicate her name from memory, and partly due also to the records of the later appeal of her case after the war when the trial was investigated and its verdict was overturned.

During the trial in 1431, a trio of notaries headed by chief notary Guillaume Manchon took notes in French which were then collated each day following the trial session. About four years later, these records were translated into Latin by Manchon and University of Paris master Thomas de Courcelles.

Five copies were produced, three of which are still in existence. The lengthy investigations and appellate trial during the 1450s produced additional information about the details and behind-the-scenes activity during the process, since the 115 witnesses questioned during these investigations included many of the clergymen who had served during the trial in 1431. They gave vivid memories of many incidents that are not recorded in the trial transcript, and described how the English government had manipulated the affair.

Jules Quicherat published the first unabridged version of the trial record in the first volume of his five-volume series Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc in Paris in the 1840s. But it was not until 1932 that the first unabridged English translation became available when W.P. Barrett published his Trial of Joan of Arc in New York.

The 1928 film The Passion of Jeanne d’Arc, hailed as a cinematic masterpiece, was based on the trial record.

The official records of the Great Trial of 1431 and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish with remarkable fulness the facts of her life. The record gives the questions put to her and her replies to them. They are remarkably direct and full, not infrequently touched with the native shrewdness of the French peasant, occasionally resentful of repetition or of the incredulity of her hearers.

There emerges from the record the story of a sensitive child, raised in simple piety, for whom the saints were as real as the people she saw around her, and who saw St. Catherine, St. Michael and other saints just as they were represented by their images in the parish church.

The trial at Rouen could end in but one way.
She was in the hands of those who could not afford not to destroy her. A moment of weakness on Jeanne’s part gave them the opportunity. Wearied, frightened by threats of torture and tempted by hopes of release, abandoned, as she thought, by her “voices,” she broke down, declared herself an imposter, confessed that her voices had been feigned and threw herself on the mercy of the court.

Sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, returned to a cell and subjected to neglect and insult, she regained her courage, withdrew her confession and sought peace in the reassertion of her guiding voices and the reality of her mission. This was her end. She was summoned again before her judges, declared a relapsed heretic and a sorceress, and on the 3Oth of May 1431, she was burned at the stake in the market place in Rouen."

COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Woody Bullard SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth LTC Jeff Shearer SPC Margaret Higgins LTC Greg Henning Maj William W. 'Bill' Price SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski CW5 Jack Cardwell SPC Douglas Bolton TSgt David L. Lt Col Charlie Brown Sgt Randy Wilber PVT Mark Zehner CPL Dave Hoover CSM Charles HaydenWorld