He also affirmed that Jeanne was “vehemently suspected of heresy” and that “rumors of her acts and sayings wounding our faith had notoriously spread”.

Without such a grant, he would have been unable to conduct the hearings as he was not in his native diocese. In a letter of February 20, 1431, to the assessors and others summoning them to appear the morning of the following day for the first public interrogation session of Jeanne, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, cited the grant of territory within the city of Rouen by the chapter of the cathedral of Rouen for the purpose of conducting the trial against Jeanne. This could then be followed by an interrogation of the suspect, in which he or she was compelled to provide testimony which could then be used against them in a subsequent trial. This investigation consisted of the collection of any evidence about the character of the subject, including witness testimony. Barrett published his Trial of Joan of Arc in New York.The procedures of an Inquisitorial trial called for a preliminary investigation into the life of the accused. But it was not until 1932 that the first unabridged English translation became available when W.P. 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.

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. This is especially remarkable when one considers that she was not an aristocrat but rather a peasant girl. The life of Joan of Arc is one of the best documented of her era.

She is now a French national heroine and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. The trial verdict would later be reversed on appeal by the Inquisitor-General in 1456, thereby completely exonerating her. It culminated in the execution of the person known to history as Joan of Arc, the young French peasant girl who was the defendant in the case.

The Trial of Joan of Arc, which took place before an English-backed church court at Rouen, Normandy in the first half of the year 1431 was one of the more famous trials in history and the subject of many books and movies.

Joan of arc pernoud