Summary
On May 24, 1431, Joan's sentence was read. After her
trial at the ecclesiastic hands of the Bishop Pierre Cauchon, Joan
was to be turned over to the secular power of the Burgundians and
English. Joan begged for an appeal to Pope, but her judges refused.
Afraid of what would happen to her in English and Burgundian hands,
Joan relented and signed an abjuration in which she admitted her
crimes. This infuriated the English. Joan had foiled their plan
by admitting her guilt, so now she would remain under ecclesiastical
authority and not be killed. The English desperately wanted her
dead and did not know what to do. Joan, however, did not stand
by her abjuration long: after signing the document, Joan was returned
to prison to remain there indefinitely; in prison, Joan said she
was visited by her voices, condemning her capitulation. Joan now
said her abjuration was a mistake, that she had not meant it. (After
signing her abjuration, Joan put a cross next to her name [the
signature still survives]. Some hypothesize that this was a signal
that she did not seriously mean what she signed.) The Church judges
called this a "relapse," and on May 29 they handed her over to
the secular authorities that she so feared.
When Joan learned of the method of her execution, she
was distraught, telling her jailers that she would much rather
be beheaded than burned, but no one was listening. Before her
death, a guard of English soldiers, who laughed at her as she made
her frantic, last minute prayers, surrounded the weeping Joan.
One English soldier took pity on the nineteen-year-old girl and
handed her a hastily made wooden cross moments before she was tied
to the stake. She kissed it and put it into her bosom. During
her burning, a Dominican friar consoled her by holding up a crucifix
for her to gaze upon as she died. Even as she was burned, Joan
did not recant. To the end, she continued to claim that the voices
she had heard all her life were divine in nature. She called on
her three favorite saints for help as she burned. Right before
she lost consciousness, she yelled out: "Jesus!"
Although most of the authorities involved in Joan's case
seemed more politically than religiously motivated, Bishop Pierre
Cauchon did display a concern for Joan's soul. For all his cruelty
to Joan, he did allow her to make confession and receive communion
after the abjuration and even after the relapse, and he spent considerable effort
trying to get her to admit that she made up the voices that she heard.
It seems that unlike the conniving English and Burgundian leaders,
Cauchon genuinely believed Joan to be guilty of heresy and her soul
to be in danger.
In later years, as Joan's legend grew, the executioner
would claim that Joan's heart had resisted the flames, and had
been found intact among the ashes. The same executioner was said
to have confessed to his friends and family that he feared he was
eternally damned for burning a holy woman. Even in death, Joan
continued to maintain a powerful hold over people's imaginations.
In 1450, Charles VII came to Rouen and demanded an investigation
into Joan's tragic execution, resulting in the immense amount of
source material now available on Joan's life and death. Later,
Pope Calixtus III annulled Cauchon's 1431 verdict declaring Joan
a heretic, and on May 16, 1920, Pope Benedict XV made Joan of Arc
a saint. In June of that year, the French Parliament declared
a national holiday in Joan's honor.
