Joan of Arc
What the Record Shows About 10 Famous Stories

Joan of Arc is unusually well recorded for someone of the Middle Ages. Her own answers to her judges were written down in 1431. In the 1450s, many people who knew her gave evidence on oath.

So most popular claims about her can be set against her own words, and the words of people who saw her. Here are ten of them.

Quotations from the trials come from the English edition edited by T. Douglas Murray in 1902. It is free to read on Project Gutenberg, and the book does not name its translator. The Latin comes from the edition by Jules Quicherat.

A short life

Birth. Only one account we found gives a date for her birth. It is a letter of 1429 to the Duke of Milan from Perceval de Boulainvilliers, a councillor of Charles VII. It gives the night of Epiphany, 6 January, but no year.

Murray dates her birth to 6 January 1412. His table writes the year as 1411–12, because years were then counted from Easter. When asked her age on 21 February 1431, Joan said she was about nineteen.

Domremy. She grew up in Domremy, a village on the Meuse, the daughter of Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle. She told her judges she was about thirteen when she first heard a voice that she said came from God.

Orléans and Reims. In March 1429 she reached the court of Charles, the uncrowned Dauphin, at Chinon. She arrived at Orléans on 29 April 1429, and the English siege of the city was raised on 8 May. On 17 July 1429 Charles was crowned at Reims.

Capture and trial. On 23 May 1430 she was captured at Compiègne. She was held by Jean de Luxembourg and the Duke of Burgundy’s followers. Jean de Luxembourg sold her in about mid-November 1430.

In late December she was brought to Rouen, where Henry VI of England had arrived that July. Her first public examination took place on 21 February 1431. She was condemned as a relapsed heretic and burned in the Old Market at Rouen on 30 May 1431.

Afterwards. In 1455 Pope Calixtus III ordered the case reopened. On 7 July 1456 the condemnation was declared null and void. She was beatified in 1909. On 16 May 1920 Pope Benedict XV declared her a saint in the Vatican Basilica.

What the sources are

There are three main kinds of evidence, and they were made for different purposes.

The trial of condemnation (1431). Notaries wrote down the questions and her answers in French. Part of that French record survives. It begins on 3 March and seems to be in the handwriting of Manchon, one of the notaries.

The official text is a Latin translation of those notes, made afterwards by Thomas de Courcelles. Five certified copies were made, and three survive. This is the record of a court that wanted to convict her.

The nullification trial (1450s). This was the later process that overturned her conviction, also called her rehabilitation. Charles VII ordered a first enquiry, held in March 1450. Murray dates it 1449, keeping the old practice of starting the year at Easter.

The full case followed under the Pope’s authority in 1455–56. Witnesses came from Domremy, Orléans, Paris and Rouen: neighbours, soldiers, priests, and notaries and assessors from the first trial. This process was meant to clear her, and its witnesses were remembering events nearly twenty years later or more.

Chroniclers and letters. Chroniclers of the time recorded her career, and some of her dictated letters survive. In the 1840s Jules Quicherat published the Latin and French texts of both trials in Paris, with the chronicles and letters, in five volumes. Murray’s 1902 edition says it was the first English translation of the official Latin text.

1. “Joan of Arc was burned as a witch”

Doesn't hold up No, though the story has roots in the trial itself. Witchcraft was in the first list of charges against her.

But by the end the charge was different. She was condemned as a relapsed heretic: the court said she had gone back to errors she had sworn, in writing, to give up.

• The first charges. The first list of charges had 70 items. One said she had claimed that using witchcraft, divination and superstition was not a sin.

• It was dropped. The list was later cut to 12. In the English translation, none of the 12 mentions witchcraft or sorcery. They cover her visions and revelations, her men’s clothes, her letters, her leaving home, her leap from a tower and her refusal to submit to the Church.

• The final sentence names relapse. It recalls that she had already been found guilty of schism, idolatry, invoking demons and many other crimes. But what it decrees, in Murray’s 1902 translation, is this: “WE DECREE THAT THOU ART A RELAPSED HERETIC”. The Latin reads te relapsam et hœreticam decernimus.

So the witch story has a seed of truth: the sentence does mention demons. But witchcraft is not what she was condemned for.

2. “She was executed for wearing men’s clothes”

Partly It’s easy to see why this one sticks: the judges did name her men’s clothes as a reason. But the record shows a second reason as well.

On 24 May 1431, facing the fire, she signed an abjuration: a statement renouncing her errors, with a sworn promise never to return to them. That afternoon she put on a woman’s dress. Four days later, on 28 May, the judges found her in men’s clothes again.

According to the trial record, her answers included these two.

• She had taken it “of my own free will, and with no constraint”, because she preferred a man’s dress to a woman’s.

• She had put it on again “because the promise made to me has not been kept”. She had been promised she could go to Mass, receive communion and be taken out of irons.

In the same session she said her voices had spoken to her since the abjuration. They told her she had done a great evil by declaring that what she had done was wrong. She added that everything she had said and taken back, she had said for fear of the fire.

When the judges met on 29 May, they gave both reasons: she had declared that her voices had returned, and she had put men’s clothes back on.

There are other accounts of the clothing. Murray’s notes say several versions of her reasons were given at the nullification trial, all claiming to come from her. One is Jean Massieu’s.

Massieu, a priest who was at every session she attended, gave evidence in the first enquiry of 1450. He said she told him that on the Sunday morning, while she was still chained to her bed, an English guard took her woman’s dress. He left her only the man’s, and in the end she was compelled to put it on.

So the trial record says one thing, and witnesses at the nullification trial, years later, said other things. We can set both out, but we can’t settle which is right.

3. “The English burned her”

Partly The English were deeply involved, so the short version has real truth in it. But the court that condemned her was a church court.

Two church judges presided: Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, and Jean Lemaître, deputy of the Inquisitor. Murray’s notes call it a composite court: the bishop sat as judge, with the Inquisitor’s deputy joined to him. It was neither a court of the Inquisition nor an English heresy court of the day.

Here is how close the English were.

• In Murray’s account, Cauchon was acting for the regent, Bedford, when he went to buy her from her Burgundian captors. He offered 10,000 livres tournois, which Murray calls the usual ransom for a king.

• An order from the English king, Henry VI, handed her to the judges on 3 January 1431.

• She was held in the castle at Rouen under English guard.

• Nicolas de Houppeville, a Rouen theologian, said in 1452 that the English brought her to Rouen. He believed they had also started the trial.

The church sentence then handed her over to the secular power, meaning the lay authorities. Brother Ysambard de la Pierre, a friar who was with her to the end, said the secular judge never sentenced her, to death or to burning. She was handed to the executioner with only the words “Do thy duty”.

Witnesses also said the English had a high scaffold built for the burning and had her ashes thrown into the Seine.

So a church court condemned her. But the English paid for her and held her, and one witness believed they set the trial in motion. She was burned without any sentence from the secular judge.

4. “She was a peasant shepherdess”

Partly There’s real truth here: her family worked the land, and she did look after animals at times. The picture is just simpler than the record.

Her godfather, Jean Morel, said her parents were both labourers, and that she had modest ways, as a girl whose parents were not rich. Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in 2011, called her parents well-off peasants.

She told her judges that once she was older, she did not generally look after the animals. She did help take them to the meadows, and to a castle called the Island for fear of soldiers. She could not remember whether she herded them as a small child.

A neighbour, Beatrix Estellin, said Joan sometimes kept the village’s cattle and flocks for her father when it was his turn. The village took turns.

The shepherdess story was already going round in 1429. Boulainvilliers’ letter says that at seven she was set to mind the lambs, and that not one was lost. Years later, at the nullification trial, the Sieur de Gaucourt remembered her at Chinon as “a poor little shepherdess!”

So the image is old. It was told about her in her own lifetime, and it was simpler than her life.

5. “Joan of Arc commanded the French army”

Partly Her influence on the army was real, so the picture of her as its leader has something behind it. She rode with it, and at least one of its commanders praised her judgment. Formal command, though, lay with the king’s captains.

The Duke of Alençon later testified that at Beaugency, in June 1429, he was “Lieutenant to the King, and thus in command of the army”. He also said she was most skilful at ordering military operations and directing artillery.

Joan described her own part differently. “Better, forty times better, my banner than my sword!” she said, when asked which she cared for more. She said she carried the banner herself when she attacked, so as not to kill anyone, and that she had never killed anyone.

Her page, Louis de Contes, remembered the pursuit of the English after Beaugency. La Hire led the vanguard that day, he said, and Joan was much vexed, because she liked to command the vanguard herself.

In 2024 the British Library described her as the military leader behind the French victory at the siege of Orléans. That is fair as a description of her influence. On who held command, the testimony points to the royal captains.

6. “Joan of Arc said she heard voices”

Holds up, as a statement of what she said. This one comes straight from her own answers. She told her judges on 22 February 1431: “I was thirteen when I had a Voice from God for my help and guidance”.

She named who she understood the voices to be. Asked whether it was the voice of an angel, a saint or God, she named Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. The first voice, she said, was Saint Michael, and she saw him before her eyes.

What the voices were is a different question, and history cannot answer it. Since the late nineteenth century, doctors have tried.

• A 2023 review found a variety of medical hypotheses for her voices, offered between 1882 and 2016.

• One 2006 paper suggested the voices may have been a sign of an epileptic syndrome.

• In 2023 a group of physicians examined some of the proposed diagnoses and found all of them unconvincing. They concluded that she does not warrant a medical or psychiatric diagnosis.

These are hypotheses about someone who cannot be examined, built on a record kept by her accusers. We give no view on what she experienced.

7. “Joan of Arc could not read or write”

Partly Her own answers point this way, so the idea is easy to believe. She dictated her letters, but some of her letters show she could sign her name.

At her trial she said she alone had dictated her letters to the English. Pope Benedict XVI said in 2011 that she could not read or write. When she signed her abjuration on 24 May 1431, the record shows her mark as Jehanne followed by a cross. Massieu remembered that she made a cross with a pen he handed her.

But a letter she dictated to the town of Riom on 9 November 1429 is signed Jehanne. The British Library, which displayed it in 2024–25, calls it the earliest known example of her signature.

Allen Williamson, who runs an online archive of her letters, says it was written by someone clearly just learning to write. He notes that her signature also appears on two later letters, getting better from one to the next.

Reading is another matter. Gobert Thibaut, a squire, was at her examination in Poitiers before she went to Orléans. In 1455–56 he testified that she told her examiners: “I know neither A nor B”. We couldn’t find any record of her learning to read later.

8. “Her name was Joan of Arc”

Partly The name isn’t made up: she did accept d’Arc as a surname. But the name she used for herself was a different one.

At her first examination she said that at home she was called Jeannette, and since coming into France, Jeanne. She said she knew nothing of her surname. She gave her father’s name as Jacques d’Arc.

A month later, as the record was read back to her, she added that her surname was d’Arc or Rommée. In her part of the country, she said, girls took their mother’s name.

The name she used was the Maid, la Pucelle. Her letter to the English in March 1429 asks them to hear the message of the Maid. When it was read out at her trial, she accepted it except for three words, among them “give up to the Maid”. She said that should read “give up to the King”.

Her confessor, Jean Pasquerel, remembered a letter she sent to the English at Orléans in May 1429. It was signed “Jhésus Maria, JEHANNE LA PUCELLE”. Pope Benedict XVI said in 2011 that everyone, including Joan herself, called her the Maid.

The name Joan of Arc is the English form of Jeanne d’Arc.

9. “Her heart would not burn”

Can't confirm The story comes from witnesses close to the events, which gives it real weight. But it was told at the nullification trial, years later, not on the day itself.

Ysambard de la Pierre gave evidence in the first enquiry of 1450. He said the executioner came to him afterwards. Despite the oil, sulphur and charcoal he had used, the executioner said, he could not burn the entrails or the heart to ashes.

Massieu, testifying in 1455–56, told it at second hand. He heard from Jean Fleury, the bailiff’s clerk, that her heart “remained whole and bleeding”.

That is what witnesses said they were told, years later, in a process meant to honour her. And there is nothing left to examine. According to the same witnesses, her ashes and all that remained of her were thrown into the Seine.

10. “Her relics are kept at Chinon”

Doesn't hold up The jar at Chinon was labelled as hers, so the belief had something to go on. But the scientists who tested it concluded the remains came from an Egyptian mummy, not from Joan.

The jar, known as the Bottle of Chinon, has a short history.

• In 1867 it was found in the attic of a Paris pharmacy, labelled as remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc.

• It held a charred-looking human rib, pieces of what looked like burnt wood, a piece of linen and a cat’s femur.

• A team led by the French forensic scientist Philippe Charlier analysed it. As reported in April 2007, carbon dating placed the remains between the 3rd and 6th centuries BC.

• Charlier concluded that they were mummified remains of Egyptian origin, from Egypt’s Late Period.

• The full study, in which 14 specialists analysed the samples, was published in Forensic Science International in 2010.

The Archdiocese of Tours noted at the time that the Church had never officially authenticated the remains.

What the sources can and can’t tell us

The trial records let us hear Joan answer questions, but through filters.

• The questions were chosen by judges trying to convict her.
• Her French answers were turned into Latin after the event.
• On the clothing in May 1431, a later witness for her side tells a different story from the official record.

The nullification testimony brings in the people who knew her. But it was gathered to overturn the verdict, a generation after the events, and some of it is hearsay. The heart that would not burn is one example.

So a useful habit, for Joan or anyone with a trial behind them, is to ask three things of any striking claim. Which record is it from? Who said it? And when?

A line from her own answers in 1431 is a different kind of evidence from a memory reported in 1456. Both differ from a story with no record behind it at all.

Why it matters

The charge that sticks in memory isn’t always the one in the record. Joan is remembered as a witch, a shepherdess and a general, and each picture has a real detail behind it. So when a story about the past feels familiar, it can help to look for the real detail behind it, and then for what the story leaves out.

Sources

Trial records and letters

• T. Douglas Murray (ed.), Jeanne d’Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France (London: Heinemann, 1902), Project Gutenberg #57389: the trial of condemnation (examinations of 21, 22, 24 and 27 February, 1 and 24 March, 28 and 29 May 1431; sentences of 24 and 30 May), the enquiries and depositions of 1450–1456 (dated 1449–1456 in Murray’s old-style years) (Toutmouillé, Ysambard de la Pierre, Ladvenu, Massieu, Cusquel, Jean Morel, Beatrix Estellin, Gaucourt, Louis de Contes, the Duke of Alençon, Pasquerel), the seventy and twelve articles, the note on the original documents, and the chronological table.
• Jules Quicherat (ed.), Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, dite la Pucelle, 5 vols (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1841–1849): vol. 1, pp. 46, 66–67, 472–473; vol. 4, chroniclers; vol. 5, pp. 114–121, letter of Perceval de Boulainvilliers.
• British Library, “British Library to open exhibition about medieval women”, press release, 25 October 2024 (the Riom letter, Ville de Riom, Archives municipales).
• Allen Williamson, “Joan of Arc’s Letter to the People of Riom; November 9, 1429”, Joan of Arc Archive (2004).

Church documents

• Benedict XVI, General Audience of 26 January 2011: Saint Joan of Arc, vatican.va.
• Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1 (1909), p. 394, brief of beatification; Acta Apostolicae Sedis 12 (1920), p. 226, the canonisation of 16 May 1920.

Modern studies

• Philippe Charlier et al., “The ‘relics of Joan of Arc’: a forensic multidisciplinary analysis”, Forensic Science International 194 (2010), e9–e15, doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2009.09.006.
• “St Joan’s bones look like fakes”, ABC Science, 5 April 2007.
• Giuseppe d’Orsi and Paolo Tinuper, “‘I heard voices…’: from semiology, a historical review, and a new hypothesis on the presumed epilepsy of Joan of Arc”, Epilepsy & Behavior 9(1) (2006), doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2006.04.020.
• Barbara Schildkrout, “What caused Joan of Arc’s neuropsychiatric symptoms? Medical hypotheses from 1882 to 2016”, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences 32(3) (2023), doi:10.1080/0964704X.2023.2171799.
• James Phillips et al., “Undiagnosing St Joan: She Does Not Need a Medical or Psychiatric Diagnosis”, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 211(8) (2023), doi:10.1097/NMD.0000000000001654.

Checked October 2026.

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