Place du Vieux-Marché and Joan of Arc
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Transcript
On 30 May 1431, Joan of Arc was executed by burning in Rouen after an ecclesiastical trial conducted under English political domination.
Joan had been captured by Burgundian forces and transferred to the English. The trial accused her of heresy and related offences. Twenty-five years later, a rehabilitation trial authorised by Pope Callixtus III overturned the earlier judgment.
The modern church and memorial landscape around Place du Vieux-Marché make Joan a national heroine. That memory should not flatten the legal and political context: French churchmen participated in the condemnation, and “France versus England” was not a simple modern national war with fixed popular loyalties.
The Historial Jeanne d’Arc nearby occupies part of the archiepiscopal palace associated with the trials.
Joan’s story became much cleaner after her death than it was while she was alive. Nations are excellent posthumous editors.