Процесс Жанны д’Арк

An image familiar from an illustration in a school textbook: a girl on a horse, in armor, with a banner and a sword, enters a besieged city. The legendary Jeanne d'Arc... What was she really like?

The historian who studies the life and work of Joan of Arc has abundant and varied sources at his disposal. Jeanne herself spoke about many things in her testimony before the church tribunal, which tried her in the first half of 1431. The materials of this process have been preserved. They convey to us the true words of Jeanne and recreate the atmosphere of the trial, which ended with a guilty verdict and the execution of the defendant. A quarter of a century later, in 1456, the case of Joan of Arc was reviewed: the death sentence was declared a miscarriage of justice, and Joan was found not guilty. The rehabilitation was preceded by a lengthy investigation, during which the commission of inquiry questioned numerous witnesses who knew Jeanne at different periods of her life. The materials of this investigation also provide a lot of valuable information.

The activities of Joan of Arc are also reflected in other sources: her letters, letters to her, financial documents, chronicles, contemporary literary works, etc. All this forms a solid basis for building a scientific biography of Jeanne and removes many obstacles in the way of the researcher, which inevitably arise before anyone who, without sufficiently reliable guides, undertakes a journey through distant centuries.

We know about Joan of Arc more than any other of her contemporaries. But that doesn't mean we know everything about her. Her history is replete with ambiguities, her life is covered with legends, and one can hardly find another person among the people of the 15th century, whose image would seem so mysterious to posterity.

The story of Joan of Arc... This is not only the biography of a young girl who came to the aid of her homeland in a difficult time. This is a story about the French people, about the trials that fell to their lot, about their hopes and their struggle.