Procès en nullité de la condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc

by Pierre Duparc, Marie-Henriette Jullien de Pommerol, Henri Courteault

Text in Middle French with commentary in French.

541 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Elijah McLellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

St. Joan of Arc is one of those exceptional historical figures whose story, though entirely true, reads like a piece of fiction and yet is all the more intriguing precisely due to veracity. Many are likely already familiar with her story: the simple village girl, called by God through visions of saints Michael, Margaret, and Catherine to liberate the city of Orleans and to lead the French dauphin to be crowned king in Reims. After doing so, her continued military campaign, which rallied the then-abeyant French forces to action and numerous significant victories, ultimately led to her capture, trial by the Inquisition, and her condemnation and subsequent death at the stake. It’s a true story of the inconsequential called to carry out mighty deeds, a tale of unmatched valor and literal world-changing action, and ultimately, a story of humanity, with all its weakness, brokenness, and bravery.
Much could be said of the importance of St. Joan of Arc - how she quite literally awoke the French and set them on track to end the Hundred Years’ War; how her actions protected France from the plague of Protestantism that soon after contaminated Europe, making France a harbor and seedbed of the Catholic Faith for centuries; how her example shows us that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness - but I’ll finish by saying that perhaps, in our day, the message we need the most is that God’s ways are not man’s, and if we have faith like the little-village-girl, Joan of Arc, God can and will do great things in and through us.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

There exist some 700 pages of the many actual inquests, trials and defence hearings. I have editions of exerpts in the actual French published in the 1960s, so this edition is not one that I read. The whole of Joan's ordeal and the accounts and of the witnesses and Joan's own statements- all recorded by various scribes of priests, officials- are riveting. One English man upon watching Joan death on the pyre said, We have burned a saint. If even a portion of the witnessed events and interviews of Joan in captivity are true, the man was right.