Scott Alexander (author/host)

Also, he can't really refuse because this is his job.

He tries to offer her someone else hearing her confession and eventually drops the point.

Entertainingly, she does this without apparently knowing anything except war and, uh, now theology, somehow.

They ask her if she'd tell the Pope anything differently than she tells them and she immediately demands to be taken to the Pope.

They ask her which Pope and she goes, the Pope in Rome?

Footnote, it is customary to grant this request for an appeal, so this is another violation of trial procedures.

Back to the text.

The Avignon schism was, metaphorically speaking, last week, and in a couple decades the people trying her are going to schism briefly and elect their own pope because they dislike the Roman one.

The thing about all this is, though, that it's totally irrelevant to the actual situation.

She can beat all the inquisitors in the room in debate, sure.

That doesn't matter.

The English bought her so they could kill her, ideally in a way that disgraces her king, and they aren't going to just let her go.

She's the enemy's best general.

When she answers all their absurd trick questions correctly, they respond by writing down different answers than the ones she gave and having her convicted based on them.

Footnote.

How do we know this?

Why?

Because the Rouen archives weren't destroyed, and that means the French-language handwritten notes of the scribe who recorded her testimony, the French minute, were still in the archives.

And we can compare that...

and, as importantly, the French at the trial of rehabilitation could compare that with the official Latin version broadcast for publication.