Scott Alexander (author/host)
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The consensus of Catholic Europe was to assume it was a perfectly normal inquisitorial trial that convicted a perfectly normal heretic of perfectly normal heresy.
An embarrassed silence descended upon the French court on the topic of Joan of Arc.
She might have won their battles, but her death made them look bad, and so they were silent.
A few decades passed.
She was burned in 1431.
In 1435, after French victories alternating with long truces, an attempted tripartite council between the French, Burgundians and English ended with the outcome least favourable to England.
Bedford, the regent of England, dead of an illness, and the Burgundian-Armagnac feud put on pause while they ganged up on England.
after 1485, or, as she put it, within seven years, and I should be very vexed should it be so long deferred.
1436 saw the fall of Paris to the French, and now the French armies were unstoppable, racking up victory over victory while the English collapsed into the internal feuds that would lead to the Wars of the Roses.
Meanwhile, the records of the first trial remained in Rouen in their metaphorical file drawer.
In 1450, the French took Rouen, and in their metaphorical file drawer, the files rested.
I think, if my sources give an exact date, I missed it, but the Normandy campaign that secured all of the duchy for the French was 49 to 50, and most of the action was in 1450.
But there was a right for families of a condemned victim to request to reopen trials, and Joan of Arc still had friends.
A few preliminary stabs had been taken to reopen the trial in 1450 and 1452, but in 1454, her mother and brothers petitioned the papacy for the case to be reopened.
Footnote, with the support of at least some members of the French government, which is probably why this petition didn't end up in a file drawer.
An inquiry was slowly started, but it accelerated when they saw the Rouen files and realised what had actually happened in the first trial.