First published in 1931, this is the first unabridged English translation of the documents pertaining to the trial of Joan of Arc. The basis of the translation is drawn from an edition of the text published in 1841 by Jules Quicherat, but elements are also derived from a number of the manuscripts originally translated into Latin. As notes were taken daily by several scribes, the text provides important insight into the trial, its chronology and its major players, as well as Joan’s character and intellect. With a detailed introduction and beautiful illustrations, this is a fascinating reissue that will be of value to students of medieval history, particularly those with an interest in medieval hagiography, heresy during the fourteenth century, ecclesiastical law and the practice of Church courts.

No account is more critical to our understanding of Joan of Arc than the contemporary record of her trial in 1431. Convened at Rouen and directed by bishop Pierre Cauchon, the trial culminated in Joan's public execution for heresy. The trial record, which sometimes preserves Joan's very words, unveils her life, character, visions, and motives in fascinating detail. Here is one of our richest sources for the life of a medieval woman. This new translation, the first in fifty years, is based on the full record of the trial proceedings in Latin. Recent scholarship dates this text to the year of the trial itself, thereby lending it a greater claim to authority than had traditionally been assumed. Contemporary documents copied into the trial furnish a guide to political developments in Joan's career—from her capture to the attempts to control public opinion following her execution. Daniel Hobbins sets the trial in its legal and historical context. In exploring Joan's place in fifteenth-century society, he suggests that her claims to divine revelation conformed to a recognizable profile of holy women in her culture, yet Joan broke this mold by embracing a military lifestyle. By combining the roles of visionary and of military leader, Joan astonished contemporaries and still fascinates us today. Obscured by the passing of centuries and distorted by the lens of modern cinema, the story of the historical Joan of Arc comes vividly to life once again.

A little over five hundred years ago there was a trial in the King of England’s military headquarters and capital in France—a trial that has become second in importance only to the Trial of Christ. The young woman who was examined, tried and condemned in that medieval, strong-castled town of Rouen has been the central figure of a whole literature of controversy. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Michelet, Schiller, Quicherat, Lang, Mark Twain, Anatole France, Frank Harris, Shaw, Paine and others far too numerous to mention have demonstrated by their writing about her that minds throughout the centuries from her time to the present find her as dynamic and challenging a figure as did the people of her own time. Aeterna Press

From the author of the acclaimed She-Wolves, the complex, surprising, and engaging story of one of the most remarkable women of the medieval world—as never told before. Helen Castor tells afresh the gripping story of the peasant girl from Domremy who hears voices from God, leads the French army to victory, is burned at the stake for heresy, and eventually becomes a saint. But unlike the traditional narrative, a story already shaped by the knowledge of what Joan would become and told in hindsight, Castor’s Joan of Arc: A History takes us back to fifteenth century France and tells the story forwards. Instead of an icon, she gives us a living, breathing woman confronting the challenges of faith and doubt, a roaring girl who, in fighting the English, was also taking sides in a bloody civil war. We meet this extraordinary girl amid the tumultuous events of her extraordinary world where no one—not Joan herself, nor the people around her—princes, bishops, soldiers, or peasants—knew what would happen next. Adding complexity, depth, and fresh insight into Joan’s life, and placing her actions in the context of the larger political and religious conflicts of fifteenth century France, Joan of Arc: A History is history at its finest and a surprising new portrait of this remarkable woman. Joan of Arc: A History features an 8-page color insert.

Joan of Arc was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if all that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive. She was burned to death when she was only nineteen: she was not seventeen when she first led the armies of France to victory, and delivered her country from the English.

First published in 1931, this is the first unabridged English translation of the documents pertaining to the trial of Joan of Arc. The basis of the translation is drawn from an edition of the text published in 1841 by Jules Quicherat, but elements are also derived from a number of the manuscripts originally translated into Latin. As notes were taken daily by several scribes, the text provides important insight into the trial, its chronology and its major players, as well as Joan’s character and intellect. With a detailed introduction and beautiful illustrations, this is a fascinating reissue that will be of value to students of medieval history, particularly those with an interest in medieval hagiography, heresy during the fourteenth century, ecclesiastical law and the practice of Church courts.