May 30, 1431: Joan of Arc burned at the stake

On this day in 1431, the occupying English army executed 19-year-old Joan of Arc for heresy.

A peasant girl, Joan had received a vision from God that she would lead the French to victory in The Hundred Years’ War. For whatever reason, the uncrowned Charles VII asked her to help break the siege of Orléans in 1429. The English gave up just nine days after her arrival.

She achieved instant prominence, and Charles VII was soon given a coronation. The episode is now seen as a major turning point in The Hundred Years’ War.

But in May 1430, Joan was captured by soldiers from Burgundy. They handed her over to the English, their ally, and Joan was put on trial. The charges included a repeated offense of cross-dressing: that wearing armor and keeping cropped hair were somehow heretical.

Scientists in 2006 confirmed that her body was burnt three times in Rouen. Her ashes were meant to be cast into the Seine, but some of them might have found their way to a museum.

Joan’s conviction was overturned in 1456, thanks to a trial held by Pope Callistus III after the war ended; she was canonized in 1920.

Image: Hermann Anton Stilke, Joan of Arc’s Death at the Stake (1843), via Wikimedia Commons