ABSTRACT

Joan of Arc's ecclesiastic judges condemned her "monstrous brazenness" in wearing "garments belong to the male sex" in the very opening moments of her trial. Joan of Arc's ecclesiastic exoneration is also significant because the voluminous surviving transcripts of her two trials have provided generations of historians, authors, and artists and insight into the life of Joan of Arc as understood and recorded by her contemporaries. In every subsequent historical epoch, her life and death have remained evocative of France's medieval past, of the French people's resilient capacity to endure the suffering of feudalism and the yoke of foreign domination. The struggle for sovereignty in France did not end with Joan of Arc's death. Joan of Arc's spectacular, triumphal, and tragic life story has more of the elements of heroic legend than of veritable history. During the Hundred Years War Arc’s, Joan of Arc became a defining figure in French history.