30 May marks the 595th anniversary of the execution of Joan of Arc in the Old Market Square in Rouen

30 May marks the 595th anniversary of the execution of Joan of Arc in the Old Market Square in Rouen. Today the day is observed in France as a national holiday, and in the Catholic Church as the Memorial of Saint Joan of Arc.

Formally, she was charged with heresy, apostasy and the wearing of men's clothing. Twenty-five years after her death, in 1456, the trial was declared unlawful and all charges against Joan were lifted. In 1920 the Catholic Church canonised her.

The trial of Joan of Arc lasted some five months, from January to May 1431. Its organiser was the pro-English Bishop Pierre Cauchon. The charges of heresy were a formality; in fact the trial was wholly political. The English needed to prove that the King of France, Charles VII, had been crowned by a witch.

Joan was held in a strict military prison rather than an ecclesiastical one and interrogated by dozens of theologians who tried to trip her up, yet she defended herself with remarkable wit. In the end, under threat of the stake, she was compelled to sign a recantation of heresy and to put on women's clothing, whereupon the execution was commuted to life imprisonment. But a few days later her women's clothes were taken from her, and, rather than remain undressed before the guards, Joan put on the male attire once more. She was then pronounced a relapsed heretic, an offence punishable by death.

On the morning of 30 May 1431 Joan was brought to the Old Market Square in Rouen. She was clothed in a long shift soaked in sulphur, and on her head was a paper mitre bearing the inscription «Heretic, apostate, idolatress». Bound to the stake, Joan begged to be given a cross. It is believed that an English soldier in the crowd tied two small wooden sticks crosswise and handed it to her. A large processional cross was brought from the church and held before her eyes until the very end.

When the flames rose around her, she cried out «Jesus!» several times. The executioner recalled that he understood he had burned a saint. To prevent the rise of a cult of posthumous veneration, her ashes and the unburnt remains were burned twice more, and the remnants were finally thrown into the River Seine.