11 Chapter 10 Saint Joan

CHAPTER 10 Saint Joan On May 24, 1431, Joan was led to a cemetery where two wooden platforms had been built. Surrounded by Bishop Cauchon and his agents, and crowds of English onlookers, she was told she was guilty of being a heretic, a liar, and a witch. They said that King Charles VII was also a heretic for believing in her. Joan told them not to say anything against her king, which made them furious.

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The Inquisition judges asked her if she was ready to admit she had been wrong. Only by doing that would she save herself from being burned alive. "Do you want to be burned alive?" the judges asked. The crowd pressed

forward, yelling, "Hurry up!" when she didn't answer. At this moment, and for the first time, Joan lost her nerve. Faced with a horrible death, she signed a note promising to stop wearing men's clothes, to never fight in a war again, and to say the voices she heard were all a lie. Then Bishop Cauchon announced she would be imprisoned for life. He had her head shaved as punishment. Joan hoped that now she would finally be put in a church prison with nuns, but Cauchon sent her right back to the tower, this time wearing a dress.

Joan quickly regained her courage. Three days later she was back in men's clothes—perhaps because her guards themselves had stolen her dress to get her in trouble. Joan told Cauchon that the saints said she had done a terrible thing by signing the false confession. She took it all back. And in so doing, she condemned herself to death. She was only nineteen years old.

On May 30, at dawn, three doctors came to Joan's cell to tell her she would soon be burned to death. "I would rather be beheaded seven times than burned," Joan cried. When Cauchon himself appeared at her cell to walk her outside, Joan let him know she blamed him for her death. "Bishop, I die through you," she said.