The life, the trials, and the dates behind the story
Joan of Arc's public career lasted little more than two years. Its documentary afterlife extends across decades: campaign letters and civic registers were followed by the condemnation trial, inquiries into that trial, and the nullification proceedings that ended in 1456. A chronology must keep those records together without pretending that every date is equally secure.
This page favors dates established by contemporary documents or by the formal trial registers. About marks an approximate date. Traditional marks a precise date reported by a source but not independently established. A question mark marks a genuine dispute or an editor's uncertainty. Medieval documents may begin the year at Easter rather than January 1; dates below are normalized to the modern January-to-December year.
Childhood and calling, about 1412-1428
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| about 1412 | Joan is born at Domremy to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romee. | No birth register survives. January 6, 1412 is traditional, reported in 1429 by Perceval de Boulainvilliers; Joan herself later said she was about nineteen. |
| about 1425 | Joan later says she first heard a voice, accompanied by light, when she was about thirteen. | The account comes from her answers at Rouen in 1431. It supplies an age, not a calendar date. |
| summer 1428? | Joan makes an early attempt to reach Robert de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs. | Later witnesses remember an unsuccessful first approach, but its exact date and sequence are not completely secure. |
| July 1428 | Burgundian forces raid the region; the people of Domremy take refuge at Neufchateau. | Later village testimony connects Joan with this displacement. |
| October 12, 1428 | The English begin the siege of Orleans. | This is the military crisis into which Joan's mission enters. |
From Vaucouleurs to Orleans, 1429
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| January-February 1429 | Joan returns to Vaucouleurs and persuades Baudricourt to permit an escort. She also visits the duke of Lorraine at Nancy. | The sequence is reconstructed from later testimony; not every stop has a secure day. |
| February 12, 1429 | French and Scottish forces are defeated at the Battle of the Herrings near Rouvray. | Witnesses connect Joan's report of the defeat with the final days at Vaucouleurs. |
| February 23, 1429 | Joan leaves Vaucouleurs with Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, and their companions, wearing male clothing for the dangerous journey. | The departure is closely dated in the later testimony and older documentary chronologies. |
| March 4-5, 1429 | The party reaches Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois; Joan sends word ahead to Charles. | Exact arrival and letter dates differ slightly among reconstructions. |
| March 6, 1429 | Joan reaches Chinon. | Her first formal audience with Charles probably followed after a short delay. |
| March 1429 | Joan meets Charles and is examined at Chinon and Poitiers. | The lost "Book of Poitiers" prevents a full reconstruction. Later testimony and surviving notices preserve the outcome, not a transcript. |
| March 22, 1429 | Joan dates her summons to the English king, regent, and commanders. | The letter survives through copies rather than as an original. It is the text published on this shelf as [[Primary Sources/Letter to Henry VI of England — Belle Tuten |
| April 1429 | At Tours, Joan receives armor, a household, a standard, and other equipment; she joins the relief army at Blois. | Accounts and later testimony document the preparation, though not every familiar detail survives in the same witness. |
| April 29, 1429 | Joan enters Orleans with supplies and part of the relief force. | The civic and chronicle traditions make this one of the campaign's firm anchor dates. |
| May 4, 1429 | French forces take the bastille of Saint-Loup. | Joan returns from meeting the army and joins the action. |
| May 6, 1429 | The Augustins position is taken. | The fighting shifts to the English works south of the Loire. |
| May 7, 1429 | The French assault Les Tourelles. Joan is wounded by an arrow and returns to the attack. | Numerous later witnesses remember the wound; contemporary reports also place her in the decisive assault. |
| May 8, 1429 | The English withdraw and the siege of Orleans ends. | The anniversary became the center of Orleans's continuing civic memory of Joan. |
The Loire campaign and coronation, 1429
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| June 11-12, 1429 | The royal army attacks and takes Jargeau. | Joan is struck on the helmet during the assault according to later military testimony. |
| June 15, 1429 | The bridge at Meung-sur-Loire is secured. | Older chronologies sometimes distribute the Meung operations across June 14-15. |
| June 16-17, 1429 | Beaugency is besieged and surrenders. | Arthur de Richemont joins the army despite political resistance at court. |
| June 18, 1429 | The French defeat the English at Patay. | The victory breaks the field army covering the Loire positions and opens the next phase of the campaign. |
| June 29, 1429 | Charles and the army leave Gien for Reims. | The coronation march depends as much on negotiated entries and submissions as on battle. |
| July 1, 1429 | The army reaches Auxerre. | Auxerre supplies the army without fully committing itself to Charles. |
| July 5-10, 1429 | The army reaches Troyes; after resistance and negotiation, the city submits and Charles enters. | The interval is better established than many later dramatic accounts of a single decisive confrontation. |
| July 14, 1429 | Charles enters Chalons. | People from the region of Domremy meet Joan there. |
| July 16, 1429 | Charles enters Reims. | The speed of the march gives the coronation its political force. |
| July 17, 1429 | Charles VII is anointed and crowned in Reims Cathedral, with Joan present. | This is the central completed object of the mission Joan publicly described. Her original letter to Philip the Good is dated the same day and appears in [[Primary Sources/The Five Original Letter Witnesses — Joan of Arc |
Paris, independent campaigning, and capture, 1429-1430
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| August 5, 1429 | From near Provins, Joan writes to reassure the people of Reims and warns that she distrusts the truce with Burgundy. | The unsigned original is now Archives nationales AB/XIX/3556; its own dating clause corrects the August 6 date found in some older prose. |
| August 1429 | The royal progress moves through northern towns while Charles negotiates truces with Philip the Good. | The court's preference for negotiation increasingly diverges from Joan's pressure for action. |
| August 23-26, 1429 | Joan moves from Compiegne toward Saint-Denis. | Her answer to the count of Armagnac belongs to this period and survives through the trial record. |
| September 8, 1429 | Royal forces attack Paris; Joan is wounded at the Saint-Honore gate. | The assault fails, and the king orders withdrawal. |
| September 13, 1429 | Charles leaves Saint-Denis. | Joan's armor is left as an offering in the abbey church; the Paris campaign ends. |
| late October-early November 1429 | Joan's force takes Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier. | The exact day varies in reconstructions; the successful assault is described in later testimony. |
| November 9, 1429 | From Moulins, Joan asks Riom for powder, arrows, crossbows, and other supplies for the siege of La Charite. | The original, Riom AA 33, carries the earliest of the three surviving Jehanne subscriptions traditionally attributed to Joan. |
| November-December 1429 | The siege of La Charite-sur-Loire fails. | This is the major reverse of Joan's independent Loire operations. |
| December 1429 | Charles VII ennobles Joan and members of her family. | The royal grant survives, but later privileges and interpretations should not be read back into the original act. |
| January 19, 1430 | Joan is received at Orleans. | Municipal accounts document the visit and gifts. |
| March 16, 1430 | Joan answers Reims's fear of siege and promises that she will come quickly if needed. | The original is Reims FAC 734, liasse 8 and bears Jehanne in a separate hand. |
| March 28, 1430 | Joan again writes to Reims, answers reports of conspiracy, and urges the city to keep watch. | The original was historically examined and facsimiled, but no present repository or shelfmark is verified. |
| March-April 1430 | Joan leaves the royal court and campaigns around Lagny, Melun, and the Oise. | Exact movements must be reconstructed from letters, chronicles, and municipal records. At Melun she later said her voices warned that she would be captured before midsummer. |
| May 23, 1430 | Joan is captured outside Compiegne during a sortie against Burgundian forces. | The gate is closed during the retreat. Sources disagree over blame; the evidence does not justify treating a deliberate betrayal as established fact. |
| May-June 1430 | She is held at Marigny, Beaulieu, and other places under Burgundian control. | Her captivity involved transfers rather than one continuous prison. |
| July-November 1430 | Joan is held at Beaurevoir; she jumps from its tower and survives. | At Rouen she described the leap, her fear for Compiegne, and her wish to escape. |
| October 25, 1430 | Compiegne is relieved. | Joan's earlier concern for the town became part of the testimony about the leap at Beaurevoir. |
| November 1430 | Jean de Luxembourg transfers Joan to the English after negotiations involving a payment of 10,000 livres tournois. | "Sold to the English" summarizes a documented political and financial transfer, not an ordinary private sale. |
| late December 1430 | Joan reaches Rouen and is confined in the castle under English guard. | Although tried by an ecclesiastical court, she is not kept in an ordinary church prison. |
Condemnation trial, 1431
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| January 3, 1431 | Henry VI's government orders Joan delivered to Bishop Pierre Cauchon for proceedings concerning her faith. | The royal letter makes English custody and interest explicit. |
| January 9, 1431 | Preliminary trial business begins at Rouen. | Officers are appointed and material for accusations is assembled before Joan appears publicly. |
| February 21, 1431 | Joan's first public examination is held in the castle chapel. | The sustained sequence of her recorded answers begins here. |
| February 22-March 3, 1431 | Five further public sessions are held. | The number of assessors varies; the court moves from general identity and mission toward voices, signs, clothing, and obedience. |
| March 10-17, 1431 | Nine examinations are conducted in prison. | The smaller and more controlled setting matters when weighing the record. |
| March 24, 1431 | The examinations are read back to Joan in French. | This formal verification does not turn the Latin register into a verbatim recording, but it is an important stage in its production. |
| March 27-28, 1431 | Seventy articles of accusation are read and put to Joan. | The articles mix allegations, extracted answers, argument, and interpretation. They are later reduced to twelve propositions. |
| April 5-19, 1431 | The twelve articles are circulated to assessors and sent to the University of Paris. | These summaries should not be substituted for Joan's fuller answers. |
| May 9, 1431 | Joan is taken to the torture chamber and threatened with torture. | On May 12 the judges decide not to use it. The threat nevertheless belongs to the conditions of the proceeding. |
| May 23, 1431 | Pierre Maurice gives Joan a final admonition. | Sentence is appointed for the following day. |
| May 24, 1431 | At Saint-Ouen, under threat of immediate execution, Joan makes or is represented as making an abjuration and receives a sentence of perpetual imprisonment. | The short abjuration in the formal register and a much longer French text survive; what Joan heard, understood, or signed remains a central dispute. |
| May 28, 1431 | The judges visit Joan after she has resumed male clothing and treat this as relapse. | Later testimony gives several explanations involving prison danger, the removal of women's clothing, and assault. The record does not support a simple tale of theological reversal. |
| May 29, 1431 | Assessors advise that Joan be abandoned to the secular arm as a relapsed heretic. | Some participants later disputed the fairness and reporting of these final days. |
| May 30, 1431 | Joan is condemned and burned in the Old Market Place at Rouen. | She is about nineteen. English authorities order the remains burned again and the ashes cast into the Seine. |
| June-August 1431 | English royal letters announce and defend the judgment; guarantees are issued to participants. | The paper defense of the execution begins almost immediately. |
The complete English condemnation record on this shelf is The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc. Its dates are unusually dense because the court documented its own procedure.
Inquiry and nullification, 1450-1456
| Date | Event | Documentary note |
|---|---|---|
| 1450 | Charles VII orders Guillaume Bouille to investigate Joan's trial. | This first inquiry questions several people connected with the Rouen proceeding but does not itself annul the sentence. |
| May 1452 | Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville and the inquisitor Jean Brehal conduct a second inquiry at Rouen. | The proceeding examines the trial's conduct and gathers further testimony. |
| 1455 | Joan's mother Isabelle Romee and her brothers petition to have the condemnation reviewed. Pope Callixtus III authorizes papal delegates to hear the case. | The legal action is brought in the family's name; royal and ecclesiastical interests also surround it. |
| November 7, 1455 | Isabelle publicly presents the family's petition at Notre-Dame in Paris. | The opening scene makes restoration of family reputation part of the case's visible purpose. |
| December 1455-May 1456 | Delegates hear witnesses in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans, Paris, Rouen, and other places. | Childhood neighbors, soldiers, townspeople, clergy, notaries, and assessors recall events after intervals of more than twenty years. |
| June 1456 | Parties make their final submissions; Jean Brehal's theological analysis answers the propositions used against Joan. | The later proceeding judges the 1431 process rather than rerunning Joan's entire life as a modern investigation. |
| July 7, 1456 | The delegates pronounce the condemnation process and sentence null at the archiepiscopal palace in Rouen. | The judgment orders public acts of reparation and declares the earlier proceeding tainted by fraud, calumny, iniquity, and errors of law. |
| July 8, 1456 | A public sermon and reparation are made at the Old Market Place. | The legal conclusion returns publicly to the place of execution. |
The documentary selections in T. Douglas Murray's collection carry the reader from the condemnation record into the later testimony and final judgment.
How to use this chronology
The table is an index, not a substitute for evidence. A precise day may tell us when a document was issued without proving every story later attached to it. A remembered event may be broadly reliable while its exact day remains unknown. Conversely, uncertainty about a detail does not make the whole sequence obscure: the campaign from Orleans to Reims and the procedural calendar at Rouen are exceptionally well anchored.
For a continuous account, begin with the documentary introduction. For editions, modern scholarship, and archival routes, continue to the research guide.
Source Note
The chronology was prepared from the public-domain records and editorial apparatus preserved on this shelf, especially T. Douglas Murray's Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France (1902), W. P. Barrett's The Trial of Jeanne d'Arc (1931), and the trial and chronicle editions mapped in the Good Works source campaign. Murray's chronological table has been corrected where it gives inherited precision as certainty, and its older interpretations have not been silently repeated. Dates that matter to a close historical argument should be checked against the relevant manuscript witness and a modern critical edition.
Prepared for the Good Works Library, July 2026.