Cities, courts, camps, and the stories they made
There is no single contemporary chronicle of Joan of Arc. There is a field of partial views: Orleans preserving the memory of its siege, a poet celebrating the coronation, the household of Alencon remembering campaigns, Burgundian writers reporting an enemy, Paris recording rumor under Anglo-Burgundian rule, a royal chronicler arranging the reign of Charles VII, and foreign news reaching Venice through correspondence and commerce.
These voices do not become reliable merely because they are old. Some were written during Joan's lifetime; others were composed decades later. Some authors saw particular events; some worked from informants or documents; some copied one another. Favor and hostility can each preserve facts and create distortions. The task is not to find the chronicle that has no position. It is to make position, date, access, and dependence visible.
The field at a glance
| Source | Position and date | Strongest use | Principal caution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc | favorable poem completed July 31, 1429 | contemporary meaning of Orleans and the coronation; political theology; Joan's reputation while alive | praise and prophecy, not battlefield reportage or a complete life |
| Journal du siège d'Orléans | civic siege tradition in a later surviving redaction | the siege, local sequence, city memory, and comparison with municipal accounts | not an untouched daily notebook; early entries and exact chronology require control |
| Perceval de Cagny | Alencon household chronicle, favorable and close to campaign participants | Loire campaign, coronation march, Paris, and the relation between Joan and Alencon's circle | household proximity is not eyewitness status for every scene |
| Enguerrand de Monstrelet | near-contemporary Burgundian chronicler | Burgundian information, campaign rumor, capture, and the political meaning assigned to Joan by an opposing camp | partisan errors and marvels; not independent wherever later Burgundian writers borrow him |
| Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris | contemporary Parisian voice under Anglo-Burgundian rule | urban hostility, rumor, preaching, the attack on Paris, capture, trial propaganda, and execution | hostile religious and political vocabulary must be contextualized, not silently adopted |
| Jean de Wavrin | later Anglo-Burgundian compiler and former soldier | English and Burgundian narrative, especially as a comparison witness | his Joan passages depend substantially on Monstrelet; repeated wording is not corroboration |
| Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy | Burgundian herald and chronicler | comparison within the Burgundian tradition and possible independent detail | often textually close to Monstrelet; dependency must be mapped passage by passage |
| Chronique de la Pucelle | favorable later compilation containing earlier material | extended royalist narrative and preservation of earlier traditions | compilation layers, authorship, and later knowledge can disappear beneath the familiar title |
| Jean Chartier | official royal chronicler writing after the campaigns | Charles VII's reign and the later courtly arrangement of Joan's place in it | official retrospective history, not a campaign diary |
| Guillaume Gruel | later Richemont household chronicle | the memory and self-presentation of the constable's political-military circle | late household perspective with its own reputational interests |
| Antonio Morosini | Venetian chronicle built from international news networks | foreign reception, transmission of reports, and an external control on French factional narratives | mediated news: correspondence, rumor, copying, and translation stand between event and text |
A poem written while Joan lived
Christine de Pizan completed the *Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc* after Charles VII's coronation and before the attack on Paris, capture, trial, or death. That boundary gives the poem extraordinary value. It proves that Joan had already been interpreted as a providential figure, restorer of France, answer to prophecy, and reversal of ordinary expectations while her campaign was still unfolding.
It cannot tell us how later events were understood, and it should not be made to. Christine's sixty-one stanzas are a public act of praise and persuasion. They show what Joan's success made thinkable in July 1429. They do not supply neutral confirmation of every campaign report.
The shelf publishes the complete sixty-one-stanza Middle French text after comparison with every poem page in Henri Herluison's 1865 edition. The scan-backed French Wikisource route is https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Jeanne_d%E2%80%99Arc_%28de_Pizan%29. Jules Quicherat also prints the poem in volume V of his Procès. Modern complete English translations remain copyrighted; they may be recommended or used as scholarly controls but not copied into this library.
Orleans: civic record and civic memory
The Journal du siège d'Orléans is the central narrative source for the siege, but its title is dangerous if it suggests notes preserved exactly as each day happened. The surviving form belongs to a later redaction, generally placed around 1467, drawing on earlier material and civic memory. Its chronological problems are evidence about that history of transmission, not a reason to discard it.
The best public-domain working edition is Paul Charpentier and Charles Cuissard's Journal du siège d'Orléans, 1428-1429 (1896): https://archive.org/details/journaldusiegedorleansbpt6k102284m. The volume contains several distinct objects. The Journal itself occupies printed pages 1-134. Later sections include other siege narratives, treasury material, Orleans city accounts for 1429-1431, receipts, royal letters, and a fortification account. Those documents should be published under their own identities rather than flattened into one continuous chronicle.
The municipal accounts are especially valuable because administrative records can test narrative memory. Payments, messengers, gifts, repairs, supplies, and dates answer different questions from a chronicler's dramatic sequence. Agreement between a chronicle and an account may be meaningful; silence in an account does not automatically disprove an event it was never designed to record.
A favorable military-household witness
Perceval de Cagny wrote in the orbit of Jean, duke of Alencon. This places him close to people who campaigned with Joan and makes his chronicle particularly useful beside Alencon's later sworn testimony. It does not make Perceval personally present at every event he narrates.
Henri Moranville's complete 1902 French edition is digitized at https://archive.org/details/chroniquesdeperc00cagnuoft. Quicherat volume IV prints the Joan-related extract on printed pages 1-37. A future Joan edition should state whether it gives the complete chronicle or only this section. Comparing Perceval with the nullification depositions can reveal both durable campaign memory and the ways an Alencon-centered account organizes credit.
Burgundy and England
Enguerrand de Monstrelet is indispensable because he does not write from Joan's political camp. He records hostile claims, circulating marvels, concrete information, documents, and the effect Joan's appearance had within Burgundian understanding. He reports being present when Philip the Good visited the captured Joan. That specific access does not turn all his earlier narrative into eyewitness testimony.
The shelf's Monstrelet selection carries thirteen complete chapters in Thomas Johnes's old English translation. Project Gutenberg volume VI supplies the main sequence from Chinon through Orleans, the coronation, Paris, Franquet d'Arras, Compiegne, and capture: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64948. Volume VII supplies the condemnation notice: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58083. Johnes predates modern critical work and must be controlled against the later French edition by Louis Douet d'Arcq.
Jean de Wavrin and Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy widen the Burgundian field, but they do not automatically provide independent votes. Wavrin's treatment is substantially dependent on Monstrelet in this section, and Le Fèvre is often textually related to him. When three chronicles repeat the same passage or reproduce the same English royal letter, the historian may be looking at one textual chain, not three witnesses.
The shelf publishes two short Wavrin passages from Project Gutenberg's proofread York and Lancaster, 1399-1485: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56180. They concern the raising of the siege and the condemnation. The second largely transmits Henry VI's official account; its value is the English regime's public explanation, not neutral confirmation of the trial.
Hostile Paris
The anonymous Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris is the essential urban countervoice. It records what was said, preached, feared, and believed in a city held by Joan's enemies. It is often vicious. That hostility makes it evidence for the categories through which Paris was taught to understand her: sorcery, disorder, false revelation, sexual suspicion, Armagnac violence, and divine punishment.
Alexandre Tuetey's complete 1881 French edition is available at https://archive.org/details/journaldunbourge00tuet. The principal Joan sequence lies roughly in printed pages 236-272 and includes first reports of the Maid, the raising of the siege, the attack on Paris, capture, rival female visionaries, execution, and preaching after her death.
Janet Shirley's modern English translation is copyrighted and is not reproduced here. The French edition is public domain and can support a new Good Works translation after scan-level proofing. Until then, isolated hostile phrases should not be translated loosely and detached from the entry that gives them their political setting.
Later favorable and royal arrangements
The Chronique de la Pucelle, Jean Chartier, and Guillaume Gruel preserve valuable material, but each belongs to a later arrangement of the past. The Chronique de la Pucelle is a compilation whose title and traditional attribution can hide internal layers. Jean Chartier writes as the official chronicler of Charles VII. Gruel writes from the later household world of Arthur de Richemont.
These sources are best read after the closer witnesses. They can preserve details unavailable elsewhere, show how the restored monarchy remembered Joan, and reveal contests over military and political credit. Their later perspective is not a contamination that makes them useless. It is part of what they document.
Public-domain editions are available at:
- Chronique de la Pucelle: https://archive.org/details/chroniquedelapuc00cousuoft
- Jean Chartier, volume I: https://archive.org/details/chroniquedecharl01char
- Guillaume Gruel: https://archive.org/details/chroniquedarthur00grueuoft
These scans do not provide publication-ready OCR. Their texts require comparison with page images before quotation, transcription, or translation.
A foreign news network
Antonio Morosini's Venetian chronicle shows news of Joan crossing commercial and diplomatic networks beyond the immediate French factions. The public-domain four-volume edition by Germain Lefevre-Pontalis and Leon Dorez prints Italian or Venetian text with facing French translation. Volume III covers 1429-1433 and is the principal Joan volume: https://archive.org/details/chroniquedantoni03morouoft.
The edition's title says extraits relatifs à l'histoire de France. It is a complete edition of those French-history extracts, not the complete Morosini chronicle. A future English translation should work from the original language, using the public-domain French as a control. Translating the French alone would add another unacknowledged step to an already mediated news chain.
Five events, several views
For the relief of Orleans, begin with the civic Journal and accounts, then compare Perceval, Monstrelet, Wavrin, contemporary letters, and later trial testimony. Ask which source knows the city's internal sequence, which knows the opposing army, and which writes after the outcome was famous.
For the coronation march, place Christine's poem beside Perceval, Monstrelet, municipal submissions, and Joan's July letters. Praise, campaign narrative, diplomacy, and royal action are different forms of evidence.
For the attack on Paris, the hostile Parisian Journal is not an obstacle to be corrected away. Read it against Perceval and the favorable tradition to see the same assault from inside and outside the city.
For capture at Compiegne, compare Burgundian notices, Monstrelet, Perceval, French correspondence, and Joan's later answers. Sources disagree about responsibility. The surviving record does not establish the familiar claim that Guillaume de Flavy deliberately betrayed her by closing the gate.
For trial and execution, the condemnation register is closer and procedurally fuller than any chronicle. Chronicles and royal letters matter for publicity, rumor, and political meaning. They should not replace the record of the proceeding they summarize.
Rules for responsible reading
Keep three dates separate: the date of the event, the date the chronicle was composed, and the date of the surviving manuscript or printed edition. "Contemporary" may describe one of those and not the others.
Name selections honestly. A Joan extract from Perceval is not the complete chronicle. Two Wavrin passages are not the complete Wavrin. A volume covering 1422-1431 is not the whole work. Completeness belongs to a defined object.
Track shared text. Agreement matters most when witnesses are genuinely independent. Borrowing, common documents, and common informants should be identified before repeated wording is counted as corroboration.
Preserve reported speech as reported speech. A chronicler's vivid quotation may be literary construction, remembered substance, documentary copying, or some mixture. Quotation marks do not create a transcript.
Read hostility and favor for facts, categories, and silences. A hostile source may confirm that Joan produced fear; a favorable source may preserve exact movements. Neither position supplies an automatic verdict on each claim.
Finally, distinguish a medieval text from its modern route. A public-domain chronicle may be available only through raw OCR or through a copyrighted translation. The age of the event does not remove the rights or errors of the edition presently open.
Colophon
Prepared for the Good Works Library, July 2026, from public-domain chronicle editions, institutional records, Project Gutenberg catalogues, and the Joan of Arc source campaign's volume-level inspection. This guide describes copyrighted modern translations where useful but does not reproduce them. Digitized scans named here are lawful source routes, not claims that their raw OCR is ready for publication.