Birth
According to official history, Jehanne was born in Domremy on January 6, 1412. But in a conversation she had with Charles VII at the beginning of 1429 and which Beroalde de Verville was present, the Maid told her: "My age is counted three times seven." 1429 - 21 = 1408. At that date, Jehanne was twenty-one years old and was not born in Domremy in 1412, but on Wednesday, November 9, 1407 at 2 p.m. in the Hotel Barbette in Paris, to the Queen of France Isabeau of Bavaria and her brother-in-law the Duke of Orleans.
The pyre
The archives tell us that five women were burned in the Place du Vieux Marche in Rouen for witchcraft between 1430 and 1432: Alix the redhead, Catherine la Fertee, Jehanne Vanneril and Jehanne la Guilloree, these four women were burned at quite distant dates, but concerning the fifth, Jehanne la Turquenne, a dark-haired woman of a corpulence identical to our Maid, its date of execution would correspond to that of May 30, 1431.With Jehanne La Pucelle, six witches would have been executed during this period. The trouble is that the account books of this same period mention only the expenses made for the purchase of wood and for the remuneration of the executioner and his assistants, only for five witches. So we are missing one!
No trace in the archives
There is no authentic document attesting to the death at the stake, on May 30, 1431, Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen, of Jehanne the Maid. On the other hand, five witnesses will say that it was not Jehanne the Maid, bastard of Orleans, who was burned there that day! As for the church of Rome, which holds in its Vatican library the proofs of Jehanne's ancestry, it has been careful not to breathe a word about it for seven centuries. At the risk of bringing down the legend of the shepherdess and her voices, which she says she burned by canonizing her five centuries later!
The choice
We must choose, or else we side with official history, which too easily does its part in the miracle. And this is based on documents that we now know to have been falsified by Cauchon and on inspired texts, built on a sand that time makes more and more moving. Or else a version is accepted that conforms to the mores of the time, to the reactions of contemporaries and to the facts. And in this case, we must admit both Jehanne's bastardy and survival, without rejecting her virtues. It is too easy to deny everything by crying out about the serialized novel. Jehanne, bastard of Orleans: everything becomes normal; there is no miracle more than the outbursts of faith of a young girl of good blood; there is no longer any improbability, there is no longer any mystery. Everything fits with the texts, even with those attesting to survival, texts whose authenticity is not disputed.
A political trial
Jehanne's trial was only political, it was necessary at all costs to discredit the woman who had had the "so-called dauphin" crowned king of France in the cathedral of Reims. "If you were well informed about me, you would want me to be out of your hands!" said Jehanne to her judges, who came close to revealing her heavy secret several times. Templar filiationThere is another of equal importance and never revealed to date: that of the spiritual filiation that the Maid of France claimed with the Templars, through her absolute Marian vocation. An equally dangerous secret on which she lifted part of the veil when, when asked why she wore the Bauceant at the coronation of Charles VII, Jehanne replied: "He was put to shame, it is good that he is honored!"
