Pierre Cauchon
Bishop of Beauvais who presided, with the deputy of the inquisitor of France, over the trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen in 1431 and pronounced both sentences against her. The court of 1456 named him as the author of a process it declared null.
The record of the trial is written in his name. He sat as ordinary judge in Rouen, outside his own diocese, on territory granted him for the purpose by the chapter of Rouen, on the ground that Joan of Arc had been taken in the diocese of Beauvais; the deputy inquisitor at first declined to sit as judge, while agreeing that the trial should go on (Trial of Condemnation, 21–22 February 1431 (Murray, pp. 3–8)). Both sentences, of 24 May and of 30 May, were given in the bishop’s name and the inquisitor’s deputy’s (Trial of Condemnation, 24 and 30 May 1431 (Murray, pp. 129–146)).
At the second trial the friar Martin Ladvenu testified that Joan, seeing the bishop on the day of her death, told him that he was the cause of it, since he had promised to put her in the hands of the church and had left her with her enemies (Nullification Trial, depositions of Martin Ladvenu, 1452–1456 (Murray, pp. 193–195)). The sentence of 1456 names “the late Lord Pierre Cauchon, then Bishop of Beauvais” as one of the three who had conducted the process that it annulled (Nullification Trial, sentence of 7 July 1456 (Murray, pp. 321–327)). See the Trial of Joan of Arc.
In the timeline
- 30 May 1431, firm dateThe Trial of Joan of Arc
A church court at Rouen under Bishop Pierre Cauchon tries Joan of Arc for heresy, and on 30 May 1431 she is burned as relapsed. In 1456 judges appointed by Pope Callixtus III declare that trial and its sentences null. Both verdicts are known from the courts’ own records.