Divina disponente (bull of canonization of Joan of Arc)
The bull by which Pope Benedict XV declared Joan of Arc a saint. It retells her life and both trials from the Catholic Church’s later standpoint and fixes her commemoration on 30 May.
The bull is dated at Saint Peter’s on 16 May 1920. It narrates the life of Joan of Arc, calls the trial at Rouen unjust and her death cruel, recalls the rescript of Callixtus III and the sentence of 7 July 1456, and records the steps of her cause: its introduction in 1894, the decree on her virtues, the miracles accepted, and her beatification. It then gives the formula by which the pope declared her a saint and ordered her memory kept each year on 30 May.
It is a document of 1920 and is cited for the canonization and for the judgment of the modern papacy on the trial of 1431, not as evidence for the fifteenth century. See the Trial of Joan of Arc.
Cited in
- 30 May 1431, firm date