THE SURPRISING JOAN

It was Wednesday, 30 May, 1341, in Rouen, the capital of Normandy in France. Brought to the very center of the the Vieux-Marche' - the old square - the they walked the 19 year old woman through the stacked faggots of wood,  to the center of the platform, where she was bound to a large post. The opening was closed and the wood set afire. And then - and this is the surprising thing I have recently learned - Joan of Arc did not burn to death. No witnesses reported her screaming or writhing against her ropes. We know she did not scream because,  until almost the end, she kept repeating the name “Jesus”. In truth, Joan d'Arc died of heat stroke.

A wood fire burns at 800 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The faggots of lightly bound wood piled around Joan were mostly air. Once the wood was ignited, the air in between the branches quickly expanded and rushed out, drawing more air in from the bottom, and then up and out at the center post, where Joan was standing. While the flame was still barely a few inches high on the distant perimeter of the fire, the air temperature around Joan started climbing. The already badly dehydrated girl began to sweat, which was quickly soaked up by her linen shift, which then prevented evaporation from cooling her body.

Her terror caused her heart to beat faster until she went into tachycardia, with a heart rate above 170 beats per minute. That caused her blood pressure to plummet. That caused the blood to pool in her feet, legs and abdomen. She became light headed and faint. 

Witnesses said she repeated the name “Jesus” just seven times before her head fell forward, meaning she fell unconscious within two minutes of the fire starting. It would take another eighteen minutes for the air around her to reach 300 degrees, when flesh starts to burn. Long before then her brain had been starved of oxygen for long enough that she was dead.

Using a sickle, the binding ropes were cut and her executioners pulled the corpse out of the fire. The crowd confirmed that the body was indeed Joan's, and that she was dead – which meant she had not yet been extensively burned. So they pushed her body back into the fire, and burned it to ash and bone. Under guard, more wood was stacked atop the chard bones, and they were burned again, until the they cracked and shattered, ensuring there was nothing left of la Pucelle – the Maiden - but ash. Then the ashes were swept up and dumped in the river Seine, which ran right outside the city walls.  

The English were determined to wipe out all traces of Joan of Arc. Not surprisingly, they failed.

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