1455, The Long Shadow of Rouen

  

Twenty-five winters had frozen the shame,

Since the walls of Rouen heard a girl call His name.

The year is Fourteen-Fifty-Five, a new court is sat,

To weigh out the treason, the bribe, and the rat.

They look at the ledger: the Burgundian greed,

The English gold coins that paid for the deed,

A political trap, a trial built on lies,

While the king she had crowned turned away from her cries.

"Victim of torture!" the inquisitors cry,

As the ghosts of the past pass the courthouse by.

They see her at Compiègne, fell from her horse,

Sold like a prisoner, with no dry remorse.

The Maid of the Lilies, the Maid of Orleans,

Who broke through the siege and the English chains,

Was burned for a witch in a theater of hate,

But 1455 has a date with her fate.

The verdict is broken! The record is torn!

From the soot of the stake, a Saint is being born.

Though the Vatican’s halo won’t come for years yet,

The soul of the nation has paid off its debt.

She’s the patron of soldiers, the spirit of France,

And the world stands in Rouen, in a holy trance,

Looking down at the dirt where the wood used to pile,

Knowing justice is slow... but it travels the mile.

Now a legend in stone, where the weary heart stops,

Where the pride of a people like holy rain drops.

She was a girl in the fire, a ghost on the breeze,

But today, 1455, she brings kings to their knees.

                                                                                                to be continued

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"ELENCHUS... A Trial of History"
PUBLICATION IDENTITY & CREDITS
Original Text & Inspiration:
Panayotis V. Mataragas (Rotterdam)
The foundational vision, drafted at the crossroads of European history.
Language Editing & Adaptation:
Kellene G. Safis (Chicago)
Refining the rhythm and pulse through a definitive American lens.
Digital Editing & Formatting:
Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga (Piraeus)
The architectural assembly and final form at the Great Port.

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*The Maid of Orléans... The court declared her innocent on 7 July 1456 by annulling her sentence. They declared that Joan had been tried as a result of 'false articles of accusation'. Those articles and Cauchon's sentence were to be torn out of a copy of the proceedings and burnt by the public executioner at Rouen.The Archbishop of Rheims read out the appellate court's verdict: "In consideration of the request of the d'Arc family against the Bishop of Beauvais, the promoter of criminal proceedings, and the inquisitor of Rouen... in consideration of the facts.... We, in session of our court and having God only before our eyes, say, pronounce, decree and declare that the said trial and sentence (of condemnation) being tainted with fraud (dolus malus), calumny, iniquity and contradiction, and manifest errors of fact and of law... to have been and to be null, invalid, worthless, without effect and annihilated... We proclaim that Joan did not contract any taint of infamy and that she shall be and is washed clean of such".
Joan's elderly mother lived to see the final verdict announced, and was present when the city of Orleans celebrated the event by giving a banquet for Inquisitor Bréhal on 27 July 1456. Although Isabelle's request for punishment against the tribunal members did not materialize, nonetheless the appellate verdict cleared her daughter of the charges that had hung over her name for twenty-five years.
Saint Joan of Arc, The Maid of Orléans (French: Jeanne d'Arc) is a recognized saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Although she was excommunicated and burnt at the stake for heresy by local officials in 1431, central Church officials would later nullify her excommunication, declaring her a martyr unjustly executed for a secular vendetta. Her legend would grow from there, leading to her beatification in 1909 and her canonization in 1920.

 ELEGHOS... at history