ken to manage the process of rehabilitation, presented the Pope
with a claim for a revision of the sentence of condemnation in the
name of Joan of Arc's mother and of her two brothers. The petition ran
thus: 'The brothers, mother, and relations of Joan, anxious that her
memory and their own should be cleansed from this unmerited disgrace,
demand that the sentence of condemnation that was given at Rouen shall
be annulled.' Not, however, until the death of Pope Nicolas V., and
the accession of Calixtus III., was anything further done.

The new Pope (Alfonso Borgia) did not hesitate as to the line he
intended taking in the matter, and he gave his sanction to the
rehabilitation of the heroine by a rescript dated the 11th of June,
1455. It was as follows:--

'We, Calixtus, servant of the servants of God, accord a favourable
ear to the request which has been made us. There has lately been
brought before us on the part of Peter and John of Arc, also of
Isabella of Arc, their mother, and some of their relations, a petition
stating that their sister, daughter, and relative, Joan of Arc
deceased, had been unjustly condemned as guilty of the crime of heresy
and other crimes against the Faith, on the false testimony of the late
William [John, it should be] d'Estivet of the Episcopal Court of
Beauvais, and of Peter of happy memory, at that time Bishop of
Beauvais, and of the late John Lemaitre, belonging to the Inquisition.
The nullity of their proceedings and the innocence of Joan are clearly
established both by documents and further by clearest proofs. In
consequence of this, the brothers, mother, and relatives of Joan are
therefore at liberty to cast off the mark of infamy with which this
trial has falsely stamped them; and thus they have humbly supplicated
our permission to authorise and to proceed in this trial of
rehabilitation.'

The prelates selected by the Pope as commissioners to follow the
course of the trial of rehabilitation were John Jouvenel des Ursins,
Archbishop of Rheims, William Chartrier, Bishop of Paris, and Richard
de Longueil, Bishop of Coutances. On the 7th of November, 1455, this
trial was solemnly begun in the Church of Notre Dame, in Paris.

It has been said that Joan of Arc's father died of grief on hearing of
his daughter's martyrdom. He was certainly dead before the date of
this trial. However, the now aged mother of Joan of Arc, Isabella
Romee d'Arc, in her sixty-seventh year, was there. She was su