<P> Bréhal conducted an investigation in 1452 . A formal appeal followed in November 1455 . The appellate process involved clergy from throughout Europe and observed standard court procedure . A panel of theologians analyzed testimony from 115 witnesses . Bréhal drew up his final summary in June 1456, which describes Joan as a martyr and implicated the late Pierre Cauchon with heresy for having convicted an innocent woman in pursuit of a secular vendetta . The technical reason for her execution had been a Biblical clothing law . The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to that stricture . The appellate court declared her innocent on 7 July 1456 . </P> <P> Joan of Arc became a symbol of the Catholic League during the 16th century . When Félix Dupanloup was made bishop of Orléans in 1849, he pronounced a fervid panegyric on Joan of Arc, which attracted attention in England as well as France, and he led the efforts which culminated in Joan of Arc's beatification in 1909 . </P> <P> Joan of Arc became a semi-legendary figure for the four centuries after her death . The main sources of information about her were chronicles . Five original manuscripts of her condemnation trial surfaced in old archives during the 19th century . Soon, historians also located the complete records of her rehabilitation trial, which contained sworn testimony from 115 witnesses, and the original French notes for the Latin condemnation trial transcript . Various contemporary letters also emerged, three of which carry the signature Jehanne in the unsteady hand of a person learning to write . This unusual wealth of primary source material is one reason DeVries declares, "No person of the Middle Ages, male or female, has been the subject of more study ." </P> <P> Joan of Arc came from an obscure village and rose to prominence when she was a teenager, and she did so as an uneducated peasant . The French and English kings had justified the ongoing war through competing interpretations of inheritance law, first concerning Edward III's claim to the French throne and then Henry VI's . The conflict had been a legalistic feud between two related royal families, but Joan transformed it along religious lines and gave meaning to appeals such as that of squire Jean de Metz when he asked, "Must the king be driven from the kingdom; and are we to be English?" In the words of Stephen Richey, "She turned what had been a dry dynastic squabble that left the common people unmoved except for their own suffering into a passionately popular war of national liberation ." Richey also expresses the breadth of her subsequent appeal: </P>

Who is joan of arc and why is she important