Paris - A French medical team is to spend six months analysing the presumed remains of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake at the age of 19, the daily Le Parisien reported on Monday.

A French scientific equipment will come, during the next six months, to the examination of the presumed rest of Joan of Arc, heroin of French history by its resistance against the English invasion, to verify if it is authentic despoliation.

The archbishopric of Tours is in possession of the rest that, according to affirms, the faithfuls of Joan of Arc, declared Saint by the Catholic Church, rescued of the bonfire where, with 19 years, was burned alive by heresy in Rouen, 30 of May of 1431.

In order to give validity to this theory and, in that case, to try to have more information on one of the most important figures of Gallic History, the expert in forensic medicine Philippe Charlier, who already has experience in other similar cases, will carry out genetic examinations in the hospital Raymond-Poincare' de Garches, located in the northeast of Paris.

"We will use the remains that were recovered from beneath the pyre, essentially bones and skin fragments that have been preserved over generations," explained Charlier to the newspaper "The Parisien". The specialist discovered the last year, by means of seemed analyses, that Agnès Sorel (1422-1450), lover of the King Charles VII, had died of acute mercury poisoning.

The objective of Charlier is to overwhelm the many lagoons that persist in the biography of Joan of Arc, who took up itself arms against the English and headed the liberation of France. "we know almost nothing about Joan of Arc," Charlier told Le Parisien. "We don't even have a portrait of her. Even the armour that has been attributed to her is largely posthumous," added the forensic doctor.

The girl known the world over as "The Maid of Orleans" was burned at the stake after being convicted of heresy by the British authorities whose armies she had been instrumental in routing at Orleans during the Hundred Years' War.

Beginning at the age of 13, she began hearing voices, which were accompanied by a blaze of light, that she said guided her actions.

She became the heroine of her country at the age of 17. More than two decades after her death, Pope Callixtus III reopened her case and overturned the original conviction. She was canonised by Pope Benedict XV in May 1920.

Source: Europapress