Charles VII drives the last English forces from France with campaigns in Normandy and Gascony. He defeats them at the battles of Formigny and Castillon, bringing an end to the Hundred Years War. Making peace with Burgundy in 1435 had been a key part of Charles' path to victory, but this peace came at the cost of leaving Joan unacknowledged, for he could not afford to alienate the duke who had captured and sold her. With the war finally over, exonerating the woman who had won Charles VII his crown becomes a priority.

Several French bishops, Pope Nicholas V, and Joan of Arc's own mother, Isabelle Romée, work to reopen the heresy trial of 1431. They hold a new trial in which 115 witnesses testify to Joan's innocence. Many of the witnesses come from her home village of Domrémy or had served with her on campaign. Men and women, lay and clergy, peasants and nobles, all come forward to tell their stories of how Joan displayed virtue, courage, and piety. On 7 July 1456, the first trial is declared null and void. She is no longer considered a heretic by the institutional Church.

Writers such as Voltaire continue to write about her in negative and sometimes scandalous light. His poem, entitled “The Maid of Orléans” (French: "La Pucelle d'Orléans") portray Joan as licentious, mentally absurd, and ultimately as worthy of dismissal. He takes aim at another writer of the period, Jean Chapelain, who had written about Joan as an epic hero and liberator of France. He dismisses Chapelain’s claims that Joan is a figure worthy of veneration, and insultes Chapelain’s character for believing it. Of all the many depictions of Joan, Voltaire’s is the most widely read for centuries, showing that opinions of Joan are still deeply divided.

While the French people are forging an identity for themselves in the revolution against the monarchy, they shift their understanding of Joan of Arc from being a religious figure to being a symbol of France itself. Napoleon Bonaparte especially understands Joan's power as a symbol. He uses her image as the representation of freedom from the oppressor. It also serves as a way to reconcile the Catholic Church with the new French Empire.

In the late 19th century, some scholars turn away from the idea of Joan as a heretic or saint and instead approach her as someone suffering from a mental illness. Though the early suggestions are often unscientific and vague, this idea continues to gain traction and is still oft-cited today.

Just three years after the invention of the moving picture, "Exécution de Jeanne d'Arc," a short, silent film is created by Georges Hatot and screened in France. Since then, Joan of Arc has been a popular topic for filmography, featuring in more than 42 movies and 14 TV shows. These include Joan of Arc (1948), The Lark (1957), The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), The Messenger (1999), and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).

Wikipedia has an extensive list of cultural depictions of Joan of Arc that can be found here.

Within the Catholic Church, beatification is the first step in canonizing a saint. The person in question is granted the title “blessed." A deceased Christian can only be beatified if they performed at least four miracles. These miracles could have been performed during the blessed's lifetime or later as an answer to intercessory prayer. One of the miracles normally required was waived by Pope Pius X because of Joan's role in saving France.  The other three miracles credited to Joan of Arc were when three different nuns prayed for her to intercede on their behalf. All three were reported to have been cured of cancer.

While France is engaged in an all-out struggle against Germany, propagandists turn to Joan as a potent symbol of resistance against foreign invasion. Posters of Joan of Arc pop up all across France, Britain, and America. A new statue of Joan, mounted and dressed in armor, is commissioned in 1916 and completed in 1922. One copy of this statue is donated to the women of the United States in honor of American contributions to the war effort. It currently stands at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC.

Joan of Arc on the cover of the Official Program of a Women's Suffrage Procession in Washington, DC, 1913

In this play, Shaw portrays Joan of Arc as a brash and boisterous flapper. It deliberately challenges the audience’s assumptions about the demure behavior that is expected of saintly women. According to Shaw, he wanted to undercut "a vision of Joan as a lovely, insipid slip of a girl, divinely guided, but possessed of mental and physical attributes utterly incongruous with and unfitted to her achievements." Ultimately, the play is more about contemporary debates surrounding gender roles than it is about the fifteenth century.

In 1991, two neurologists–Elizabeth Foote-Smith and Lydia Bayne–suggest that Joan’s voices are symptoms of epileptic seizures. Later articles follow suit in diagnosing Joan with varying degrees of epilepsy, psychosis, and/or schizophrenia. The most prevalent theory is one form or another of epilepsy that is triggered by auditory stimuli with auras and auditory hallucinations. In 2023, a study entitled “Undiagnosing St. Joan” dismisses the tendency of scholars and physicians to attempt to diagnose Joan. It argues this is not a helpful way of understanding history, and is ultimately disingenuous to Joan’s memory.