Treating an extraordinary person as a contradiction of their era hides how fully they express its main currents. A peasant visionary reflected her age's trends: religion reaching into ordinary lives, fights over who may judge disputed spiritual claims, especially women's, and rising national identity. Reading such figures through modern agendas instead of their own culture produces misunderstanding.
A trial can be politically decided in advance and still be run with scrupulous, by-the-book procedure. The judge who most needed the verdict was the one most obsessed with correct process, because careful procedure is what makes a predetermined outcome look justified. A rigged result and an honest process are not opposites, and neither the politics nor the legal reasoning explains the case alone.
For someone already captured by enemies who want them dead, a formal trial may be the only thing standing between them and summary execution. Due process constrains the powerful even when they control it, which is why they bother to run it properly.