d that within seven years space the English would have to forfeit a bigger prize than Orleans. This prediction came true when six years and eight months later when Paris was rendered back to the French. In the trial Joan was asked to submit herself to the Church Militant, she obviously became confused and thus did not do so. But obviously if she had known what it was she would have said yes. It seems to have been just another plot of her judges to find her as a heretic. Submitting oneself to the Church Militant is simply a pledge of the acceptance of the Churchs decisions. The trial concluded on March 17, and it was the decisions of the judges that Joan needed to retract all that she had claimed about being sent by God and about her voices. The finally settled on a set of twelve crimes she was guilty of. She was subjected to first private then public admonitions; where she could have retracted her crimes and begged mercy, both times she refused. Joan was then subjected to torture, but she still held firm. Finally forty-two of the forty-seven judges collaborated and declared Joan as a heretic and handed her over to civil power. A stake was then erected in the cemetery of St-Quen, and in front of a large crowd she was publicly admonished for the last time. Finally her courage seemed to fail her and she agreed to sign some sort of retraction. It is said that the retraction was of the most humiliating and lengthy, taking over a half an hour to read. The humorous thing is that those who wrote the retraction claim that it was only a matter of a few lines and was nothing more that a confession and not humiliating. However when it was drafted up and read to her, she refused to sign it. She however did say that she only retracted as far as it was Gods will. This for the most part was good enough to save her life for the time being and she was simply thrown back in jail. One of the things she was being condemned as a heretic for ...
