There was put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith, and renounced them humbly.

At the bottom of the document she made the mark of a cross.

Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the trial-papers.

Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher Massieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her name, every letter.

However that may be, as soon as Joan's abjuration had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, "with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more henceforth." The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors and his officers, were not.