The court convened in a public square before a large crowd, with Joan on a scaffold, in preparation to be sentenced to death. A preacher first accused her of refusing to submit to the Church, and Joan immediately demanded to be taken before the pope, but she was told that it was impossible, because he was too far away. (Just two months earlier, we saw an appeal successfully made to the pope in the diocese of Coutances in a heresy case being tried by Lemaistre’s superior, Inquisitor Jean Graverent.) Cauchon started to read his sentence, which would have convicted Joan as an unrepentant heretic and consigned her to the secular court and death. But Joan interrupted him and said she wished to go along with everything the judges and the Church would say. She then signed a statement of abjuration that was read for her. Cauchon then read a different sentence convicting her but condemning her to perpetual imprisonment. It is clear that a short form of abjuration was used on the scaffold, and a longer form was inserted into the record, in which she abjured all heresy (designed so that any offense would trigger a relapse).