In his opening allocution he told his audience that the private admonition had been unattended with good results, that Joan had refused to submit herself to the Church, and that he had accordingly invited to the present meeting a learned doctor of theology, namely, John de Chatillon, archdeacon of Evreux, whose eloquence he doubted not would have a beneficial effect upon the stubbornness of the prisoner.

On Joan being led into the room, the Bishop admonished her to listen to what Chatillon would now lay before her, and to agree to what he would advise.  If she would not do so, he added, she would place herself in jeopardy, both as to her body and as to her soul.

Chatillon then took up his parable, which was to the effect that all faithful Christians must conform to the tenets of the Church; and that he trusted she would do so to all that the doctors lay and spiritual there present expected her.

The Archdeacon held a digest of his sermon in his hand.  Seeing this, Joan of Arc requested him to read his book, after which, she said, she would make her answer.

The speech, or sermon, that he then delivered was an exhaustive examination of the twelve articles, brought under six heads, but much altered and garbled.

In the first place, he admonished her of not having given a full account of her apparitions to the Church through her judges; secondly, he told her of her culpability in insisting on retaining her male attire; thirdly, of her wickedness in asserting that she committed no crime in retaining that dress; fourthly, her sin in holding as true revelations that could only lead the people into error; fifthly, that she had, owing to these revelations, done deeds displeasing to the Divine will; and lastly, that she was committing a sin in treating the apparitions as holy, when she was not certain whether they did not come from evil spirits.  When Chatillon said that by not conforming to the article ‘Sanctam Ecclesiam,’ she placed herself in the power of the Church to condemn her to the flames, and to be burnt as a heretic, she answered boldly: 

’I will not say aught else than that I have already spoken; and were I even to see the fire I should say the same!’

After this answer in the minutes of that day’s trial is written by the clerk in the margin of the vellum: 

‘Superba responsio!’

That was a testimony of admiration which neither the fears of persecution nor of superstition could prevent from appearing.

Nothing more was to be obtained from the prisoner’s lips than this declaration, either by private or public examinations.  This being so, Cauchon bethought him what further cruelty could be employed to force the prisoner to give way, and the barbarous scheme of torture was decided on.