Abjuration
On May 24, Joan was taken to a scaffold set up in the cemetery next to Saint-Ouen Church, and told that she would be burned immediately unless she signed a document renouncing her visions and agreeing to stop wearing soldiers' clothing. She had been wearing a soldiers' outfit consisting of a tunic, hosen, and long boots that went up to the waist, tied together with cords around the waist. The clergy who served on the tribunal later said Joan had kept this clothing tied tightly together during her months in prison because she said she needed such an outfit to protect herself from possible rape: " that it wasn't proper for a woman to wear a man's tunic hosen firmly tied together with many cords, she said she didn't dare give up the hosen, nor to keep them but firmly tied, because the Bishop and Earl well knew, as they themselves said, that her guards had attempted to rape her a number of times".
One of the court scribes, Guillaume Manchon, later recalled: "And she was then dressed in male clothing, and was complaining that she could not give it up, fearing lest in the night her guards would inflict some act of outrage upon her; and she had complained once or twice to the Bishop of Beauvais, the Vice-Inquisitor, and Master Nicholas Loiseleur that one of the aforesaid guards had tried to rape her." The trial record omits much information on this issue, but does contain quotes from her protesting that she was not doing anything wrong.
But faced with immediate execution on May 24, she agreed to give up this clothing and sign the abjuration document.
Read more about this topic: Trial Of Joan Of Arc