After long, comfortless days of waiting Jeanne was informed that she was to be tried for heresy, and piteously she asked that some of her own party should be placed among the judges; but this was refused. The charge of heresy against a girl to whom the ordinances of the Church were as the breath of life seems strange. She who lived in an ecstasy of religious fervour, who spent her time in prayer and religious exercises; who confessed regularly, and partook of the Sacraments of the Church whenever she could receive them, was accused by the Church of being a heretic and schismatic. Her great crime in the eyes of the clergy lay in affirming that she obeyed voices that came from God. In her cell Jeanne could know but little of the arrangements that were being made for the trial, which were on such a scale as to command the attention of all Europe. No homage ever rendered her by her own party conveys such a sense of her importance as this trial which was instigated by a great nation to neutralize her influence. Owing to the fact that the meadow land where she was captured lay in the diocese of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon claimed jurisdiction over her. He had ever been a sympathizer with the English faction, and after Jeanne's triumphs had swept him out of his city he had fled for a while to England, and had come back to France with the Cardinal of Winchester, eager for rewards and revenge. A few months previous Winchester had recommended him to the Pope for the vacant archbishopric of Rouen, but his appointment was opposed by the clergy of that city, and the Pope had not yet come to a decision. He was a man of much learning and more ambition, and he delighted in the opportunity now afforded him of pleasing his English patrons, and avenging his private grudge. As Cauchon was presiding officer the trial should have been held, of course, in his diocese, but it was deemed expedient to hold it in Rouen, on account of the disturbances near Paris, and Canonical permission was obtained from the Cathedral Chapter of Rouen to hold the court in that city. Bishops, abbés, priors, representatives of the University of Paris, learned doctors, and noted priests, sixty of the greatest intellectuals of the Church,--all of them Frenchmen of the English faction,--were gathered together to bring to death a young, ignorant peasant girl.