 Some of the other clergy at the trial were also threatened when they refused to cooperate, including a Dominican friar named Isambart de la Pierre.These threats, and the domination of the trial by a secular government, were violations of the Church's rules and undermined the right of the Church to conduct heresy trials without secular interference.The trial record contains statements from Joan that the eyewitnesses later said astonished the court, since she was an illiterate peasant and yet was able to evade the theological pitfalls the tribunal had set up to entrap her.