II. THE ORDEAL OF BOILING WATER…

II. THE ORDEAL OF BOILING WATER

The ordeal of boiling water (æneum, judicium aquæ ferventis, cacabus, caldaria) is the one usually referred to in the most ancient texts of laws. It was a favorite both with the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, and the manner in which the pagan usages of the ancient Aryans were adopted and rendered orthodox by the Church is well illustrated by the commendation bestowed on it by Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, in the ninth century. It combines, he says, the elements of water and of fire; the one representing the deluge—the judgment inflicted on the wicked of old; the other authorized by the fiery doom of the future—the day of judgment, in both of which we see the righteous escape and the wicked suffer.[881] There were several minor variations in its administration, but none of them departed to any notable extent from the original form as invented in the East. A caldron of water was brought to the boiling-point, and the accused was obliged with his naked hand to find a small stone or ring thrown into it; sometimes the latter portion was omitted, and the hand was simply inserted, in trivial cases to the wrist, in crimes of magnitude to the elbow; the former being termed the single, the latter the triple ordeal;[882] or, again, the stone was employed, suspended by a string, and the severity of the trial was regulated by the length of the line, a palm’s breadth being counted as single, and the distance to the elbow as triple.[883] A good example of the process, in all its details, is furnished us by Gregory of Tours, who relates that an Arian priest and a Catholic deacon, disputing about their respective tenets, and being unable to convince each other, the latter proposed to refer the subject to the decision of the æneum, and the offer was accepted. Next morning the deacon’s enthusiasm cooled, and he mingled his matins with precautions of a less spiritual nature, by bathing his arm in oil, and anointing it with protective unguents. The populace assembled to witness the exhibition, the fire was lighted, the caldron boiled furiously, and a little ring thrown into it was whirled around like a straw in a tornado, when the deacon politely invited his adversary to make the trial first. This was declined, on the ground that precedence belonged to the challenger, and with no little misgiving the deacon proceeded to roll up his sleeve, when the Arian, observing the precautions that had been taken, exclaimed that he had been using magic arts, and that the trial would amount to nothing. At this critical juncture, when the honor of the orthodox faith was trembling in the balance, a stranger stepped forward—a Catholic priest named Jacintus, from Ravenna—and offered to undergo the experiment. Plunging his arm into the bubbling caldron, he was two hours in capturing the ring, which eluded his grasp in its fantastic gyrations; but finally, holding it up in triumph to the admiring spectators, he declared that the water felt cold at the bottom, with an agreeable warmth at the top. Fired by the example, the unhappy Arian boldly thrust in his arm; but the falseness of his cause belied the confidence of its rash supporter, and in a moment the flesh was boiled off the bones up to the elbow.[884]

This was a volunteer experiment. As a means of judicial investigation, the Church, in adopting it with the other ordeals, followed the policy of surrounding it with all the solemnity which her most venerated rites could impart, thus imitating, no doubt unconsciously, the customs of the Hindus, who, from the earliest times, have made the ordeal a religious ceremony, to be conducted by Brahmans, with invocations to the divine powers, and to be performed by the patient at sunrise, immediately after the prescribed ablutions, and while yet fasting.[885] With the same object, in the European ordeal, fasting and prayer were enjoined for three days previous, and the ceremony commenced with special prayers and adjurations, introduced for the purpose into the litany, and recited by the officiating priests; mass was celebrated, and the accused was required to partake of the sacrament under the fearful adjuration, “This body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be to thee this day a manifestation!” This was followed by an exorcism of the water, of which numerous formulas are on record, varying in detail, but all manifesting the robust faith with which man assumed to control the action of his Creator. A single specimen will suffice.

“O creature of water, I adjure thee by the living God, by the holy God who in the beginning separated thee from the dry land; I adjure thee by the living God who led thee from the fountain of Paradise, and in four rivers commanded thee to encompass the world; I adjure thee by Him who in Cana of Galilee by His will changed thee to wine, who trod on thee with His holy feet, who gave thee the name Siloa; I adjure thee by the God who in thee cleansed Naaman, the Syrian, of his leprosy;—saying, O holy water, O blessed water, water which washest the dust and sins of the world, I adjure thee by the living God that thou shalt show thyself pure, nor retain any false image, but shalt be exorcised water, to make manifest and reveal and bring to naught all falsehood, and to make manifest and bring to light all truth; so that he who shall place his hand in thee, if his cause be just and true, shall receive no hurt; but if he be perjured, let his hand be burned with fire, that all men may know the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will come, with the Holy Ghost, to judge with fire the quick and the dead, and the world! Amen!”[886]

After the hand had been plunged in the seething caldron, it was carefully enveloped in a cloth, sealed with the signet of the judge, and three days afterwards it was unwrapped, when the guilt or innocence of the party was announced by the condition of the member.[887] By way of extra precaution, in some rituals it is ordered that during this interval holy water and blessed salt be mingled in all the food and drink of the patient—presumably to avert diabolic interference with the result.[888]

The judicial use of this ordeal is shown in a charter of the monastery of Sobrada in Galicia, when, about 987, the Bishop of Lugo claimed of it for his church the manor of Villarplano. After a vain effort to decide the question by evidence, the representatives of the monastery took a solemn oath as to its rights and offered to confirm it by the pæna caldaria. In the church of San Juliano some fifty or sixty notables from both sides assembled; a monk named Salamiro was conducted to the boiling caldron by a person representing each claimant, and there he drew forth ten stones from the bubbling water. His arm was sealed up and three or four days later was exhibited uninjured to the assembly. The proof was conclusive and the Bishop of Lugo abandoned his claim.[889]

The justification of this mode of procedure by its most able defender, Hincmar of Reims, is similar in spirit to the above form of adjuration. King Lothair, great-grandson of Charlemagne, desiring to get rid of his wife, Teutberga, accused her of the foulest incest, and forced her to a confession, which she afterwards recanted, proving her innocence by undergoing the ordeal of hot water by proxy. Lothair, nevertheless, married his concubine Waldrada, and for ten years the whole of Europe was occupied with the degrading details of the quarrel, council after council assembling to consider the subject, and the thunders of Rome being freely employed. Hincmar, the most conspicuous ecclesiastic of his day, stood boldly forth in defence of the unhappy queen, and in his treatise “De Divortio Lotharii et Teutbergæ,” although no one at the time seriously thought of impugning the authority of ordeals in general, it suited his purpose to insist upon their claims to infallibility. His line of argument shows how thoroughly the pagan custom had become Christianized, and how easily the churchman could find reasons for attributing to God the interposition which his ancestors had ascribed to Mithra, or to Agni, or to Thor. “Because in boiling water the guilty are scalded and the innocent are unhurt, because Lot escaped unharmed from the fire of Sodom, and the future fire which will precede the terrible Judge will be harmless to the Saints, and will burn the wicked as in the Babylonian furnace of old.”[890]

In the Life of St. Ethelwold is recorded a miracle, which, though not judicial, yet, from its description by a contemporary, affords an insight into the credulous faith which rendered lawgivers ready to intrust the most important interests to decisions of this nature. The holy saint, while Abbot of Abingdon, to test the obedience of Elfstan the cook of the monastery, ordered him to extract with his hand a piece of meat from the bottom of a caldron in which the conventual dinner was boiling. Without hesitation the monk plunged his hand into the seething mass and unhurt presented the desired morsel to his wondering superior. Faith such as this could not go unrewarded, and Elfstan, from his humble station, rose to the episcopal seat of Winchester.[891]

This form of trial was in use among all the races in whose legislation the purgatio vulgaris found place. It is the only mode alluded to in the Salic Law, from the primitive text to the amended code of Charlemagne.[892] The same may be said of the Wisigoths, as we have already seen; while the codes of the Frisians, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Lombards, all refer cases to its decision.[893] In Iceland, it was employed from the earliest times;[894] in the primitive jurisprudence of Russia its use was enjoined in cases of minor importance,[895] and it continued in vogue throughout Europe until the general discredit attached to this mode of judgment led to the gradual abandonment of the ordeal as a legal process. It is among the forms enumerated in the sweeping condemnation of the whole system, in 1215, by Innocent III. in the Fourth Council of Lateran; but even subsequently we find it prescribed in certain cases by the municipal laws in force throughout the whole of Northern and Southern Germany,[896] and as late as 1282 it is specified in a charter of Gaston of Béarn, conferring on a church the privilege of holding ordeals.[897] At a later date, indeed, it was sometimes administered in a different and more serious form, the accused being expected to swallow the boiling water. I have met with no instances recorded of this, but repeated allusions to it by Rickius show that it could not have been unusual.[898] Another variant is seen in the case of a monk who had brought the body of St. Helena to his convent and was forced to prove its genuineness by complete immersion in boiling water—a trial which he endured successfully.[899]

The modern Hindoo variety of this ordeal consists in casting a piece of gold or a metal ring into a vessel of boiling ghee, or sesame oil, of a specified size and depth. Sacrifices are offered to the gods, a mantra, or Vedic prayer, is uttered over the oil, which is heated until it burns a fresh peepul leaf, and if the person on trial can extract the ring between his finger and thumb, without scalding himself, he is pronounced victorious.[900] In 1783 a case is recorded as occurring at Benares, in which a Brahman accused a linen-painter of theft, and as there was no other way of settling the dispute, both parties agreed to abide by the result of the ordeal. At that time the East India Company was endeavoring to discountenance this superstition, but could not venture to abolish it forcibly, and as persuasion was unavailing the accused was allowed to undergo the experiment, which resulted in his conviction. Not much confidence, however, seems to have been felt in the trial, as the fine incurred by him was not enforced.[901] Of course, under the influence of English rule, this and all other ordeals are legally obsolete, but the popular belief in them is not easily eradicated. So lately as 1867 the Bombay Gazette records a case occurring at Jamnuggur, when a camel-driver named Chakee Soomar, under whose charge a considerable sum of money was lost, was exposed by a local official to the ordeal of boiling oil. The authorities, however, took prompt measures to punish this act of cruelty. The karb-haree who ordered it escaped chastisement by opportunely dying, but the owner of the treasure, who had urged the trial, was condemned to pay to the camel-driver a pension of 100 rupees during life. In 1868 the Madras Times chronicled an attempt to revive the practice among the Brahmans of Travancore. About thirty years before it had been abolished by the British authorities, but previous to that time it was performed by placing a small silver ball in a brazen vessel eight inches deep, filled with boiling ghee. After various religious ceremonies, the accused plunged in his hand, and sometimes was obliged to repeat the attempt several times before he could bring out the ball. The hand was then wrapped up in tender palm leaves and examined after an interval of three days. In 1866 some Brahmans in danger of losing caste endeavored to regain their position by obtaining permission to undergo a modification of this trial, substituting cold oil for boiling ghee. The authorities made no objection to this, but the holy society refused to consider it a valid purgation.

Christian faith improved on the simplicity of pagan devices, and was able, through the intermediation of men of supreme sanctity, to induce Heaven to render the ordeal still more miraculous. D’Achery quotes from a contemporary MS. life of the holy Pons, Abbot of Andaone near Avignon, a miracle which relates that one morning after mass, as he was about to cross the Rhone, he met two men quarrelling over a ploughshare, which, after being lost for several days, had been found buried in the ground, and which each accused the other of having purloined and hidden. As the question was impenetrable to human wisdom, Pons intervened and told them to place the ploughshare in the water of the river, within easy reach. Then, making over it the sign of the cross, he ordered the disputant who was most suspected to lift it out of the river. The man accordingly plunged his arm into the stream only to withdraw it, exclaiming that the water was boiling, and showed his hand fearfully scalded, thus affording the most satisfactory evidence of his guilt.[902] St. Bertrand, Bishop of Comminges, adopted a similar method in a case of disputed paternity. A poor woman came to him with a starving infant, which the father refused to recognize or provide for, lest such evidence of sin should render him ineligible for an ecclesiastical benefice. The bishop summoned the offender, who stoutly denied the allegation, until a vessel of cold water was brought and a stone thrown in, when the bishop blessed the water, and ordered the father to take out the stone, saying that the result would show the truth or falsity of his asseverations. Full of confidence, the man plunged in his hand and brought out the stone, with his hand scalded as though the water had been boiling. He promptly admitted his guilt, acknowledged the child, and thenceforth provided for it.[903] Similar to this was the incident which drove the holy St. Gengulphus from the world. While yet a warrior and favorite of King Pepin, during his travels in Italy he was attracted by a way-side fountain, and bought it from the owner, who imagined that it could not be removed from his possessions. On his return to France, Gengulphus drove his staff into the ground near his house, in a convenient place, and on its being withdrawn next day, the obedient stream, which had followed him from Italy, burst forth. He soon learned that during his absence his wife had proved unfaithful to him with a priest, and desiring to test her innocence, he took her to the fountain and told her that she could disprove the reports against her by picking up a hair which lay at the bottom of the pool. She boldly did this, but on withdrawing her hand it was fearfully scalded, the skin and flesh hanging in strips from her finger-ends. He pardoned her and retired from the world, but she was implacable, and took her revenge by inciting her paramour to murder him.[904]

III. THE ORDEAL OF RED-HOT IRON

In almost all ages there has existed the belief that under the divine influence the human frame was able to resist the action of fire. Even the sceptic Pliny seems to share the superstition as to the families of the Hirpi, who at the annual sacrifice made to Apollo, on Mount Soracte, walked without injury over piles of burning coals, in recognition of which, by a perpetual senatus consultum, they were relieved from all public burdens.[905] That fire applied either directly or indirectly should be used in the appeal to God was therefore natural, and the convenience with which it could be employed by means of iron rendered that the most usual form of the ordeal. As employed in Europe, under the name of judicium ferri or juise it was administered in two essentially different forms. The one (vomeres igniti, examen pedale) consisted in laying on the ground at certain distances six, nine, or in some cases twelve, red-hot ploughshares, among which the accused walked barefooted, sometimes blindfolded, when it became an ordeal of pure chance, and sometimes compelled to press each iron with his naked feet.[906] The other and more usual form obliged the patient to carry in his hand for a certain distance, usually nine feet, a piece of red-hot iron, the weight of which was determined by law and varied with the importance of the question at issue or the magnitude of the alleged crime. Thus, among the Anglo-Saxons, in the “simple ordeal” the iron weighed one pound, in the “triple ordeal” three pounds. The latter is prescribed for incendiaries and “morth-slayers” (secret murderers), for false coining, and for plotting against the king’s life; while at a later period, in the collection known as the Laws of Henry I., we find it extended to cases of theft, robbery, arson, and felonies in general.[907] In Sweden, for theft, the form known as trux iarn was employed, in which the accused had to carry the red-hot iron and deposit it in a hole twelve paces from the starting-point; in other cases the ordeal was called scuz iarn, when he carried it nine paces and then cast it from him. These ordeals were held on Wednesday, after fasting on bread and water on Monday and Tuesday; the hand or foot was washed, after which it was allowed to touch nothing till it came in contact with the iron; it was then wrapped up and sealed until Saturday, when it was opened in presence of the accuser and the judges.[908] In Spain, the iron had no definite weight, but was a palm and two fingers in length, with four feet, high enough to enable the criminal to lift it conveniently.[909] The episcopal benediction was necessary to consecrate the iron to its judicial use. A charter of 1082 shows that the Abbey of Fontanelle in Normandy had one of approved sanctity, which, through the ignorance of a monk, was applied to other purposes. The Abbot thereupon asked the Archbishop of Rouen to consecrate another, and before the latter would consent the institution had to prove its right to administer the ordeal.[910] The wrapping up and sealing of the hand was a general custom, derived from the East, and usually after three days it was uncovered and the decision was rendered in accordance with its condition.[911] These proceedings were accompanied by the same solemn observances which have been already described, the iron itself was duly exorcised, and the intervention of God was invoked in the name of all the manifestations of Divine clemency or wrath by the agency of fire—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the burning bush of Horeb, the destruction of Sodom, and the day of judgment.[912] Occasionally, when several criminals were examined together, the same piece of heated iron was borne by them successively, giving a manifest advantage to the last one, who had to endure a temperature considerably less than his companions.[913]

In India this was one of the earliest forms of the ordeal, in use even in the Vedic period, as it is referred to in the Khandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda, where the head of a hatchet is alluded to as the implement employed for the trial—subsequently replaced by a ploughshare.[914] In the seventh century, A. D., Hiouen Thsang reports that the red-hot iron was applied to the tongue of the accused as well as to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, his innocence being designated by the amount of resultant injury.[915] This may have been a local custom, for, according to Institutes of Vishnu, closely followed by Yajnavalkya, the patient bathes and performs certain religious ceremonies; then after rubbing his hands with rice bran, seven green asvattha leaves are placed on the extended palms and bound with a thread. A red-hot iron ball or spear-head, weighing about two pounds and three-quarters, is then brought, and the judge adjures it—

“Thou, O fire, dwellest in the interior of all things like a witness. O fire, thou knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

The glowing ball is then placed on the hands of the accused, and with it he has to walk across seven concentric circles of cow-dung, each with a radius sixteen fingers’ breadth larger than the preceding, and throw the ball into a ninth circle, where it must burn some grass placed there for the purpose. If this be accomplished without burning the hands, he gains his cause, but the slightest injury convicts him. A minimum limit of a thousand pieces of silver was established at an early period as requisite to justify the administration of this form of ordeal in a suit.[916] But the robust faith in the power of innocence characteristic of the earlier Hindus seems to have diminished, for subsequent recensions of the code and later lawgivers increase the protection afforded to the hand by adding to the asvattha leaves additional strata of dharba grass and barley moistened with curds, the whole bound around with seven turns of raw silk.[917] Ali Ibrahim Khan relates a case which he witnessed at Benares in 1783 in which a man named Sancar, accused of larceny, offered to be tried in this manner. The court deliberated for four months, urging the parties to adopt some other mode, but they were obstinate, and being both Hindus claimed their right to the ancient forms of law, which was at last conceded. The ordeal took place in presence of a large assemblage, when, to the surprise of every one, Sancar carried the red-hot ball through the seven circles, threw it duly into the ninth where it burnt the grass, and exhibited his hands uninjured. By way of discouraging such experiments for the future, the accuser was imprisoned for a week.[918] Even in 1873, the Bombay Gazette states that this ordeal is still practised in Oodeypur, where a case had shortly before occurred wherein a husbandman had been obliged to prove his innocence by holding a red-hot ploughshare in his hands, duly guarded with peepul leaves, turning his face towards the sun and invoking it: “Thou Sun-God, if I am actually guilty of the crime, punish me; if not, let me escape unscathed from the ordeal!”—and in this instance, also, the accused was uninjured.

A peculiar modification of the hot-iron ordeal is employed by the aboriginal hill-tribes of Rajmahal, in the north of Bengal, when a person believes himself to be suffering from witchcraft. The Satane and the Cherreen are used to find out the witch, and then the decision is confirmed by a person representing the sufferer, who, with certain religious ceremonies, applies his tongue to a red-hot iron nine times, unless sooner burnt. A burn is considered to render the guilt of the accused indubitable, and his only appeal is to have the trial repeated in public, when, if the same result follows, he is bound either to cure the bewitched person or to suffer death if the latter dies.[919]

In the earlier periods of European law, the burning iron was reserved for cases of peculiar atrocity. Thus we find it prescribed by Charlemagne in accusations of parricide;[920] the Council of Risbach in 799 directed its use in cases of sorcery and witchcraft;[921] and among the Thuringians it was ordered for women suspected of poisoning or otherwise murdering their husbands[922]—a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. In 848 the Council of Mainz indicates it specially for slaves,[923] while the Council of Tribur, in 895, orders it for all cases of accusation against freemen.[924] Among the Anglo-Saxons the accuser had the right to select the ordeal to be employed,[925] while at a later period in Germany this privilege was conferred on the accused.[926] In England it subsequently became rather an aristocratic procedure as contradistinguished from the water ordeals.[927] On the other hand, in the Assises de Jerusalem the hot iron is the only form alluded to as employed in the roturier courts;[928] in the laws of Nieuport, granted by Philip of Alsace in 1163, it is prescribed as a plebeian ordeal;[929] and about the same period, in the military laws enacted by Frederic Barbarossa during his second Italian expedition, it appears as a servile ordeal.[930] In the Russian law of the eleventh century, it is ordered in all cases where the matter at stake amounts to more than half a grivna of gold, while the water ordeal is reserved for suits of less importance.[931] In the Icelandic code of the twelfth century it is prescribed for men, in cases in which women are required to undergo the hot-water ordeal;[932] while the reverse of this is seen in an English case occurring in 1201, where six men and a woman were accused of burglary; the men were ordered to the water ordeal and the woman to red-hot iron.[933] A specially severe form was provided for women in Ireland, who, when accused, were obliged to lick with the tongue a bronze axe-head heated to redness in a fire of black-thorn.[934]

Irrespective of these distinctions, we find it to have been the mode usually selected by persons of rank when compelled to throw themselves upon the judgment of God. The Empress Richardis, wife of Charles le Gros, accused in 887 of adultery with Bishop Liutward, offered to prove her innocence either by the judicial combat or the red-hot iron.[935] So when the Emperor St. Henry II. indulged in unworthy doubts of the purity of his virgin-wife St. Cunigunda, she eagerly appealed to the judgment of God, and established her innocence by treading unharmed the burning ploughshares.[936] The tragical tradition of Mary, wife of the Third Otho, contains a similar example, with the somewhat unusual variation of an accuser undergoing an ordeal to prove a charge. The empress, hurried away by a sudden and unconquerable passion for Amula, Count of Modena, in 996, repeated in all its details the story of Potiphar’s wife. The unhappy count, unceremoniously condemned to lose his head, asserted his innocence to his wife, and entreated her to clear his reputation. He was executed, and the countess, seeking an audience of the emperor, disproved the calumny by carrying unharmed the red-hot iron, when Otho, convinced of his rashness by this triumphant vindication, immediately repaired his injustice by consigning his empress to the stake.[937] When Edward the Confessor, who entertained a not unreasonable dislike for his mother Emma, listened eagerly to the accusation of her criminal intimacy with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester, she was condemned to undergo the ordeal of the burning shares, and, walking over them barefooted and unharmed, she established beyond peradventure the falsehood of the charge.[938] So when in 943 Arnoul of Flanders had procured the assassination of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, at Pecquigny, he offered to Louis d’Outremer to clear himself of complicity in the murder by the ordeal of fire.[939] Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror, while in exile during his youthful rebellion against his father, formed an intimacy with a pretty girl. Years afterwards, when he was Duke of Normandy, she presented herself before him with two likely youths, whom she asserted to be pledges of his former affection. Robert was incredulous; but the mother, carrying unhurt the red-hot iron, forced him to forego his doubts and to acknowledge the paternity of the boys, whom he thenceforth adopted.[940] Indeed this was the legal form of proof in cases of disputed paternity established by the Scandinavian legislation at this period,[941] and in that of Spain a century later.[942] Remy, Bishop of Dorchester, when accused of treason against William the Conqueror, was cleared by the devotion of a follower, who underwent the ordeal of hot iron.[943] When, in 1098, William Rufus desired to supply his treasury by confiscations, he accused about fifty of his richest Saxon subjects of having killed deer in his forests and hurried them to the hot-iron ordeal, but he was stupefied when after the third day their hands were found to be unhurt.[944] In 1143, Henry I., Archbishop of Mainz, ordered its employment, and administered it himself, in a controversy between the Abbey of Gerode and the Counts of Hirschberg. In the special charter issued to the abbey attesting the decision of the trial, it is recorded that the hand of the ecclesiastical champion was not only uninjured by the fiery metal, but was positively benefited by it.[945] About the same period, Centulla IV. of Béarn caused it to be employed in a dispute with the Bishop of Lescar concerning the fine paid for the murder of a priest, the ecclesiastic, as usual, being victorious.[946] The reward of the church for its faith in adopting these pagan customs was seen in the well-known case by which Bishop Poppo of Slesvick, in 962, succeeded in convincing and converting the Pagan Danes even as, three thousand years earlier, according to the Persian historians, Zoroaster convinced King Gushtashp of the truth of his revelation from Hormazd,[947] and, within seven centuries, Adurabad converted the heretical Mazdeans. The worthy missionary, dining with King Harold Blaatand, denounced, with more zeal than discretion, the indigenous deities as lying devils. The king dared him to prove his faith in his God, and, on his assenting, caused next morning an immense piece of iron to be duly heated, which the undaunted Poppo grasped and carried around to the satisfaction of the royal court, displaying his hand unscathed by the glowing mass; or, as a variant of the legend asserts, he drew on an iron gauntlet reaching to the elbow and heated to redness. The miracle was sufficient, and Denmark thenceforth becomes an integral portion of Christendom.[948] Somewhat similar, except in its results, was a case in which a priest involved in a theological dispute with a Jew, and unable to overcome him in argument, offered to prove the divinity of Christ by carrying a burning brand in his naked hand. Invoking the name of Jesus, the faithful ecclesiastic drew the blazing wood from the fire and slowly carried it for a considerable distance, but though he triumphantly exhibited his hand unhurt, his obdurate antagonist refused to be converted, alleging that the miracle was the result of magic.[949] In Norway, the sanctity of St. Olaf the King was attested in the same way, when he thoughtlessly whittled a twig on Sunday, and his attention was respectfully called by one of his courtiers to this violation of the sabbatical rules. By way of penance he collected the chips, placed them on the palm of one hand, and set fire to them, but after they had been reduced to ashes, to the surprise of the bystanders, his hand was found unharmed.[950]

In fact, there was scarcely a limit to the credulity which looked for the constant interference of the divine power. About 1215 some heretics at Cambrai were convicted by the hot iron and sentenced to the stake. One of them was of noble birth, and on the way to the place of execution the priest who had conducted the proceedings exhorted him to repentance and conversion. The condemned man listened willingly, and commenced to confess his errors. As he proceeded his hand commenced to heal, and when he had received absolution there remained no trace of the burn. When he was called in turn to take his place at the stake, the priest interposed, saying that he was innocent, and, on examination of the hand, he was released. About the same time a similar occurrence is recorded at Strassburg, where ten heretics had been thus convicted and condemned to be burnt, and one repenting at the last moment was cured of his burn, and was discharged. In this case, however, on his return to his house near the town, his wife upbraided him for his weakness in betraying the eternal truth to avoid a momentary suffering, and under her influence he relapsed. Immediately the burn on his hand reappeared, and a similar one took possession of his wife’s hand, scorching both to the bone and inflicting such excruciating agony that being unable to repress their screams, and fearing to betray themselves, they took to the woods, where they howled like wolves. Concealment was impossible, however. They were discovered, carried to the city, where the ashes of their accomplices were not yet cold, and both promptly shared the same fate.[951] Somewhat similar is a case recorded in York, where a woman accused of homicide was exposed to the ordeal, resulting in a blister the size of a half walnut. She was accordingly convicted by a jury of knights, but on her offering a prayer at the tomb of St. William of York the blister disappeared. Thereupon the royal justiciaries dismissed her as innocent, and declared the jury to be at the king’s mercy for rendering a false verdict.[952]

No form of ordeal was more thoroughly introduced throughout the whole extent of Europe. From Spain to Constantinople, and from Scandinavia to Naples, it was appealed to with confidence as an unfailing mode of ascertaining the will of Heaven. The term judicium, indeed, was at length understood to mean an ordeal, and generally that of hot iron, and in its barbarized form, juise, may almost always be considered to indicate this particular kind. In the Swedish law of the early 13th century, the red-hot iron was used in a large number of crimes, and the ferocity of its employment is exemplified in the formula prescribed for homicide. A person accused of murder on suspicion was always obliged to justify himself by carrying the hot iron for nine steps; and if he did not appear to stand his trial when duly summoned, he might be forced to undergo a preliminary ordeal to prove that he had been unavoidably detained. If he failed in this, he was condemned as guilty, but if he succeeded in enduring it he was forced to perform the second ordeal to clear him of the crime itself; while the heir of the murdered man, so long as no one succumbed in the trial, could successively accuse ten men; for the last of whom, however, the nine burning ploughshares were substituted.[953] In the code of the Frankish kingdoms of the East, it is the only mode alluded to, except the duel, and it there retained its legal authority long after it had become obsolete elsewhere. The Assises de Jerusalem were in force in the Venetian colonies until the sixteenth century, and the manuscript preserved officially in the archives of Venice, described by Morelli as written in 1436, retains the primitive directions for the employment of the juise.[954] Even the Venetian translation, commenced in 1531, and finished in 1536, is equally scrupulous, although an act of the Council of Ten, April 10, 1535, shows that these customs had fallen into desuetude and had been formally abolished.[955] In Hungary, the judicial records of Waradin from 1209 to 1235 contain 389 judgments, of which a large part were determined by the hot-iron ordeal.[956]

This ordeal even became partially naturalized among the Greeks, probably as a result of the Latin domination at Constantinople. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Theodore Lascaris demanded that Michael Paleologus, who afterwards wore the imperial crown, should clear himself of an accusation in this manner; but the Archbishop of Philadelphia, on being appealed to, pronounced that it was a custom of the barbarians, condemned by the canons, and not to be employed except by the special order of the emperor.[957] Yet George Pachymere speaks of the custom as one not uncommon in his youth, and he describes at some length the ceremonies with which it was performed.[958]

In Europe, even as late as 1310, in the proceedings against the Order of the Templars, at Mainz, Count Frederic, the master preceptor of the Rhenish provinces, offered to substantiate his denial of the accusations by carrying the red-hot iron.[959] In Modena in 1329, in a dispute between the German soldiers of Louis of Bavaria and the citizens, the Germans offered to settle the question by carrying a red-hot bar; but when the townsfolks themselves accomplished the feat, and triumphantly showed that no burn had been inflicted, the Germans denied the proof, and asserted that magic had been employed.[960]

Though about this time it may be considered to have disappeared from the ordinary proceedings of the secular courts, there was one class of cases in which its vitality still continued for a century and a half. The mysterious crime of witchcraft was so difficult of proof that judicial ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to secure conviction, and the Devil was always ready to aid his followers and baffle the ends of justice. The Inquisitor Sprenger, writing in 1487, therefore recommends that, when a witch cannot be forced to confess her guilt by either prayers or torture, she shall be asked whether she will undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron; to this she will eagerly assent, knowing that she can rely on the friendly assistance of Satan to carry her through it unscathed, and this readiness will be good evidence of her guilt. He warns inexperienced judges moreover not to allow the trial to take place, and thus afford to Satan the opportunity of triumph, and instances a case which occurred in 1484 before the Count of Furstenberg. A well-known witch was arrested and tried, but no confession could be extorted from her by all the refinements of torture. Finally she offered to prove her innocence with the red-hot iron, and the Count being young and unwary accepted the proposal, sentencing her to carry it three paces. She carried it for six paces and offered to hold it still longer, exhibiting her hand uninjured. The Count was forced to acquit her, and at the time that Sprenger wrote she was still living, to the scandal of the faithful.[961]

After the judicial use of the red-hot iron had at last died out, the superstition on which it was based still lingered, and men believed that God would reverse the laws of nature to accomplish a special object. About 1670 Georg Frese, a merchant of Hamburg, distinguished for piety and probity, published an account, the truth of which was vouched for by many respectable eye-witnesses, stating that a friend of his named Witzendorff, who had bound himself to a young woman by terrible oaths, and then had proved false and caused her death, fell into a despairing melancholy. He accused himself of the sin against the Holy Ghost, declared that his salvation was impossible, and refused to hope unless he could see a miracle wrought in his behalf. Frese at length asked him what miracle he required, and on his replying that he must see that fire would not burn, the intrepid consoler went to a blazing fire, picked out the burning coals and also a red-hot ring, which he brought to the sinner with uninjured hands and convinced him that he could be saved by repentance. The moral drawn from the facts by the narrator to whom we owe them, is that he who under Divine influence undertakes such ordeals will be preserved unharmed.[962]

Even as we have seen that Heaven sometimes interposed to punish the guilty by a reversal of the hot-water ordeal, so the industrious belief of the Middle Ages found similar miracles in the hot-iron trial, especially when Satan or some other mysterious influence nullified the appeal to God. Early in the thirteenth century a case is related in which a peasant to revenge himself on a neighbor employed a vagabond monk to burn the house of the latter. The hot-iron ordeal was vainly employed on all suspected of the crime; the house was rebuilt, the monk again bribed, burnt it a second time, and again the ordeal proved vain. The owner again rebuilt his house, and kept in it the ordeal-iron, ready for use. The monk, tempted with fresh promises, paid him another visit, and was hospitably received as before, when seeing the piece of iron, his curiosity was aroused and he asked what it was. The host handed it to him, explaining its use, but as soon as the wretch took it, it burned him to the bone, when the other seeing in him the incendiary, seized him; he was duly tried, confessed his guilt, and was broken on the wheel.[963] A variant of this story relates how a man accused of arson offered to prove his innocence by the red-hot iron, which he carried for a long distance and then showed his hand uninjured. The ordeal-iron mysteriously vanished and could not be found, until a year afterwards, when a laborer who was mending the highway came upon it under a layer of sand. It was still glowing fiercely, and when he attempted to pick it up, it burnt him severely. The bystanders at once suspected him of the crime, and on the appropriate means being taken he was forced to confess his guilt, which was duly punished by the wheel.[964] A less tragical example of the same form of miracle was that wrought by the holy Suidger, Bishop of Munster, who suspected his chamberlain of the theft of a cup. As the man stoutly denied his guilt, Suidger ordered him to pick up a knife from the table, after he had mentally exorcised it. The cold metal burnt the culprit’s hand as though it had been red-hot, and he promptly confessed his crime.[965]

IV. THE ORDEAL OF FIRE

The ordeal of fire, administered directly, without the intervention either of water or of iron, is one of the most ancient forms, as is shown by the allusions to it in both the Hindu Vedic writings, the adventure of Siawush, and the passage in the Antigone of Sophocles (pp. 266, 267, 270). In this, its simplest form, it may be considered the origin of the proverbial expression, “J’en mettrois la main au feu,” as an affirmation of positive belief,[966] showing how thoroughly the whole system engrained itself in the popular mind. In India, as practised in modern times, its form approaches somewhat the ordeal of the burning ploughshares. A trench is dug nine hands in length, two spans in breadth, and one span in depth. This is filled with peepul wood, which is then set on fire, and the accused walks into it with bare feet.[967] A more humane modification is described in the seventh century by Hiouen-Thsang as in use when the accused was too tender to undergo the trial by red-hot iron. He simply cast into the flames certain flower-buds, when, if they opened their leaves, he was acquitted; if they were burnt up, he was condemned.[968]

An anticipation of the fire ordeal may be found in the Rabbinical story of Abraham when he was cast into a fiery furnace by Nimrod, for reproving the idolatry of the latter, and escaped unharmed from the flames;[969] as well as the similar experience of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, when they were saved from the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar.[970] Miraculous interposition of this kind was expected as a matter of course by the early Christians. About the year 400 Rufinus, in his account of his visit to the monks of the Nitrian desert, tells an adventure of the hermit Copres as related to him by that holy man himself. On visiting a neighboring city he engaged in a disputation with a Manichæan who was perverting the people. Finding the heretic not easily overcome by argument, he proposed that a fire should be built in the public square, into which both should enter. The populace was delighted with the idea and speedily had a roaring pyre ready, when the Manichæan insisted that the Christian should enter first. Copres assented and remained unhurt in the flames for half an hour; his antagonist still held back, when the crowd seized him and tossed him into the fire, where he was severely scorched, and was ejected with disgrace from the city.[971] Almost identical is the story related in 597 A. D., under the Emperor Anastasius, of a Catholic bishop, who, after being worsted in a theological dispute by the subtle logic of an Arian, offered to test the soundness of their respective doctrines by together entering a blazing fire. The prudent Arian declined the proposition, when the enthusiastic Catholic jumped into the burning pile, and thence continued the controversy without suffering the least inconvenience.[972] In the less impressive form of filling the lap with burning coals and carrying them uninjured till they grew cold this ordeal seems to have been a favorite with holy men accused of unchastity. It is related of St. Brice, the successor of St. Martin in the see of Tours, of St. Simplicius of Autun, and of Montano bishop of Toledo in the sixth century.[973]

The earliest legal allusion to this form of ordeal in Europe occurs in the code of the Ripuarian Franks, where it is prescribed as applicable to slaves and strangers, in some cases of doubt.[974] From the phraseology of these passages, we may conclude that it was then administered by placing the hand of the accused in a fire. As a legal ordeal this is perhaps the only allusion to it in European jurisprudence, but it was repeatedly resorted to by enthusiasts as a voluntary trial for the purpose of establishing the truth of accusations or of substantiating their position. In these cases it was conducted on a larger and more impressive scale; huge pyres were built, and the individual undergoing the trial literally walked through the flames, as Siawush did. The celebrated Petrus Igneus gained his surname and reputation by an exploit of this kind, which was renowned in its day. Pietro di Pavia, Bishop of Florence, unpopular with the citizens, but protected by Godfrey, Duke of Tuscany, was accused of simony and heresy. Being acquitted by the Council of Rome, in 1063, and the offer of his accusers to prove his guilt by the ordeal of fire being refused, he endeavored to put down his adversaries by tyranny and oppression. Great disturbances resulted, and at length, in 1067, the monks of Vallombrosa, who had borne a leading part in denouncing the bishop, and who had suffered severely in consequence (the episcopal troops having burned the monastery of St. Salvio and slaughtered the cenobites), resolved to decide the question by the ordeal, incited thereto by no less than three thousand enthusiastic Florentines who assembled there for the purpose. Pietro Aldobrandini, a monk of Vallombrosa, urged by his superior, the holy S. Giovanni Gualberto, offered himself to undergo the trial. After imposing religious ceremonies, he walked slowly between two piles of blazing wood, ten feet long, five feet wide, and four and a half feet high, the passage between them being six feet wide and covered with an inch or two of glowing coals. The violence of the flames agitated his dress and hair, but he emerged without hurt, even the hair on his legs being unsinged, barelegged and barefooted though he was. Desiring to return through the pyre, he was prevented by the admiring crowd, who rushed around him in triumph, kissing his feet and garments, and endangering his life in their transports, until he was rescued by his fellow monks. A formal statement of the facts was sent to Rome by the Florentines, the papal court gave way, and the bishop was deposed; while the monk who had given so striking a proof of his steadfast faith was marked for promotion, and eventually died Cardinal of Albano.[975]

An example of a similar nature occurred in Milan in 1103, when the Archbishop Grossolano was accused of simony by a priest named Liutprand, who, having no proof to sustain his charge, offered the ordeal of fire. All the money he could raise he expended in procuring fuel, and when all was ready the partisans of the archbishop attacked the preparations and carried off the wood. The populace, deprived of the promised exhibition, grew turbulent, and Grossolano was obliged not only to assent to the trial, but to join the authorities in providing the necessary materials. In the Piazza di S. Ambrogio two piles were accordingly built, each ten cubits long, by four cubits in height and width, with a gangway between them of a cubit and a half. As the undaunted priest entered the blazing mass, the flames divided before him and closed as he passed, allowing him to emerge in safety, although with two slight injuries, one a burn on the hand, received while sprinkling the fire before entering, the other on the foot, which he attributed to a kick from a horse in the crowd that awaited his exit. The evidence was accepted as conclusive by the people, and Grossolano was obliged to retire to Rome. Pascal II., however, received him graciously, and the Milanese suffragans disapproved of the summary conviction of their metropolitan, to which they were probably all equally liable. The injuries received by Liutprand were exaggerated, a tumult was excited in Milan, the priest was obliged to seek safety in flight, and Grossolano was restored for a time, but the adverse party prevailed and in spite of papal support he was forced to exile.[976]

A volunteer miracle of somewhat the same character, which is recorded as occurring in Paris early in the thirteenth century, may be alluded to as illustrating the belief of the period. A loose woman in the household of a great noble was luring the youthful retainers to sin, when the chaplain remonstrated with his master, and threatened to depart unless she was removed. When she was taxed with her guilt she defended herself by saying that the priest had accused her because she had refused his importunities, and offered to prove it. Approaching him as a penitent, she sought to seduce his virtue, finally threatening to kill herself unless he would gratify her despairing love, until, to prevent her suicide, he finally made an appointment with her. Secretly announcing her triumph to the noble, she went to the place of meeting, where she found the chaplain mounted on a bed of plank, surrounded by straw and dry wood, to which he set fire on her appearance, and invited her to join him. Covered by the flames, the sinless man felt nothing but a cool, refreshing breeze, and when the pile had burnt out, he emerged unhurt, even his garments and hair being untouched.[977]

But the experiment was not always so successful for the rash enthusiast. In 1098, during the first crusade, after the capture of Antioch, when the Christians were in turn besieged in that city, and, sorely pressed and famine-struck, were well-nigh reduced to despair, an ignorant peasant named Peter Bartholomew, a follower of Raymond of Toulouse, announced a series of visions in which St. Andrew and the Saviour had revealed to him that the lance which pierced the side of Christ lay hidden in the church of St. Peter. After several men had dug in the spot indicated, from morning until night, without success, Peter leaped into the trench, and by a few well-directed strokes of his mattock exhumed the priceless relic, which he presented to Count Raymond. Cheered by this, and by various other manifestations of Divine assistance, the Christians gained heart, and defeated the Infidels with immense slaughter. Peter became a man of mark, and had fresh visions on all important conjunctures. Amid the jealousies and dissensions which raged among the Frankish chiefs, the possession of the holy lance vastly increased Raymond’s importance, and rival princes were found to assert that it was merely a rusty Arab weapon, hidden for the occasion, and wholly undeserving the veneration of which it was the object. At length, after some months, during the leisure of the siege of Archas, the principal ecclesiastics in the camp investigated the matter, and Peter, to silence the doubts expressed as to his veracity, offered to vindicate the identity of the relic by the fiery ordeal. He was taken at his word, and after three days allowed for fasting and prayer, a pile of dry olive-branches was made, fourteen feet long and four feet high, with a passage-way one foot wide. In the presence of forty thousand men all eagerly awaiting the result, Peter, bearing the object in dispute, and clothed only in a tunic, boldly rushed through the flames, amid the anxious prayers and adjurations of the multitude. As the chroniclers lean to the side of the Neapolitan Princes or of the Count of Toulouse, so do their accounts of the event differ; the former asserting that Peter sustained mortal injury in the fire; the latter assuring us that he emerged safely, with but one or two slight burns, and that the crowd enthusiastically pressing around him in triumph, he was thrown down, trampled on, and injured so severely that he died in a few days, asseverating with his latest breath the truth of his revelations. Raymond persisted in upholding the sanctity of his relic, but it was subsequently lost.[978]

Even after the efforts of Innocent III. to abolish the ordeal, and while the canons of the Council of Lateran were still fresh, St. Francis of Assisi, in 1219, offered himself to the flames for the propagation of the faith. In his missionary trip to the East, finding the Soldan deaf to his proselyting eloquence, he proposed to test the truth of their respective religions by entering a blazing pile in company with some imams, who naturally declined the perilous experiment. Nothing daunted, the enthusiastic saint then said that he would traverse the flames alone if the Soldan would bind himself, in the event of a triumphant result, to embrace the Christian religion and to force his subjects to follow the example. The Turk, more wary than the Dane whom Poppo converted, declined the proposition, and St. Francis returned from his useless voyage unharmed.[979]

In this St. Francis endeavored unsuccessfully to emulate the glorious achievement of Boniface, the Apostle of Russia, who, according to the current martyrologies, converted the King of Russia to the true faith by means of such a bargain and ordeal.[980] It is a little curious that Peter Cantor, in his diatribe against the judgment of God, presents the supposition of a trial such as this as an unanswerable argument against the system—the Church, he says, could not assent to such an experiment, and therefore it ought not to be trusted in affairs of less magnitude.[981]

Somewhat irregular as a judicial proceeding, but yet illustrating the general belief in the principles of the ordeal of fire, was an occurrence related about the year 1220 by Cæsarius of Heisterbach as having taken place a few years before in Arras. An ecclesiastic of good repute decoyed a goldsmith into his house, and murdered him to obtain possession of some valuables, cutting up the body, with the assistance of a younger sister, and hiding the members in a drain. The crime was proved upon them, and both were condemned to the stake. On the way to the place of punishment, the girl demanded a confessor, and confessed her sins with full contrition, but the brother was obdurate and impenitent. Both were tied to the same stake; the brother was promptly reduced to ashes, while the flames were deliciously cool to the sister, and only burnt the rope with which she was tied, so that she quietly walked down from the pile. The judges, thus convinced of her innocence, dismissed her without further trouble.[982]

From every point of view, however, both as to date and as to consequences, the most remarkable recourse to the fire ordeal was that which proved to be the proximate cause of the downfall of Savonarola. Long after the ordeal system had been superseded in European jurisprudence, and occurring in the centre of the New Learning, it was a most noteworthy illustration of the superstition which formed a common bond between sceptics and religious enthusiasts. In 1498 Savonarola had been silenced by command of Alexander III., his influence with the people was waning, and his faithful follower Fra Domenico da Pescia was desperately struggling in the pulpit to maintain the cause against the assaults of the Franciscans led by the eloquent Fra Francesco della Puglia. Domenico in a sermon offered to prove the truth of his leader’s utterances by throwing himself from the roof of the Palazzo de’ Signori, by casting himself in the river, or by entering fire. This burst of rhetoric might have passed unheeded had not Fra Francesco taken it up and offered to share the ordeal with Savonarola himself. Savonarola declined, except under impossible conditions, but Domenico accepted the challenge and affixed to the portal of Santa Croce a paper in which he offered to prove by argument or miracle the truth of sundry propositions bearing upon his teacher’s mission. To this Fra Francesco replied that he would enter fire with Fra Domenico; that he fully expected to be burnt, but that he would willingly suffer if he could disabuse the people of their false idol. Popular excitement rose to such a height that the Signoria sent for both disputants, and made them sign a written agreement to undergo the ordeal. In this Fra Francesco wisely provided that, although he was willing to enter fire with Savonarola himself, if Domenico was to act he would only produce a champion, who was readily found in the person of Fra Giuliano Rondinelli. On the side of the Dominicans the enthusiasm was so great that all the friars of Savonarola’s convent of San Marco, nearly three hundred in number, eagerly signed a pledge to submit to the ordeal, and he assured them that in such a cause they could do so without danger. In fact, when, on the day before the trial, he preached on the subject in San Marco, the whole audience rose as one man and offered to take Domenico’s place.

April 7th was the day fixed for the Sperimento del Fuoco. In the Piazza de’ Signori a huge pile of wood, plentifully reinforced with gunpowder, sulphur, oil, and spirits, was built with a gangway through which the champions were to pass; it was to be lighted at one end, and after they entered fire was to be set at the other to preclude retreat. All Florence assembled to witness the spectacle, and patiently endured the peltings of a terrible storm. The day was spent, however, in wrangling over questions skilfully raised by the Franciscans, the chief one being whether Fra Domenico should carry in his hand a consecrated host. It had been revealed to one of his brethren that this was indispensable, and Savonarola adhered to it firmly. When evening came the Signoria announced that the ordeal was abandoned. The crowd was enraged at the loss of the promised exhibition; the Dominicans had so confidently promised a miracle that the drawn battle was universally regarded as their defeat, an armed guard was required to protect their return to their convent, and Savonarola’s power over the Florentine populace was gone. His enemies lost no time in pushing their advantage. The next evening the mob assailed San Marco; he was seized and conveyed to prison, and after prolonged and repeated tortures he was hanged and burnt on May 23d.[983]

It will be observed that the ordeal of fire was principally affected by ecclesiastics in church affairs, perhaps because it was of a nature to produce a powerful impression on the spectators, while at the same time it could no doubt in many instances be so managed as to secure the desired results by those who controlled the details. In like manner, it was occasionally employed on inanimate matter to decide points of faith or polity. Thus, in the question which excited great commotion in Spain, in 1077, as to the substitution of the Roman for the Gothic or Mozarabic rite, after a judicial combat had been fought and determined in favor of the national ritual, the partisans of the Roman offices continued to urge their cause, and the ordeal of fire was appealed to. A missal of each kind was committed to the flames, and, to the great joy of all patriotic Castilians, the Gothic offices were unconsumed.[984] More satisfactory to the orthodox was the result of a similar ordeal during the efforts of St. Dominic to convert the Albigenses. In a dispute with some heretics he wrote out his argument on the points of faith, and gave it to them for examination and reply. That night, as they were seated around the hearth, the paper was produced and read, when one of them proposed that it should be cast into the flames, when, if it remained unconsumed, they would see that its contents were true. This was promptly done, when the saintly document was unharmed. One, more obstinate than the rest, asked for a second and then for a third trial, with the same result. The perverse heretics, however, closed their hearts against the truth, and bound themselves by oath to keep the affair secret; and so glorious a victory for the true faith would have remained unknown but for the indiscretion of one of them, a knight, who had a covert inclination towards orthodoxy.[985] A somewhat similar instance occurred in Constantinople as late as the close of the thirteenth century, when Andronicus II., on his accession, found the city torn into factions relative to the patriarchate, arising from the expulsion of Arsenius, a former patriarch. All attempts to soothe the dissensions proving vain, at length both parties agreed to write out their respective statements and arguments, and, committing both books to the flames, to abide by the result, each side hoping that its manuscript would be preserved by the special interposition of Heaven. The ceremony was conducted with imposing state, and, to the general surprise, both books were reduced to ashes. Singularly enough, all parties united in the sensible conclusion that God had thereby commanded them to forget their differences and to live in peace.[986]

About the same period as this last example, Samaritan tradition related that the comparative claims of Mt. Gerizim and Al-Qods (Jerusalem) as the sole seats of Yahveh-worship were settled before Nebuchadnezzar, by the ordeal of fire, applied respectively to the Pentateuch and to the later books of the Jewish canon, Sanballat appearing for Ephraim, and Zerubbabel for Judah. The later books were promptly consumed, but the law of Moses emerged twice from the flames unhurt. Zerubbabel, in despair, then spat upon some pages of the index, and cast the Law a third time into the fire, when the leaves thus polluted were burnt, but the book itself leaped unscathed into the bosom of the king, who promptly slew the representatives of Judah, and gave an unhesitating verdict in favor of the Samaritans.[987]

The genuineness of relics was often tested in this manner by exposing them to the action of fire. This custom, like the ordeal itself as a judicial process, finds its original home in the East. When, for instance, the sacred tooth-relic of Buddha was carried to the court of King Pandu at Patali-putta, and its holiness was questioned by the Niganthas, or worshippers of Siva, they tested it by casting it into a pit filled with glowing charcoal “bright and horrid as the hell Roruva”—when the tooth, in place of being consumed to ashes, rose out of the fiery mass resting on a lotus the size of a chariot-wheel.[988] Even Roman unbelief accepted a similar faith respecting the superfluous thumb which ornamented the right foot of King Pyrrhus, the touch of which cured diseases of the spleen, and which remained unharmed on the funeral pyre which consumed the rest of his body to ashes. The indestructible supplementary member was thereupon inclosed in a casket, and reverently placed in a temple—the first relic, probably, on record in the western world.[989] At how early an age Christianity adopted the belief which led to this is manifested by the story of the swaddling-cloth of Christ in one of the apocryphal Gospels. The Virgin, being unable, on account of poverty, to make a return for the offerings of the Magi who came to worship the infant Saviour, presented them with one of his swaddling-bands. On their return they placed it in the sacred fire of their altar, and though the flames eagerly embraced it, they left it unharmed and unaltered, whereupon the Magi venerated it, and laid it away among their treasures.[990] On the conversion of the Spanish Arians the experiment was tried on a larger scale. It seems that doubts were felt by the orthodox as to the relics preserved in their churches, and a general regulation was adopted by the Council of Saragossa in 592 that they should be all brought before the bishops and tested by fire—with what result is not recorded.[991]

In such cases the ceremony of the ordeal was conducted with appropriate religious services, including the following prayer, which would seem to show that in its regular form it was not the relic itself, but the cloth in which it was wrapped that was exposed to the test—

Lord Jesus Christ, who art king of kings and lord of lords, and lover of all believers in thee, who art a just judge, strong and powerful, who hast revealed thy holy mysteries to thy priests, and who didst mitigate the flames to the Three Children; concede to us thy unworthy servants and grant our prayers that this cloth or this thread in which are wrapped those bodies of saints, if they are not genuine let them be burned by this fire, and if they are genuine let them escape, so that iniquity shall not prevail over injustice but falsehood shall succumb to truth, so that thy truth shall be declared to thee and be manifested to us, believers in thee, that we may know thee to be the blessed God in ages everlasting. Amen.[992]

Numerous instances of this superiority of relics to fire are narrated by the pious chroniclers of the middle ages. In 1015 some monastic pilgrims, hospitably received at Monte Cassino on their return from Jerusalem, offered at the shrine of St. Benedict a fragment of the towel with which the Saviour had washed the feet of his disciples. Some of the monks, being incredulous, placed it on burning coals, when it turned fiery red, but, on being removed, returned to its original color, and all doubts as to its authenticity were dispelled.[993] When, in 1065, the pious Egelwin, Bishop of Durham, miraculously discovered the relics of the holy martyr King Oswyn, he gave the hair to Judith, wife of Tosti, Earl of Northumberland, and she with all reverence placed it on a raging fire, whence it was withdrawn, not only uninjured, but marvellously increased in lustre, to the great edification of all beholders.[994] A similar miracle attested the sanctity of King Olaf the Saint, of Norway, when his hair was laid on a pan of live coals, consecrated by Bishop Grimkel, to satisfy the incredulity of Queen Alfifa.[995] Guibert de Nogent likewise relates that, when his native town became honored with the possession of an arm of St. Arnoul, the inhabitants, at first doubting the genuineness of the precious relic, cast it into the flames; when it vindicated its sanctity, not only by being fireproof, but also by leaping briskly away from the coals, testimony which was held to be incontrovertible.[996] The historian of the monastery of Andres informs us that when in 1084 the long-lost remains of the holy virgin Rotruda were miraculously found, and Baldwin I., Count of Guisnes, desired to take the sacred treasure to his town of Guisnes, it refused to be removed until he proposed to place it on a wagon and allow a team of oxen to be divinely guided to the spot where the saint desired to rest. This was accordingly done, and the oxen carried the relics to a little chapel dedicated to St. Medard, where steps were immediately taken to found an abbey. The Seigneur of Andres, however, Baldwin Bochard, on whose lands the chapel lay, foreseeing that a powerful monastery would be a troublesome neighbor, and being an irreligious man, circulated defamatory libels impugning the authenticity of the relics, and finally persuaded Count Baldwin to have them tested by the ordeal of fire. This was accordingly done, and the genuineness of the holy remains was proved to the satisfaction of all. Bochard and his descendants continued inveterately hostile to St. Rotruda and her monks, but all, without exception, were compelled, upon their death-beds, to contribute a portion of their substance to her honor.[997] The custom continued even until the sixteenth century was well advanced. In the Jeronymite monastery of Valdebran in Catalonia, a piece of the true cross bears inscription that its genuineness was tested with fire by Archbishop Miralles on October 2, 1530.[998]

The persistency of popular belief in this method of ascertaining guilt or innocence is seen as recently as 1811, when a Neapolitan noble, suspecting the chastity of his daughter, exposed her to the ordeal of fire, from which she barely escaped with her life.[999]

V. THE ORDEAL OF COLD WATER

The cold-water ordeal (judicium aquæ frigidæ) differed from most of its congeners in requiring a miracle to convict the accused, as in the natural order of things he escaped. The preliminary solemnities, fasting, prayer, and religious rites, were similar to those already described; holy water sometimes was given to the accused to drink; the reservoir of water, or pond, was then exorcised with formulas exhibiting the same combination of faith and impiety, and the accused, bound with cords, was slowly lowered into it with a rope, to prevent fraud if guilty, and to save him from drowning if innocent.[1000] According to Anglo-Saxon rule, the length of rope allowed under water was an ell and a half;[1001] in one ritual it is directed that a knot be made in the rope at a distance of a long hair from the body of the accused, and if he sinks so as to bring the knot down to the surface of the water, he is cleared;[1002] but in process of time nice questions arose as to the precise amount of submergence requisite for acquittal. Towards the close of the twelfth century we find that some learned doctors insisted that sinking to the very bottom of the water was indispensable; others decided that if the whole person were submerged it was sufficient; while others again reasoned that as the hair was an accident or excrement of the body, it had the privilege of floating without convicting its owner, if the rest of the body was satisfactorily covered.[1003]

The basis of this ordeal was the belief, handed down from the primitive Aryans, that the pure element would not receive into its bosom any one stained with the crime of a false oath, another form of which is seen in the ancient superstition that the earth would eject the corpse of a criminal, and not allow it to remain quietly interred. The manner in which the church reconciled it to orthodoxy is clearly set forth by Hincmar: “He who seeks to conceal the truth by a lie will not sink in the waters over which the voice of the Lord hath thundered; for the pure nature of water recognizes as impure, and rejects as incompatible, human nature which, released from falsehood by the waters of baptism, becomes again infected with untruth.”[1004] The baptism in the Jordan, the passage of the Red Sea, and the crowning judgment of the Deluge, were freely adduced in support of this theory, though these latter were in direct contradiction to it; and the most figurative language was boldly employed to give some show of probability to the results expected. Thus, in the elaborate formula which passes under the name of St. Dunstan, the prayer offered over the water metaphorically adjures the Supreme Being—“Let not the water receive the body of him who, released from the weight of goodness, is upborne by the wind of iniquity!”[1005]

In India the ordeal of cold water became simply one of endurance. The stream or pond was exorcised with the customary Mantras:—

“Thou O water dwellest in the interior of all things like a witness. O water thou knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

The patient stood in water up to his middle, facing the East, caught hold of the thighs of a man “free from friendship or hatred” and dived under, while simultaneously an arrow of reed without a head was shot from a bow, 106 fingers’ breadth in length, and if he could remain under water until the arrow was picked up and brought back, he gained his cause, but if any portion of him could be seen above the surface he was condemned. Yajnavalkya says this form of ordeal was only used on the Sudras, or lowest caste, while the Ayeen Akbery speaks of it as confined to the Vaisyas, or caste of husbandmen and merchants. According to the Institutes of Vishnu, it was not to be administered to the timid or those affected with lung diseases, nor to those who gained their living by the water, such as fishermen or boatmen, nor was it allowed during the winter.[1006]

Although, as we have seen (p. 268), the original cold-water ordeal in India, as described by Manu, was precisely similar to the European form, inasmuch as the guilty were expected to float and the innocent to sink, and although in this shape it prevailed everywhere throughout Europe, and its tenacity of existence rendered it the last to disappear in the progress of civilization, yet it does not make its appearance in any of the earlier codes of the Barbarians. The first allusions to it occur in the ninth century, and it was then so generally regarded as a novelty that documents almost contemporaneous ascribe its invention to the popes of that period. One story is that when Leo III. fled in 799 from his rebellious subjects to Charlemagne, and returned to Rome under the latter’s protection, the cold-water ordeal was introduced for the purpose of trying the rebels or recovering a treasure which they had stolen.[1007] Another version asserts that Eugenius II., who occupied the pontifical throne from 824 to 827, invented it at the request of Louis le Débonnaire, for the purpose of repressing the prevalent sin of perjury.[1008] It is further worthy of note that St. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, in his treatises against the judgments of God, written a few years before the accession of Eugenius, while enumerating and describing the various methods in use at that time, says nothing about that of cold water.[1009] But for the evidence of its pre-existence in the East, we therefore should be justified in assuming that it was an innovation invented by the Church of the ninth century. That it was a novelty is proved by the necessity felt to adduce authority for its use.[1010]

At first, its revival promised to be but temporary. Only a few years after its introduction it was condemned by Louis le Débonnaire at the Council of Worms, in 829; its use was strictly prohibited, and the missi dominici were instructed to see that the order was carried into effect, regulations which were repeated by the Emperor Lothair, son of Louis.[1011] These interdictions were of little avail. The ordeal found favor with popular superstition, and Hincmar contents himself with remarking that the imperial prohibition was not confirmed by the canons of authoritative councils.[1012] The trial by cold water spread rapidly throughout Europe, and by all the continental races it was placed on an equal footing with the other forms of ordeal. Among the Anglo-Saxons, indeed, its employment has been called in question by some modern writers; but the Dooms of Ethelstan sufficiently manifest its existence in England before the Conquest, while as late as the close of the twelfth century its use would seem to have been almost universal. The assizes of Clarendon in 1166, confirmed at Northampton in 1176, direct an inquest to be held in each shire, and all who are indicted for murder, robbery, harboring of malefactors, and other felonies are to be at once, without further trial, passed through the water ordeal to determine their guilt or innocence.[1013]

As we have seen in the case of the iron ordeal, those of water, both cold and hot, were variously described as patrician or plebeian in different times and places. Thus Hincmar, in the ninth century, alludes to the water ordeals as applicable to persons of servile condition;[1014] a constitution of the Emperor St. Henry II., about A. D. 1000, in the Lombard law, has a similar bearing;[1015] in the eleventh century an Alsatian document,[1016] in the twelfth Glanville’s treatise on the laws of England,[1017] and in the thirteenth the laws of Scotland[1018] all assume the same position. This, however, was an innovation; for in the earliest codes there was no such distinction, a provision in the Salic law prescribing the æneum, or hot-water ordeal, even for the Antrustions, who constituted the most favored class in the state.[1019] Nor even in later times was the rule by any means absolute. In the tenth century, Sanche, Duke of Gascony, desirous of founding the monastery of Saint Sever, claimed some land which was necessary for the purpose, and being resisted by the possessor, the title was decided by reference to the cold-water ordeal.[1020] In 1027, Welf II., Count of Altorf, ancestor of the great houses of Guelf in Italy and England, having taken part in the revolt of Conrad the Younger and Ernest of Suabia, was forced by the Emperor Conrad the Salic to prove his innocence in this manner.[1021] About the same period Othlonus relates an incident in which a man of noble birth accused of theft submitted himself to the cold-water ordeal as a matter of course;[1022] while in 1068, at the Council of Vich, in Catalonia, held for the purpose of enforcing the Truce of God, all persons accused of being directly concerned in its violation are directed to be tried by the cold-water ordeal in the Church of San Pedro, without distinction of rank.[1023] Nearly two centuries later, indeed, when all the vulgar ordeals were falling into disuse, the water ordeal was established among the nobles of Southern Germany, as the mode of deciding doubtful claims on fiefs, and in Northern Germany, for the settlement of conflicting titles to land.[1024]

In 1083, during the deadly struggle between the Empire and the Papacy, as personified in Henry IV. and Hildebrand, the imperialists related with great delight that some of the leading prelates of the papal court submitted the cause of their chief to this ordeal. After a three days’ fast, and proper benediction of the water, they placed in it a boy to represent the emperor, when to their horror he sank like a stone. On referring the result to Hildebrand, he ordered a repetition of the experiment, which was attended with the same result. Then, throwing him in as a representative of the pope, he obstinately floated during two trials, in spite of all efforts to force him under the surface, and an oath was exacted from all concerned to maintain inviolable secrecy as to the unexpected result.[1025]

Perhaps the most extensive instance of the application of this form of ordeal was that proposed when the sacred vessels were stolen from the cathedral church of Laon, as related by a contemporary. At a council convened on the subject, Master Anselm, the most learned doctor of the diocese, suggested that, in imitation of the plan adopted by Joshua at Jericho, a young child should be taken from each parish of the town and be tried by immersion in consecrated water. From each house of the parish which should be found guilty, another child should be chosen to undergo the same process. When the house of the criminal should thus be discovered, all its inmates should be submitted to the ordeal, and the author of the sacrilege would thus be revealed. This plan would have been adopted had not the frightened inhabitants rushed to the bishop and insisted that the experiment should commence with those whose access to the church gave them the best opportunity to perpetrate the theft. Six of these latter were accordingly selected, among whom was Anselm himself. While in prison awaiting his trial, he caused himself to be bound hand and foot and placed in a tub full of water, in which he sank satisfactorily to the bottom, and assured himself that he should escape. On the day of trial, in the presence of an immense crowd, in the cathedral which was chosen as the place of judgment, the first prisoner sank, the second floated, the third sank, the fourth floated, the fifth sank, and Anselm, who was the sixth, notwithstanding his previous experiment, obstinately floated, and was condemned with his accomplices, in spite of his earnest protestations of innocence.[1026]

Although the cold-water ordeal disappears from the statute-book in civil and in ordinary criminal actions together with its kindred modes of purgation, there was one class of cases in which it maintained its hold upon the popular faith to a much later period. These were the accusations of sorcery and witchcraft which form so strange a feature of mediæval and modern society; and its use for this purpose may apparently be traced to various causes. For such crimes, drowning was the punishment inflicted by the customs of the Franks, as soon as they had lost the respect for individual liberty of action which excluded personal punishments from their original code;[1027] and in addition to the general belief that the pure element refused to receive those who were tainted with crime, there was in this special class of cases a widely spread superstition that adepts in sorcery and magic lost their specific gravity. Pliny mentions a race of enchanters on the Euxine who were lighter than water—“eosdem præterea non posse mergi ne veste quidam degravatos;”[1028] and Stephanus Byzantinus describes the inhabitants of Thebe as magicians who could kill with their breath, and floated when thrown into the sea.[1029] To the concurrence of these notions we may attribute the fact that when the cold-water ordeal was abandoned, in the thirteenth century, as a judicial practice in ordinary cases, it still maintained its place as a special mode of trying those unfortunate persons whom their own folly, or the malice and fears of their neighbors, pointed out as witches and sorcerers.[1030] No less than a hundred years after the efforts of Innocent III. had virtually put an end to all the other forms of vulgar ordeals, we find Louis Hutin ordering its employment in these cases.[1031] At length, however, it fell into desuetude, until the superstitious panic of witchcraft which took possession of the popular mind caused its revival in the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1487, Sprenger, while treating of every possible detail concerning witchcraft and its prosecution, and alluding to the red-hot iron ordeal, makes no reference whatever to cold water or to the faculty of floating possessed by witches, thus showing that it had passed completely out of remembrance as a test in these cases, both popularly and judicially.[1032] In 1564, Wier discusses it as though it were in ordinary use in Western Germany, and mentions a recent case wherein a young girl falsely accused was tested in this manner and floated, after which she was tortured until the executioner himself wondered at her power of endurance. As no confession could be extracted, she was discharged, which shows how little real confidence was reposed in the ordeal.[1033] Twenty years later, Scribonius, writing in 1583, speaks of it as a novelty, but Neuwald assures us that for eighteen years previous it had been generally employed throughout Westphalia,[1034] and in 1579 Bodin alludes to it as a German fashion which, though he believes in its efficacy, he yet condemns as savoring of magic.[1035] The crime was one so difficult to prove judicially, and the ordeal offered so ready and so satisfactory a solution to the doubts of timid and conscientious judges, that its resuscitation is not to be wondered at. The professed demonographers, Bodin, Binsfeld, Godelmann, and others, opposed its revival for various reasons, but still it did not lack defenders. In 1583, Scribonius, on a visit to Lemgow, saw three unfortunates burnt as witches, and three other women, the same day, exposed to the ordeal on the accusation of those executed. He describes them as stripped naked, hands and feet bound together, right to left, and then cast upon the river, where they floated like logs of wood. Profoundly impressed with the miracle, in a letter to the magistrates of Lemgow he expresses his warm approbation of the proceeding, and endeavors to explain its rationale, and to defend it against unbelievers. Sorcerers, from their intercourse with Satan, partake of his nature; he resides within them, and their human attributes become altered to his; he is an imponderable spirit of air, and therefore they likewise become lighter than water. Two years later, Hermann Neuwald published a tract in answer to this, gravely confuting the arguments advanced by Scribonius, who, in 1588, returned to the attack with a larger and more elaborate treatise in favor of the ordeal. Shortly after this, Bishop Binsfeld, in his exhaustive work on witchcraft, states that the process was one in common use throughout Westphalia, and occasionally employed in the Rhinelands. He condemns it, however, on the score of superstition, and the prohibition of all ordeals by the popes, and concludes that any judge making use of it, or any one believing in it, is guilty of mortal sin. Rejecting the explanation of Scribonius, he argues that the floating of the witch is caused by the direct interposition of the Devil himself, who is willing to sacrifice a follower occasionally in order to damn the souls of those who participate in a practice condemned by the Church.[1036] Wier, who denied witchcraft, while believing in the active interposition of the Devil, argues likewise that those who float are borne up by demons, but he attributes it to their desire to confirm the popular illusions concerning witchcraft.[1037] Another demonographer of the period, Godelmann, does not hesitate to say that any judge resorting to this mode of proof rendered himself liable to a retaliatory action; and he substantiates his opinion as to the worthlessness of the trial by a case within his own experience. In 1588 he was travelling from Prussia to Livonia, when at the castle of a great potentate his host happened to mention that he had condemned a most wicked witch to be burnt the next day. Godelmann, desirous to know whether the proof could be relied on, asked whether the water ordeal had been tried, and on being answered in the negative, urged the experiment. His request was granted, and the witch sank like a stone. Subsequently the noble wrote to him that he had tried it with six other indubitable witches, and that it had failed with all, showing that it was a false indication, which might deceive incautious judges.[1038] Oldenkop, on the other hand, relates that he was present when some suspected women were tried in this manner, who all floated, after which one of the spectators, wholly innocent of the crime, to satisfy the curiosity of some nobles who were present, allowed himself for hire to be tied and thrown in, when he likewise floated and could not be made to sink by all the efforts of the officiating executioner.[1039] In 1594, a more authoritative combatant entered the arena—Jacob Rickius, a learned jurisconsult of Cologne, who, as judge in the court of Bonn, had ample opportunity of considering the question and of putting his convictions into practice. He describes vividly the perplexities of the judges hesitating between the enormity of the crime and the worthlessness of the evidence, and his elaborate discussions of all the arguments in favor of the ordeal may be condensed into this: that the offence is so difficult of proof that there is no other certain evidence than the ordeal; that without it we should be destitute of absolute proof, which would be an admission of the superiority of the Devil over God, and that anything would be preferable to such a conclusion. He states that he never administered it when the evidence without it was sufficient for conviction, nor when there was not enough other proof to justify the use of torture; and that in all cases it was employed as a prelude to torture—“præparandum et muniendum torturæ viam”—the latter being frequently powerless in consequence of diabolical influences. The deplorable examples which he details with much complacency as irrefragable proofs of his positions show how frequent and how murderous were the cases of its employment, but would occupy too much space for recapitulation here; while the learning displayed in his constant citations from the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Roman and the Canon Law, is in curious contrast with the fatuous cruelty of his acts and doctrines.

In France, the central power had to be invoked to put an end to the atrocity of such proceedings. In 1588, an appeal was taken to the supreme tribunal from a sentence pronounced by a Champenois court, ordering a prisoner to undergo the experiment, and the Parlement, in December, 1601, registered a formal decree against the practice; an order which it found necessary to repeat, August 10, 1641.[1040] That this latter was not uncalled for, we may assume from the testimony of Jerôme Bignon, who, writing nearly at the same time, says that, to his own knowledge, within a few years, judges were in the habit of elucidating doubtful cases in this manner.[1041] In England, James I. gratified at once his conceit and his superstition by eulogizing the ordeal as an infallible proof in such cases. His argument was the old one, which pronounced that the pure element would not receive those who had renounced the privileges of the water of baptism,[1042] and his authority no doubt gave encouragement to innumerable judicial murders. In Scotland, indeed, the indecency of stripping women naked for the immersion was avoided by wrapping them up in a sheet before binding the thumbs and toes together, but a portion of the Bay of St. Andrews is still called the “Witch Pool,” from its use in the trial of these unfortunates.[1043]

How slowly the belief was eradicated from the minds of even the educated and enlightened may be seen in a learned inaugural thesis presented by J. P. Lang, in 1661, for the Licentiate of Laws in the University of Bâle, in which, discussing incidentally the question of the cold-water ordeal for witches, he concludes that perhaps it is better to abstain from it, though he cannot question its efficaciousness as a means of investigation.[1044] In 1662, N. Brant, in a similar thesis, offered at Giessen, speaks of it as used in some places, chiefly in Westphalia, and argues against it on the ground of its uncertainty.[1045] P. Burgmeister, in a thesis presented at Ulm in 1680, speaks of the practice as still continued in Westphalia, and that it was defended by many learned men, from whose opinions he dissents; among them was Hermann Conring, one of the most distinguished scholars of the time, who argued that if prayers and oaths could obtain the divine interposition, it could reasonably be expected in judicial cases of importance.[1046] Towards the close of the century it was frequently practised in Burgundy, not as a judicial process, but when persons popularly reputed as sorcerers desired to free themselves from the damaging imputation. In these cases they are frequently reported as floating in spite of repeated efforts to submerge them, and though this evidence of guilt did not lead to a formal trial they would have to abandon the neighborhood. A notarial act of June 5, 1696, records such a trial at Montigny-le-Roi, when six persons offered themselves to the ordeal in the River Senin; two sank and four floated for about half an hour, with hands and feet tied.[1047] F. M. Brahm, in 1701, alludes to the ordeal as no longer in use;[1048] but in 1714, J. C. Nehring describes it as nearly, though not quite obsolete, and considers it worthy of an elaborate discussion. He disapproves of it, though he records a case which occurred a few years previously, in which a woman accused of witchcraft managed to escape from her chains, and went into the water to try herself, and could not be submerged. Notwithstanding this he declares that even when a prisoner demands the ordeal, the judge who grants it is guilty of mortal sin, for the Devil often promises witches to save them in this manner, and, though he very rarely keeps his promise, still he thus succeeds in retaining men in superstitious observances. The success of the ordeal thus is uncertain, and his conclusion is that laws must be made for the generality of cases, and not for exceptional ones.[1049] In 1730 thirteen persons were exposed to the cold-water ordeal at Szegedin, in Hungary, and though their guilt was proved by it, any remaining doubts were settled by submitting them to the balance;[1050] and five years later Ephraim Gerhardt alludes to it as everywhere in daily use in such cases.[1051] Even in the middle of the century, the learned and pious Muratori affirms his reverent belief in the miraculous convictions recorded by the mediæval writers as wrought in this manner by the judgment of God; and he further informs us that it was common in his time throughout Transylvania, where witches were very numerous;[1052] while in West Prussia, as late as 1745, the Synod of Culm describes it as a popular abuse in frequent use, and stringently forbids it for the future.[1053]

Although, within the last hundred years, the cold-water ordeal has disappeared from the authorized legal procedures of Europe, still the popular mind has not as yet altogether overcome the superstitions and prejudices of so many ages, and occasionally in some benighted spot a case occurs to show us that mediæval ignorance and brutality still linger amid the triumphs of modern civilization. In 1815 and 1816, Belgium was disgraced by trials of the kind performed on unfortunates suspected of witchcraft;[1054] and in 1836, the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the sea an old woman reputed to be a sorceress, and as the miserable creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was pronounced guilty, and was beaten to death.[1055] Even in England it is not many years since a party of credulous people were prosecuted for employing the water ordeal in the trial of a woman whom they believed to be a witch.[1056]

In Montenegro and Herzegovina the practice continued till the middle of the present century. Any unusual mortality of children was attributed to sorcery by women: in such cases the head of a village assembled all the men and exhorted them to bring next morning their wives and mothers to the nearest water—a lake or a river, or if necessary a well. The women were then examined one by one, by passing a rope under the arms and tossing them in, without divesting them of their clothes. Those who were so ill-advised as not to sink were pronounced guilty, and were liable to lapidation if they would not swear to abandon their evil practices. The belief even extended to the dominant Turks who, in 1857 at Trebinje, compelled the Christians to bring all their women to the river and cast them in. Buoyed up by their garments seven floated, and these were only saved from stoning by the archimandrite Eustache, who administered to them a solemn oath of abstinence from witchcraft. Austrian domination has rendered all such proceedings unlawful of late years, but in the remoter districts they are said to be still occasionally practised.[1057]

Perhaps we may class as a remnant of this superstition a custom described by a modern traveller as universal in Southern Russia. When a theft is committed in a household, the servants are assembled, and a sorceress, or vorogeia, is sent for. Dread of what is to follow generally extorts a confession from the guilty party without further proceedings, but if not, the vorogeia places on the table a vase of water and rolls up as many little balls of bread as there are suspected persons present. Then, taking one of the balls, she addresses the nearest servant—“If you have committed the theft, this ball will sink to the bottom of the vase, as will your soul in Hell; but if you are innocent, it will float on the water.” The truth or falsehood of this assertion is never tested, for the criminal invariably confesses before his turn arrives to undergo the ordeal.[1058]

VI. THE ORDEAL OF THE BALANCE

We have seen above that a belief existed that persons guilty of sorcery lost their specific gravity, and this superstition naturally led to the use of the balance in the effort to discover and punish the crime of witchcraft, which all experts assure us was the most difficult of all offences on which to obtain evidence. The trial by balance, however, was not a European invention. Like nearly all the other ordeals, it can be traced back to India, where, at least as early as the time of the Institutes of Vishnu, it was in common use. It is described there as reserved for women, children, old men, invalids, the blind, the lame, and the privileged Brahman caste, and not to be undertaken when a wind was blowing. After proper ceremonies the patient was placed in one scale, with an equivalent weight to counterbalance him in the other, and the nicety of the operation is shown by the prescription that the beam must have a groove with water in it, evidently for the purpose of detecting the slightest deflection either way. The accused then descended and the judge addressed the customary adjuration to the balance:—

“Thou, O balance, art called by the same name as holy law (dharma); thou, O balance, knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man, arraigned in a cause, is weighed upon thee. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

Then the accused was replaced in the scale, and if he were found to be lighter than before he was acquitted. If the scale broke, the trial was to be repeated.[1059]

It will be seen here that lightness was an evidence of innocence, but in Europe the ordeal was reversed in consequence of the belief that sorcerers became lighter than water. Rickius, writing in 1594, speaks of this mode of trial being commonly used in many places in witchcraft cases, and gravely assures us that very large and fat women had been found to weigh only thirteen or fifteen pounds;[1060] but even this will scarcely explain the modification of the process as employed in some places, which consisted in putting the accused in one scale and a Bible in the other.[1061] Kœnigswarter assures us that the scales formerly used on these occasions are still to be seen at Oudewater in Holland.[1062] In the case already referred to as occurring July 30, 1728, at Szegedin in Hungary, thirteen persons, six men and seven women, were burnt alive for witchcraft, whose guilt had been proved, first by the cold-water ordeal and then by that of the balance. We are told that a large and fat woman weighed only one and a half drachms and her husband five drachms and the rest varied from a pennyweight to three drachms and under. One of the victims was a man of 82, a local judge, who had previously borne an unblemished character.[1063] The use of the Bible as a counterpoise is on record even as lately as the year 1759, at Aylesbury in England, where one Susannah Haynokes, accused of witchcraft, was formally weighed against the Bible in the parish church.[1064]

VII. THE ORDEAL OF THE CROSS

The ordeal of the cross (judicium crucis, stare ad crucem) was one of simple endurance and differed from all its congeners, except the duel, in being bilateral. The plaintiff and defendant, after appropriate religious ceremonies and preparation, stood with uplifted arms before a cross, while divine service was performed, victory being adjudged to the one who was able longest to maintain his position. An ancient formula for judgments obtained in this manner in cases of disputed titles to land prescribes the term of forty-two nights for the trial.[1065] It doubtless originated in the use of this exercise by the Church both as a punishment and as a penance.[1066] Of its use as an ordeal the earliest instance which I have observed occurs in a Capitulary of Pepin le Bref, in 752, where it is prescribed in cases of application by a wife for dissolution of marriage.[1067] Charlemagne appears to have regarded it with much favor, for he not only frequently refers to it in his edicts, but, when dividing his mighty empire, in 806, he directs that all territorial disputes which may arise in the future between his sons shall be settled in this manner.[1068] An example occurring during his reign shows the details of the process. A controversy between the bishop and citizens of Verona, relative to the building of certain walls, was referred to the decision of the cross. Two young ecclesiastics, selected as champions, stood before the sacred emblem from the commencement of mass; at the middle of the Passion, Aregaus, who represented the citizens, fell lifeless to the ground, while his antagonist, Pacificus, held out triumphantly to the end, and the bishop gained his cause, as ecclesiastics were wont to do.[1069]

When a defeated pleader desired to discredit his own compurgators, he had the right to accuse them of perjury, and the question was then decided by this process.[1070] In a similar spirit, witnesses too infirm to undergo the battle-trial, by which in the regular process of law they were bound to substantiate their testimony, were allowed, by a Capitulary of 816, to select the ordeal of the cross, with the further privilege, in cases of extreme debility, of substituting a relative or other champion, whose robustness promised an easier task for the Divine interference.[1071]

A slight variation of this form of ordeal consisted in standing with the arms extended in the form of a cross, while certain portions of the service were recited. In this manner St. Lioba, Abbess of Bischoffsheim, triumphantly vindicated the purity of her flock, and traced out the offender, when the reputation of her convent was imperilled by the discovery of a new-born child drowned in a neighboring pond.[1072]

The sensitive piety of Louis le Débonnaire was shocked at this use of the cross, as tending to bring the Christian symbol into contempt, and in 816, soon after the death of Charlemagne, he prohibited its continuance, at the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle;[1073] an order which was repeated by his son, the Emperor Lothair.[1074] Baluze, however, considers, with apparent reason, that this command was respected only in the Rhenish provinces and in Italy, from the fact that the manuscripts of the Capitularies belonging to those regions omit the references to the ordeal of the cross, which are retained in the copies used in the other territories of the Frankish empire.[1075] Louis himself would seem at length to have changed his opinion; for, in the final division of his succession between his sons, he repeats the direction of Charlemagne as regards the settlement of disputed boundaries.[1076] The procedure, however, appears to have soon lost its popularity, and indeed never to have obtained the wide and deeply-seated hold on the veneration of the people enjoyed by the other forms of ordeal, though there is extant a formula for confirming disputed titles to real estate decided in this manner.[1077] We see little of it at later periods, except the trace it has left in the proverbial allusion to an experimentum crucis.

In India a cognate mode is adopted by the people of Ramgur to settle questions of disputed boundaries between villages. When agreement by argument or referees is found impossible, each community chooses a champion, and the two stand with one leg buried in the earth until weariness or the bites of insects cause one of them to yield, when the territory in litigation is adjudged to the village of the victor.[1078]

VIII. THE CORSNÆD

The ordeal of consecrated bread or cheese (judicium offæ, panis conjuratio, pabulum probationis, the corsnæd of the Anglo-Saxons) was administered by presenting to the accused a piece of bread (generally of barley) or of cheese, about an ounce in weight,[1079] over which prayers and adjurations had been pronounced. After appropriate religious ceremonies, including the communion, the morsel was eaten, the event being determined by the ability of the accused to swallow it. This depended of course on the imagination, and we can readily understand how, in those times of faith, the impressive observances which accompanied the ordeal would affect the criminal, who, conscious of guilt, stood up at the altar, took the sacrament, and pledged his salvation on the truth of his oath. The mode by which a conviction was expected may be gathered from the forms of the exorcism employed, of which a number have been preserved.

“O Lord Jesus Christ, ... grant, we pray thee, by thy holy name, that he who is guilty of this crime in thought or in deed, when this creature of sanctified bread is presented to him for the proving of the truth, let his throat be narrowed, and in thy name let it be rejected rather than devoured. And let not the spirit of the Devil prevail in this to subvert the judgment by false appearances. But he who is guilty of this crime, let him, chiefly by virtue of the body and blood of our Lord which he has received in communion, when he takes the consecrated bread or cheese tremble, and grow pale in trembling, and shake in all his limbs; and let the innocent quietly and healthfully, with all ease, chew and swallow this morsel of bread or cheese, crossed in thy holy name, that all may know that thou art the just Judge,” etc.[1080]

And even more forcible in its devout impiety is the following:—

“O God Most High, who dwellest in Heaven, who through thy Trinity and Majesty hast thy just angels, send, O Lord, thy Angel Gabriel to stick in the throat of those who have committed this theft, that they may neither chew nor swallow this bread and cheese created by Thee. I invoke the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with twelve thousand Angels and Archangels. I invoke the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I invoke Moses and Aaron, who divided the sea. That they may bind to their throats the tongues of the men who have committed this theft, or consented thereto. If they taste this bread and cheese created by Thee, may they tremble like a trembling tree, and have no rest, nor keep the bread and cheese in their mouths; that all may know Thou art the Lord, and there is none other but Thee!”[1081]

As the efficiency of the ordeal depended upon the effect produced on the imagination of the patient clerical ingenuity exhausted itself in devising tremendous and awe-inspiring exorcisms. One like the following, for instance, could hardly fail to constrict the throat of the most hardened sinner:—

“I exorcise thee, accursed and most filthy dragon, basilisk, evil serpent, by the Word of truth, by almighty God, by the spotless Lamb begotten of the Highest, conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, whose coming Gabriel announced, whom when John saw he cried aloud This is the Son of the living God, that thou may’st have no power over this bread or cheese, but that he who committed this theft may eat in trembling and vomit forth by Thy command, Holy Father and Lord, almighty and eternal God.... May he who has stolen these things or is an accomplice in this, may his throat and his tongue and his jaws be narrowed and constricted so that he cannot chew this bread or cheese, by the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, by the tremendous Day of Judgment, by the four Evangels, by the twelve Apostles, by the four and twenty elders who daily praise and worship Thee, by that Redeemer who deigned for our sins to stretch his hands upon the cross, that he who stole these things cannot chew this bread or cheese save with a swelled mouth and froth and tears, by the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honor and glory forever and forever.”[1082]

Yet Boccaccio’s story of Calendrino, which turns upon the mixing of aloes with the bread administered in the corsnæd, perhaps affords a more rationalistic explanation of the expected miracle.[1083]

A striking illustration of the superstitions connected with this usage is found in the story related by most of the English chroniclers concerning the death of Godwin, Duke of Kent, father of King Harold, and in his day the king-maker of England. As he was dining with his royal son-in-law, Edward the Confessor, some trivial circumstance caused the king to repeat an old accusation that his brother Alfred had met his death at Godwin’s hands. The old but fiery duke, seizing a piece of bread, exclaimed: “May God cause this morsel to choke me if I am guilty in thought or in deed of this crime!” Then the king took the bread and blessed it, and Godwin, putting it in his mouth, was suffocated by it, and fell dead.[1084] A poetical life of Edward the Confessor, written in the thirteenth century, gives a graphic picture of the death of the duke and the vengeful triumph of the king:—

“L’aleine e parole pert Par le morsel ki ferm s’ahert. Morz est li senglant felun; Mut out force la benaicun, Ke duna a mors vertu, Par unc la mort provée fu. ‘Atant’ se escrie li rois, ‘Treiez hors ceu chen punois.’”[1085]

This form of ordeal never obtained the extended influence which characterized some of the other modes, and it seems to have been chiefly confined to the populations allied to the Saxon race. In England, before the Conquest, it was enjoined on the lower orders of the clergy who were unable to procure conjurators,[1086] and it may be considered as a plebeian mode of trial, rarely rising into historical importance. Its vitality, however, is demonstrated by the fact that Lindenbruck, writing in 1613, states that it was then still in frequent use.[1087]

Aimoin relates a story which, though in no sense judicial, presents us with a development of the same superstition. A certain renowned knight named Arnustus unjustly occupied lands belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Fleury. Dining at the usurped property one day, and boasting of his contempt for the complaints of the holy monks, he took a pear and exclaimed—“I call this pear to witness that before the year is out I will give them ample cause for grumbling.” Choking with the first morsel, he was carried speechless to bed, and miserably perished unhouselled, a warning to evildoers not to tempt too far the patience of St. Benedict.[1088] Stories such as this are by no means uncommon, and are not without interest as a portion of the armory by which the clergy defended themselves against their unquiet neighbors. Of kindred nature is an occurrence related about the year 1090, when Duke Henry of Limburg was involved in a quarrel with Engilbert, Archbishop of Trèves, and treated with contempt the excommunication and anathema inflicted upon him. Joking upon the subject with his followers one day at dinner, he tossed a fragment of food to his dog, remarking that if the animal ate it, they need not feel apprehensive of the episcopal curse. The dog refused the tempting morsel, though he manifested his hunger by eagerly devouring food given him by another hand, and the duke, by the advice of his counsellors, lost no time in reconciling himself with his ghostly adversary. This is the more remarkable, as Engilbert himself was under excommunication by Gregory VII., being a stanch imperialist, who had received his see from Henry IV., and his pallium from the antipope Guiberto.[1089]

In India, this ordeal is performed with a kind of rice called sathee, prepared with various incantations. The person on trial eats it, with his face to the East, and then spits upon a peepul leaf. “If the saliva is mixed with blood, or the corners of his mouth swell, or he trembles, he is declared to be a liar.”[1090] A slightly different form is described for cases in which several persons are suspected of theft. The consecrated rice is administered to them all, is chewed lightly, and then spit out upon a peepul leaf. If any one ejects it either dry or tinged with blood, he is adjudged guilty.[1091]

Based on the same theory is a ceremony performed by the pre-Aryan hill-tribes of Rajmahal, when swearing judges into office preparatory to the trial of a case. In this a pinch of salt is placed upon a tulwar or scimitar, and held over the mouth of the judge, to whom is addressed the adjuration, “If thou decidest contrary to thy judgment and falsely, may this salt be thy death!” The judge repeats the formula, and the salt is washed with water into his mouth.[1092]

IX. THE EUCHARIST AS AN ORDEAL

From ancient times in India there has been in common use an ordeal known as cosha, consisting of water in which an idol has been washed. The priest celebrates solemn rites “to some tremendous deity,” such as Durga or the Adityas, whose image is then bathed in water. Three handfuls of this water are then drunk by the accused, and if within fourteen days he is not visited with some dreadful calamity from the act of the deity or of the king, “he must indubitably be acquitted.”[1093]

In adapting the ordeal system to Christianity the natural substitute for this pagan ceremony was the administration of the Eucharist. This, indeed, formed a portion of the preparatory rites in all the judgments of God, the Host being given with the awful adjuration, “May this body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be a judgment to thee this day!” The apostle had said that “he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself” (I. Corinth. xi. 28, 29), and the pious veneration of the age accepted the admonition literally. Mediæval literature is full of legends showing the miraculous power of the Eucharist in bringing sinners to repentance and exposure, even without any special invocation; and the absolute belief in this fetishism, even by the irreligious, is fairly illustrated by the case of a dissolute priest of Zurich, in the fourteenth century. An habitual drunkard, gambler, and fornicator, he yet celebrated mass daily with exemplary regularity. On being warned of the dangers to which he was thus exposing himself in partaking of the Eucharist, he at length confessed that he never consecrated the host, but that he carried about him a small round piece of wood, resembling the holy wafer, which he exhibited to the people and passed it off for the body of Christ. The honest chronicler fairly explodes with indignation in relating the subterfuge, and assures us that while the priest succeeded in escaping one danger he fell into a much greater, as he was the cause of leading his flock into the unpardonable sin of idolatry. Apparently his parishioners thought so too, for though they had patiently endured the scandals of his daily life, as soon as this trick became known they drove him away unceremoniously.[1094] What this pastor, but for his ingenious device, might have reasonably dreaded is to be learned from the story of a volunteer miracle vouchsafed to an unchaste priest at Lindisfarne, who being suddenly summoned to celebrate mass without having had time to purify himself, when he came to partake of the sacramental cup, saw the wine change to an exceeding blackness. After some hesitation he took it, and found it bitter to the last degree. Hurrying to his bishop, he confessed his sin, underwent penance, and reformed his life.[1095] Even more edifying was a case related as happening in France about the year 1200. A priest yielded to the temptation of the flesh immediately before celebrating mass on Christmas eve, when, after consecrating the body and blood, and before he could touch them with his polluted lips, a white dove appeared which drank the wine and carried off the wafer. It happened that he could find no one to replace him during the ceremonies of the festival, and, though appalled by the miracle, he could not refuse to perform his functions without exposure, so that a second and a third time he went through the canon with the same result. Finally he applied to an abbot, and confessed his sin with due contrition. The abbot postponed inflicting penance until the priest should officiate again, when the dove reappeared, bearing in its beak the three wafers, and returning to the chalice all the wine it had taken. Filled with rejoicing at this evidence that his contrition was accepted, the priest cheerfully undertook three years’ pilgrimage in the Holy Land, prescribed for him by the abbot, and on his return entered a convent.[1096]

A still more striking manifestation of the interposition of God by means of the Eucharist to vindicate innocence is to be found in the case of Erkenbald de Burban, a noble of Flanders, who was renowned for his inflexible administration of justice. While lying on his death-bed, his favorite nephew and heir endeavored to violate one of the maidens of the castle. Erkenbald ordered him to be hanged, but his followers were afraid to execute the sentence; so, when after an interval, the youth approached his uncle for a reconciliation, the latter put his arm affectionately round his neck, and drove a dagger up to the hilt in his throat. When Erkenbald made his final confession preparatory to the last sacrament, he refused to include this deed among his sins, claiming that it was an act of righteousness, and his bishop consequently refused to administer the Host. The dying man obdurately allowed him to depart; then ordering him recalled, asked him to see whether he had the wafer in his pyx. On the latter being opened it was found empty, and Erkenbald exhibited it to him in his mouth. The Eucharist which man had refused, God had ministered to the righteous judge.[1097]

It is, therefore, easy to understand the superstition of the ages of faith which believed that, when the consecrated wafer was offered under appropriate adjurations, the guilty could not receive it; or that, if it were taken, immediate convulsions and speedy death, or some other miraculous manifestation would ensue, thus constituting its administration for such purposes a regular and recognized form of ordeal. This is well illustrated by a form of exorcism preserved by Mansi: “We humbly pray thy Infinite Majesty that this priest, if guilty of the accusation, shall not be able to receive this venerated body of thy Son, crucified for the salvation of all, and that what should be the remedy of all evil shall prove to him hurtful, full of grief and suffering, bearing with it all sorrow and bitterness.”[1098] What might be expected under such circumstances is elucidated by a case which occurred in the early part of the eleventh century, as reported by the contemporary Rodolphus Glaber, in which a monk, condemned to undergo the trial, boldly received the sacrament, when the Host, indignant at its lodgment in the body of so perjured a criminal, immediately slipped out at the navel, white and pure as before, to the immense consternation of the accused, who forthwith confessed his crime.[1099]

The antiquity of this mode of trial is shown in its employment by Cautinus, Bishop of Auvergne, towards the close of the sixth century. A certain Count Eulalius was popularly accused of parricide, whereupon he was suspended from communion. On his complaining of thus being punished without a trial, the bishop administered the sacrament under the customary adjuration, and Eulalius, taking it without harm, was relieved from the imputation.[1100] It was usually, however, a sacerdotal form of purgation, as is shown by the Anglo-Saxon laws,[1101] and by the canons of the council of Worms in 868, embodied in the Decretum of Gratian.[1102] Thus, in 941, Frederic, Archbishop of Mainz, publicly submitted to an ordeal of this kind, to clear himself of the suspicion of having taken part in an unsuccessful rebellion of Henry, Duke of Bavaria, against his brother, Otho the Great.[1103] After the death of Henry, slander assailed the fame of his widow, Juthita, on account of an alleged intimacy between her and Abraham, Bishop of Freisingen. When she, too, died, the bishop performed her funeral rites, and, pausing in the mass, he addressed the congregation: “If she was guilty of that whereof she was accused, may the Omnipotent Father cause the body and blood of the Son to be my condemnation to just perdition, and perpetual salvation to her soul!”—after which he took the sacrament unharmed, and the people acknowledged the falsity of their belief.[1104] In 1050, Subico, Bishop of Speyer, sought to clear himself of a similar accusation at the council of Mainz, in the same manner, when according to one version he succeeded, while another less friendly account assures us that his jaw became paralyzed in the very act, and remained so till the day of his death.[1105]

Perhaps the most striking instance recorded of its administration was, however, in a secular matter, when in 869 it closed the unhappy controversy between King Lothair and his wives, to which reference has been already made. To reconcile himself to the Church, Lothair took a solemn oath before Adrian II. that he had obeyed the ecclesiastical mandates in maintaining a complete separation from his pseudo-wife Waldrada, after which the pontiff admitted him to communion, under an adjuration that it should prove the test of his truthfulness. Lothair did not shrink from the ordeal, nor did his nobles, to whom it was given on their declaring that they had not abetted the designs of the concubine; but leaving Rome immediately afterwards, the royal cortége was stopped at Piacenza by a sudden epidemic which broke out among the courtiers, and there Lothair died, August 8th, with nearly all of his followers—an awful example held out by the worthy chroniclers as a warning to future generations.[1106]

In this degradation of the Host to the level of daily life there was a profanity repugnant to a reverential mind, and we are therefore not surprised to find King Robert the Pious, in the early part of the eleventh century, raising his voice against its judicial use, and threatening to degrade the Archbishop of Sens for employing it in this manner, especially as his biographer informs us that the custom was daily growing in favor.[1107] Robert’s example was soon afterwards imitated by Alexander II., whose pontificate lasted from 1061 to 1073.[1108] The next pope, however, the impetuous Hildebrand, made use of it on a memorable occasion. When, in 1077, the Emperor Henry IV. had endured the depths of humiliation before the castle gate of Canossa, and had at length purchased peace by submitting to the exactions demanded of him, the excommunication under which he had lain was removed in the chapel. Then Gregory, referring to the crimes imputed to himself by the emperor’s partisans, said that he could easily refute them by abundant witnesses; “but lest I should seem to rely rather on human than on divine testimony, and that I may remove from the minds of all, by immediate satisfaction, every scruple, behold this body of our Lord which I am about to take. Let it be to me this day a test of my innocence, and may the Omnipotent God this day by his judgment absolve me of the accusations if I am innocent, or let me perish by sudden death if guilty!” Swallowing the wafer, he turned to the emperor, and demanded of him the same refutation of the charges urged against him by the German princes. Appalled by this unexpected trial, Henry in an agony of fear evaded it, and consulted hurriedly with his councillors how to escape the awful test, which he finally declined on the ground of the absence of both his friends and his enemies, without whose presence the result would establish nothing.[1109] In estimating the mingled power of imagination and conscience which rendered the proposal insupportable to the emperor, we must allow for the influence which a man like Hildebrand with voice and eye can exert over those whom he wishes to impress. At an earlier stage of his career, in 1055, he improvised a very effective species of ordeal, when presiding as papal legate at the Council of Lyons, assembled for the repression of simony. A guilty bishop had bribed the opposing witnesses, and no testimony was obtainable for his conviction. Hildebrand addressed him: “The episcopal grace is a gift of the Holy Ghost. If, therefore, you are innocent, repeat, ‘Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!’” The bishop boldly commenced, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to—” here his voice failed him, he was unable to finish the sentence; and, confessing the sin, he was deposed.[1110]

Henry’s prudence in declining the Eucharistic ordeal was proved by the fate of the unfortunate Imbrico, Bishop of Augsburg, who, in the same year, 1077, after swearing fealty to Rodolph of Suabia, abandoned him and joined the emperor. Soon after, while saying mass before Henry, to prove the force of his loyal convictions, he declared that the sacrament he was about to take should attest the righteousness of his master’s cause; and the anti-imperialist chronicler duly records that a sudden disease overtook him, to be followed by speedy death.[1111] In the case of William, Bishop of Utrecht, as related by Hugh of Flavigny, the Eucharist was less an ordeal than a punishment. He dared, at the Assembly of Utrecht, in 1076, to excommunicate Gregory, at the command of Henry IV.; but when, at the conclusion of the impious ceremony, he audaciously took the Host, it turned to fire within him, and, shrieking “I burn! I burn!” he fell down and miserably died.[1112]

According to a Spanish theologian in the sixteenth century, when the Eucharist was administered as an ordeal it was to be taken without previous sacramental confession—presumably in order that the accused might not escape in consequence of absolution.[1113] After the Reformation, the Protestants who denied the real presence naturally rejected this form of ordeal, but Del Rio, writing in 1599, compares them to frogs swelling themselves against an elephant; and Peter Kluntz, in 1677, assures us that it was still commonly used in his day.[1114]

X. THE ORDEAL OF THE LOT

The appeal to chance, as practised in India, bears several forms, substantially identical in principle. One mode consists in writing the words dherem (consciousness of innocence) and adherem (its opposite) on plates of silver and lead respectively, or on pieces of white and black linen, which are placed in a vessel that has never held water. The person whose cause is at stake inserts his hand and draws forth one of the pieces, when if it happens to be dherem it proves his truth.[1115] Another method is to place in a vessel a silver image of Dharma, the genius of justice, and one in iron or clay of Adharma; or else a figure of Dharma is painted on white cloth and another on black cloth, and the two are rolled together in cow-dung and thrown into a jar, when the accused is acquitted or convicted according to his fortune in drawing Dharma.[1116]

In adapting to Christian usage the ordeal of the lot, attempts were made to invest it with similar sacred symbolism, but it was not well adapted to display the awful solemnity which rendered the other forms so impressive. Notwithstanding the ample warrant for it in Scripture, and its approval by St. Augustin,[1117] it was therefore in less favor with the Church, and it seems not to have retained among the people, after their conversion, the widespread popularity and confidence enjoyed by the other ordeals. Indeed, as a judicial process, it is only to be found prescribed in the earlier remains of the Barbarian laws and customs, and no trace of it is to be met with in the latter legislation of any race. Thus mention of it is made in the Ripuarian code,[1118] and in some of the earlier Merovingian documents its use is prescribed in the same brief manner.[1119] As late as the middle of the eighth century, Ecgberht, Archbishop of York, quotes from the canons of an Irish Council a direction for its employment in cases of sacrilegious theft, as a means of determining the punishment to be inflicted;[1120] but not long after, the Council of Calchuth condemned the practice between litigants as a sacrilege and a remnant of paganism.[1121] This was ineffectual, for about 850 Leo IV. describes it as in universal use in England, and forbids it as mere divination.[1122]

No explanation is given of the details of the process by which this appeal to fortune was made, and I know of no contemporary applications by which its formula can be investigated; but in the primitive Frisian laws there is described an ordeal of the lot, which may reasonably be assumed to show us one of the methods in use. When a man was killed in a chance-medley and the murderer remained unknown, the friends had a right to accuse seven of the participants in the brawl. Each of these defendants had then to take the oath of denial with twelve conjurators, after which they were admitted to the ordeal. Two pieces of twig, precisely similar, were taken, one of which was marked with a cross; they were then wrapped up separately in white wool and laid on the altar; prayers were recited, invoking God to reveal the innocence or guilt of the party, and the priest, or a sinless youth, took up one of the bundles. If it contained the marked fragment, the defendants were absolved; if the unmarked one, the guilty man was among them. Each one then took a similar piece of stick and made a private mark upon it; these were rolled up as before, placed on the altar, taken up one by one, and unwrapped, each man claiming his own. The one whose piece was left to the last was pronounced guilty, and was obliged to pay the wer-gild of the murder.[1123] Among the ancient Irish the lot or crannchur was employed by mingling white and black stones, when if the accused drew a black one he was adjudged guilty.[1124]

The various modes of ecclesiastical divination, so frequently used in the Middle Ages to obtain an insight into the future, sometimes assumed the shape of an appeal to Heaven to decide questions of the present or of the past.[1125] Thus, when three bishops, of Poitiers, Arras, and Autun, each claimed the holy relics of St. Liguaire, and human means were unavailing to reconcile their pretensions, the decision of the Supreme Power was resorted to, by placing under the altar-cloth three slips with their respective names inscribed, and after a becoming amount of prayer, on withdrawing one of them, the see of Poitiers was enriched with the precious remains by Divine favor.[1126]

That such appeals to chance were regarded by the Church with disfavor is shown by Gratian, who argues that the Hebrew examples were not precedents to be observed under the New Law.[1127] Yet the second council of Barcelona in 599 had decreed that when an episcopal vacancy was to be filled two or three candidates should be chosen by the clergy and people, and from among these the metropolitan and his suffragans should select one by lot, after due fasting and prayer.[1128]

One of the most interesting applications of the lot on record was that by which the founders of the Bohemian Brethren determined upon the future existence of the sect. At an assembly of deputies held at Lhotka, in 1467, the lot was resorted to to ascertain whether it was the will of God that they should separate themselves from the Roman presbyterate and seek consecration from the Waldenses, when the response was in the affirmative. Then nine men were chosen, from among whom three or two, or one, or none should be drawn as candidates for the episcopate. Twelve cards were taken, three inscribed “is” and nine “is not,” and nine of them were distributed among the men selected. Three were found to be drawn; one of them was sent to an Austrian community of Waldenses for episcopal consecration, and the “Unitas Fratrum” was then organized.[1129] This same pious dependence on the will of God is still preserved by the Mennonites in the choice of pastors. As described in the journals of 1884 an election of this kind in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where there were twenty candidates, was conducted by three bishops. After divine service twenty books with clasps were taken in one of which was inserted a slip of paper inscribed Ein Diener des Wort; the books were placed in a row on a table and each applicant selected one. Bishop Shenk proceeded to open the books, and in the eleventh, held by Menno Zimmerman, the paper was found, entitling him to the position.

* * * * *

Closely related to the lot are the appeals to chance, to settle doubtful questions or ascertain guilt. Such was that made by the pious monks of Abingdon, about the middle of the tenth century, to determine their right to the meadows of Beri against the claims of some inhabitants of Oxfordshire. For three days, with fasting and prayer, they implored the Divine Omnipotence to make manifest their right; and then, by mutual assent, they floated on the Thames a round buckler, bearing a handful of wheat, in which was stuck a lighted taper. The sturdy Oxonians gaped at the spectacle from the distant bank, while a deputation of the more prudent monks followed close upon the floating beacon. Down the river it sailed, veering from bank to bank, and pointing out, as with a finger, the various possessions of the Abbey, till at last, on reaching the disputed lands, it miraculously left the current of the stream, and forced itself into a narrow and shallow channel, which in high water made an arm of the river around the meadows in question. At this unanswerable decision, the people with one accord shouted “Jus Abbendoniæ, jus Abbendoniæ!” and so powerful was the impression produced, that the worthy chronicler assures us that thenceforth neither king, nor duke, nor prince dared to lay claim to the lands of Beri, showing conclusively the wisdom of the abbot who preferred thus to rely upon his right rather than on mouldy charters or dilatory pleadings.[1130]

A more prosaic form of the ordeal of chance is the trial by Bible and key which is of old Teutonic origin.[1131] It is still in common use in England, where it may even yet “be met with in many an out-of-the-way-farm-house.” In cases of theft a key is secured at Psalm 50, 18: “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers;”[1132] and the mode in which it is expected to reveal guilt is manifested in a case recorded in the London Times as occurring at Southampton in 1867, where a sailor boy on board a collier was brought before court on a charge of theft, the only evidence against him being that afforded by securing a key in a Bible opposite the first chapter of Ruth. The Bible was then swung round while the names of several suspected persons were repeated, and on the mention of the prisoner’s name the book fell on the floor. A somewhat different method is recounted in a case reported by the journals in 1879, where a woman in Ludlow, who had lost a sheet, perambulated the streets of the town with a Bible and key, and brought a prosecution against a person whose guilt she had thus discovered. It was explained in court that the key was placed at Ruth I. 16, the investigator holding his fingers crossed, and when the thief was named the key would spontaneously move. In this case the prosecutrix declared that when she came to the defendant’s house “the Bible turned completely round and fell out of her hands.” A variant of this, described in two MSS. of the twelfth century, consisted in placing a piece of wood over the verse of the Psalm, “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is true;” the book was then securely bound so that the head of the wood protruded, and it was suspended, while a priest uttered an adjuration and the accused was questioned, the result being apparently determined by the motion or rest of the book. Still another form consisted of suspending a small loaf of bread which had been placed behind the altar during mass and at its conclusion blessed and marked with a cross by the priest. At the trial he uttered a conjuration, when if the bread turned the accused was held guilty.[1133]

Closely akin to the Bible and key is the sieve-driving or sieve-turning by which criminals were detected by the tilting or falling of a sieve when, in repeating the names of those suspected, that of the culprit was mentioned. The sieve required to be an heirloom in the family; it was balanced on the point of a pair of scissors, or was laid upon a pair of tongs, or the point of a pair of scissors was driven into the rim and it was suspended by the ring to the middle finger of the right hand. This was of ancient origin and was extensively practised in France and Germany even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1134] The existence of the same belief in England is shown in 1554, when William Haselwood, on being cited before the ecclesiastical court of the diocese of London, said that having lost his purse “remembering that he being a chylde dyd hear his mother declare that when any man had lost anything, then they wolde use a syve and a payre of sheers to bring to knowledge who hadd the thing lost; and so he did take a seve and a payre of sheeres and hanged the seve by the pointe of the sheeres and sayd these words: By Peter and Paule he hath yt, namying the party whom he in that behalf suspected.”[1135] Evidently at this time the Church regarded the process as sorcery.

XI. BIER-RIGHT

The belief that at the approach of the murderer the corpse of the slain would bleed or give some other sign has, under the names of jus feretri, jus cruentationis, bahr-recht, and “bier-right,” been a resource eagerly seized by puzzled jurists. Its source is not easily traced. There is no evidence of its existence among the Eastern Aryans, nor is it alluded to in any of the primitive “Leges Barbarorum,” though Russian legends render probable that it was current among the Slavs at an early day.[1136] Enthusiastic explorers into antiquity quote Aristotle for it,[1137] while others find in Lucretius evidence that it was shared by cultured Romans.[1138] Possibly its origin may be derived from a Jewish custom under which pardon was asked of a corpse for any offences committed against the living man, the offender laying hold of the great toe of the body as prepared for sepulture, and it is said to be not uncommon, where the injury has been grievous, for the latter to respond to the touch by a copious nasal hemorrhage.[1139]

The earliest allusion I have met with to this belief occurs in 1189, and shows that already it was rooted in popular credulity. It is the well-known story that when Richard Cœur de Lion hastened to the funeral of his father, Henry II., and met the procession at Fontevraud, the blood poured from the nostrils of the dead king, whose end he had hastened by his rebellion and disobedience.[1140] Although it never seems to have formed part of English jurisprudence, its vitality in the popular mind is shown in Shakespeare’s Richard III., where Gloster interrupts the obsequies of Henry VI. and Lady Anne exclaims:—

“O gentlemen,see, see! dead Henry’s wounds Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh!”

And in the ballad of “Earl Richard”—

“Put na the wite on me, she said, It was my may Catherine. Then they hae cut baith fern and thorn, To burn that maiden in.

“It wadna take upon her cheik, Nor yet upon her chin, Nor yet upon her yellow hair To cleanse that deadly sin.

“The maiden touched that clay-cauld corpse, A drap it never bled. The ladye laid her hand on him, And soon the ground was red.”[1141]

This indicates that the belief was equally prevalent in Scotland. Indeed King James VI. gave it the stamp of his royal authority,[1142] and cases on record there show that it was occasionally received as judicial evidence, and even sometimes prescribed as an ordeal for detection. Thus in 1611, doubts arising as to the mode by which a person had met his death, the vicinage was summoned, as we are told according to custom, to touch the body which had been exhumed for the purpose. The murderer, whose rank relieved him of suspicion, kept away, but his little daughter, attracted by curiosity, approached the corpse, when it began to bleed and the crime was proved.[1143] One of the most noted cases in which crime was detected in this manner was that of Philip Standsfield, tried in 1688 for the murder of his father, Sir James Standsfield of New Milne. In this the indictment sets forth that after the body had been found in a pond and an autopsy had been performed by a surgeon, “James Row, merchant, having lifted the left side of Sir James, his head and shoulder, and the said Philip the right side, his father’s body, though carefully cleaned, as said is, did (according to God’s usual mode of discovering murders), blood afresh upon him and defiled all his hands, which struck him with such a terror that he immediately let his father’s head and body fall with violence and fled from the body and in consternation and confusion cryed Lord have mercy upon me! and bowed himself down over a seat in the church (where the corp were inspected), wiping his father’s innocent blood off his own murdering hands upon his cloaths.” When such was the spirit of the prosecution it need not surprise us that though the defence showed that in the autopsy an incision had been made in the neck, where there was a large accumulation of extravasated blood, and though high authorities were quoted to prove that such bleeding was not evidence sufficient even to justify torture, Philip Standsfield was condemned and executed in spite of the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence.[1144] A similar incident is recorded in the indictment of Christian Wilson, tried for witchcraft at Edinburgh in 1661.[1145] These cases are typical, inasmuch as they illustrate the two forms, the existence of which differentiates this from other ordeals. Sometimes, as in others, suspects were brought, under judicial order, to view or touch the body. Frequently, however, the occurrence is spontaneous, and serves to excite or direct suspicion where none existed before.

The belief extended throughout all the nationalities of Europe. Although there is no reference to it in the German municipal codes of the thirteenth century, there is ample store of cases both of its spontaneous occurrence and of its judicial employment. In 1261, at Forchheim, a manifestation of this kind brought home to the Jews the lingering death of a young girl slain by them according to their hellish custom, and the guilty were promptly broken on the wheel.[1146] More serious was an affair at Ueberlingen in 1331. The body of a child was found in a pond and from the character of the wounds it was recognized that Jewish fanaticism had caused the murder. The corpse was therefore carried in front of the houses of the principal Jews and when it began to bleed the evidence was deemed sufficient. The burgomaster endeavored to calm the populace, but his efforts were ascribed to Hebrew gold, and condign punishment was resolved upon. All the Jews of the town were skilfully decoyed into a large stone house and when they had been securely locked in the upper stories it was set on fire. Those that succeeded in throwing themselves from the roof were dispatched by the mob, and the rest, to the number of three hundred, were consumed by the avenging flames. Though sundry miracles ratified the justice of the act, yet the godless Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, punished the pious townsfolk by dismantling their walls and levying a heavy fine upon them.[1147] The judicial employment of the ordeal is seen in a case in 1324, when Reinward, a canon of Minden, was murdered by a drunken soldier and the crime was proved by a trial of this kind.[1148] More satisfactory, as showing how through the influence of imagination the ordeal sometimes resulted in substantial justice, was a case in Lucerne in 1503, when Hans Speiss of Etiswiler murdered his wife. She was duly buried, but suspicion arose, and after three weeks the body was exhumed and he was brought before it. As he approached, it flushed with color and immediately began to bleed. He had hitherto defiantly asserted his innocence, but at this sight he fell on his knees, confessed the crime, and begged for mercy. He was broken on the wheel and died most penitently.[1149] Numerous cases are on record of its use throughout Germany in the seventeenth century, of which it will suffice to refer to one in which the corpse manifested a discrimination greatly impressing the authorities. It had been dead for thirty-six hours and refused to bleed on the approach of two persons suspected. Then three others were brought, one of whom, George, had planned the murder and been present, but had not taken personal part in it: for him the corpse bled at the mouth. Then came Lorenz, who had held the victim when the blow was struck: for him the mouth frothed and the wound bled. Finally Claus, who had inflicted the blow, came, and for him the blood gushed forth from the wound.[1150]

The extent to which popular credulity was prepared to accept this miraculous manifestation is shown in a story which obtained wide currency. An Austrian noble journeying to Vienna passed through a wood in which his dogs scratched up some bones. Their whiteness struck his fancy; he carried them to the city and sent them to a cutler to be worked up into some ornament, when as soon as they were brought into the presence of the artificer they became covered with blood. The noble reported the fact to the magistrates, the cutler was arrested and confessed that twenty years before he had slain a comrade and buried the body where the bones were found.[1151] We may trace a more poetic form of this sympathy in the legend which relates the welcome given by the bones of Abelard to Heloise when, twenty years after his death, her body was consigned to his tomb.

In Denmark, though this form of trial finds no place in the codes of law, we are told that it was generally used during the seventeenth century in all appropriate cases.[1152] In Holstein there was a custom known as Scheingehen, in which, when a murderer remained undiscovered, a hand was severed from the corpse with provident care and preserved as a touchstone for the future. A celebrated case is related in the books in which a dead body was found and buried, and the hand was hung up in the prison of Itzehoe. Ten years later a thief was arrested and brought there, when the hand immediately began to bleed freely, and the thief confessed the murder.[1153]

Italy shared fully in the belief. The most distinguished exponent of the New Learning in the fifteenth century, Marsiglio Ficino, the Platonist, does not hesitate to adduce it as a fact well known to judges, in his argument to prove the immortality of the soul against the Averrhoism fashionable in his day.[1154] Equally distinguished as a jurist was Hippolito de’ Marsigli (died in 1528), who relates that in his youth he was governor of Alberga, near Genoa, when a murder occurred without affording evidence as to the perpetrator. By the advice of an old citizen he had the body brought before him and summoned all liable to suspicion to pass near it one by one. When the homicide approached, to the surprise of Marsigli, the wounds burst out afresh, but his incredulity was such that he did not consider this to warrant even an arrest until he had collected sufficient collateral evidence, when the culprit confessed without torture.[1155] In Venice this ordeal was sometimes used and likewise in Piedmont, though in the latter region some magistrates regarded it as fallacious, for their experience showed that blood had not flowed in the presence of those subsequently proved to be guilty.[1156] In Corsica the belief, if not still existent, has been widely diffused until within a few years.[1157]

France seems to have been even more addicted to this superstition. About 1580 President Bertrand d’Argentré, in his Commentaries on the Customs of Brittany, treats it as an indisputable fact and one affording good evidence.[1158] In Picardy we are told it was constantly used by magistrates, it was approved by the courts in Bordeaux, and Chassanée, whose authority in Burgundy was great, argues that its occurrence justifies the torture of the accused without further evidence.[1159] Spain likewise was not exempt from it. A celebrated case is cited in the books as occurring in Aragon, where the accused was brought before the corpse of the victim in the public square and appealed to God to perform a miracle if he were guilty, whereupon the body raised its right arm, pointed with its fingers to the several wounds and then to the accused; this was regarded as sufficient proof, and under sentence of the Council of Aragon the culprit was executed. Another case which occurred at Ledesma, near Salamanca, shows the existence of the belief in Castile.[1160]

English colonists brought the superstition across the Atlantic, where it has never been fairly eradicated from the popular mind. In January, 1680, in Accomac County, Virginia, a new-born illegitimate child of “Mary, daughter of Sarah, wife of Paul Carter” died and was buried. It was nearly six weeks before suspicion was aroused, when the coroner impanelled a jury of twelve matrons, whose verdict recorded that Sarah Carter was brought to touch the corpse without result, but when Paul Carter touched it “immediately whilst he was stroaking ye childe ye black and settled places above ye body of ye childe grew fresh and red so that blud was ready to come through ye skin of ye childe.” On the strength of this verdict an indictment was found against Paul Carter, but with what result the records do not show.[1161] Nearly a century later, in 1767, the coroner’s jury of Bergen County, N. J., was summoned to view the body of one Nicholas Tuers, whose death had led to suspicion of murder. Johannes Demarest, the coroner, attests that he had no belief in bier-right and paid no attention to the experiment, when one of the jury touched the body without result. At length a slave named Harry, who had been suspected without proof, was brought forward for the trial when he heard an exclamation “He is the man,” and was told that the body had bled when touched by Harry. He then ordered the slave to place his hand on its face, when about a tablespoonful of blood flowed from each nostril, and Harry confessed the murder.[1162] So recently as 1833 a man named Getter was hanged in Pennsylvania for the murder of his wife, and among the evidence which was allowed to go to the jury on the trial was that of a female witness, who swore “If my throat was to be cut I could tell, before God Almighty, that the deceased smiled when he (the murderer) touched her. I swore this before the justice, and also that she bled considerably. I was sent for to dress her and lay her out. He touched her twice. He made no hesitation about doing it. I also swore before the justice that it was observed by other people in the house.”[1163] This is perhaps the latest instance in which bier-right has figured in regular judicial proceedings, but the popular belief in it is by no means eradicated. In 1860 the Philadelphia journals mention a case in which the relatives of a deceased person, suspecting foul play, vainly importuned the coroner, six weeks after the interment, to have the body exhumed in order that it might be touched by a person whom they regarded as concerned in his death. In 1868 at Verdiersville, Virginia, a suspected murderer was compelled to touch the body of a woman found murdered in a wood; and in 1869, at Lebanon, Illinois, the bodies of two murdered persons were exhumed and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past and made to touch them in the hope of identifying the criminals.[1164]

In Germany, in the seventeenth century, there was a recognized formula for the administration of the ordeal. The corpse was exposed to the open air for some hours, with breast and stomach bare to insure the thorough coagulation of the blood. The person suspected was then brought forward and required to repeat certain adjurations read to him, and then he was made to touch with two fingers the mouth, the navel, and the wounds, if there were any. If the corpse manifested any signs of sensation, if there was frothing at the mouth, or bleeding from any orifices or wounds it was considered an evidence of guilt.[1165] The trial was not a mere popular experiment, but was a judicial proceeding, under the order of a magistrate.

Although bier-right, in comparison with other ordeals, plays so inconspicuous a part in the history of jurisprudence, it is especially interesting in one respect. As a judicial expedient, it did not spring into notice until after the other vulgar ordeals had been discredited and banished from the courts. It escaped the censure of the Church and was a survival of the Judgment of God, reaching its fullest development in the seventeenth century. It thus became the subject of investigation and debate in an age of critical tendencies and comparative intelligence. Among those who had faith in it there was much fruitless speculation to account for the result, and there was by no means a consensus of opinion as to the causes at work. In 1487 the inquisitor Sprenger takes a materialistic view and uses it as the basis of an argument on the wonderful properties of inanimate matter. He explains that air is introduced into the wound when it is inflicted, and that it rushes out when agitated by the presence of the slayer, bringing blood with it, but he adds that others believe it to be the cry of blood from the earth against the murderer, as related of the first homicide, Cain.[1166] About a century later Del Rio tells us that some looked upon it as a miracle, others as an accident, while he himself can see no better reason than the violent antipathy conceived by the slain for the slayer.[1167] Carena holds it to be the mysterious Judgment of God, unless it happens to be the work of the demon, and in this uncertainty concludes that if there are no other proofs it only justifies further investigation and not torture.[1168] Oelsner informs us that learned men disputed whether it was occasioned by antipathy or sympathy, by the remains of the soul in the body, by wandering spirits of the dead, or by the spirit of enmity, and he concludes that the causes are sometimes natural and sometimes supernatural.[1169] It is significant that, among so many theories framed by believers in the fact, there were so few who assented to the direct interposition of God.

Among jurists there was lively debate as to the exact weight of the evidence when the experiment was successful. Criminal lawyers were naturally loath to admit that it was decisive, for the corollary followed that if no bleeding occurred the suspect must be innocent, which was contradicted by the numerous cases in which an accused successfully passed through the ordeal and was subsequently proved to be guilty. This decisiveness was the essence of the older ordeals, and was wholly opposed to the current inquisitorial system in which certainty was aimed at by the habitual use of torture. Almost with unanimity, therefore, the legists held that it was only one of the indications pointing to guilt, and that its failure could not be alleged as a proof of innocence. They differed, however, as to the weight of the indication which it afforded. Authoritative names were cited in favor of the opinion that it sufficed by itself to justify the subjection of the accused to torture, as in a case at Marburg in 1608, where on this ground alone several suspects were tortured, when they confessed and were executed. Others took the position that it did not of itself warrant the use of torture, and that it required to be supported by other proof. Among these was the great criminal jurist Carpzov, who states that in cases submitted to him and his colleagues he had seen many in which no bleeding occurred when the murderers touched the corpse, while in others it did occur when innocents were exposed to the trial.[1170] When the discussion had reached this stage the ordeal became a superfluity which was bound to disappear from the courts in spite of the persistence of popular credulity, and a school of jurists arose who denied that it deserved the name of evidence, and declared that it must be wholly disregarded. It was only a question of time when this opinion should triumph, and the first quarter of the eighteenth century probably witnessed the disappearance of this survival of mediævalism from recognized judicial procedure.[1171]

XII. OATHS AS ORDEALS

The oath naturally formed an integral portion of the ordeal. Even as in the battle trial both parties, on entering the lists, were compelled to swear to the truth of their assertions, so in the other ordeals the accuser and accused took an oath immediately prior to the administration of the test.[1172] Sometimes, however, the oath of the accused was regarded as a sufficient ordeal in itself. We have seen above how, among many and diverse races, disculpatory oaths are administered with ceremonies which render them practically ordeals in view of the popular belief that misfortune will follow perjury. The anthropomorphic mythology of Hellas presents this idea in its most concrete form by the most solemn oath of the gods, taken on the water of Styx brought in a vase for the purpose, perjury on which was followed by a year of stupor and nine years of segregation from all fellowship with the brother immortals.[1173] We have also seen (pp. 29 sqq.) that in Christendom the Church set little store by simple oaths, but reckoned their obligation by the holiness of the material objects on which they were taken; and when these were relics of peculiar sanctity they were held to have the power of punishing the perjurer, thus rendering the oath administered upon them an absolute ordeal. This belief developed itself at an early period in the history of the Church. St. Augustin relates that at Milan a thief, who swore upon some holy relics with the intention of bearing false witness, was forced irresistibly to confess himself guilty of the offence which he designed to fasten upon another; and Augustin himself, when unable to decide between two of his ecclesiastics who accused each other of revolting crime, sent them both to the shrine of St. Felix of Nola, in the full expectation that the judgment of God would bring to light the truth as between them.[1174] Gregory the Great shows the same belief when he alludes to a simple purgatorial oath taken by a bishop on the relics of St. Peter in terms which expressly convey the idea that the accused, if guilty, had exposed himself to no little danger, and that his performance of the ceremony unharmed had sufficiently proved his innocence. Gregory, moreover, in one of his Homilies, assumes that perjury committed on the relics of the saints is punished by demoniacal possession.[1175]

This was not a belief likely to be allowed to die out for lack of nourishment. When, in the tenth century, Adaulfus, Bishop of Compostella, was accused of a nameless crime, and was sentenced by the hasty judgment of the king to be gored to death by a wild bull, he had taken the precaution, before appearing at the trial, to devoutly celebrate mass in his full pontificals. The bull, maddened with dogs and trumpets, rushed furiously at the holy man; then, suddenly pausing, advanced gently towards him and placed its horns in his hands, nor could any efforts of the assistants provoke it to attack him. The king and his courtiers, awed by this divine interposition in favor of innocence, threw themselves at the feet of the saint, who pardoned them and retired to the wildest region of the Asturias, where he passed the rest of his days as an anchorite. He left his chasuble behind him, however, and this garment thenceforth possessed the miraculous power that, when worn by any one taking an oath, it could not be removed if he committed perjury.[1176]

In other cases the shrines of saints convicted the perjurer by throwing him down in an epileptic fit, or by fixing him rigid and motionless at the moment of his invoking them to witness his false oath.[1177] The monks of Abingdon boasted a black cross made from the nails of the crucifixion, said to have been given them by the Emperor Constantine, a false oath on which was sure to cost the malefactor his life; and the worthy chronicler assures us that the instances in which its miraculous power had been triumphantly exhibited were too numerous to be specified.[1178] At the priory of Die, dependent on the great Benedictine abbey of Fleury, there was preserved an arm-bone of St. Maur, which was possessed of somewhat similar properties. On one occasion a steward of the priory named Joscelin was accused of embezzlement, and offered to rebut the evidence against him by an oath taken on the arm of St. Maur. Rejoiced at passing through the test triumphantly, he removed his hand from the relic, and stroking his long beard with it he exclaimed, “By this beard, the oath I swore was true!” when suddenly the beard came off in his hand, and his chin, thenceforth hairless, was the evidence alike of his guilt and his perjury, so that he and his descendants were at once proclaimed ineligible to the stewardship.[1179] Less serious in its consequences was a false oath taken by a peasant on the altar of St. Martial of Limoges. The offender was deprived of speech, and could only bellow like an ox until he had prayed over the tomb of the saint, and his throat had received the sign of the cross from a priest.[1180] Even at the present day the jaw-bone of St. Patrick is preserved near Belfast, and is used extra-judicially as an ordeal, in the full conviction that the slightest variation from the truth will bring instantaneous punishment on the perjurer,[1181] and in Sardinia a similar oath on relics is believed when false to flay the hand of the accused.[1182] In the Middle Ages these dangerous relics were common, and however we may smile at the simplicity of the faith reposed in them, we may rest assured that on many occasions they were the means of eliciting confessions which could have been obtained by no devices of legal subtlety according to modern procedures.

Nor did it always require death to confer the sanctity requisite to perform these miracles, as was attested during the life of St. Bertrand of Comminges. A woman accused of adultery went to the saint and laying her hand on him swore to her innocence, when the hand immediately withered and remained a permanent witness of her guilt and her perjury.[1183]

Even without any special sanctity in the administration of the oath, Heaven sometimes interposed to protect the rights of the Church. About the year 1200 Cæsarius of Königswinter, a knight, who had borrowed twenty marcs of his brother, Hirminold Dean of the Chapter of Bonn, denied the loan after his brother’s death. As the money belonged to the Church, the chapter summoned the knight, and having no proof, were obliged to content themselves with his oath. Having accomplished his perjury, Cæsarius mounted his horse and returned homewards, but when he had accomplished the half of his journey his horse was suddenly fixed immovable to the earth, and he found himself deprived of the use of the tongue which he had thus abused. Recognizing the source of the trouble, he prayed to Abraham, promising to retrace his steps and confess his sin. He was immediately released, returned to Bonn, made restitution, and accepted penance. He subsequently entered the monastery of Heisterbach as a novice, and related the story of himself.[1184]

XIII. POISON ORDEALS

The poison ordeal, which forms the basis of judicial proceedings among so many of the African tribes, seems not to have been brought into Europe by the Aryan invaders, although it was in use among their kindred who remained in the East. Possibly this may have arisen from the fact that in their migrations they could no longer obtain the substances which they had been accustomed to use, and before they had familiarized themselves with the resources of their new homes the custom may have fallen into desuetude amid the abundance of other methods. A lingering remnant of it may perhaps be detected in the trial of the priestess of the Gæum in Achaia, already alluded to, but substantially the poison ordeal may be regarded as obsolete in the West.

In the East, however, it has continued in use. The poison prescribed is that known as sringa, produced by a tree which grows in the Himalayas, and the judge invokes it—

“On account of thy venomous and dangerous nature thou art destruction to all living creatures; thou, O poison, knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

Seven grains of the substance, mixed with clarified butter, are then administered; if no evil symptoms follow during the day, at evening the accused is dismissed as innocent.[1185] A more recent authority describes a somewhat different form. A specified quantity of some deadly article, varying in amount with its activity, is mixed with thirty times its weight of ghee, or clarified butter. The patient takes this, standing with his face to the north, and if it produces no effect upon him while the bystanders can clap their hands five hundred times, he is pronounced innocent and antidotes are at once administered to him.[1186] A slight variation of this is recorded by a writer of the last century. After appropriate religious ceremonies, seven barleycorns of the deadly root vishanaga, or of arsenic, are mingled with thirty-two times its bulk of ghee, and eaten by the accused from the hand of a Brahman. If it produces no effect, he is acquitted.[1187] Much more humane was the custom described by Hiouen Thsang in the seventh century, when the experiment was performed vicariously on a bullock, even as a hen is used among the Niam-Niam of equatorial Africa. The animal was fed with poisoned food, and poison was likewise inserted in a wound made for the purpose in the right leg, while the fate of the accused was determined by the death or survival of the unlucky beast.[1188]

Still another form in modern times seems to have been invented as a combination of the hot-water and poison ordeals. A naga or cobra is dropped into a deep earthen pot along with a coin or ring, which the person on trial must remove with his hand. If he is bitten, he is condemned; if he escapes scathless, he is acquitted.[1189]

XIV. IRREGULAR ORDEALS

The devout dependence upon Heaven, exhibited in the ordeal, did not exhaust itself on the forms of trial described above, but was manifested in various other expedients, sometimes adopted as legal processes, and sometimes merely the outcome of individual credulous piety. While therefore they cannot be regarded as forming part of the recognized institutions of Europe, still they illustrate too clearly the tendency of thought and belief to be entirely passed over.

Among these may be classed a practice which was substantially an appeal to God to regulate the amount of punishment requisite for the expiation of a crime. One or more bands of iron were not infrequently fastened around the neck or arm of a murderer, who was banished until by pilgrimage and prayer his reconciliation and pardon should be manifested by the miraculous loosening of the fetter, showing that soul and body were both released from their bonds.[1190] A case is related of a Pole thus wandering with a circlet tightly clasped to each arm. One fell before the intercession of St. Adalbert, the apostle of Prussia, but the other retained its hold until the sinner came to the shrine of St. Hidulf near Toul. There, joining in the worship of the holy monks, the remaining band flew off with such force that it bounded against the opposite wall, while the pardoned criminal fell fainting to the ground, the blood pouring from his liberated arm: a miracle gratefully recorded by the spiritual children of the saint.[1191] Equally melodramatic in its details is a similar instance of an inhabitant of Prunay near Orléans, laden with three iron bands for fratricide. His weary pilgrimage was lightened of two by the intercession of St. Peter at Rome, and the third released itself in the most demonstrative manner through the merits of St. Bertin and St. Omer.[1192] If the legend of St. Emeric of Hungary be true, the pope himself did not disdain to prescribe this ordeal to the criminal whose miraculous release caused the immediate canonization of the saint by a synod in 1073.[1193] In France at one time we are told that this penance or punishment was habitual in cases of parricide or fratricide, when the rings or chains were wrought from the sword with which the crime had been committed.[1194] Repentant sinners also frequently bound themselves with iron rings and chains by way of penance, and the spontaneous disruption of these, which sometimes occurred, was regarded as a sign that God had pardoned the penitent.[1195] The shrine of St. Nicetius at Lyons had a special reputation in these cases, and the pile of broken rings and chains exhibited there in the sixth century testified to the power of the saint’s intercession.[1196]

The spirit of the age is likewise manifested in an appeal to Heaven which terminated a quarrel in the early part of the twelfth century between St. Gerald, Archbishop of Braga, and a magnate of his diocese, concerning the patronage of a church. Neither being inclined to yield, at length the noble prayed that God would decide the cause by not permitting the one who was in the wrong to live beyond the year, to which St. Gerald assented; and in six months the death of the unhappy noble showed how dangerous it was to undertake such experiments with a saint.[1197] This, indeed, may be held to have warrant of high authority, for when, in 336, Alexander Bishop of Constantinople was about to engage in disputation with the arch-heretic Arius, he underwent a long fast, and shut himself up for many days and nights alone in his church praying to God, and finally supplicating that if his faith were wrong he might not live to see the day of contest, while if Arius were in error he likewise might be taken off in advance; and the orthodoxy of the Nicene creed was confirmed miraculously by the sudden and terrible death of Arius within a few days.[1198]

The error of the Arian doctrine of the Trinity was demonstrated by another volunteer miracle about the year 510, when Deuterius the Arian Bishop of Constantinople undertook to baptize a convert in the name of the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost, and was rebuked for using this heretical formula by the sudden disappearance of all the water in the font.[1199]

With these examples may be classed a trial of faith proposed by Herigarius, one of the earliest Christian converts of Sweden, as conclusive, though not so dangerous as that of Bishop Poppo. After frequent disputes with his Pagan neighbors, he one day suggested, when a storm was approaching, that they should stand on one side and he on the other, and see which of them would get wet. The rain came down in torrents and nearly drowned the heathen scoffers, while Herigarius and a boy in his company serenely looked on, untouched by a single drop.[1200]

When, at the end of the ninth century, the attacks of Rollo and his Normans drove the monks of St. Martin of Tours to seek safety for themselves and the priceless relics of their saint at Auxerre, the body of St. Martin was deposited in the church of St. Germain near the tomb of the latter. The miracles wrought by the newcomer speedily caused a large influx of oblations which the strangers took to themselves. The monks of St. Germain claimed an equal share on the ground that the miracles were wrought by the combined merits of both saints. The Touraingeois resisted the demand, and finally offered to decide the question by taking a leper and placing him for a night between the rival reliquaries. If he should in the morning be entirely cured, they agreed to admit that both saints were concerned in the miracles, and that the receipts should be shared; but if only one side of him was restored to health then the saint on whose side he was cured should have the credit and his monks the money. This was agreed to; the leper was placed between the tombs, and both parties spent the night in prayer. In the morning he was found with the half of him towards St. Martin sound and well, while the side towards St. Germain had not been in the least benefited. To remove any lingering doubts, he was then turned around, and the other side was cured. The result was beyond further question, and the monks of St. Martin were permitted to enjoy in peace thenceforth the offerings of the faithful.[1201]

It occasionally happened that the direct interference of Heaven, without the use of formulas, was volunteered to stay the blundering hand of human justice. In 1219, near Cologne, a man was condemned for theft and promptly hanged, but when the spectators supposed him comfortably dead, he suddenly exclaimed, “Your labor is vain; you cannot strangle me, for my lord bishop St. Nicholas is aiding me. I see him.” Taking this for a convincing proof of his innocence, the crowd at once cut him down, and he hastened to the church of Bruweiler to give thanks for his miraculous escape.[1202] It is curious to observe, however, that the pious contemporary narrator of this instance of the power of St. Nicholas is careful to let us understand that the man may have been guilty after all. St. Olaf of Norway once interfered in the same way to support, during nine hours of suspension, a man unjustly hanged on a false accusation of theft.[1203]

Heaven could also be directly appealed to without the intervention of the hot iron or boiling water. A question of much importance to northern Italy was thus settled in the tenth century, when Uberto of Tuscany, driven into exile by Otho the Great, returned after a long absence, and found his wife Willa with a likely boy whose paternity he refused to acknowledge. After much parleying, the delicate question was thus settled. A large assembly, consisting principally of ecclesiastics, was convened, in which Uberto sat without anything to distinguish him. The boy, who had never seen him, was placed in the centre, and prayers were offered by all present that he should be led by divine instinct to his father. The prayers were promptly answered, for he rushed without hesitation to the arms of Uberto, who could no longer indulge in unworthy doubts, and in time Ugo became the most powerful prince of Italy.[1204]

There would appear to have been a form of ordeal known as the judgment of the Holy Ghost, but its details are unknown. Pope Stephen VII. employed it for the condemnation of the body of his predecessor Pope Formosus, in 896. The corpse was dug up for the purpose, clad in papal vestments, and brought before a synod of bishops; after condemnation, the three fingers used in benediction were cut off, and it was cast into the Tiber. After the murder of Stephen in 898, John IX. assembled another council which annulled the condemnation and forbade such proceedings in the future, for the unanswerable reason that a dead body cannot vindicate itself, and the judgment was still further discredited when the corpse was fished out of the river, and on being brought into St. Peter’s all the sacred images there bowed to it. Whatever may have been the judgment of the Holy Ghost it naturally became obsolete.[1205]

Perhaps the simplest and at the same time one of the most barbarous of ordeals is prescribed in a MS. of the eleventh century for Jews unlucky enough to be involved in controversies with Christians. The Jew was made to stand up and his knees were closely bound together; a collar made of brambles was placed around his neck, and a switch of brambles, five cubits long and well furnished with thorns, was smartly dragged between his thighs. If he escaped without a scratch he was acquitted.[1206]

In the crazied effort to detect the all-pervading and secret crime of witchcraft, a number of superstitious observances found currency among the people which practically assumed the position of ordeals. Thus in the latter half of the sixteenth century it was believed that a fragment of earth from a grave, when sanctified in the Mass and placed on the threshold of a church door, would prevent the egress of any witch who might be within; and a similar power was attributed to a splinter of oak from a gallows, sprinkled with holy water and hung up in the church porch.[1207]

XV. CONDITIONS OF THE ORDEAL

The ordeal was thoroughly and completely a judicial process, ordained by the law for certain cases, and carried out by the tribunals as a regular form of ordinary procedure. From the earliest times, the accused who was ordered to undergo the trial was compelled to submit to it, as to any other decree of court. Thus, by the Salic law, a recusant was summoned to the royal court; and if still contumacious, he was outlawed and his property confiscated, as was customary in all cases of contempt.[1208] The directions of the codes, as we have seen, are generally precise, and admit of no alternative.[1209] Occasionally, however, a privilege of selection was afforded between this and other modes of compurgation, and also between the various forms of ordeal.[1210]

There was, however, a remarkable exception to this enforcement of the ordeal in a provision existing in some codes by which a man condemned to it could buy himself off by compounding with his adversary. This mode of adjustment was not extensively introduced, but it nevertheless existed among the Anglo-Saxons,[1211] while among the Franks it was a settled custom, permitted by all the texts of the Salic law, from the earliest to the latest.[1212] By this a person condemned by the court to undergo the ordeal could, by a transaction with the aggrieved party, purchase the privilege of clearing himself by canonical purgation, and thus escape the severer trial. He was bound to pay his accuser only a portion of the fine which he would incur if proved guilty—a portion varying with different offences from one-fourth to one-sixth of the wer-gild. The interests of the tribunal were guarded by a clause which compelled him to pay to the grafio, or judge, the full fredum, or public fine, if his conscience impelled him to submit to an arrangement for more than the legal percentage. Even as late as 1229, by the Bohemian laws of Ottokar Premislas the accused could escape the ordeal by paying seven deniers to the seigneur.[1213]

The circumstances under which its employment was ordered varied considerably with the varying legislations of races and epochs; and to enter minutely into the question of the power of the court to decree it, or the right to demand it by the appellant or the defendant, would require too much space, especially as this has already been discussed at some length with regard to one of its forms, the wager of battle. In India, the accused was required to undergo the risk of a fine if he desired to force his adversary to the ordeal; but either party could voluntarily undertake it, in which case the other was subject to a mulct if defeated.[1214] The character of the defendant, however, had an important bearing upon its employment. If he had already been convicted of a crime or of perjury he was subject to it in all cases, however trifling; if, on the other hand, he was a man of unblemished reputation, he was not to be exposed to it, however important was the case.[1215] In civil cases, however, it apparently was only employed to supplement deficient evidence.—“Evidence consists of writings, possession, and witnesses. If one of these is wanting, then one of the ordeals is valid.”[1216]

In Europe there appears at times to have been a custom under which, when the accused had escaped in the ordeal, the accuser was obliged to undergo it. Thus in the Frisian law, when a man accused of theft proved his innocence by the ordeal, the accuser was then obliged to clear himself of the charge of perjury by a similar trial,[1217] but the law fails to define what are their respective positions if the second ordeal proves likewise innocuous. In the case of bier-right quoted above from Scott’s Border Minstrelsy, this secondary ordeal seems to have been to prove whether the accuser herself was not the guilty person. In the heroic poems of the Elder Edda a similar trial appears to be resorted to, as in the Frisian laws, only for the purpose of showing the false witness borne by the accuser. When Gudrun the wife of Atli is defamed as an adulteress by the concubine Herkia, and is forced to the ordeal—

She to the bottom plunged Her snow-white hand, And up she drew The precious stones. “See now, ye men, I am proved guiltless In holy wise, Boil the vessel as it may.” Laughed then Atli’s Heart within his breast When he unscathed beheld The hand of Gudrun.

“Now must Herkia To the cauldron go, She who Gudrun Had hoped to injure.” No one has misery seen Who saw not that, How the hand there Of Herkia was hurt. They then the woman led To a foul slough. So were Gudrun’s Wrongs avenged.[1218]

Churchmen held that if the accused escaped in the ordeal the accuser was guilty of perjury and homicide and must atone for it by public penitence.[1219]

The absence of satisfactory testimony, rendering the case one not to be solved by human means alone is frequently, as in India, alluded to as a necessary element;[1220] and indeed we may almost assert that this was so, even when not specifically mentioned, as far as regards the discretion of the tribunal to order an appeal to the judgment of God. Yet there were some exceptions to this, as in the early Russian legislation, where the ordeal is prescribed for the accused in all cases in which the accusation is substantiated by testimony;[1221] and a law of King Ethelred seems to indicate that the plaintiff might require his adversary to submit to it,[1222] while numerous examples among those cited above authorize the conclusion that an offer on the part of the accused was rarely refused, even when there was strong evidence against him,[1223] though this laxity of practice was occasionally objected to stoutly.[1224] When the custom was declining, indeed, a disposition existed to require the assent of both parties before the tribunal would allow a case to be thus decided.[1225] In civil cases, we may assume that absence of testimony, or the consent of both parties, was requisite to its employment.[1226]

The comfort which the system must have afforded to indolent judges in doubtful cases is well exhibited by a rule in various ancient codes, by which a man suspected of crime, even though no accuser came forward, was thrown into prison and kept there until he could prove his innocence by the ordeal of water.[1227] No testimony was required save that of evil repute. Thus in Hungary, in the eleventh century, a man who was regarded as a thief by the whole village was subjected to the ordeal: if he was cleared, he paid the fee to the priest; if he was convicted, all his property was confiscated.[1228] This, in fact, was virtually the process adopted and systematized in England by the Assizes of Clarendon in 1166. The grand jury was directed to present all persons suspected of robbery, murder, theft, etc., when they were promptly sent to the water ordeal to prove their innocence.[1229] Thus it afforded an unfailing solution to all doubts and simplified greatly the administration of criminal law, for it was equally applicable to cases of individual prosecutions. In 1201, for instance, a widow accuses a man of the murder of her husband and the court rejects her appeal because it does not state that she saw the deed, but as the jurors when interrogated say that the accused is suspected of the crime, he is ordered at once to the ordeal.[1230]

We have seen above occasional instances in which the accuser or plaintiff offered to substantiate his veracity by an appeal to the ordeal. This was an established rule with regard to the wager of battle, but not as respects the other forms of the judgment of God, which were regarded rather as means of defence than of attack. Still there are occasional instances of instructions for their employment by the accusing party. In the primitive laws of Russia, an accuser who could not substantiate his case with witnesses was obliged to undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron.[1231] In England it seems to have been within the discretion of the court to order it for either the accuser or the accused. A very singular case is recorded in 1202, in which Astin of Wispington accused Simon of Edlington of assaulting him and putting out an eye, when the court adjudged the red-hot iron ordeal and gave to the defendant the option whether he or the prosecutor should undergo it; Simon naturally preferred that his antagonist should try the dangerous experiment, and the result was that the case was settled without it.[1232] We have already seen (p. 385) that in some places where the accused succeeded in clearing himself by the ordeal the accuser was obliged to undergo it in order to determine the question of his perjury.

Sometimes the ordeal was employed in connection with compurgation, both for prosecution and defence, to supplement the notorious imperfections of that procedure. Thus Archbishop Hincmar directs that cases of complaint against priests for dissolute life shall be supported by seven witnesses, of whom one must submit to the ordeal to prove the truth of his companions’ oaths, as a wholesome check upon perjury and subornation.[1233] With a similar object, the same prelate likewise enjoins it on compurgators chosen by the accused, on his failing to obtain the support of those who had been selected for him by his judge.[1234] Allied to this was a rule for its employment which was extensively adopted, allowing the accused the privilege of compurgation with conjurators in certain cases, only requiring him to submit to the ordeal on his failing to procure the requisite number of sponsors. Thus, in 794, a certain Bishop Peter, who was condemned by the Synod of Frankfort to clear himself, with two or three conjurators, of the suspicion of complicity in a conspiracy against Charlemagne, being unable to obtain them, one of his vassals offered to pass through the ordeal in his behalf, and on his success the bishop was reinstated.[1235] That this was strictly in accordance with usage is shown by a very early text of the Salic Law,[1236] as well as by a similar provision in the Ripuarian code.[1237] Among the Anglo-Saxons it likewise obtained, from the time of the earliest allusion to the ordeal occurring in their jurisprudence, down to the period of the Conquest.[1238] Somewhat similar in tendency was a regulation of Frederic Barbarossa, by which a slave suspected of theft was exposed to the red-hot iron unless his master would release him by an oath.[1239] Occasionally it was also resorted to when the accused was outsworn after having endeavored to defend himself by his oath or by conjurators. Thus a canon of the Council of Tribur in 895 declares that if a man is so generally suspected that he is outsworn in compurgation, he must either confess or submit to the hot-iron ordeal.[1240] Popular belief evidently might give to the accuser a larger number of men willing to associate themselves in the oath of accusation than the defendant could find to join him in rebutting it, and yet his guilt might not as yet be clear. In such cases, the ordeal was a most convenient resort.

These regulations give to the ordeal decidedly the aspect of punishment, as it was thus inflicted on those whose guilt was so generally credited that they could not find comrades to stand up with them at the altar as partakers in their oath of denial; and this is not the only circumstance which leads us to believe that it was frequently so regarded. This notion is visible in the ancient Indian law, where, as we have seen, certain of the ordeals—those of red-hot iron, poison, and the balance—could not be employed unless the matter at stake were equivalent to the value of a thousand pieces of silver, or involved an offence against the king;[1241] and it reappears in Europe in the graduated scale of single and triple ordeals for offences of different magnitudes. Such a scheme is so totally at variance with the theory of miraculous interposition to protect innocence and punish guilt, that we can only look upon it as a mode of inflicting graduated punishments in doubtful cases, thus holding up a certain penalty in terrorem over those who would otherwise hope to escape by the secrecy of their crime—no doubt with a comforting conviction, like that of Legate Arnaud at the sack of Béziers, that God would know his own. This same principle is visible in a provision of the charter of Loudun, granted by Louis le Gros in 1128, by which an assault committed outside of the liberties of the commune could be disproved by a simple sacramental oath; but if within the limits of the commune, the accused was obliged to undergo the ordeal.[1242] In another shape we see it in the customs of Tournay, granted by Philip Augustus in 1187, where a person accused of assault with sharpened weapons, if there were no witnesses, was allowed to purge himself with six conjurators if the affair occurred in the daytime, but if at night, was obliged to undergo the water ordeal.[1243] Further illustration is afforded by the principle, interwoven in various codes, by which a first crime was defensible by conjurators, or other means, while the tiht-bysig man, the homo infamatus, one of evil repute, whose character had been previously compromised, was denied this privilege, and was forced at once to the hot iron or the water. Thus, among the Anglo-Saxons, in the earliest allusion to the ordeal, by Edward the Elder, it is provided that perjured persons, or those who had once been convicted, should not be deemed thereafter oath-worthy, but should be hurried to the ordeal; a regulation repeated with some variations in the laws of Ethelred, Cnut, and Henry I.[1244] The Carlovingian legislation establishes a similar principle,[1245] while the canons of Burckhardt show it to be still in force in the eleventh century.[1246] A hundred and fifty years later, the legislation of Flanders manifests the same tendency, the code granted to Bruges in 1190 providing that a first accusation of theft should be decided by witnesses, while a second was to be met by the cold-water ordeal.[1247] In the German municipal law of the thirteenth century, the same principle is observable. A man who had forfeited his legal privileges by conviction for theft or similar crimes was no longer admitted to the oath, but on subsequent accusations was compelled to choose between the hot iron, the cauldron, and a combat with a champion; and similarly an officer of the mint issuing false money was permitted the first time to swear to his ignorance, but on a second offence he had to submit to the ordeal. In the codes in force throughout Germany, indeed, previous suspicion was sufficient to send the accused to the ordeal in place of the oath.[1248] The contemporary jurisprudence of Spain has a somewhat similar provision, by which a woman accused of homicide could not be exposed to the ordeal unless she could be proved utterly abandoned, for which a curious standard was requisite;[1249] while for more serious crimes, such as sorcery or killing her husband, she was forced at once to the red-hot iron to prove her innocence. In the legislation of Charlemagne there is an elaborate provision, by which a man convicted seven times of theft was no longer allowed to escape on payment of a fine, but was required to undergo the ordeal of fire. If he succumbed, he was put to death; if he escaped unhurt, he was not discharged as innocent, but his lord was allowed to enter bail for his future good behavior[1250]—a mode at once of administering punishment and of ascertaining whether his death would be agreeable to Heaven. When we thus regard it as a penalty on those who by misconduct had forfeited the confidence of their fellow-men, the system loses part of its absurdity, in proportion as it departs from the principle under which it was established.

There is also another aspect in which it is probable that the ordeal was viewed by those whose common sense must have shrunk from it as a simple appeal to the judgment of God. There can be little doubt that it was frequently found of material use in extorting confession or unwilling testimony. By the early codes, as in the primitive Greek and Roman law, torture could be applied only to slaves, and the ordeal was a legalized torture, applied under circumstances peculiarly provocative of truth, and as such we occasionally find regulations which enable the freeman to escape by compurgation, while the slave is required to undergo the ordeal.[1251] The elaborate nature of the ritual employed, with its impressive adjurations and exorcisms, was well fitted to excite the imagination and alarm the conscience; sometimes, indeed, to render it more effective, the mass celebrated was a mortuary one, which when sung for a living man was popularly believed to possess deadly powers of peculiar efficacy.[1252] In those ages of faith, the professing Christian, conscious of guilt, must indeed have been hardened who could undergo these awful rites, pledging his salvation on his innocence, and knowing under such circumstances that the direct intervention of Heaven could alone save him from having his hand boiled to rags,[1253] after which he was to meet the full punishment of his crime, and perhaps in addition lose a member for the perjury committed. With such a prospect, all motives would conspire to lead him to a prompt and frank acknowledgment in the early stages of the proceedings against him. These views are strengthened by the fact that when, in the thirteenth century, the judicial use of torture, as a means of obtaining testimony and confession, was becoming systematized and generally employed, the ordeal was falling into desuetude and rapidly disappearing. The latter had fulfilled its mission, and the former was a substitute better fitted for an age which reasoned more, believed less, and at the same time was quite as arbitrary and cruel as its predecessor. A further confirmation of this supposition is afforded by the coincidence that the only primitive jurisprudence which excluded the ordeal—that of the Wisigoths—was likewise the only one which habitually permitted the use of torture,[1254] the only reference to the ordeal in their code being a provision which directs its employment as a preliminary to the more regular forms of torture.

In fact, the ordeal was practically looked upon as a torture by those whose enlightenment led them to regard as a superstition the faith popularly reposed in it. An epistle which is attributed both to Stephen V. and Sylvester II. condemns the whole system on the ground that the canons forbid the extortion of confessions by heated irons and boiling water; and that a credulous belief could not be allowed to sanction that which was not permitted by the fathers.[1255] When, therefore, at the Council of St. Baseul, a priest named Adalger, in confessing the assistance he had rendered to Arnoul of Reims during Charles of Lorraine’s resistance to the usurpation of Hugh Capet, offered to substantiate his testimony by undergoing the ordeal, he did it in terms which show that he expected it to be regarded as a torture giving additional weight to evidence—“If any of you doubt this and deem me unworthy of belief, let him believe the fire, the boiling water, the glowing iron. Let these tortures convince those who disbelieve my words.”[1256] It is observable that he omits the cold-water as not being a torture, just as in the ancient Indian law the limitation referred to above as applicable to the red-hot iron, the poison, and the balance, did not apply to the cold-water ordeal, or to that in which was administered the water in which an idol had been dipped.[1257]

In the same way, some among the European ordeals, such as that of the Eucharist, of bread and cheese, and bier-right, do not come within the class of tortures, but they addressed themselves powerfully to the conscience and imagination of the accused, whose callous fortitude no doubt often gave way under the trial. In our own country, and almost within our own time, the latter ordeal was revived in one instance with this object, and the result did not disappoint the expectations of those who undertook it. In the case of People vs. Johnson, tried in New York in 1824, the suspected murderer was led from his cell to the hospital where lay the body of the victim, which he was required to touch. Dissimulation which had been before unshaken failed him at the awful moment; his overstrung nerves gave way, and a confession was faltered forth. The proceeding was sustained by court, and a subsequent attempt at retraction was overruled.[1258] The powerful influence of such feelings is shown in a custom which, as recently as 1815, was still employed at Mandeure, near Mont-belliard, and which is said to be even yet in use in some of the remoter districts of the Ardennes. When a theft has been committed, the inhabitants are summoned to assemble after vespers on Sunday at the place of judgment. There the mayor calls upon the guilty person to make restitution and live in isolation for six months. If this appeal prove fruitless, recourse is had to the trial of the staff, in which two magistrates hold aloft a piece of wood, under which every one is bound to pass. No instance, it is said, is on record in which the culprit dares to do this, and he is always left alone.[1259] Very similar to this is the use made of the Clog Oir or golden bell of St. Senan, the founder of the monastery of Inniscattery, at the mouth of the river Shannon, which was supposed to have peculiar virtue in revealing culprits. A case occurred as late as 1834, when a farmer, who had lost a sum of twenty pounds by a burglary, had the bell brought to his house with much ceremony, and the following Sunday was appointed for the whole parish to appear and clear themselves upon it. On Saturday night, however, the stolen bank notes were thrown through a window of his house.[1260] The method described above (p. 334), as practised in Southern Russia to detect household thieves, affords another example of the power exercised over a guilty conscience. It is easy thus to imagine how the other forms of ordeal may have conduced to the discovery of crime in ages of lively superstition. A case occurring about the commencement of the twelfth century is a fair illustration of the manner in which it frequently worked on the imagination of those whose lives or fortunes were at stake. André de Trahent, a vassal of the convent of St. Mary of Saintes, claimed certain property belonging to the convent. On the final hearing it was decreed that he must abandon his claim unless he could prove it by oath and ordeal. This he agreed to do, and on the appointed day he appeared with his men ready to undergo the trial. As there were two pieces of property in question, two ordeals were required. The caldrons of water were duly heated and André’s men were prepared for the attempt, when his courage gave way; he abruptly abandoned his claim and submitted himself to the mercy of the abbess.[1261]

This case illustrates the fact that in the vulgar ordeals as well as in the duel champions were sometimes allowed. To how great an extent this was permitted it would now be difficult to assert. It is not specially alluded to in any body of laws, but numerous examples of it have been incidentally given above, and in some of the ordines it is assumed as a matter of course. In one for the cold-water ordeal the substitutes are described as children who are made to fast for forty days in advance, and carefully watched and washed to prevent any illusions of the devil.[1262] In the ordeal of the cross, however, it was a recognized privilege of the old or infirm to put forward a substitute, and when communities or churches were pleaders a champion was of course a necessity. A still greater relaxation, occasionally permitted but not approved by the Church, was the practice of writing the name of the accused on paper or some other substance and submitting this to the ordeal in place of the individual himself.[1263] Perhaps the most illogical use of a champion in an ordeal is one suggested by Hincmar of Reims in 860, that a satisfactory person should undergo it in order to determine whether the secret motive alleged by another person for not living with his wife were true or not.[1264]

XVI. CONFIDENCE REPOSED IN THE ORDEAL

The degree of confidence really inspired by the results of the ordeal is a somewhat curious subject of speculation on which definite opinions are not easily reached. Judicially, the trial was, for the most part, conclusive; he who had duly sunk under water, walked unharmed among the burning shares, or withdrawn an unblistered hand from a caldron of legal temperature, stood forth among his fellows as innocent. So, even now, the verdict of a few fools or knaves in a jury-box may discharge a criminal, against the plainest dictates of common sense, but in neither case would the sentiments of the community be probably changed by the result. The reverential feelings which alone could impart faith in the system seem scarcely compatible with the practice of compounding for ordeals, which, as we have seen above (p. 384), was occasionally permitted.

Charlemagne, at the commencement of his reign, does not seem to have entertained much respect for the judgment of God when he prescribed the administration of the ordeal for trifling affairs only, cases of magnitude being reserved for the regular investigation of the law.[1265] Thirty years later, the public mind appears afflicted with the same doubts, for we find the monarch endeavoring to enforce confidence in the system by his commands.[1266] The repeated use of the ordeal in the affair of the divorce of Teutberga shows that it was expected to have no little effect on public opinion, and the same is seen when in 876 Charlemagne’s grandson, Louis of Saxony, forced to defend his dominions against his uncle Charles le Chauve, commenced by proving the justness of his title by the judgment of God. After fasting and prayer ten of his followers were exposed to the ordeal of red-hot iron and ten each to those of cold and boiling water; all escaped without injury, and the righteousness of the verdict was shown soon after by the victory of Andernach, which sent the invader flying back to France.[1267] Yet a rule of English law, nearly four hundred years later, during the expiring struggles of the practice, would show that the result was regarded as by no means conclusive. By the assizes of Clarendon in 1166, which directed that all malefactors defamed for murder, robbery, and other felonies should be at once tried by the water ordeal, it was provided that those who had confessed or who had been found in possession of stolen property should not be allowed the privilege of clearing themselves in this manner; and a still more irreverential rule decreed that those who were pronounced innocent by the judgment of God, if regarded as guilty by common report, should have eight days to quit the kingdom, under pain of outlawry.[1268] In the revision of these laws, made at Northampton ten years later, it was provided that in all cases those who passed safely through the ordeal should give bail for their future good conduct, except in charges of murder or aggravated felony, when they were banished within forty days, under penalty of outlawry as before.[1269]

St. Ivo of Chartres, though he had no scruple in recommending and enjoining the ordeal for laymen, and, on one occasion at least, pronounced its decisions as beyond appeal, yet has placed on record his conviction of its insufficiency, and his experience that the mysterious judgment of God not infrequently allowed in this manner the guilty to escape and the innocent to be punished.[1270] A case related by Peter Cantor in the twelfth century shows how recklessly it often was abused as a relief to careless judges in doubtful cases. Two Englishmen were returning in company from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, when one of them wandered off to the shrine of St. Jago de Compostella, and the other went directly home. The kindred of the absent one accused the latter of murdering his companion; as no evidence was procurable on either side, he was hurried to the ordeal, convicted, and executed, shortly after which the missing man came back in safety.[1271]

The manifest injustice of the decisions thus rendered by the ordeal put a severe strain on the faith of believers, and led them to the most ingenious sophistry for an explanation. When, in 1127, the sacrilegious murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, sent a thrill of horror throughout Europe, Lambert of Redenberg, whose participation in the crime was notorious, succeeded in clearing himself by the hot iron. Shortly afterwards he undertook the siege of Ostbourg, which he prosecuted with great cruelty, when he was killed in a sally of the besieged. The pious Galbert assumes that Lambert, notwithstanding his guilt, escaped at the ordeal in consequence of his humility and repentance, and philosophically adds: “Thus it is that in battle the unjust man is killed, although in the ordeal of water or of fire he may escape, if truly repentant.”[1272] The same doctrine was enunciated under John Cantacuzenes, in the middle of the fourteenth century, by a bishop of Didymoteichos in Thrace. A frail fair one being violently suspected by her husband, the ordeal of hot iron was demanded by him. In this strait she applied to the good bishop, and he, being convinced of her repentance and intention to sin no more, assured her that in such a frame of mind she might safely venture on the trial, and she accordingly carried the glowing bar triumphantly twice around the bishop’s chair, to the entire satisfaction of her lord and master.[1273]

In fact it was a recognized doctrine of the Church that confession, contrition, and absolution so thoroughly washed away a sin that a culprit thus prepared could safely tempt the justice of God. A case related by Cæsarius of Heisterbach as a most edifying example illustrates the curious nature of the superstition thus inculcated by the religious teachers of the period. In the diocese of Utrecht a fisherman notoriously maintained illicit relations with a woman, and fearing to be called to account for it by an approaching synod, where he would be convicted by the red-hot iron, and be forced to marry her, he consulted a priest. This ghostly counsellor advised him that, if he was firmly resolved to sin no more, he could safely deny the fact and endure the ordeal, after receiving absolution. The event verified the prediction; he carried the burning iron unhurt, and to the surprise of all the country round he was acquitted. Shortly afterwards, while in his boat, a companion expressed his wonder, when the fisherman, whose short-lived repentance was already over, boastingly struck his hand on the water, exclaiming, “It hurt me no more than that!” By the marvellous justice of God, the water was to him as red-hot iron, and as he hastily withdrew his hand the skin peeled off in strips.[1274] Even as late as 1539, the learned Ciruelo reproves the use of ordeals because the accused, though innocent of the special crime at issue, may succumb in consequence of other offences; or though guilty may escape because he has confessed and received absolution; and he states that he had personally known more than one case in which women, rightly accused of adultery by their husbands and forced to undergo the ordeal, had thus succeeded in being acquitted.[1275]

This doctrine of Ciruelo’s that the innocent were sometimes liable to conviction on account of previous misdeeds was likewise a belief of old standing. We have already seen (p. 137) that there was papal authority for it in the wager of battle. A striking instance of the vague notions current is afforded in the middle of the eleventh century by a case related by Othlonus, in which a man accused of horse-stealing was tried by the cold-water ordeal and found guilty. Knowing his own innocence, he appealed to the surrounding monks, and was told that it must be in consequence of some other sin not properly redeemed by penance. As he had confessed and received absolution before the trial, he denied this, till one of them pointed out that in place of allowing his beard to grow, as was meet for a layman, he had impiously carried the smooth chin reserved for ecclesiastics. Confessing his guilt, promising due penance, and vowing never to touch his beard with a razor again, he was conducted a second time to the water, and being now free from all unrepented sin, he was triumphantly acquitted. It is added that, taking advantage of a quibble as to the kind of instrument employed, he lapsed again into the sin of shaving, when the anger of Heaven manifested itself by allowing him to fall into the hands of an enemy, who put out his eyes.[1276]

Yet, on the other hand, the ordeal sometimes was regarded as the most satisfactory kind of proof, entitled to respect beyond any other species of evidence. The age was not logical, men acted more from impulse than from reason, and the forms of jurisprudence were still in a state too chaotic for regular and invariable rules to be laid down. The confusion existing in the popular mind is well illustrated by a case occurring in the twelfth century. A serf of the Abbey of Marmoutiers married a serf who had been given by the Viscount of Blois to one of his retainers named Erbald. The husband purchased his wife’s liberty, and by paying an additional sum had the deed of manumission confirmed by the viscount and viscountess. Years passed away, the serf and wife died, and then also their son, when their property fell to the abbey, which enjoyed it until the heirs of Erbald and the viscount claimed it. The monks produced the deeds of manumission, and the viscountess, then the only surviving witness to the transaction, testified to its authenticity, but to no purpose. The claimants demanded the wager of battle, and the monks, in refusing this as unsuited to their calling, were obliged to produce a man who offered to undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron to prove the validity of the deed. Then the claimants at last desisted, but still succeeded in extorting sixteen livres from the abbey as the price of appending their signatures to the controverted deed.[1277]

In general, however, as the result depended mostly upon those who administered the ordeal, it conferred an irresponsible power to release or to condemn, and it would be expecting too much of human nature to suppose that men did not yield frequently to the temptation to abuse that power. When Sigurd Thorlaksson was accused by Saint Olaf the King of the murder of his foster-brother Thoralf, and offered to clear himself by the red-hot iron, King Olaf accepted his offer, and appointed the next day for the trial at Lygra, where the bishop was to preside over it. When Sigurd went back at night to his ship, he said to his comrades that their prospects were gloomy, for the king had probably caused himself the death of Thoralf, and then brought the accusation against them, adding, “For him, it is an easy matter to manage the iron ordeal so that I doubt he will come ill off who tries it against him;” whereupon they hoisted sail in the darkness and escaped to their home in the Faroe Islands.[1278] The collusion thus hinted at must often have been practised, and must have shaken the most robust faith, and this cause of disbelief would receive additional strength from the fact that the result itself was not seldom in doubt, victory being equally claimed by both parties. Of this we have already seen examples in the affairs of the lance of St. Andrew and of the Archbishop of Milan, and somewhat similar is an incident recorded by the Bollandists in the life of St. Swithin, in which, by miraculous interposition, the opposing parties beheld entirely different results from an appeal to the red-hot iron.[1279]

Efforts of course were made from time to time to preserve the purity of the appeal, and to secure impartiality in its application. Clotair II., in 595, directs that three chosen persons shall attend on each side to prevent collusion;[1280] and among the Anglo-Saxons, some four hundred years later, Ethelred enjoins the presence of the prosecutor under penalty of loss of suit and fine of twenty ores, apparently for the same object, as well as to give authenticity to the decision.[1281] So in Hungary, the laws of St. Ladislas, in 1092, direct that three sworn witnesses shall be present to attest the innocence or guilt of the accused as demonstrated by the result.[1282] A rule announced by the Council of Grateley in 928, that if the accused is accompanied by more than twelve comrades he shall be adjudged as though he had failed in the ordeal, points to an obvious source of miscarriage of justice by which a crowd of partisans could interfere with the proceedings and then proclaim that the result had been successful.[1283] A law adopted by the Scottish Parliament under William the Lion, in the second half of the twelfth century, shows that corruption was not uncommon, by forbidding those concerned in the administration of ordeals from receiving bribes to divert the course of justice,[1284] and a further precaution was taken by prohibiting the Barons from adjudging the ordeal without the intervention of the sheriff to see that law and justice were observed.[1285]

In spite of all that we have seen, the ordeal, with its undoubted cruelty, was not as cruel as it appears to us, and in its practical results it probably acquitted the guilty far more often than it convicted the innocent. Mr. Maitland tells us that in his researches in the English records from 1201 till the abolition of the ordeal in 1219—a period in which, as stated above (p. 387), it was in constant use—he has found but one instance in which it failed to clear the accused.[1286] It is true that the cold-water ordeal was the one most freely resorted to, but the red-hot iron was also freely employed, and the one case of failure occurred in the water ordeal. At this distance of time it would be useless to frame a positive explanation of this, although bribery and collusion of course naturally suggest themselves in the notorious and almost universal corruption of the period. Contemporaries reconciled themselves to this as best they could, but while relying comfortably upon the inscrutable judgment of God, and the preservative power of contrition and confession, they were not without other solutions of the problem.

We have seen that in the judicial duel magic arts were popularly supposed to have power to control the interposition of God. This was likewise the case with the vulgar ordeals, and in addition a special power was attributed to the use or abuse of the holy chrism. The Council of Tours, in 813, informs us that it was generally believed that a criminal who drank the chrism or anointed himself with it could not be convicted by any ordeal.[1287] So serious indeed was this considered that Charlemagne in 809 decreed that a priest giving out the chrism for this purpose should not only be degraded but should lose a hand—a law which long continued in force, nominally at least.[1288] The belief was not ephemeral, for until the early part of the twelfth century a canon was carried through all the collections which speaks of the matter as a fact proved by experience.[1289] The superstition probably died out towards the middle of the century when the number of sacraments was increased from three to seven, and the comparative importance of the chrism was thus diminished in the popular eyes. The belief that the judgment of God could be perverted or eluded by magic arts still continued, however, and precautions were commonly taken to prevent their use.[1290] Holy water, moreover, was lavishly sprinkled on the materials employed in the ordeal and on the patient, and was given to him to drink to prevent diabolic illusions by which it was imagined that the purposes of God could be defeated.[1291]

Precautions also were taken to guard against processes by which, in the fire ordeals, it was believed that the human frame could be rendered incombustible, and for this object a widely prevailing custom required that for three days previous the hand should be wrapped up to guard against its being thus fortified.[1292] The nature of these unguents may be guessed from a prescription given by Albertus Magnus, consisting of mallow and radish juice, white of egg, lime, and “psillus” seeds, the use of which he assures us will enable a man with impunity to enter the flames or to carry red-hot iron.[1293] Doubtless reliance on some such expedients may partially explain the readiness with which the ordeal was undertaken.