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]