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]