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]