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.