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]