IRREGULAR ORDEALS.
The devout dependence upon Heaven, exhibited in the ordeal, did
not exhaust itself on the forms of trial described above, but was
manifested in various other expedients, sometimes adopted as legal
processes, and sometimes merely the outcome of individual credulous
piety. While therefore they cannot be regarded as forming part of the
recognized institutions of Europe, still they illustrate too clearly
the tendency of thought and belief to be entirely passed over.
Among these may be classed a practice which was substantially an
appeal to God to regulate the amount of punishment requisite for the
expiation of a crime. One or more bands of iron were not infrequently
fastened around the neck or arm of a murderer, who was banished until
by pilgrimage and prayer his reconciliation and pardon should be
manifested by the miraculous loosening of the fetter, showing that
soul and body were both released from their bonds.[1190] A case is
related of a Pole thus wandering with a circlet tightly clasped to each
arm. One fell before the intercession of St. Adalbert, the apostle
of Prussia, but the other retained its hold until the sinner came to
the shrine of St. Hidulf near Toul. There, joining in the worship
of the holy monks, the remaining band flew off with such force that
it bounded against the opposite wall, while the pardoned criminal
fell fainting to the ground, the blood pouring from his liberated
arm: a miracle gratefully recorded by the spiritual children of the
saint.[1191] Equally melodramatic in its details is a similar instance
of an inhabitant of Prunay near Orléans, laden with three iron bands
for fratricide. His weary pilgrimage was lightened of two by the
intercession of St. Peter at Rome, and the third released itself in
the most demonstrative manner through the merits of St. Bertin and St.
Omer.[1192] If the legend of St. Emeric of Hungary be true, the pope
himself did not disdain to prescribe this ordeal to the criminal whose
miraculous release caused the immediate canonization of the saint by
a synod in 1073.[1193] In France at one time we are told that this
penance or punishment was habitual in cases of parricide or fratricide,
when the rings or chains were wrought from the sword with which the
crime had been committed.[1194] Repentant sinners also frequently
bound themselves with iron rings and chains by way of penance, and the
spontaneous disruption of these, which sometimes occurred, was regarded
as a sign that God had pardoned the penitent.[1195] The shrine of St.
Nicetius at Lyons had a special reputation in these cases, and the
pile of broken rings and chains exhibited there in the sixth century
testified to the power of the saint’s intercession.[1196]
The spirit of the age is likewise manifested in an appeal to Heaven
which terminated a quarrel in the early part of the twelfth century
between St. Gerald, Archbishop of Braga, and a magnate of his diocese,
concerning the patronage of a church. Neither being inclined to yield,
at length the noble prayed that God would decide the cause by not
permitting the one who was in the wrong to live beyond the year, to
which St. Gerald assented; and in six months the death of the unhappy
noble showed how dangerous it was to undertake such experiments with
a saint.[1197] This, indeed, may be held to have warrant of high
authority, for when, in 336, Alexander Bishop of Constantinople
was about to engage in disputation with the arch-heretic Arius, he
underwent a long fast, and shut himself up for many days and nights
alone in his church praying to God, and finally supplicating that if
his faith were wrong he might not live to see the day of contest, while
if Arius were in error he likewise might be taken off in advance; and
the orthodoxy of the Nicene creed was confirmed miraculously by the
sudden and terrible death of Arius within a few days.[1198]
The error of the Arian doctrine of the Trinity was demonstrated by
another volunteer miracle about the year 510, when Deuterius the Arian
Bishop of Constantinople undertook to baptize a convert in the name of
the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost, and was rebuked for using
this heretical formula by the sudden disappearance of all the water in
the font.[1199]
With these examples may be classed a trial of faith proposed by
Herigarius, one of the earliest Christian converts of Sweden, as
conclusive, though not so dangerous as that of Bishop Poppo. After
frequent disputes with his Pagan neighbors, he one day suggested, when
a storm was approaching, that they should stand on one side and he
on the other, and see which of them would get wet. The rain came down
in torrents and nearly drowned the heathen scoffers, while Herigarius
and a boy in his company serenely looked on, untouched by a single
drop.[1200]
When, at the end of the ninth century, the attacks of Rollo and his
Normans drove the monks of St. Martin of Tours to seek safety for
themselves and the priceless relics of their saint at Auxerre, the body
of St. Martin was deposited in the church of St. Germain near the tomb
of the latter. The miracles wrought by the newcomer speedily caused
a large influx of oblations which the strangers took to themselves.
The monks of St. Germain claimed an equal share on the ground that
the miracles were wrought by the combined merits of both saints. The
Touraingeois resisted the demand, and finally offered to decide the
question by taking a leper and placing him for a night between the
rival reliquaries. If he should in the morning be entirely cured, they
agreed to admit that both saints were concerned in the miracles, and
that the receipts should be shared; but if only one side of him was
restored to health then the saint on whose side he was cured should
have the credit and his monks the money. This was agreed to; the leper
was placed between the tombs, and both parties spent the night in
prayer. In the morning he was found with the half of him towards St.
Martin sound and well, while the side towards St. Germain had not been
in the least benefited. To remove any lingering doubts, he was then
turned around, and the other side was cured. The result was beyond
further question, and the monks of St. Martin were permitted to enjoy
in peace thenceforth the offerings of the faithful.[1201]
It occasionally happened that the direct interference of Heaven,
without the use of formulas, was volunteered to stay the blundering
hand of human justice. In 1219, near Cologne, a man was condemned
for theft and promptly hanged, but when the spectators supposed him
comfortably dead, he suddenly exclaimed, “Your labor is vain; you
cannot strangle me, for my lord bishop St. Nicholas is aiding me. I see
him.” Taking this for a convincing proof of his innocence, the crowd
at once cut him down, and he hastened to the church of Bruweiler to
give thanks for his miraculous escape.[1202] It is curious to observe,
however, that the pious contemporary narrator of this instance of the
power of St. Nicholas is careful to let us understand that the man may
have been guilty after all. St. Olaf of Norway once interfered in the
same way to support, during nine hours of suspension, a man unjustly
hanged on a false accusation of theft.[1203]
Heaven could also be directly appealed to without the intervention
of the hot iron or boiling water. A question of much importance to
northern Italy was thus settled in the tenth century, when Uberto of
Tuscany, driven into exile by Otho the Great, returned after a long
absence, and found his wife Willa with a likely boy whose paternity he
refused to acknowledge. After much parleying, the delicate question
was thus settled. A large assembly, consisting principally of
ecclesiastics, was convened, in which Uberto sat without anything to
distinguish him. The boy, who had never seen him, was placed in the
centre, and prayers were offered by all present that he should be led
by divine instinct to his father. The prayers were promptly answered,
for he rushed without hesitation to the arms of Uberto, who could no
longer indulge in unworthy doubts, and in time Ugo became the most
powerful prince of Italy.[1204]
There would appear to have been a form of ordeal known as the judgment
of the Holy Ghost, but its details are unknown. Pope Stephen VII.
employed it for the condemnation of the body of his predecessor Pope
Formosus, in 896. The corpse was dug up for the purpose, clad in papal
vestments, and brought before a synod of bishops; after condemnation,
the three fingers used in benediction were cut off, and it was cast
into the Tiber. After the murder of Stephen in 898, John IX. assembled
another council which annulled the condemnation and forbade such
proceedings in the future, for the unanswerable reason that a dead body
cannot vindicate itself, and the judgment was still further discredited
when the corpse was fished out of the river, and on being brought into
St. Peter’s all the sacred images there bowed to it. Whatever may have
been the judgment of the Holy Ghost it naturally became obsolete.[1205]
Perhaps the simplest and at the same time one of the most barbarous
of ordeals is prescribed in a MS. of the eleventh century for Jews
unlucky enough to be involved in controversies with Christians. The
Jew was made to stand up and his knees were closely bound together; a
collar made of brambles was placed around his neck, and a switch of
brambles, five cubits long and well furnished with thorns, was smartly
dragged between his thighs. If he escaped without a scratch he was
acquitted.[1206]
In the crazied effort to detect the all-pervading and secret crime
of witchcraft, a number of superstitious observances found currency
among the people which practically assumed the position of ordeals.
Thus in the latter half of the sixteenth century it was believed that
a fragment of earth from a grave, when sanctified in the Mass and
placed on the threshold of a church door, would prevent the egress of
any witch who might be within; and a similar power was attributed to a
splinter of oak from a gallows, sprinkled with holy water and hung up
in the church porch.[1207]