CONFIDENCE REPOSED IN THE ORDEAL.
The degree of confidence really inspired by the results of the ordeal
is a somewhat curious subject of speculation on which definite opinions
are not easily reached. Judicially, the trial was, for the most part,
conclusive; he who had duly sunk under water, walked unharmed among
the burning shares, or withdrawn an unblistered hand from a caldron of
legal temperature, stood forth among his fellows as innocent. So, even
now, the verdict of a few fools or knaves in a jury-box may discharge a
criminal, against the plainest dictates of common sense, but in neither
case would the sentiments of the community be probably changed by the
result. The reverential feelings which alone could impart faith in
the system seem scarcely compatible with the practice of compounding
for ordeals, which, as we have seen above (p. 384), was occasionally
permitted.
Charlemagne, at the commencement of his reign, does not seem to have
entertained much respect for the judgment of God when he prescribed
the administration of the ordeal for trifling affairs only, cases
of magnitude being reserved for the regular investigation of the
law.[1265] Thirty years later, the public mind appears afflicted with
the same doubts, for we find the monarch endeavoring to enforce
confidence in the system by his commands.[1266] The repeated use of
the ordeal in the affair of the divorce of Teutberga shows that it was
expected to have no little effect on public opinion, and the same is
seen when in 876 Charlemagne’s grandson, Louis of Saxony, forced to
defend his dominions against his uncle Charles le Chauve, commenced
by proving the justness of his title by the judgment of God. After
fasting and prayer ten of his followers were exposed to the ordeal
of red-hot iron and ten each to those of cold and boiling water; all
escaped without injury, and the righteousness of the verdict was shown
soon after by the victory of Andernach, which sent the invader flying
back to France.[1267] Yet a rule of English law, nearly four hundred
years later, during the expiring struggles of the practice, would show
that the result was regarded as by no means conclusive. By the assizes
of Clarendon in 1166, which directed that all malefactors defamed for
murder, robbery, and other felonies should be at once tried by the
water ordeal, it was provided that those who had confessed or who had
been found in possession of stolen property should not be allowed the
privilege of clearing themselves in this manner; and a still more
irreverential rule decreed that those who were pronounced innocent by
the judgment of God, if regarded as guilty by common report, should
have eight days to quit the kingdom, under pain of outlawry.[1268] In
the revision of these laws, made at Northampton ten years later, it was
provided that in all cases those who passed safely through the ordeal
should give bail for their future good conduct, except in charges of
murder or aggravated felony, when they were banished within forty
days, under penalty of outlawry as before.[1269]
St. Ivo of Chartres, though he had no scruple in recommending and
enjoining the ordeal for laymen, and, on one occasion at least,
pronounced its decisions as beyond appeal, yet has placed on record his
conviction of its insufficiency, and his experience that the mysterious
judgment of God not infrequently allowed in this manner the guilty to
escape and the innocent to be punished.[1270] A case related by Peter
Cantor in the twelfth century shows how recklessly it often was abused
as a relief to careless judges in doubtful cases. Two Englishmen were
returning in company from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, when one of
them wandered off to the shrine of St. Jago de Compostella, and the
other went directly home. The kindred of the absent one accused the
latter of murdering his companion; as no evidence was procurable on
either side, he was hurried to the ordeal, convicted, and executed,
shortly after which the missing man came back in safety.[1271]
The manifest injustice of the decisions thus rendered by the ordeal put
a severe strain on the faith of believers, and led them to the most
ingenious sophistry for an explanation. When, in 1127, the sacrilegious
murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, sent a thrill of
horror throughout Europe, Lambert of Redenberg, whose participation
in the crime was notorious, succeeded in clearing himself by the hot
iron. Shortly afterwards he undertook the siege of Ostbourg, which
he prosecuted with great cruelty, when he was killed in a sally of
the besieged. The pious Galbert assumes that Lambert, notwithstanding
his guilt, escaped at the ordeal in consequence of his humility and
repentance, and philosophically adds: “Thus it is that in battle the
unjust man is killed, although in the ordeal of water or of fire he may
escape, if truly repentant.”[1272] The same doctrine was enunciated
under John Cantacuzenes, in the middle of the fourteenth century, by
a bishop of Didymoteichos in Thrace. A frail fair one being violently
suspected by her husband, the ordeal of hot iron was demanded by him.
In this strait she applied to the good bishop, and he, being convinced
of her repentance and intention to sin no more, assured her that in
such a frame of mind she might safely venture on the trial, and she
accordingly carried the glowing bar triumphantly twice around the
bishop’s chair, to the entire satisfaction of her lord and master.[1273]
In fact it was a recognized doctrine of the Church that confession,
contrition, and absolution so thoroughly washed away a sin that
a culprit thus prepared could safely tempt the justice of God. A
case related by Cæsarius of Heisterbach as a most edifying example
illustrates the curious nature of the superstition thus inculcated
by the religious teachers of the period. In the diocese of Utrecht a
fisherman notoriously maintained illicit relations with a woman, and
fearing to be called to account for it by an approaching synod, where
he would be convicted by the red-hot iron, and be forced to marry her,
he consulted a priest. This ghostly counsellor advised him that, if he
was firmly resolved to sin no more, he could safely deny the fact and
endure the ordeal, after receiving absolution. The event verified the
prediction; he carried the burning iron unhurt, and to the surprise
of all the country round he was acquitted. Shortly afterwards, while
in his boat, a companion expressed his wonder, when the fisherman,
whose short-lived repentance was already over, boastingly struck his
hand on the water, exclaiming, “It hurt me no more than that!” By the
marvellous justice of God, the water was to him as red-hot iron, and
as he hastily withdrew his hand the skin peeled off in strips.[1274]
Even as late as 1539, the learned Ciruelo reproves the use of ordeals
because the accused, though innocent of the special crime at issue, may
succumb in consequence of other offences; or though guilty may escape
because he has confessed and received absolution; and he states that he
had personally known more than one case in which women, rightly accused
of adultery by their husbands and forced to undergo the ordeal, had
thus succeeded in being acquitted.[1275]
This doctrine of Ciruelo’s that the innocent were sometimes liable to
conviction on account of previous misdeeds was likewise a belief of old
standing. We have already seen (p. 137) that there was papal authority
for it in the wager of battle. A striking instance of the vague notions
current is afforded in the middle of the eleventh century by a case
related by Othlonus, in which a man accused of horse-stealing was tried
by the cold-water ordeal and found guilty. Knowing his own innocence,
he appealed to the surrounding monks, and was told that it must be in
consequence of some other sin not properly redeemed by penance. As he
had confessed and received absolution before the trial, he denied this,
till one of them pointed out that in place of allowing his beard to
grow, as was meet for a layman, he had impiously carried the smooth
chin reserved for ecclesiastics. Confessing his guilt, promising due
penance, and vowing never to touch his beard with a razor again, he
was conducted a second time to the water, and being now free from all
unrepented sin, he was triumphantly acquitted. It is added that, taking
advantage of a quibble as to the kind of instrument employed, he lapsed
again into the sin of shaving, when the anger of Heaven manifested
itself by allowing him to fall into the hands of an enemy, who put out
his eyes.[1276]
Yet, on the other hand, the ordeal sometimes was regarded as the most
satisfactory kind of proof, entitled to respect beyond any other
species of evidence. The age was not logical, men acted more from
impulse than from reason, and the forms of jurisprudence were still
in a state too chaotic for regular and invariable rules to be laid
down. The confusion existing in the popular mind is well illustrated
by a case occurring in the twelfth century. A serf of the Abbey of
Marmoutiers married a serf who had been given by the Viscount of
Blois to one of his retainers named Erbald. The husband purchased
his wife’s liberty, and by paying an additional sum had the deed of
manumission confirmed by the viscount and viscountess. Years passed
away, the serf and wife died, and then also their son, when their
property fell to the abbey, which enjoyed it until the heirs of
Erbald and the viscount claimed it. The monks produced the deeds of
manumission, and the viscountess, then the only surviving witness to
the transaction, testified to its authenticity, but to no purpose. The
claimants demanded the wager of battle, and the monks, in refusing
this as unsuited to their calling, were obliged to produce a man who
offered to undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron to prove the validity of
the deed. Then the claimants at last desisted, but still succeeded in
extorting sixteen livres from the abbey as the price of appending their
signatures to the controverted deed.[1277]
In general, however, as the result depended mostly upon those who
administered the ordeal, it conferred an irresponsible power to release
or to condemn, and it would be expecting too much of human nature
to suppose that men did not yield frequently to the temptation to
abuse that power. When Sigurd Thorlaksson was accused by Saint Olaf
the King of the murder of his foster-brother Thoralf, and offered to
clear himself by the red-hot iron, King Olaf accepted his offer, and
appointed the next day for the trial at Lygra, where the bishop was
to preside over it. When Sigurd went back at night to his ship, he
said to his comrades that their prospects were gloomy, for the king
had probably caused himself the death of Thoralf, and then brought
the accusation against them, adding, “For him, it is an easy matter
to manage the iron ordeal so that I doubt he will come ill off who
tries it against him;” whereupon they hoisted sail in the darkness and
escaped to their home in the Faroe Islands.[1278] The collusion thus
hinted at must often have been practised, and must have shaken the most
robust faith, and this cause of disbelief would receive additional
strength from the fact that the result itself was not seldom in doubt,
victory being equally claimed by both parties. Of this we have already
seen examples in the affairs of the lance of St. Andrew and of the
Archbishop of Milan, and somewhat similar is an incident recorded by
the Bollandists in the life of St. Swithin, in which, by miraculous
interposition, the opposing parties beheld entirely different results
from an appeal to the red-hot iron.[1279]
Efforts of course were made from time to time to preserve the purity
of the appeal, and to secure impartiality in its application. Clotair
II., in 595, directs that three chosen persons shall attend on each
side to prevent collusion;[1280] and among the Anglo-Saxons, some four
hundred years later, Ethelred enjoins the presence of the prosecutor
under penalty of loss of suit and fine of twenty _ores_, apparently for
the same object, as well as to give authenticity to the decision.[1281]
So in Hungary, the laws of St. Ladislas, in 1092, direct that three
sworn witnesses shall be present to attest the innocence or guilt of
the accused as demonstrated by the result.[1282] A rule announced by
the Council of Grateley in 928, that if the accused is accompanied by
more than twelve comrades he shall be adjudged as though he had failed
in the ordeal, points to an obvious source of miscarriage of justice
by which a crowd of partisans could interfere with the proceedings and
then proclaim that the result had been successful.[1283] A law adopted
by the Scottish Parliament under William the Lion, in the second
half of the twelfth century, shows that corruption was not uncommon,
by forbidding those concerned in the administration of ordeals from
receiving bribes to divert the course of justice,[1284] and a further
precaution was taken by prohibiting the Barons from adjudging the
ordeal without the intervention of the sheriff to see that law and
justice were observed.[1285]
In spite of all that we have seen, the ordeal, with its undoubted
cruelty, was not as cruel as it appears to us, and in its practical
results it probably acquitted the guilty far more often than it
convicted the innocent. Mr. Maitland tells us that in his researches
in the English records from 1201 till the abolition of the ordeal in
1219—a period in which, as stated above (p. 387), it was in constant
use—he has found but one instance in which it failed to clear the
accused.[1286] It is true that the cold-water ordeal was the one most
freely resorted to, but the red-hot iron was also freely employed, and
the one case of failure occurred in the water ordeal. At this distance
of time it would be useless to frame a positive explanation of this,
although bribery and collusion of course naturally suggest themselves
in the notorious and almost universal corruption of the period.
Contemporaries reconciled themselves to this as best they could, but
while relying comfortably upon the inscrutable judgment of God, and the
preservative power of contrition and confession, they were not without
other solutions of the problem.
We have seen that in the judicial duel magic arts were popularly
supposed to have power to control the interposition of God. This was
likewise the case with the vulgar ordeals, and in addition a special
power was attributed to the use or abuse of the holy chrism. The
Council of Tours, in 813, informs us that it was generally believed
that a criminal who drank the chrism or anointed himself with it could
not be convicted by any ordeal.[1287] So serious indeed was this
considered that Charlemagne in 809 decreed that a priest giving out the
chrism for this purpose should not only be degraded but should lose a
hand—a law which long continued in force, nominally at least.[1288]
The belief was not ephemeral, for until the early part of the twelfth
century a canon was carried through all the collections which speaks
of the matter as a fact proved by experience.[1289] The superstition
probably died out towards the middle of the century when the number
of sacraments was increased from three to seven, and the comparative
importance of the chrism was thus diminished in the popular eyes. The
belief that the judgment of God could be perverted or eluded by magic
arts still continued, however, and precautions were commonly taken to
prevent their use.[1290] Holy water, moreover, was lavishly sprinkled
on the materials employed in the ordeal and on the patient, and was
given to him to drink to prevent diabolic illusions by which it was
imagined that the purposes of God could be defeated.[1291]
Precautions also were taken to guard against processes by which, in the
fire ordeals, it was believed that the human frame could be rendered
incombustible, and for this object a widely prevailing custom required
that for three days previous the hand should be wrapped up to guard
against its being thus fortified.[1292] The nature of these unguents
may be guessed from a prescription given by Albertus Magnus, consisting
of mallow and radish juice, white of egg, lime, and “psillus” seeds,
the use of which he assures us will enable a man with impunity to enter
the flames or to carry red-hot iron.[1293] Doubtless reliance on some
such expedients may partially explain the readiness with which the
ordeal was undertaken.