Trial by ordeal was the method used to ascertain the guilt or innocence of a person accused of crime, according to his ability to perform certain acts, or accomplish results which would, in the ordinary course of events, be hurtful to him.[1]

If the suspected criminal was injured or killed in the performance of the act required of him, he was adjudged guilty, but if he performed the part assigned to him without injury, he was declared innocent. The tests that the suspected person was subjected to were called ordeals,[2] or judgments of God.

The custom of referring disputed questions such as the guilt or innocence of a person accused of crime, to the judgment of God, to be determined either by lot, or the success of certain dangerous experiments, has existed, from the earliest times, among various widely separated nations and peoples.[3]

We find that according to the “law of jealousies,” laid down in the Mosaic code Fifteen hundred years before Christ, the guilt of a woman, accused of infidelity, by her husband, was determined according to this trial of ordeal, for it is recorded:

Compurgation of accused persons, by fire, existed among the ancient Greeks,[5] and the Hindus practiced ordeal in nine different ways,—by the balance, by fire, by water, by poison, by the cosha, or drinking water, in which the images of the sun and other deities had been washed, by chewing rice, by hot oil, by red hot iron, and by drawing two images out of a jar, into which they had been thrown.[6]

The most generally used ordeals throughout ancient Europe were: Trial by battle, in which the vanquished one was adjudged guilty; trial by the ordeal of fire; trial by water; trial by the corsned; the trial of the eucharist; the trial by the cross and the test by judgment of the bier.

In trial by battle, the accuser and accused fought in mortal combat to determine the guilt or innocence of the suspected person.[7] In the trial by fire, the accused walked bare-footed, over red hot plow-shares, or coals of fire,[8] carried a red hot iron in his hand, or walked through flames, clad in a suit of wax, spread over woolen cloth, known as the “trial of the waxen shirt,” because if he was unhurt by the fire and the wax was unmelted, he was considered innocent, but otherwise was adjudged guilty.[9]

The trial by water was either by cold or boiling water. If the former, which was the test usually applied to witches, the guilt was determined by the ability of the accused to float or sink, when cast into the water.[10] Where the ordeal by boiling water was used, the accused had to take a stone out of boiling water, by inserting his hand into a caldron, containing boiling water, as deep as his wrist, and if the triple ordeal was used, the boiling water was deepened so that he had to insert his arm as far as the elbow to get the stone.[11]

In the offa execrata, or corsned ordeal, a priest put the corsned or hallowed cheese and bread, in the mouth of the accused, with various chants and imprecations and if he swallowed it, he was freed from the judgment, but if it stuck in his throat, he was held to be proven guilty of the offense with which he was charged.[12]

The test of the eucharist was chiefly applied among the monks and clergy, for it was believed that when they took the test, God would smite the guilty, with sickness or death.[13]

In the ordeal of the cross, the accuser and accused were placed under the cross, with their arms extended, and the one whose hands moved first was adjudged to be the guilty one and the other the innocent. A trial by lot, similar to this latter ordeal, occurred when the accused was placed before certain relics with two dice before him, one of which was marked with a cross. If the cross was selected, at hazard, he was acquitted, but otherwise was adjudged guilty.[14]

And finally, the ordeal known as the judgment of the bier was used to determine the guilt of the accused, under a charge of murder. The deceased, supposed to have been murdered, was placed upon a bier, and the accused was made to touch his body. If blood flowed, or foam appeared in the mouth of the murdered person, or the body changed position, the accused was adjudged guilty of the murder, but if none of these signs appeared, he was acquitted.[15]

According to the Institute of Narada,[16] the ordeal was used four or five centuries before Christ, in India, for we find that the balance, fire, water, poison and the sacred libation, were considered the five divine tests, for determining the guilt or innocence of suspected persons.

From the formulas given in the Institute of Narada, the most solemn ceremonies accompanied the application of the tests used in the trials by ordeal, in India, in ancient days. In describing the different tests, it is said:

Charlemagne apparently did not place much dependence in the judicium Dei, by means of the ordeal, at the beginning of his reign, for in 779, by his edict the trial by ordeal was to be used in the more trifling offenses, while cases of greater magnitude were to be tried by the civil law of the realm.[19]

Later on in his reign, however, by his edicts of the year 806 and 809 this monarch seems to have come to regard the ordeal with much greater favor, for he frequently referred to this method of trial; when dividing up his empire between his sons he directed that all disputes should be settled by ordeal, and endeavored to force a greater regard for the judgments in trials by ordeal, on the part of the subjects, whom, it seems, had come to entertain his own early distrust in this species of trials.[20]

It seems that Charlemagne completely believed in the efficacy of the ordeal, by the year 794, for we are told that in this year, a certain Bishop Peter, who was condemned by the Synod of Frankfort to clear himself of the suspicion of complicity in a conspiracy of treason against Charlemagne, being unable to obtain conjurators, one of his vassals offered to attempt the test of the ordeal, as his proxy, and on his success, the Bishop was adjudged innocent of the charge and was reinstated.[21]

Soon after the death of Charlemagne, in the year 816, Louis-le-Debonnaire, at the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, prohibited the continuance of the ordeal of the cross,[22] because it had a tendency to bring the Christian symbol into contempt and his son, the Emperor Lothair also issued a similar edict against the use of this ordeal, after he assumed the reigns of government.[23]

Among the early Saxons, the ordeals by fire and water were practiced, for we find that the ordale signified judicium aequum, justum, indifferens, “an upright, just and indifferent judgment.”[24]

Tacitus tells us that the ancestors of our Saxon forefathers, during pagan times, were addicted to divination and risked certain results upon the flying of birds, the neighing of horse and trial by combat.[25] And trial by ordeal was used by them in both civil and criminal cases, to determine the issues later solved by the testimony of witnesses, or the oaths of compurgators.[26]

The ordeal of hot water appears in the laws of Ine,[27] who began his reign in the year 710, and the ordeals by fire and water had become so common by the time of King Athelstan, that we find the procedure governing such trial, fully covered by his Constitutions,[28] by which they were considered in the light of religious ceremonies:

For three days before the trial, the accused was to attend the priest, to be constant at mass, to make his offering and in the interim, to sustain himself on nothing but bread, salt, water and onions. On the day of the trial he was to take the sacrament and swear he was not guilty of the crime imputed to him. The accuser and accused both came to the place of trial, with not more than twelve persons each, to stay any interposition or violence and the accuser then renewed his charge upon oath and the accused made his purgation on oath also. If the ordeal was by hot water, he put his wrist or arm into the boiling water, accordingly whether it was the simple or triple test, and if the trial was by cold water, his thumbs were tied to his toes and he was cast into the water. If he escaped the boiling water unhurt, or sank in the cold water, he was adjudged innocent, but if he was burned by the hot water, or swam in the cold water, he was adjudged guilty, as charged by his accuser.[31]

These trials by water and fire were called judicium Dei, or, as the Mirror of Justice puts it, miracles of God, but “Christianity suffered not that they be by such wicked arts cleared, if one may otherwise avoid it.”[32]

From this observation in the Mirror, it has been contended that the Anglo-Saxons distinguished between open and manifest offenses and those not so public as to be susceptible of proof and that trial by ordeal was only used in the latter class of crimes.[33]

It is true that in Alfred’s time there were trials by jury, and it seems that trial by ordeal may have been re-established, after trial by jury, in doubtful cases, as a refuge or solution of an otherwise doughty problem for the barbarian mind to solve.[34]

Pursuance to the terms of a certain league, made between Edward the Elder and Guthrun, the Dane, ordeals were forbidden upon festivals or fasting days[35] and the same provision was inserted in the constitution made by the synod held at Eanham, under King Ethelred.[36]

The laws of Canute and Edward the Confessor also contained provisions forbidding trials by ordeal upon festivals or fasting days, for we read that the judicium Dei, upon these auspicious occasions, was to be postponed, until the affairs of mortals could be better arranged for its reception, by the following provision:[37]

In the simple ordeal, of the Anglo-Saxons, the hot iron weighed one pound and in the triple ordeal, it was to weigh three pounds. The triple ordeal was used in the crimes of arson and murder, treason and forgery.[38]

In the laws of Edward the Elder, perhaps the earliest reference in Anglo-Saxon laws, to the ordeal, it was provided that perjured persons, or those once convicted should not thereafter be deemed oath-worthy, but on their accusation, should be hurried to the ordeal,[39] and similar provisions are to be found in the laws of Ethelred, Cnut and Henry I.[40]

Trial by ordeal at first carried with it the sanction of the priest, as well as the civil power and the clergy continued to approve and interject the spiritual portion of the proceeding, until the early portion of the thirteenth century.[41] Under the law of William the Conqueror, the conduct of the ordeal, as a known ecclesiastical procedure, was declared to be the business of the bishop, but the civil and spiritual powers were to co-operate harmoniously, in the trial by ordeal, the court of the hundred making the original order by which a man was sent to the ordeal of fire or water, but the bishop presided at the ceremony and regulated the course of the proceeding, in accordance with the solemn religious ceremony, whereby the element used was blessed and the Divine Wisdom of Omnipotence was invoked to the conclusion of the whole proceeding.[42]

The Normans were attached to the procedure, elsewhere discussed, as the trial by battle and they did not relish a procedure which seemed to them to be a mere superstitious formality, fit only for women and old or maimed men. However, ever since the reign of Ina, the Saxons had been accustomed to the ordeal and the laws of Ina and later monarchs continued in effect, and the accused person was entitled to select the ordeal of hot iron, or that of hot water and to undergo, under the supervision of the priest or bishop, a trial, to determine his guilt or innocence of the offense charged.[43]

In the year 1166, in the Assize of Clarendon, and again in the year 1176, in the Assize of Northampton, Henry II. provided for a public mode of accusation for the capital felonies and trial by ordeal was the method of procedure fixed to determine the guilt or innocence of the person charged.[44]

Prior to the thirteenth century perjury was so common and it was so impossible to avoid the effects of a false oath, by the proceedings of men, that the Laws of Henry provided that “No one is to be convicted of a capital crime by testimony.”[45] Mere human testimony was not enough to send a man to the gallows, but one accused of a capital offense was to be entitled to one of the old-world sacred processes, wherein the judicium Dei, was supposed to take the place of the false standards, too often erected by ordinary mortals. The ordeal was then so far “the law of the land” that one accused of a capital offense, who refused the ordeal, could be executed, as an outlaw, because he had thus defied the law of the realm. But one who had not been accorded this “law of the land,” based upon the sacred and Divine belief in the infallibility of the test of ordeal, could not legally be condemned, as trial by jury or by the oaths of witnesses was not yet an accredited method of procedure in cases of capital offense.[46]

Glanville tells us that in his time, about the year 1187, an accused person, who was so far disabled by mayhem that he could not test his guilt or innocence by the ordeal of battle, was entitled to the ordeal of fire or water, to determine his guilt or innocence, this author of the first law book observing:[47]

This corresponds with the statement elsewhere made, that in the early use of this trial, the hot iron ordeal, was confined to the nobility, or patricians, while the water ordeal was generally used among the common people, accused of minor offenses or other than the capital felonies.[48]

By the latter part of the twelfth century, the ordeal had become so discredited, in the time of Henry II. that the law of that reign provided that any one charged before the king’s justices with the crime of murder, theft, robbery, or the receipt of such offenders, or of arson, or forgery, by the oaths of twelve knights of the hundred, or of twelve free and lawful men, in the absence of such knights, should submit to the water ordeal, and if he failed in the experiment, he should lose one foot; and this law afterwards amended, at Northampton in order to make the punishment more severe and the felon also lost his right hand, as well as one of his feet. He was also required to abjure the realm, within forty days and even though he was acquitted by the water ordeal, he was required to find pledges to answer for his good behavior, and if he were later charged with murder, or other felony, he was then required to abjure the realm within the forty days, with all his goods, save what his lord might distrain to discharge his obligations due him.[49] This law was to remain in effect, as long as the king pleased and the effect of this law was that the accused, if convicted, lost a limb and suffered banishment and even if acquitted, by ordeal, he was likewise banished, for such was the doubt then entertained as to the justness of the trial by ordeal.[50]

This doubt upon the justness of the trial by ordeal, was due, in large measure to the fact that many such trials were fraudulently managed, by the Bishops, to bring about the acquittal of the accused.

It is related that William Rufus, who had caused fifty Englishmen of good family, to be tried by ordeal for the violation of some law of the realm, after their acquittal by the ordeal of the hot iron, declared that he would try them again by the judgment of his court and would not abide by this pretended judgment of God, “which was made favorable or unfavorable, at any man’s pleasure.”[51] And Henry II., likewise convinced of the fraud accompanying such acquittals, by this means, also refused to give final effect to such acquittals.[52]

Trial by ordeal continued in England until the judgments of councils, in the reign of Henry III., but in the third year of the reign of this monarch on January 27’, 1219, direction was given to the justices itinerant for the northern counties of the kingdom not to try persons charged with murder, arson, robbery, theft or other felonies, by the ordeals of fire or water, but for the present, until further provision could be made, to keep them in prison, so as not to endanger their life or limb[53] and those charged with the inferior offenses were to be compelled to abjure the realm.[54]

This order of council, during the reign of Henry III., had such a potent influence toward abolishing the superstitious trial of ordeal, that it went quite out of use by the time of Bracton, who makes no mention of it in his book.[55]

Compurgation by witnesses was substituted, in England in the early part of the thirteenth century, for the former mode of compurgation by ordeal and the latter became an obsolete procedure in England, until revived in the crime of witchcraft, by James I., where it was quite generally used, to determine the guilt or innocence of persons accused of sorcery, because of the absence of any other test to apply, to determine their guilt or innocence.[56] This superstitious monarch maintained that trial by ordeal was an infallible test in cases of witchcraft, because the pure elements of fire and water would not receive those who had renounced the sacred privileges of their baptism and by his authority and example thousands of cases of cruelty and oppression resulted, in the use of the ordeal, as applied to cases of sorcery, during the craze of that delusion, in Europe,[57] but otherwise, the trial by ordeal passed into history, along with the many other cruel institutions of a past age.

The ordeal was frequently used, in ancient Europe, to establish the paternity of children or the chastity of women, the success or failure of the test being generally accepted as the judgment of God.

In 887 Charles-le-Gros accused his wife, the Empress Richarda, of adultery with Bishop Liutward, and she offered to prove her innocence by the judicial combat, or the ordeal of the red-hot iron.[58]

St. Cunigundi, referred to as the “virgin-wife” of the Emperor St. Henry II., is also reported to have eagerly appealed to the judgment of God, to establish her innocence of the baseless charge of infidelity, preferred against her by her jealous lord, and in vindication of her honor, to have successfully trod, unharmed, the red-hot plow-shares.[59]

In the eleventh century, the unholy purpose of Edward the Confessor—who was himself too ascetic to make his own wife, Editha, the partner of his bed[60]—in his desire to accomplish the death of his own Mother, Queen Emma, because of her partiality to his half brother, Hardicanute—the son of Canute,—was frustrated by the Queen invoking this judgment of God, through the ordeal of the red-hot iron, to establish her innocence of the charge of adultery with Alwyn, the Bishop of Winchester. The Queen triumphantly purged both herself and the Bishop, by the help of St. Sowthin, by walking bare-footed over nine red-hot plow-shares and out of gratitude for this vindication, the Queen and the Bishop each gave nine manors to the Church of Winchester in memory of the nine plow-shares, and it is reported that the King, for preferring the false charge against them, was corrected with stripes.[61]

The Confessor was more successful in ridding himself of his father-in-law, however, and the interesting case of Godwin, Duke of Kent, father of Harold and sometimes called the “King maker of England,” during the reign of Edward the Confessor, also illustrates the superstitious belief in the corsned ordeal.

As the story goes, Duke Godwin was dining with his royal son-in-law Edward the Confessor—for the latter had then married his daughter Editha—and whether premeditated or not, the King repeated the accusation that his brother Alfred had met his death at the hands of Duke Godwin. To vindicate himself old Godwin then invoked the ordeal of the corsned and seizing a morsel of bread he dramatically exclaimed: “May God cause this bread to choke me if I am guilty in thought or in deed of this crime.” Then the King took the bread and blessed it, and, whether he poisoned it or not, when Godwin put it in his mouth and swallowed it, he was suffocated by it and fell down dead.[62]

In this age of scepticism it is hard to accept this superstitious explanation for the end of old Duke Godwin, but the secret of his death is more reasonably accounted for, on the theory of Boccascio’s story of Calen Drino, where the expected miracle was brought about by the secret mixture of aloes in the bread of the corsned, for, as Lea suggests, Edward the Confessor, both because of his dislike for his father-in-law, and his desire to cast off the tutelage in which he was held, in order to further his self interest and rid himself of a hated enemy, would no doubt have secretly mixed poison with the corsned used in this ordeal and then caused the story to be circulated among the superstitious subjects, to account for the Duke’s sudden demise.[63]

We find that the ordeal was utilized in France, in the tenth century in the notable case of Teutberga, the wife of King Lothair, great-grandson of Charlemagne. Desiring to rid himself of his wife, this degenerate grandson of a worthy grand-sire, accused her of incest and forced her to a confession. She afterwards recanted and denied the truth of her confession and offered to establish her innocence by the ordeal of hot water, by proxy.[64]

Hincmar, the most distinguished divine of this period championed the cause of the unfortunate queen and wrote a dissertation upon the infallibility of the test of the ordeals, because they had the guidance of the Divine Wisdom, effectually convincing himself and a large number of the French subjects of the correctness of the judgment by this ordeal, especially when King Lothair so far estopped himself from claiming that he had not desired to get rid of his wife, by espousing his concubine, Waldrada, whom he had, in fact, preferred to the wife he had discredited by the criminal charge against her.[65]

Illustrating the prevalence with which the pagan practice of ordeal had taken possession of the minds of the churchmen of the ninth century, Lea quotes the argument of Hincmar, in his interesting work, “Superstition and Force,”[66] as follows:

Of course the correctness of this syllogism, depends upon the correctness of the first assumption, based upon the delusions and superstitions of a past age, but the conclusion seemed to satisfy a large number of that day, judged by the standards then obtaining, among which was the idea of a Deity who was a bigger, stronger, crueler man—a more “terrible judge.”

Some few of the many interesting trials by ordeal, which obtained during the twelfth century in the reigns of Richard I. and King John, have been reproduced by Sir F. Palgrave, in his “Proofs and Illustrations,” to be found in the Rotuli Curiae Regis[67] for those reigns. Let us examine a few of these old Rolls.

During the witchcraft craze, in Europe, the ordeal of fire and water was frequently invoked by the accused persons, to clear themselves of the charge, but so incensed were the people against those arraigned for this offense that it was difficult to convince the courts and juries of the innocence of the alleged offender, even by this supposed infallible test of the judgment of God. It was presumed that the Devil interfered with the correctness of the termination of the tests in this hated crime and so the poor suspects were condemned, after suffering untold tortures, even though the test of the ordeal favored their innocence of the charge.

The Inquisitor Sprenger cites the case of a witch, tried before the Count of Furstenberg, in 1484. The accused invoked the test of the red-hot iron and the Inquisitor attributed his acquiescence to his youth and inexperience and the fact that he was not acquainted with the methods of the Devil, to further the cause of the sorcerers. Although sentenced to carry the hot iron only six paces, the supposed witch carried it six paces and offered to hold it still longer, if required, as she displayed her hand wholly uninjured. The Count was thus compelled to render a judgment of not guilty against the accused person and at the time Sprenger wrote, in 1487, he reported that she still lived “to the scandal of the faithful.”[70]

The superstition connected with the trial by ordeal, as a means of detecting the guilt or innocence of the participants of the foul crimes of the middle ages, early took a firm hold of the popular imagination and we find repeated references to the ordeal, in the dramatic and popular literature of the different countries where this mode of trial obtained.

The heroic Iceland song of the Elder Edda, supposed to have been composed between the sixth and eighth centuries, utilizes the ordeal as a means of bringing to justice the false witness borne by the accuser, the Concubine Herkia, in her charge of adultery against Gudrun, the wife of Atli.[71] First describing the test, resulting in the innocence of Gudrun, and then the proof of the guilt of her accuser, the poem proceeds:

The ordeal of the bier was exemplified in the current literature of the age of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, for the histories of that King report that when he met the funeral procession of his father Henry II., at Fontevraud, the blood spurted from the nose of the deceased, because of the treason and rebellion of which his son had been guilty.[72]

Shakespeare utilizes this story of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in the funeral scene, in Richard III., where Lady Anne, when interrupted in her grief at the bier of Henry VI., is made to say to the by-standers: