|
TRIAL BY ORDEAL
Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful task. If either the task is completed without injury, or the injuries sustained are healed quickly, the accused is considered innocent. Like trial by combat, it was a judicium Dei: a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf.
In Europe, ordeals commonly required an accused person to test himself or herself against fire or water, though the precise nature of the proof varied considerably at different times and places. A classic history of the subject is Henry C. Lea's Superstition and Force (Greenwood, 1968; reprint of 1870 edition.)
Ordeal of fire
This test typically required that the accused walk a certain distance, usually nine feet, over red-hot ploughshares or holding a red-hot iron. Innocence was sometimes established by a complete lack of injury, but it was more common for the wound to be bandaged and reexamined three days later by a priest, who would pronounce that God had intervened to heal it, or that it was merely festering - in which case the suspect would have exile or execution added to their problems. One famous instance of the ordeal of ploughshares concerned Emma of Normandy, accused of adultery with the Bishop of Winchester in the mid-eleventh century. If church chroniclers are to believed, she was so manifestly innocent that she had already walked over the blades when she asked if her trial would soon begin.
Another form of the ordeal required that an accused remove a stone from a pot of boiling water, oil, or lead. The assessment of the injury, and the consequences of a miracle or lack thereof, followed a similar procedure to that described in the preceding paragraph. An early (non-judicial) example of the test was described by Gregory of Tours in the seventh century AD. He tells how a Catholic saint (Hyacinth) bested an Arian rival by plucking a stone from a boiling cauldron. Gregory accepted that it took Hyacinth about an hour to complete the task (because the waters were bubbling so ferociously), but he was pleased to record that when the heretic tried, he had the skin boiled off up to his elbow.
Ordeal of water
Gregory of Tours (died 695) recorded the common expectation that with a millstone round his or her neck, the guilty would sink: "The cruel pagans cast him [Quirinus, bishop of the church of Sissek] into a river with a millstone tied to his neck, and when he had fallen into the waters he was long supported on the surface by a divine miracle, and the waters did not suck him down since the weight of crime did not press upon him." (Historia Francorum i.35)
This superstition was frequently used to test innocence and guilt during the Dark Ages and medieval era. The accused would be immersed in a well or stream, bound tightly to ensure that he or she did not interfere with divine justice. The innocent were expected to sink, while the guilty would float. Innocent people would then be rescued — not left to drown, as is popularly portrayed — though the rescue was not always successful.
Another type of trial by water, used specifically against women suspected of adultery, tested the accused by requiring that she consume 'bitter water' and be condemned only if 'her belly shall swell and her thigh shall rot'. It can be found in the Torah (where it is known as the Sotah) and the Old Testament (Numbers 5:12-31). It reverses ordinary expectations, in that it seems to require a miracle to convict rather than acquit - but one writer has recently argued that it has a rational basis, envisioning punishment only upon clear proof of pregnancy (a swelling belly) or venereal disease (a rotting thigh). [1]
In England, ordeals were common under both the Saxons and the Normans. Fire was the element typically used to test noble defendants, while water was more commonly used by lesser folk. A deputy could be nominated in certain circumstances.
Priestly cooperation in trials by fire and water was forbidden by Pope Innocent IV at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Its effect was slow and piecemeal, and certain superstitions would linger for centuries. The ordeal of water would, for example, revive with a vengeance during the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and demonologists would develop inventive new theories about how it worked. Some argued that witches floated because they had renounced baptism when entering the Devil's service. Jacob Rickius claimed that they were supernaturally light, and recommended weighing them as an alternative to dunking them. King James I (and VI of Scotland) claimed in his Daemonologie that water was so pure an element that it repelled the guilty.
In any event, Innocent IV's decision to abolish ordeals had a dramatic effect on criminal justice throughout Europe. On the continent it spurred the development of radically new legal procedures which would come to be known collectively as the Inquisition. In England, it resulted in adoption of the jury trial. An account of both the ordeal's history and its transformation at this time can be found in the first three chapters of Sadakat Kadri's The Trial: Four Thousand Years of Courtroom Drama (Random House, 2006).
Other ordeal methods
- In Hindu law, a husband may require his wife to pass through fire, proving her fidelity by having no traces of being burnt.
- A Burmese ordeal tradition involves the two accused persons to light a candle, with the winner being the owner of the candle that outlasts the other's.
- If the loser is alive after a duel, burning or hanging might ensue to assure that victory belongs to the "judgment of God" (since the victor was believed to have won only due to the aid of divination).
- In medieval times, a Trial by Sacrament was sometimes provided to nobles or other people who could pay for it. The criminal would be forced to swallow bread quickly without chewing. If the accused criminal choked, it was believed that God was not on their side and they were killed. If they were successful, then God had protected them and they escaped punishment.
- some cultures administer the poisonous calabar bean to attempt to detect guilt.
References
- ^ Sadakat Kadri, The Trial: Four Thousand Years of Courtroom Drama (Random House, 2006), p.25.
External links
|