ORDEAL

(In modern Latin, ordalium; from the Ger man urtheil, judgment.) The practice of referring litigated questions, and the guilt or innocence of parties under accusation to the judgment of God (testified, in popular belief, either by the event of lots, or by the succe or failure of certain experiments), is of very ancient date; and was transferred, with other relics of their Pagan institutions, by the Teutonic nations, when settled in the provinces of ancient Rome, to their new bodies of jurisprudence. The ordeal was awarded in various cases; either arbitrarily by the court, or at the request of a party accused, who was anxious to clear himself; eitiier as an alternative for trial by compurgation or by battle, or as the regular mode of deciding:m is sue. In the earlier ages of modern European history, the ordeal was under the peculiar protection of the clergy, who afterwards discountenanced it; and its gradual Buppn must be mainly attributed to the decrees of jKipes and coun cils, of which several were pronounced against it in the course of the thirteenth century, beginning with the decree of the fourth Later an council in 1215. Among the various forms of ordeal in use among different nations, the following are some of the most remarkable. The trial of the eucha rist was used chiefly among the clergy; the accused party took the sacrament in attestation of his innocence, and it was believed that if he were guilty he would be Immediate!) visited with punishment for the sacrilege. Of the same description was the corsnedd, or trial by the consecrated piece of bread or cheese, so much in use among the Anglo Saxons. The triiil of the cro was used, both in civil and criminal questions, in many European countries. See the supplementary formula! to those of Mareuifus, cited by Meyer, In stitutions Judiciaircs, liv. ii., c. C. It appears that the lit i gants, or the accuser and accused, were to stand upright be fore a cro , and that he who fell or changed his position first was cast or condemned. This popular mode of ordeal was abolished by the capitulary of 816, in the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, as irreverent towards the mystery of the Cro : but the abolition seems only to have been carried in to effect in Italy and the provinces adjoining the seat of empire. The ordeal of hot water, in which the accused party plunged his hand into a ve el of boiling water, was used by the Salian Franks, when pagans, as early as the fifth century. It was afterwards extensively practised. In what WIS called the expurgatio simplex, the accused party plunged his arm to the wrist; in the triple ordeal, to the elbow Trials by burning iron were of various sorts: carrying a redhot bar in the hand, and walking barefoot over heated ploughshares, mentioned in the imperial capitulary of 803, and adopted in England, as is well known from the celebrated example of Queen Emma. Among the Saxons, the iron was awarded to freemen, the water to those of inferior conditions. There can be no doubt that, in these severer forms of ordeal, some precaution was occasionally used by the clergy, under whose inspection and management the trial took place, to preserve parties whom it was wished " clear from. suspicion from the ordinary consequences of such exposure. There were also ordeals by lot, as by the casual choice between a pair of dice, one marked with a cro and the other blank, mentioned in the laws of the Prisons. The famous trial of the bier, in which the supposed perpetrator was required to touch the body of a murdered person, and was pronounced guilty if the blood flowed, may be regarded as a species of ordeal, although founded more on usage than legal enactment; as this form of superstition did not become prevalent until later times, when ordeals were no longer a recognised part of the law. To the same head may be referred the various absurd and cruel methods wn.cn were adopted in different countries to try susnected witcnes. One of the most remarkable instances of the solemn application of the ordeal in later times took place in 14<)S, when the truth of the doctrines preached by Savonarola, a celebrated monk at Florence, was put to the lest by a challenge l»- tween one of bis disciples and a Francis can friar to walk through a burning pile. This, however, may be rather rementgardedthanastheas an appeal example of an of enthusiast a recognised to the us aged'\ineOrdealsjudgare of common use in the judicial practice of various heathen nations, especially of the Hindoos [s. 870]