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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. In England , ordeals were common under both the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans . Fire was the element typically used to test noble defendants, while water was more commonly used by lesser folk. Priestly cooperation in trials by fire and water was forbidden by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 , and replaced by Compurgation .1. Trials by ordeal became more rare over the Late Middle Ages , often replaced by confessions extracted under Torture , but the practice was discontinued only in the 16th Century . Johannes Hartlieb in 1456 reports a popular superstition on how to identify a thief by an Ordeal By Ingestion practiced privately without judicial sanction. ORDEAL OF FIRE This test typically required that the accused walk a certain distance, usually nine feet, over Red-hot Ploughshare s 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 Fester ing - in which case the suspect would be Exile d or executed. 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 be 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 ( 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 Ordeal of hot water First mentioned in the 6th century '' Lex Salica '', the ordeal of hot water requires the accused to dip his hand in a kettle of boiling water. A similar practice was known in India , described in the law code of Narada . Ordeal of cold water This ordeal has a precedent in the Code Of Hammurabi , where a man accused of Sorcery is to be submerged in a stream and acquitted if he survives. The practice occurred in Frankish law and was abolished by Louis The Pious in 829 . The practice did re-appear in the Late Middle Ages, however. In the '' Dreieicher Wildbann '' of 1338, a man accused of Poaching is to be submerged in a Barrel three times, and to be considered guilty if he sinks to the bottom. This ordeal became also associated with the Witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th 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. A late witch process to include this ordeal took place in Szegedin , Hungary in 1728 (Böhmer, ''ius eccles.'' 5.608). cast him 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 ) The ordeal of water is also proscribed by the Vishnu Smrti ( Sacred Books Of The East , vol. 7, tr. Julius Jolly), chapter 12, which is one of the texts of the Dharmaśāstra. {Link without Title} ORDEAL OF THE CROSS The ordeal of the cross was apparently introduced in the Early Middle Ages by the church in an attempt to discourage Judicial Duels among the Germanic Peoples . As in the case of such duels, and unlike the case of most other ordeals, the accuser has to undergo the ordeal together with the accused. They stand on either side of a cross and stretch out their hands horizontally. The one to first lower his arms loses. This ordeal was proscribed by Charlemagne in 779 and again in 806 . A decree of Lothar I recorded in 876 on the other hand rules its abolition so as to avoid mockery of Christ. ORDEAL OF INGESTION Further information: Corsned
OTHER ORDEAL METHODS
PARODIES OF TRIALS BY ORDEAL A humorous parody, illustrating the absurdity of trials by ordeal, is included in the Monty Python film, '' Monty Python And The Holy Grail ''. A crowd of medieval villagers bring a woman to Sir Bedevere , accusing her of witchcraft. The villagers admit that they gave her a fake nose and had dressed her up to appear more like a witch. Sir Bedevere, not fully convinced, proposes a Non Sequitur test to determine whether or not she is a witch: witches burn, and so does wood, so witches are made of wood; wood floats on water, and so do ducks, therefore, if she weighs as much as a duck, she is a witch. (She does, and is carried off by the villagers to be burned, adding, "It's a fair cop"—that is, that she was rightly accused and properly tried.) NOTES REFERENCES
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