ORDEAL, an ancient form of trial. See TRIAL.
It was peculiarly distinguished by the appellation of
judicium Dei; and sometimes vulgaris purgatio, to distinguish it from the canonical purgation, which was by the oath of the party. This was of two sorts, either fire-ordeal, or water-ordeal; the former being confined to persons of higher rank, the latter to the common people. Both these might be performed by deputy: but the principal was to answer for the success of the trial; the deputy only venturing some corporal pain, for hire, or perhaps for friendship.
Fire-ordeal was performed either by taking up in the hand, unhurt, a piece of red-hot iron, of one, two, or three pounds weight; or else by walking, barefoot, and blindfold, over nine red-hot ploughshares, laid lengthwise at unequal distances: and if the party escaped being hurt, he was adjudged innocent; but if it happened otherwise, as without collusion it usually did, he was then condemned as guilty. However, by this latter method queen Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, is mentioned to have cleared her character, when suspected of familiarity with Alwyn bishop of Winchester.
Water-ordeal was performed, either by plunging the bare arm up to the elbow in boiling-water, and escaping unhurt thereby: or by casting the person suspected into a river or pond of cold water; and, if he floated therein without any action of swimming, it was deemed an evidence of his guilt; but, if he sunk, he was acquitted. It is easy to trace out the traditional relics of this water-ordeal, in the ignorant barbarity still practised in many countries to discover witches, by casting them into a pool of water, and drowning them to prove their innocence. And in the Eastern empire the fire-ordeal was used to the same purpose by the emperor Theodore Lascaris; who, attributing his sickness to magic, caused all those whom he suspected to handle the hot iron: thus joining (as has been well remarked) to the most dubious crime in the world, the most dubious proof of innocence.
And indeed this purgation by ordeal seems to have been very ancient, and very universal in the times of superstitious barbarity. It was known to the ancient Greeks: for in the Antigone of Sophocles, a person, suspected by Creon of a misdemeanor, declares himself ready "to handle hot iron, and to walk over fire," in order to manifest his innocence; which, the scholiast tells us, was then a very usual purgation. And Grotius gives us many instances of water-ordeal in Bithynia, Sardinia, and other places. There is also a very peculiar species of water-ordeal, said to prevail among the Indians on the coast of Malabar; where a person accused of any enormous crime is obliged to swim over a large river abounding with crocodiles, and, if he escapes unhurt, he is reputed innocent. As in Siam, besides the usual methods of fire and water ordeal, both parties are sometimes exposed to the fury of a tiger let loose for that purpose: and, if the beast spares either, that person is accounted innocent; if neither, both are held to be guilty; but if he spares both, the trial is incomplete, and they proceed to a more certain criterion.
One cannot but be astonished at the folly and impiety of pronouncing a man guilty, unless he was cleared by a miracle; and of expecting that all the powers of nature should be suspended, by an immediate interposition of Providence to save the innocent, whenever
Order whenever it was presumptuously required. And yet
Ordinary. in England, so late as King John's time, we find
grants to the bishops and clergy to use the judicium
ferri, aqua, et ignis. And, both in England and
Sweden, the clergy presided at this trial, and it was
only performed in the churches or in other consecrated
ground: for which Stiernhook gives the reason, Non
desuit illis opera et laboris pretium; semper enim ab
eiusmodi iudicio aliquid lucri sacerdotibus obveniebat.
But, to give it its due praise, we find the canon law
very early declaring against trial by ordeal, or vulgaris
purgatio, as being the fabric of the devil, cum sit con-
tra preceptum Domini, Non tentabis Dominum Deum
tuum. Upon this authority, though the canons them-
selves were of no validity in England, it was thought
proper (as had been done in Denmark above a century
before) to disuse and abolish this trial entirely in our
courts of justice, by an act of parliament in 3 Hen.
III. according to Sir Edward Coke, or rather by an
order of the king in council.