a term applied to an ancient form of trial, derived from the Anglo-Saxon ordeal, compounded, according to Speelman and Duncage, of or, great, and dael, judgment. Lye and Bosworth derive it from or, without, and dael difference; signifying thus a judgment without a difference or distinction of persons, or, in other words, an impartial judgment. It agrees with the German urtheil. (See Hickes, Dissert. Epistol., p. 149.) It consisted in an appeal to the immediate interposition of Divine power, being particularly distinguished by the appellation of judicium Dei; and was sometimes called purgatio vulgaris, to distinguish it from canonical purgation, which was by oath.

That the purgation by ordeal, of some kind or other, is very ancient, admits not of a doubt; and that it was universal in the times of superstitious ignorance, seems to be equally certain. Perhaps the earliest trace of this practice is to be found in the book of Numbers, chap. v., where Hebrew women suspected of incontinency had to drink the "waters of jealousy" as a test of their innocence. The ordeal of the "red drink," employed by the inhabitants of the Gold Coast in Africa, resembles this Jewish custom not a little. (See Kitto's Biblical Cyclopaedia.) It appears even to have been known also to the ancient Greeks; for in the Antigone of Sophocles a person suspected by Creon of a misdemeanour, 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 usual mode of purgation. And Grotius gives many instances of water-ordeal in Bithynia, Sardinia, and other places. It seems, however, to have been carried to a greater height amongst the Hindus than ever it had been in any nation or amongst any people, however rude or barbarous; for in a paper in the Asiatic Researches (vol. i., p. 389), communicated by Hastings, we find that the trial by ordeal amongst that people is conducted in nine different ways: by the balance; by fire; by water; by poison; by the casha, or the water in which an idol has been washed; by rice; by boiling oil; by red-hot iron; and by images. Two kinds of this trial were more common than the rest, at least in Europe,—viz., fire-ordeal and water-ordeal. The former was confined to persons of high rank, the latter to the common people. Both these might be performed by deputy; but the principal was bound to answer for the success of the trial, the deputy only venturing some corporal pain, for hire, or perhaps for friendship; hence the origin of the expression "to go through fire and water" for one. "Fire-ordeal," says Blackstone (Comm., vol. iv., c. 27), "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 unhurt, 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." "The 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 act of swimming, it was deemed an evidence of his guilt, but if he sunk he was acquitted."

The origin of this mode of trial may be traced to necessity as well as to superstition. At the time in which it originated in England, as well as in other countries of Europe, it was no easy matter for an innocent person, when accused of guilt, to get himself cleared by the then established mode of trial. It was therefore natural for superstition to fly to heaven for those testimonies of innocence which the ab- surdity of human laws often prevented men from obtaining in the ordinary course of affairs. In this way, doubtless, did the trial by ordeal commence; and being thus begun by necessitous superstition, it was fostered by impious priestcraft and unjust power. (See Jury Trial.) Besides the particular methods of trial which we have already mentioned, there were some few more common in European countries; as the judicial combat, the ordeal of the cross, and the ordeal of the cornsnel.

The judicial combat was exceedingly common in Germany in very remote ages; but it is not mentioned in any of the Anglo-Saxon laws, and it does not appear to have been much used in England until after the Conquest. It was so much the custom in the middle ages of Christianity to respect the cross, even to superstition, that it would indeed have been wonderful if the same ignorant bigotry had not converted it into an ordeal; and accordingly we find it used for this purpose in so many different ways as almost to preclude description. The cornsnel, or the consecrated bread and cheese, was the ordeal to which the clergy commonly appealed when they were accused of any crimes. If the culprit swallowed the bread and cheese freely, he was declared innocent; but if it stuck in his throat, he was pronounced guilty. In the reign of Edward the Confessor, as historians assure us, Godwin, Earl of Kent, in abjuring the death of the king's brother, appealed to this ordeal, and was choked by the cornsnel. (Blackstone, vol. iv.)

Besides these, there were a variety of other ordeals practised in Christian countries, many of which retain the same names which were used amongst pagans, and differ only as to the mode in which they were performed. In all nations of Christians where these trials were used, we find the clergy engaged in them. Indeed, in England, as late as the time of King John, we find grants to the bishops and clergy to use the judicium ferri, aquae, 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. But we find the canon law, at a very early period, declaring against trial by ordeal, or vulgaris purgatio, as being the work of the devil. A decree to this effect was issued in the eighteenth canon of the fourth Lateran Council, November 1215. "Upon this authority, though the canons themselves were of no validity in England, it was thought proper," says Blackstone (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 3 Henry III., according to Sir Edward Coke, or rather by an order of the king in council. Spelman thinks, however (Glossary under Judicium Dei), that this law was merely temporary. It is clear that it must have fallen into disuse in England about the middle of the thirteenth century, as it had in most European nations long before. (Seldon's Notes to Eadmer; see also Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i., p. 256.)

That much priestly jugglery was practised in connection with ordeals there can be no manner of doubt. Artificial preparations were known and used which enabled the suspected to undergo the most unheard-of trials without injury. With the scientific knowledge of the present day this seems in no way so miraculous as it must have done to the ignorant of those early times. When the ordeal was abolished, and this art rendered useless, the clergy no longer kept it a secret.