CHAPTER III.

THE ORDEAL OF RED-HOT IRON.

In almost all ages there has existed the belief that under the divine influence the human frame was able to resist the action of fire. Even the sceptic Pliny seems to share the superstition as to the families of the Hirpi, who at the annual sacrifice made to Apollo, on Mount Soracte, walked without injury over piles of burning coals, in recognition of which, by a perpetual senatus consultum, they were relieved from all public burdens.[905] That fire applied either directly or indirectly should be used in the appeal to God was therefore natural, and the convenience with which it could be employed by means of iron rendered that the most usual form of the ordeal. As employed in Europe, under the name of _judicium ferri_ or _juise_ it was administered in two essentially different forms. The one (_vomeres igniti, examen pedale_) consisted in laying on the ground at certain distances six, nine, or in some cases twelve, red-hot ploughshares, among which the accused walked barefooted, sometimes blindfolded, when it became an ordeal of pure chance, and sometimes compelled to press each iron with his naked feet.[906] The other and more usual form obliged the patient to carry in his hand for a certain distance, usually nine feet, a piece of red-hot iron, the weight of which was determined by law and varied with the importance of the question at issue or the magnitude of the alleged crime. Thus, among the Anglo-Saxons, in the “simple ordeal” the iron weighed one pound, in the “triple ordeal” three pounds. The latter is prescribed for incendiaries and “morth-slayers” (secret murderers), for false coining, and for plotting against the king’s life; while at a later period, in the collection known as the Laws of Henry I., we find it extended to cases of theft, robbery, arson, and felonies in general.[907] In Sweden, for theft, the form known as _trux iarn_ was employed, in which the accused had to carry the red-hot iron and deposit it in a hole twelve paces from the starting-point; in other cases the ordeal was called _scuz iarn_, when he carried it nine paces and then cast it from him. These ordeals were held on Wednesday, after fasting on bread and water on Monday and Tuesday; the hand or foot was washed, after which it was allowed to touch nothing till it came in contact with the iron; it was then wrapped up and sealed until Saturday, when it was opened in presence of the accuser and the judges.[908] In Spain, the iron had no definite weight, but was a palm and two fingers in length, with four feet, high enough to enable the criminal to lift it conveniently.[909] The episcopal benediction was necessary to consecrate the iron to its judicial use. A charter of 1082 shows that the Abbey of Fontanelle in Normandy had one of approved sanctity, which, through the ignorance of a monk, was applied to other purposes. The Abbot thereupon asked the Archbishop of Rouen to consecrate another, and before the latter would consent the institution had to prove its right to administer the ordeal.[910] The wrapping up and sealing of the hand was a general custom, derived from the East, and usually after three days it was uncovered and the decision was rendered in accordance with its condition.[911] These proceedings were accompanied by the same solemn observances which have been already described, the iron itself was duly exorcised, and the intervention of God was invoked in the name of all the manifestations of Divine clemency or wrath by the agency of fire—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the burning bush of Horeb, the destruction of Sodom, and the day of judgment.[912] Occasionally, when several criminals were examined together, the same piece of heated iron was borne by them successively, giving a manifest advantage to the last one, who had to endure a temperature considerably less than his companions.[913]

In India this was one of the earliest forms of the ordeal, in use even in the Vedic period, as it is referred to in the Khandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda, where the head of a hatchet is alluded to as the implement employed for the trial—subsequently replaced by a ploughshare.[914] In the seventh century, A. D., Hiouen Thsang reports that the red-hot iron was applied to the tongue of the accused as well as to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, his innocence being designated by the amount of resultant injury.[915] This may have been a local custom, for, according to Institutes of Vishnu, closely followed by Yajnavalkya, the patient bathes and performs certain religious ceremonies; then after rubbing his hands with rice bran, seven green asvattha leaves are placed on the extended palms and bound with a thread. A red-hot iron ball or spear-head, weighing about two pounds and three-quarters, is then brought, and the judge adjures it—

“Thou, O fire, dwellest in the interior of all things like a witness. O fire, thou knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man being arraigned in a cause desires to be cleared from guilt. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

The glowing ball is then placed on the hands of the accused, and with it he has to walk across seven concentric circles of cow-dung, each with a radius sixteen fingers’ breadth larger than the preceding, and throw the ball into a ninth circle, where it must burn some grass placed there for the purpose. If this be accomplished without burning the hands, he gains his cause, but the slightest injury convicts him. A minimum limit of a thousand pieces of silver was established at an early period as requisite to justify the administration of this form of ordeal in a suit.[916] But the robust faith in the power of innocence characteristic of the earlier Hindus seems to have diminished, for subsequent recensions of the code and later lawgivers increase the protection afforded to the hand by adding to the asvattha leaves additional strata of dharba grass and barley moistened with curds, the whole bound around with seven turns of raw silk.[917] Ali Ibrahim Khan relates a case which he witnessed at Benares in 1783 in which a man named Sancar, accused of larceny, offered to be tried in this manner. The court deliberated for four months, urging the parties to adopt some other mode, but they were obstinate, and being both Hindus claimed their right to the ancient forms of law, which was at last conceded. The ordeal took place in presence of a large assemblage, when, to the surprise of every one, Sancar carried the red-hot ball through the seven circles, threw it duly into the ninth where it burnt the grass, and exhibited his hands uninjured. By way of discouraging such experiments for the future, the accuser was imprisoned for a week.[918] Even in 1873, the Bombay _Gazette_ states that this ordeal is still practised in Oodeypur, where a case had shortly before occurred wherein a husbandman had been obliged to prove his innocence by holding a red-hot ploughshare in his hands, duly guarded with peepul leaves, turning his face towards the sun and invoking it: “Thou Sun-God, if I am actually guilty of the crime, punish me; if not, let me escape unscathed from the ordeal!”—and in this instance, also, the accused was uninjured.

A peculiar modification of the hot-iron ordeal is employed by the aboriginal hill-tribes of Rajmahal, in the north of Bengal, when a person believes himself to be suffering from witchcraft. The _Satane_ and the _Cherreen_ are used to find out the witch, and then the decision is confirmed by a person representing the sufferer, who, with certain religious ceremonies, applies his tongue to a red-hot iron nine times, unless sooner burnt. A burn is considered to render the guilt of the accused indubitable, and his only appeal is to have the trial repeated in public, when, if the same result follows, he is bound either to cure the bewitched person or to suffer death if the latter dies.[919]

In the earlier periods of European law, the burning iron was reserved for cases of peculiar atrocity. Thus we find it prescribed by Charlemagne in accusations of parricide;[920] the Council of Risbach in 799 directed its use in cases of sorcery and witchcraft;[921] and among the Thuringians it was ordered for women suspected of poisoning or otherwise murdering their husbands[922]—a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. In 848 the Council of Mainz indicates it specially for slaves,[923] while the Council of Tribur, in 895, orders it for all cases of accusation against freemen.[924] Among the Anglo-Saxons the accuser had the right to select the ordeal to be employed,[925] while at a later period in Germany this privilege was conferred on the accused.[926] In England it subsequently became rather an aristocratic procedure as contradistinguished from the water ordeals.[927] On the other hand, in the Assises de Jerusalem the hot iron is the only form alluded to as employed in the _roturier_ courts;[928] in the laws of Nieuport, granted by Philip of Alsace in 1163, it is prescribed as a plebeian ordeal;[929] and about the same period, in the military laws enacted by Frederic Barbarossa during his second Italian expedition, it appears as a servile ordeal.[930] In the Russian law of the eleventh century, it is ordered in all cases where the matter at stake amounts to more than half a _grivna_ of gold, while the water ordeal is reserved for suits of less importance.[931] In the Icelandic code of the twelfth century it is prescribed for men, in cases in which women are required to undergo the hot-water ordeal;[932] while the reverse of this is seen in an English case occurring in 1201, where six men and a woman were accused of burglary; the men were ordered to the water ordeal and the woman to red-hot iron.[933] A specially severe form was provided for women in Ireland, who, when accused, were obliged to lick with the tongue a bronze axe-head heated to redness in a fire of black-thorn.[934]

Irrespective of these distinctions, we find it to have been the mode usually selected by persons of rank when compelled to throw themselves upon the judgment of God. The Empress Richardis, wife of Charles le Gros, accused in 887 of adultery with Bishop Liutward, offered to prove her innocence either by the judicial combat or the red-hot iron.[935] So when the Emperor St. Henry II. indulged in unworthy doubts of the purity of his virgin-wife St. Cunigunda, she eagerly appealed to the judgment of God, and established her innocence by treading unharmed the burning ploughshares.[936] The tragical tradition of Mary, wife of the Third Otho, contains a similar example, with the somewhat unusual variation of an accuser undergoing an ordeal to prove a charge. The empress, hurried away by a sudden and unconquerable passion for Amula, Count of Modena, in 996, repeated in all its details the story of Potiphar’s wife. The unhappy count, unceremoniously condemned to lose his head, asserted his innocence to his wife, and entreated her to clear his reputation. He was executed, and the countess, seeking an audience of the emperor, disproved the calumny by carrying unharmed the red-hot iron, when Otho, convinced of his rashness by this triumphant vindication, immediately repaired his injustice by consigning his empress to the stake.[937] When Edward the Confessor, who entertained a not unreasonable dislike for his mother Emma, listened eagerly to the accusation of her criminal intimacy with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester, she was condemned to undergo the ordeal of the burning shares, and, walking over them barefooted and unharmed, she established beyond peradventure the falsehood of the charge.[938] So when in 943 Arnoul of Flanders had procured the assassination of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, at Pecquigny, he offered to Louis d’Outremer to clear himself of complicity in the murder by the ordeal of fire.[939] Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror, while in exile during his youthful rebellion against his father, formed an intimacy with a pretty girl. Years afterwards, when he was Duke of Normandy, she presented herself before him with two likely youths, whom she asserted to be pledges of his former affection. Robert was incredulous; but the mother, carrying unhurt the red-hot iron, forced him to forego his doubts and to acknowledge the paternity of the boys, whom he thenceforth adopted.[940] Indeed this was the legal form of proof in cases of disputed paternity established by the Scandinavian legislation at this period,[941] and in that of Spain a century later.[942] Remy, Bishop of Dorchester, when accused of treason against William the Conqueror, was cleared by the devotion of a follower, who underwent the ordeal of hot iron.[943] When, in 1098, William Rufus desired to supply his treasury by confiscations, he accused about fifty of his richest Saxon subjects of having killed deer in his forests and hurried them to the hot-iron ordeal, but he was stupefied when after the third day their hands were found to be unhurt.[944] In 1143, Henry I., Archbishop of Mainz, ordered its employment, and administered it himself, in a controversy between the Abbey of Gerode and the Counts of Hirschberg. In the special charter issued to the abbey attesting the decision of the trial, it is recorded that the hand of the ecclesiastical champion was not only uninjured by the fiery metal, but was positively benefited by it.[945] About the same period, Centulla IV. of Béarn caused it to be employed in a dispute with the Bishop of Lescar concerning the fine paid for the murder of a priest, the ecclesiastic, as usual, being victorious.[946] The reward of the church for its faith in adopting these pagan customs was seen in the well-known case by which Bishop Poppo of Slesvick, in 962, succeeded in convincing and converting the Pagan Danes even as, three thousand years earlier, according to the Persian historians, Zoroaster convinced King Gushtashp of the truth of his revelation from Hormazd,[947] and, within seven centuries, Adurabad converted the heretical Mazdeans. The worthy missionary, dining with King Harold Blaatand, denounced, with more zeal than discretion, the indigenous deities as lying devils. The king dared him to prove his faith in his God, and, on his assenting, caused next morning an immense piece of iron to be duly heated, which the undaunted Poppo grasped and carried around to the satisfaction of the royal court, displaying his hand unscathed by the glowing mass; or, as a variant of the legend asserts, he drew on an iron gauntlet reaching to the elbow and heated to redness. The miracle was sufficient, and Denmark thenceforth becomes an integral portion of Christendom.[948] Somewhat similar, except in its results, was a case in which a priest involved in a theological dispute with a Jew, and unable to overcome him in argument, offered to prove the divinity of Christ by carrying a burning brand in his naked hand. Invoking the name of Jesus, the faithful ecclesiastic drew the blazing wood from the fire and slowly carried it for a considerable distance, but though he triumphantly exhibited his hand unhurt, his obdurate antagonist refused to be converted, alleging that the miracle was the result of magic.[949] In Norway, the sanctity of St. Olaf the King was attested in the same way, when he thoughtlessly whittled a twig on Sunday, and his attention was respectfully called by one of his courtiers to this violation of the sabbatical rules. By way of penance he collected the chips, placed them on the palm of one hand, and set fire to them, but after they had been reduced to ashes, to the surprise of the bystanders, his hand was found unharmed.[950]

In fact, there was scarcely a limit to the credulity which looked for the constant interference of the divine power. About 1215 some heretics at Cambrai were convicted by the hot iron and sentenced to the stake. One of them was of noble birth, and on the way to the place of execution the priest who had conducted the proceedings exhorted him to repentance and conversion. The condemned man listened willingly, and commenced to confess his errors. As he proceeded his hand commenced to heal, and when he had received absolution there remained no trace of the burn. When he was called in turn to take his place at the stake, the priest interposed, saying that he was innocent, and, on examination of the hand, he was released. About the same time a similar occurrence is recorded at Strassburg, where ten heretics had been thus convicted and condemned to be burnt, and one repenting at the last moment was cured of his burn, and was discharged. In this case, however, on his return to his house near the town, his wife upbraided him for his weakness in betraying the eternal truth to avoid a momentary suffering, and under her influence he relapsed. Immediately the burn on his hand reappeared, and a similar one took possession of his wife’s hand, scorching both to the bone and inflicting such excruciating agony that being unable to repress their screams, and fearing to betray themselves, they took to the woods, where they howled like wolves. Concealment was impossible, however. They were discovered, carried to the city, where the ashes of their accomplices were not yet cold, and both promptly shared the same fate.[951] Somewhat similar is a case recorded in York, where a woman accused of homicide was exposed to the ordeal, resulting in a blister the size of a half walnut. She was accordingly convicted by a jury of knights, but on her offering a prayer at the tomb of St. William of York the blister disappeared. Thereupon the royal justiciaries dismissed her as innocent, and declared the jury to be at the king’s mercy for rendering a false verdict.[952]

No form of ordeal was more thoroughly introduced throughout the whole extent of Europe. From Spain to Constantinople, and from Scandinavia to Naples, it was appealed to with confidence as an unfailing mode of ascertaining the will of Heaven. The term _judicium_, indeed, was at length understood to mean an ordeal, and generally that of hot iron, and in its barbarized form, _juise_, may almost always be considered to indicate this particular kind. In the Swedish law of the early 13th century, the red-hot iron was used in a large number of crimes, and the ferocity of its employment is exemplified in the formula prescribed for homicide. A person accused of murder on suspicion was always obliged to justify himself by carrying the hot iron for nine steps; and if he did not appear to stand his trial when duly summoned, he might be forced to undergo a preliminary ordeal to prove that he had been unavoidably detained. If he failed in this, he was condemned as guilty, but if he succeeded in enduring it he was forced to perform the second ordeal to clear him of the crime itself; while the heir of the murdered man, so long as no one succumbed in the trial, could successively accuse ten men; for the last of whom, however, the nine burning ploughshares were substituted.[953] In the code of the Frankish kingdoms of the East, it is the only mode alluded to, except the duel, and it there retained its legal authority long after it had become obsolete elsewhere. The Assises de Jerusalem were in force in the Venetian colonies until the sixteenth century, and the manuscript preserved officially in the archives of Venice, described by Morelli as written in 1436, retains the primitive directions for the employment of the _juise_.[954] Even the Venetian translation, commenced in 1531, and finished in 1536, is equally scrupulous, although an act of the Council of Ten, April 10, 1535, shows that these customs had fallen into desuetude and had been formally abolished.[955] In Hungary, the judicial records of Waradin from 1209 to 1235 contain 389 judgments, of which a large part were determined by the hot-iron ordeal.[956]

This ordeal even became partially naturalized among the Greeks, probably as a result of the Latin domination at Constantinople. In the middle of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Theodore Lascaris demanded that Michael Paleologus, who afterwards wore the imperial crown, should clear himself of an accusation in this manner; but the Archbishop of Philadelphia, on being appealed to, pronounced that it was a custom of the barbarians, condemned by the canons, and not to be employed except by the special order of the emperor.[957] Yet George Pachymere speaks of the custom as one not uncommon in his youth, and he describes at some length the ceremonies with which it was performed.[958]

In Europe, even as late as 1310, in the proceedings against the Order of the Templars, at Mainz, Count Frederic, the master preceptor of the Rhenish provinces, offered to substantiate his denial of the accusations by carrying the red-hot iron.[959] In Modena in 1329, in a dispute between the German soldiers of Louis of Bavaria and the citizens, the Germans offered to settle the question by carrying a red-hot bar; but when the townsfolks themselves accomplished the feat, and triumphantly showed that no burn had been inflicted, the Germans denied the proof, and asserted that magic had been employed.[960]

Though about this time it may be considered to have disappeared from the ordinary proceedings of the secular courts, there was one class of cases in which its vitality still continued for a century and a half. The mysterious crime of witchcraft was so difficult of proof that judicial ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to secure conviction, and the Devil was always ready to aid his followers and baffle the ends of justice. The Inquisitor Sprenger, writing in 1487, therefore recommends that, when a witch cannot be forced to confess her guilt by either prayers or torture, she shall be asked whether she will undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron; to this she will eagerly assent, knowing that she can rely on the friendly assistance of Satan to carry her through it unscathed, and this readiness will be good evidence of her guilt. He warns inexperienced judges moreover not to allow the trial to take place, and thus afford to Satan the opportunity of triumph, and instances a case which occurred in 1484 before the Count of Furstenberg. A well-known witch was arrested and tried, but no confession could be extorted from her by all the refinements of torture. Finally she offered to prove her innocence with the red-hot iron, and the Count being young and unwary accepted the proposal, sentencing her to carry it three paces. She carried it for six paces and offered to hold it still longer, exhibiting her hand uninjured. The Count was forced to acquit her, and at the time that Sprenger wrote she was still living, to the scandal of the faithful.[961]

After the judicial use of the red-hot iron had at last died out, the superstition on which it was based still lingered, and men believed that God would reverse the laws of nature to accomplish a special object. About 1670 Georg Frese, a merchant of Hamburg, distinguished for piety and probity, published an account, the truth of which was vouched for by many respectable eye-witnesses, stating that a friend of his named Witzendorff, who had bound himself to a young woman by terrible oaths, and then had proved false and caused her death, fell into a despairing melancholy. He accused himself of the sin against the Holy Ghost, declared that his salvation was impossible, and refused to hope unless he could see a miracle wrought in his behalf. Frese at length asked him what miracle he required, and on his replying that he must see that fire would not burn, the intrepid consoler went to a blazing fire, picked out the burning coals and also a red-hot ring, which he brought to the sinner with uninjured hands and convinced him that he could be saved by repentance. The moral drawn from the facts by the narrator to whom we owe them, is that he who under Divine influence undertakes such ordeals will be preserved unharmed.[962]

Even as we have seen that Heaven sometimes interposed to punish the guilty by a reversal of the hot-water ordeal, so the industrious belief of the Middle Ages found similar miracles in the hot-iron trial, especially when Satan or some other mysterious influence nullified the appeal to God. Early in the thirteenth century a case is related in which a peasant to revenge himself on a neighbor employed a vagabond monk to burn the house of the latter. The hot-iron ordeal was vainly employed on all suspected of the crime; the house was rebuilt, the monk again bribed, burnt it a second time, and again the ordeal proved vain. The owner again rebuilt his house, and kept in it the ordeal-iron, ready for use. The monk, tempted with fresh promises, paid him another visit, and was hospitably received as before, when seeing the piece of iron, his curiosity was aroused and he asked what it was. The host handed it to him, explaining its use, but as soon as the wretch took it, it burned him to the bone, when the other seeing in him the incendiary, seized him; he was duly tried, confessed his guilt, and was broken on the wheel.[963] A variant of this story relates how a man accused of arson offered to prove his innocence by the red-hot iron, which he carried for a long distance and then showed his hand uninjured. The ordeal-iron mysteriously vanished and could not be found, until a year afterwards, when a laborer who was mending the highway came upon it under a layer of sand. It was still glowing fiercely, and when he attempted to pick it up, it burnt him severely. The bystanders at once suspected him of the crime, and on the appropriate means being taken he was forced to confess his guilt, which was duly punished by the wheel.[964] A less tragical example of the same form of miracle was that wrought by the holy Suidger, Bishop of Munster, who suspected his chamberlain of the theft of a cup. As the man stoutly denied his guilt, Suidger ordered him to pick up a knife from the table, after he had mentally exorcised it. The cold metal burnt the culprit’s hand as though it had been red-hot, and he promptly confessed his crime.[965]