CHAPTER VI.

THE ORDEAL OF THE BALANCE.

We have seen above that a belief existed that persons guilty of sorcery lost their specific gravity, and this superstition naturally led to the use of the balance in the effort to discover and punish the crime of witchcraft, which all experts assure us was the most difficult of all offences on which to obtain evidence. The trial by balance, however, was not a European invention. Like nearly all the other ordeals, it can be traced back to India, where, at least as early as the time of the Institutes of Vishnu, it was in common use. It is described there as reserved for women, children, old men, invalids, the blind, the lame, and the privileged Brahman caste, and not to be undertaken when a wind was blowing. After proper ceremonies the patient was placed in one scale, with an equivalent weight to counterbalance him in the other, and the nicety of the operation is shown by the prescription that the beam must have a groove with water in it, evidently for the purpose of detecting the slightest deflection either way. The accused then descended and the judge addressed the customary adjuration to the balance:—

“Thou, O balance, art called by the same name as holy law (dharma); thou, O balance, knowest what mortals do not comprehend.

“This man, arraigned in a cause, is weighed upon thee. Therefore mayest thou deliver him lawfully from this perplexity.”

Then the accused was replaced in the scale, and if he were found to be lighter than before he was acquitted. If the scale broke, the trial was to be repeated.[1059]

It will be seen here that lightness was an evidence of innocence, but in Europe the ordeal was reversed in consequence of the belief that sorcerers became lighter than water. Rickius, writing in 1594, speaks of this mode of trial being commonly used in many places in witchcraft cases, and gravely assures us that very large and fat women had been found to weigh only thirteen or fifteen pounds;[1060] but even this will scarcely explain the modification of the process as employed in some places, which consisted in putting the accused in one scale and a Bible in the other.[1061] Kœnigswarter assures us that the scales formerly used on these occasions are still to be seen at Oudewater in Holland.[1062] In the case already referred to as occurring July 30, 1728, at Szegedin in Hungary, thirteen persons, six men and seven women, were burnt alive for witchcraft, whose guilt had been proved, first by the cold-water ordeal and then by that of the balance. We are told that a large and fat woman weighed only one and a half drachms and her husband five drachms and the rest varied from a pennyweight to three drachms and under. One of the victims was a man of 82, a local judge, who had previously borne an unblemished character.[1063] The use of the Bible as a counterpoise is on record even as lately as the year 1759, at Aylesbury in England, where one Susannah Haynokes, accused of witchcraft, was formally weighed against the Bible in the parish church.[1064]