CHAPTER X.

THE ORDEAL OF THE LOT.

The appeal to chance, as practised in India, bears several forms, substantially identical in principle. One mode consists in writing the words _dherem_ (consciousness of innocence) and _adherem_ (its opposite) on plates of silver and lead respectively, or on pieces of white and black linen, which are placed in a vessel that has never held water. The person whose cause is at stake inserts his hand and draws forth one of the pieces, when if it happens to be _dherem_ it proves his truth.[1115] Another method is to place in a vessel a silver image of Dharma, the genius of justice, and one in iron or clay of Adharma; or else a figure of Dharma is painted on white cloth and another on black cloth, and the two are rolled together in cow-dung and thrown into a jar, when the accused is acquitted or convicted according to his fortune in drawing Dharma.[1116]

In adapting to Christian usage the ordeal of the lot, attempts were made to invest it with similar sacred symbolism, but it was not well adapted to display the awful solemnity which rendered the other forms so impressive. Notwithstanding the ample warrant for it in Scripture, and its approval by St. Augustin,[1117] it was therefore in less favor with the Church, and it seems not to have retained among the people, after their conversion, the widespread popularity and confidence enjoyed by the other ordeals. Indeed, as a judicial process, it is only to be found prescribed in the earlier remains of the Barbarian laws and customs, and no trace of it is to be met with in the latter legislation of any race. Thus mention of it is made in the Ripuarian code,[1118] and in some of the earlier Merovingian documents its use is prescribed in the same brief manner.[1119] As late as the middle of the eighth century, Ecgberht, Archbishop of York, quotes from the canons of an Irish Council a direction for its employment in cases of sacrilegious theft, as a means of determining the punishment to be inflicted;[1120] but not long after, the Council of Calchuth condemned the practice between litigants as a sacrilege and a remnant of paganism.[1121] This was ineffectual, for about 850 Leo IV. describes it as in universal use in England, and forbids it as mere divination.[1122]

No explanation is given of the details of the process by which this appeal to fortune was made, and I know of no contemporary applications by which its formula can be investigated; but in the primitive Frisian laws there is described an ordeal of the lot, which may reasonably be assumed to show us one of the methods in use. When a man was killed in a chance-medley and the murderer remained unknown, the friends had a right to accuse seven of the participants in the brawl. Each of these defendants had then to take the oath of denial with twelve conjurators, after which they were admitted to the ordeal. Two pieces of twig, precisely similar, were taken, one of which was marked with a cross; they were then wrapped up separately in white wool and laid on the altar; prayers were recited, invoking God to reveal the innocence or guilt of the party, and the priest, or a sinless youth, took up one of the bundles. If it contained the marked fragment, the defendants were absolved; if the unmarked one, the guilty man was among them. Each one then took a similar piece of stick and made a private mark upon it; these were rolled up as before, placed on the altar, taken up one by one, and unwrapped, each man claiming his own. The one whose piece was left to the last was pronounced guilty, and was obliged to pay the wer-gild of the murder.[1123] Among the ancient Irish the lot or _crannchur_ was employed by mingling white and black stones, when if the accused drew a black one he was adjudged guilty.[1124]

The various modes of ecclesiastical divination, so frequently used in the Middle Ages to obtain an insight into the future, sometimes assumed the shape of an appeal to Heaven to decide questions of the present or of the past.[1125] Thus, when three bishops, of Poitiers, Arras, and Autun, each claimed the holy relics of St. Liguaire, and human means were unavailing to reconcile their pretensions, the decision of the Supreme Power was resorted to, by placing under the altar-cloth three slips with their respective names inscribed, and after a becoming amount of prayer, on withdrawing one of them, the see of Poitiers was enriched with the precious remains by Divine favor.[1126]

That such appeals to chance were regarded by the Church with disfavor is shown by Gratian, who argues that the Hebrew examples were not precedents to be observed under the New Law.[1127] Yet the second council of Barcelona in 599 had decreed that when an episcopal vacancy was to be filled two or three candidates should be chosen by the clergy and people, and from among these the metropolitan and his suffragans should select one by lot, after due fasting and prayer.[1128]

One of the most interesting applications of the lot on record was that by which the founders of the Bohemian Brethren determined upon the future existence of the sect. At an assembly of deputies held at Lhotka, in 1467, the lot was resorted to to ascertain whether it was the will of God that they should separate themselves from the Roman presbyterate and seek consecration from the Waldenses, when the response was in the affirmative. Then nine men were chosen, from among whom three or two, or one, or none should be drawn as candidates for the episcopate. Twelve cards were taken, three inscribed “is” and nine “is not,” and nine of them were distributed among the men selected. Three were found to be drawn; one of them was sent to an Austrian community of Waldenses for episcopal consecration, and the “Unitas Fratrum” was then organized.[1129] This same pious dependence on the will of God is still preserved by the Mennonites in the choice of pastors. As described in the journals of 1884 an election of this kind in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where there were twenty candidates, was conducted by three bishops. After divine service twenty books with clasps were taken in one of which was inserted a slip of paper inscribed _Ein Diener des Wort_; the books were placed in a row on a table and each applicant selected one. Bishop Shenk proceeded to open the books, and in the eleventh, held by Menno Zimmerman, the paper was found, entitling him to the position.

* * * * *

Closely related to the lot are the appeals to chance, to settle doubtful questions or ascertain guilt. Such was that made by the pious monks of Abingdon, about the middle of the tenth century, to determine their right to the meadows of Beri against the claims of some inhabitants of Oxfordshire. For three days, with fasting and prayer, they implored the Divine Omnipotence to make manifest their right; and then, by mutual assent, they floated on the Thames a round buckler, bearing a handful of wheat, in which was stuck a lighted taper. The sturdy Oxonians gaped at the spectacle from the distant bank, while a deputation of the more prudent monks followed close upon the floating beacon. Down the river it sailed, veering from bank to bank, and pointing out, as with a finger, the various possessions of the Abbey, till at last, on reaching the disputed lands, it miraculously left the current of the stream, and forced itself into a narrow and shallow channel, which in high water made an arm of the river around the meadows in question. At this unanswerable decision, the people with one accord shouted “Jus Abbendoniæ, jus Abbendoniæ!” and so powerful was the impression produced, that the worthy chronicler assures us that thenceforth neither king, nor duke, nor prince dared to lay claim to the lands of Beri, showing conclusively the wisdom of the abbot who preferred thus to rely upon his right rather than on mouldy charters or dilatory pleadings.[1130]

A more prosaic form of the ordeal of chance is the trial by Bible and key which is of old Teutonic origin.[1131] It is still in common use in England, where it may even yet “be met with in many an out-of-the-way-farm-house.” In cases of theft a key is secured at Psalm 50, 18: “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers;”[1132] and the mode in which it is expected to reveal guilt is manifested in a case recorded in the London _Times_ as occurring at Southampton in 1867, where a sailor boy on board a collier was brought before court on a charge of theft, the only evidence against him being that afforded by securing a key in a Bible opposite the first chapter of Ruth. The Bible was then swung round while the names of several suspected persons were repeated, and on the mention of the prisoner’s name the book fell on the floor. A somewhat different method is recounted in a case reported by the journals in 1879, where a woman in Ludlow, who had lost a sheet, perambulated the streets of the town with a Bible and key, and brought a prosecution against a person whose guilt she had thus discovered. It was explained in court that the key was placed at Ruth I. 16, the investigator holding his fingers crossed, and when the thief was named the key would spontaneously move. In this case the prosecutrix declared that when she came to the defendant’s house “the Bible turned completely round and fell out of her hands.” A variant of this, described in two MSS. of the twelfth century, consisted in placing a piece of wood over the verse of the Psalm, “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is true;” the book was then securely bound so that the head of the wood protruded, and it was suspended, while a priest uttered an adjuration and the accused was questioned, the result being apparently determined by the motion or rest of the book. Still another form consisted of suspending a small loaf of bread which had been placed behind the altar during mass and at its conclusion blessed and marked with a cross by the priest. At the trial he uttered a conjuration, when if the bread turned the accused was held guilty.[1133]

Closely akin to the Bible and key is the sieve-driving or sieve-turning by which criminals were detected by the tilting or falling of a sieve when, in repeating the names of those suspected, that of the culprit was mentioned. The sieve required to be an heirloom in the family; it was balanced on the point of a pair of scissors, or was laid upon a pair of tongs, or the point of a pair of scissors was driven into the rim and it was suspended by the ring to the middle finger of the right hand. This was of ancient origin and was extensively practised in France and Germany even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1134] The existence of the same belief in England is shown in 1554, when William Haselwood, on being cited before the ecclesiastical court of the diocese of London, said that having lost his purse “remembering that he being a chylde dyd hear his mother declare that when any man had lost anything, then they wolde use a syve and a payre of sheers to bring to knowledge who hadd the thing lost; and so he did take a seve and a payre of sheeres and hanged the seve by the pointe of the sheeres and sayd these words: By Peter and Paule he hath yt, namying the party whom he in that behalf suspected.”[1135] Evidently at this time the Church regarded the process as sorcery.