Superstition to Science: Nature, Fortune, and the Passing of the Medieval Ordeal

Abstract

IN THE LATE TWELFTH CENTURY, one of the strongest opponents of judicial ordeals was the Parisian master Peter the Chanter. Part of his attack was theological: God's participation in ordeals could not be relied upon, because, though could intervene in an ordeal, He could not be compelled to do so by priestly incantation. The Chanter also argued that ordeals violated Biblical prohibitions against tempting God, particularly since many issues decided by ordeals could also be resolved by other, nonmiraculous means. But the greatest part of the Chanter's criticisms were based on experience. He cited cases in which men were known to have been falsely convicted of theft and an instance in which a pilgrim had come home to find that a companion who had returned before him had been subjected to the ordeal of cold water, convicted of the pilgrim's murder, and executed. In addition, Peter pointed out that natural explanations could be found for the outcomes of many ordeals: callused hands were better able to survive tests of hot iron and those who knew how to exhale all of the air from their bodies stood a better chance of victory in the ordeal of cold water.' The Chanter's criticisms were directed against a wide variety of practices that his contemporaries called of God (judicia Del). Some of these testssuch as the ordeals by boiling water, immersion, and hot iron-went back to pagan times. Compurgatory oaths, which required the correct repetition of a complicated verbal formula, and judicial duels also apparently dated from traditional Germanic law. Other judgments of were distinctly Christian. Among these was the Carolingian ordeal of the cross, in which the litigants held their arms out from their shoulders in the shape of the cross; the first to let his or her arms drop lost the case. Diverse as these customs were, all were founded on a