TRIAL BY ORDEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 21

TRIAL BY ORDEAL.

"JUDGMENT OF GOD."

MCDIEVAL FORMS.

THE DUEL A STTRVIVAIi.

"Ordeal" is the name given to a mode of trial which was not unknown to the ancients, was familiar in the Middle Ages, and is still practised in parts of the world. Sophocles mentions the use of fire among the Greeks.

The ordeal was generally supported by oaths. Sometimes an*oath written 011 a tablet was ca6t into the water; if it sank, the oath was false. In the Old English laws of Ethelred we find the Church paying special attention to the ordeal by red-lia* bars or boiling water. The ceremony -was introduced by fasting ami an elaborate service, and the limbs were examined after an interval of three days. The water ordeal was gradually transferred from the church

to a trench or pit outride, and was abolished in 1219. Orthodox priests frequently gainde triumphs over heretics and infidels by preferring a point of dogma to some such test. In Tibet a black and a white stone were oast into boiling water. The innocent person was sure to draw out the white one. If a serf withdrew his hand from the lire unburned. hie master was held guilty of the tlieft with which the serf was charged. • By nil ancient Iri<h custom the chief who offered an expiatory sacrifice walked thrice Iwrefooted over the burning cairn to give the entrails of the victims to the Druids. This may have been a test whether the sacrifice was favourably received. Sometimes the red-hot iron was prepared in the form of a glove, into which the arm to the elbow was thrust. Sometimes like the Indian marsh was the Scandinavian earth-trial. The accused lay beneath a roll of turf. If it fell oil them they were perjurers. Primitive Lie Detectors. Elsewhere the perjurers' hands were said to blacken at the moment of the oath. Thus in the romance Reynard the fox is obliged to swear 011 the teeth of a saint and a dog. who plays the saint, tries to bite him. In the Edda Tlior swears with his hand on the throat of the wolf Fenrir. In the same wav blood flowed from the dead bodies

of murdered persons when the murderer was taken near, after having sworn his innocence. Church rules often prescribed a fast for three days on a handful of barley and some salt and water. By an old French custom, when a theft was committed, the local magistrates, at a meeting of the inhabitants, after having called forth the thief, held up a stick under which everyone must pass, but which the thief never had the courage to pass. This resembled the Dyak custom of hanging an arch of ti-iciV teeth. In Madagascar the drinking (if the water of the tangena nut was frequently resorted to, but the draught was sometimes administered to two fowls representing the accused and the accuser. Generally in South Africa if a goblet full of Mbuiulhu juice does not at once act as an emetic the guilt of the accused is proved. This reminds one of the "'cornaed." or consecrated bread and cheese, which Old English priests sometimes administered, and which only the innocent could swallow. If a priest were accused, he merely made oath on the "housel,"' or sacramental bread. Still Current in India. There are still among the Dravidic races of India nine different kinds of ordeal —poison, fire, water, and the scales, used for thefts of different degrees of gravity; the cold water test, which consisted in keeping the accused

between two jets of water while another shot an arrow and went to fetch it; water in which an idol has been washed; rice, boiling oil. red-hot iron, the image of iron and silver. Most of the testa simply rely on a supposed Divine intervention, with natural law in favour of an innocent person. It has been said that the duel is simply a relic of the ordeal, or judgment of God; and that it resembles in principle the practice of torture, the only difference being that in the latter the event depends on the will of the accused, and a man on the rack being as little able to declare "the truth as in former times to prevent without fraud the effects of fire or boiling water.