Conrad of Marburg freely used the hot iron against eighty persons in Strassburg alone who were
suspected of the Albigensian heresy. The clergy prepared the combatants by fasting and prayer,
and special liturgical formula; they presided over the trial and pronounced the sentence. Sometimes
fraud was practiced, and bribes offered and taken to divert the course of justice. Gregory of Tours
mentions the case of a deacon who, in a conflict with an Arian priest, anointed his arm before he
stretched it into the boiling caldron; the Arian discovered the trick, charged him with using magic
arts, and declared the trial null and void; but a Catholic priest, Jacintus from Ravenna, stepped
forward, and by catching the ring from the bubbling caldron, triumphantly vindicated the orthodox
faith to the admiring multitude, declaring that the water felt cold at the bottom and agreeably warm
at the top. When the Arian boldly repeated the experiment, his flesh was boiled off the bones up
to the elbow.^360
The Church even invented and substituted new ordeals, which were less painful and cruel
than the old heathen forms, but shockingly profane according to our notions. Profanity and
superstition are closely allied. These new methods are the ordeal of the cross, and the ordeal of the
eucharist. They were especially used by ecclesiastics.
The ordeal of the cross^361 is simply a trial of physical strength. The plaintiff and the
defendant, after appropriate religious ceremonies, stood with uplifted arm before a cross while
divine service was performed, and victory depended on the length of endurance. Pepin first prescribed
this trial, by a Capitulary of 752, in cases of application by a wife for divorce. Charlemagne
prescribed it in cases of territorial disputes which might arise between his sons (806). But
Louis-le-Débonnaire, soon after the death of Charlemagne, forbade its continuance at a Council of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 816, because this abuse of the cross tended to bring the Christian symbol into
contempt. His son, the Emperor Lothair, renewed the prohibition. A trace of this ordeal is left in
the proverbial allusion to an experimentum crucis.
A still worse profanation was the ordeal of consecrated bread in the eucharist with the awful
adjuration: "May this body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be a judgment to thee this day."^362
It was enjoined by a Synod of Worms, in 868, upon bishops and priests who were accused of a
capital crime, such as murder, adultery, theft, sorcery. It was employed by Cautinus, bishop of
Auvergne, at the close of the sixth century, who administered the sacrament to a Count Eulalius,
accused of patricide, and acquitted him after he had partaken of it without harm. King Lothair and
his nobles took the sacrament in proof of his separation from Walrada, his mistress, but died soon
afterwards at Piacenza of a sudden epidemic, and this was regarded by Pope Hadrian II. as a divine
punishment. Rudolfus Glaber records the case of a monk who boldly received the consecrated host,
but forthwith confessed his crime when the host slipped out of his navel, white and pure as before.
Sibicho, bishop of Speier, underwent the trial to clear himself of the charge of adultery (1049).
Even Pope Hildebrand made use of it in self-defense against Emperor Henry IV. at Canossa, in
- "Lest I should seem," he said "to rely rather on human than divine testimony, and that I may
remove from the minds of all, by immediate satisfaction, every scruple, behold this body of our
(^360) De Gloria Martyrum I. 81. Lea, p. 198.
(^361) Judicium crucis, orstare ad crucem, Kreuzesprobe. A modification of it was the trial of standing with the arms extended
in the form of a cross. In this way St. Lioba, abbess of Bischoffsheim, vindicated the honor of her convent against the charge
of impurity when a new-born child was drowned in the neighborhood. Lea, p. 231.
(^362) Judicium offae, panis conjuratio, corsnaed, Abendmahlsprobe. Comp. Hefele IV. 370, 552, 735.