The ordeal of fire, administered directly, without the intervention either of water or of iron, is one of the most ancient forms, as is shown by the allusions to it in both the Hindu Vedic writings, the adventure of Siawush, and the passage in the Antigone of Sophocles (pp. 266, 267, 270). In this, its simplest form, it may be considered the origin of the proverbial expression, “J’en mettrois la main au feu,” as an affirmation of positive belief,[966] showing how thoroughly the whole system engrained itself in the popular mind. In India, as practised in modern times, its form approaches somewhat the ordeal of the burning ploughshares. A trench is dug nine hands in length, two spans in breadth, and one span in depth. This is filled with peepul wood, which is then set on fire, and the accused walks into it with bare feet.[967] A more humane modification is described in the seventh century by Hiouen-Thsang as in use when the accused was too tender to undergo the trial by red-hot iron. He simply cast into the flames certain flower-buds, when, if they opened their leaves, he was acquitted; if they were burnt up, he was condemned.[968]
An anticipation of the fire ordeal may be found in the Rabbinical story of Abraham when he was cast into a fiery furnace by Nimrod, for reproving the idolatry of the latter, and escaped unharmed from the flames;[969] as well as the similar experience of Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, when they were saved from the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar.[970] Miraculous interposition of this kind was expected as a matter of course by the early Christians. About the year 400 Rufinus, in his account of his visit to the monks of the Nitrian desert, tells an adventure of the hermit Copres as related to him by that holy man himself. On visiting a neighboring city he engaged in a disputation with a Manichæan who was perverting the people. Finding the heretic not easily overcome by argument, he proposed that a fire should be built in the public square, into which both should enter. The populace was delighted with the idea and speedily had a roaring pyre ready, when the Manichæan insisted that the Christian should enter first. Copres assented and remained unhurt in the flames for half an hour; his antagonist still held back, when the crowd seized him and tossed him into the fire, where he was severely scorched, and was ejected with disgrace from the city.[971] Almost identical is the story related in 597 A. D., under the Emperor Anastasius, of a Catholic bishop, who, after being worsted in a theological dispute by the subtle logic of an Arian, offered to test the soundness of their respective doctrines by together entering a blazing fire. The prudent Arian declined the proposition, when the enthusiastic Catholic jumped into the burning pile, and thence continued the controversy without suffering the least inconvenience.[972] In the less impressive form of filling the lap with burning coals and carrying them uninjured till they grew cold this ordeal seems to have been a favorite with holy men accused of unchastity. It is related of St. Brice, the successor of St. Martin in the see of Tours, of St. Simplicius of Autun, and of Montano bishop of Toledo in the sixth century.[973]
The earliest legal allusion to this form of ordeal in Europe occurs in the code of the Ripuarian Franks, where it is prescribed as applicable to slaves and strangers, in some cases of doubt.[974] From the phraseology of these passages, we may conclude that it was then administered by placing the hand of the accused in a fire. As a legal ordeal this is perhaps the only allusion to it in European jurisprudence, but it was repeatedly resorted to by enthusiasts as a voluntary trial for the purpose of establishing the truth of accusations or of substantiating their position. In these cases it was conducted on a larger and more impressive scale; huge pyres were built, and the individual undergoing the trial literally walked through the flames, as Siawush did. The celebrated Petrus Igneus gained his surname and reputation by an exploit of this kind, which was renowned in its day. Pietro di Pavia, Bishop of Florence, unpopular with the citizens, but protected by Godfrey, Duke of Tuscany, was accused of simony and heresy. Being acquitted by the Council of Rome, in 1063, and the offer of his accusers to prove his guilt by the ordeal of fire being refused, he endeavored to put down his adversaries by tyranny and oppression. Great disturbances resulted, and at length, in 1067, the monks of Vallombrosa, who had borne a leading part in denouncing the bishop, and who had suffered severely in consequence (the episcopal troops having burned the monastery of St. Salvio and slaughtered the cenobites), resolved to decide the question by the ordeal, incited thereto by no less than three thousand enthusiastic Florentines who assembled there for the purpose. Pietro Aldobrandini, a monk of Vallombrosa, urged by his superior, the holy S. Giovanni Gualberto, offered himself to undergo the trial. After imposing religious ceremonies, he walked slowly between two piles of blazing wood, ten feet long, five feet wide, and four and a half feet high, the passage between them being six feet wide and covered with an inch or two of glowing coals. The violence of the flames agitated his dress and hair, but he emerged without hurt, even the hair on his legs being unsinged, barelegged and barefooted though he was. Desiring to return through the pyre, he was prevented by the admiring crowd, who rushed around him in triumph, kissing his feet and garments, and endangering his life in their transports, until he was rescued by his fellow monks. A formal statement of the facts was sent to Rome by the Florentines, the papal court gave way, and the bishop was deposed; while the monk who had given so striking a proof of his steadfast faith was marked for promotion, and eventually died Cardinal of Albano.[975]
An example of a similar nature occurred in Milan in 1103, when the Archbishop Grossolano was accused of simony by a priest named Liutprand, who, having no proof to sustain his charge, offered the ordeal of fire. All the money he could raise he expended in procuring fuel, and when all was ready the partisans of the archbishop attacked the preparations and carried off the wood. The populace, deprived of the promised exhibition, grew turbulent, and Grossolano was obliged not only to assent to the trial, but to join the authorities in providing the necessary materials. In the Piazza di S. Ambrogio two piles were accordingly built, each ten cubits long, by four cubits in height and width, with a gangway between them of a cubit and a half. As the undaunted priest entered the blazing mass, the flames divided before him and closed as he passed, allowing him to emerge in safety, although with two slight injuries, one a burn on the hand, received while sprinkling the fire before entering, the other on the foot, which he attributed to a kick from a horse in the crowd that awaited his exit. The evidence was accepted as conclusive by the people, and Grossolano was obliged to retire to Rome. Pascal II., however, received him graciously, and the Milanese suffragans disapproved of the summary conviction of their metropolitan, to which they were probably all equally liable. The injuries received by Liutprand were exaggerated, a tumult was excited in Milan, the priest was obliged to seek safety in flight, and Grossolano was restored for a time, but the adverse party prevailed and in spite of papal support he was forced to exile.[976]
A volunteer miracle of somewhat the same character, which is recorded as occurring in Paris early in the thirteenth century, may be alluded to as illustrating the belief of the period. A loose woman in the household of a great noble was luring the youthful retainers to sin, when the chaplain remonstrated with his master, and threatened to depart unless she was removed. When she was taxed with her guilt she defended herself by saying that the priest had accused her because she had refused his importunities, and offered to prove it. Approaching him as a penitent, she sought to seduce his virtue, finally threatening to kill herself unless he would gratify her despairing love, until, to prevent her suicide, he finally made an appointment with her. Secretly announcing her triumph to the noble, she went to the place of meeting, where she found the chaplain mounted on a bed of plank, surrounded by straw and dry wood, to which he set fire on her appearance, and invited her to join him. Covered by the flames, the sinless man felt nothing but a cool, refreshing breeze, and when the pile had burnt out, he emerged unhurt, even his garments and hair being untouched.[977]
But the experiment was not always so successful for the rash enthusiast. In 1098, during the first crusade, after the capture of Antioch, when the Christians were in turn besieged in that city, and, sorely pressed and famine-struck, were well-nigh reduced to despair, an ignorant peasant named Peter Bartholomew, a follower of Raymond of Toulouse, announced a series of visions in which St. Andrew and the Saviour had revealed to him that the lance which pierced the side of Christ lay hidden in the church of St. Peter. After several men had dug in the spot indicated, from morning until night, without success, Peter leaped into the trench, and by a few well-directed strokes of his mattock exhumed the priceless relic, which he presented to Count Raymond. Cheered by this, and by various other manifestations of Divine assistance, the Christians gained heart, and defeated the Infidels with immense slaughter. Peter became a man of mark, and had fresh visions on all important conjunctures. Amid the jealousies and dissensions which raged among the Frankish chiefs, the possession of the holy lance vastly increased Raymond’s importance, and rival princes were found to assert that it was merely a rusty Arab weapon, hidden for the occasion, and wholly undeserving the veneration of which it was the object. At length, after some months, during the leisure of the siege of Archas, the principal ecclesiastics in the camp investigated the matter, and Peter, to silence the doubts expressed as to his veracity, offered to vindicate the identity of the relic by the fiery ordeal. He was taken at his word, and after three days allowed for fasting and prayer, a pile of dry olive-branches was made, fourteen feet long and four feet high, with a passage-way one foot wide. In the presence of forty thousand men all eagerly awaiting the result, Peter, bearing the object in dispute, and clothed only in a tunic, boldly rushed through the flames, amid the anxious prayers and adjurations of the multitude. As the chroniclers lean to the side of the Neapolitan Princes or of the Count of Toulouse, so do their accounts of the event differ; the former asserting that Peter sustained mortal injury in the fire; the latter assuring us that he emerged safely, with but one or two slight burns, and that the crowd enthusiastically pressing around him in triumph, he was thrown down, trampled on, and injured so severely that he died in a few days, asseverating with his latest breath the truth of his revelations. Raymond persisted in upholding the sanctity of his relic, but it was subsequently lost.[978]
Even after the efforts of Innocent III. to abolish the ordeal, and while the canons of the Council of Lateran were still fresh, St. Francis of Assisi, in 1219, offered himself to the flames for the propagation of the faith. In his missionary trip to the East, finding the Soldan deaf to his proselyting eloquence, he proposed to test the truth of their respective religions by entering a blazing pile in company with some imams, who naturally declined the perilous experiment. Nothing daunted, the enthusiastic saint then said that he would traverse the flames alone if the Soldan would bind himself, in the event of a triumphant result, to embrace the Christian religion and to force his subjects to follow the example. The Turk, more wary than the Dane whom Poppo converted, declined the proposition, and St. Francis returned from his useless voyage unharmed.[979]
In this St. Francis endeavored unsuccessfully to emulate the glorious achievement of Boniface, the Apostle of Russia, who, according to the current martyrologies, converted the King of Russia to the true faith by means of such a bargain and ordeal.[980] It is a little curious that Peter Cantor, in his diatribe against the judgment of God, presents the supposition of a trial such as this as an unanswerable argument against the system—the Church, he says, could not assent to such an experiment, and therefore it ought not to be trusted in affairs of less magnitude.[981]
Somewhat irregular as a judicial proceeding, but yet illustrating the general belief in the principles of the ordeal of fire, was an occurrence related about the year 1220 by Cæsarius of Heisterbach as having taken place a few years before in Arras. An ecclesiastic of good repute decoyed a goldsmith into his house, and murdered him to obtain possession of some valuables, cutting up the body, with the assistance of a younger sister, and hiding the members in a drain. The crime was proved upon them, and both were condemned to the stake. On the way to the place of punishment, the girl demanded a confessor, and confessed her sins with full contrition, but the brother was obdurate and impenitent. Both were tied to the same stake; the brother was promptly reduced to ashes, while the flames were deliciously cool to the sister, and only burnt the rope with which she was tied, so that she quietly walked down from the pile. The judges, thus convinced of her innocence, dismissed her without further trouble.[982]
From every point of view, however, both as to date and as to consequences, the most remarkable recourse to the fire ordeal was that which proved to be the proximate cause of the downfall of Savonarola. Long after the ordeal system had been superseded in European jurisprudence, and occurring in the centre of the New Learning, it was a most noteworthy illustration of the superstition which formed a common bond between sceptics and religious enthusiasts. In 1498 Savonarola had been silenced by command of Alexander III., his influence with the people was waning, and his faithful follower Fra Domenico da Pescia was desperately struggling in the pulpit to maintain the cause against the assaults of the Franciscans led by the eloquent Fra Francesco della Puglia. Domenico in a sermon offered to prove the truth of his leader’s utterances by throwing himself from the roof of the Palazzo de’ Signori, by casting himself in the river, or by entering fire. This burst of rhetoric might have passed unheeded had not Fra Francesco taken it up and offered to share the ordeal with Savonarola himself. Savonarola declined, except under impossible conditions, but Domenico accepted the challenge and affixed to the portal of Santa Croce a paper in which he offered to prove by argument or miracle the truth of sundry propositions bearing upon his teacher’s mission. To this Fra Francesco replied that he would enter fire with Fra Domenico; that he fully expected to be burnt, but that he would willingly suffer if he could disabuse the people of their false idol. Popular excitement rose to such a height that the Signoria sent for both disputants, and made them sign a written agreement to undergo the ordeal. In this Fra Francesco wisely provided that, although he was willing to enter fire with Savonarola himself, if Domenico was to act he would only produce a champion, who was readily found in the person of Fra Giuliano Rondinelli. On the side of the Dominicans the enthusiasm was so great that all the friars of Savonarola’s convent of San Marco, nearly three hundred in number, eagerly signed a pledge to submit to the ordeal, and he assured them that in such a cause they could do so without danger. In fact, when, on the day before the trial, he preached on the subject in San Marco, the whole audience rose as one man and offered to take Domenico’s place.