Then the accused was replaced in the scale, and if he were found to be lighter than before he was acquitted. If the scale broke, the trial was to be repeated.[1059]
It will be seen here that lightness was an evidence of innocence, but in Europe the ordeal was reversed in consequence of the belief that sorcerers became lighter than water. Rickius, writing in 1594, speaks of this mode of trial being commonly used in many places in witchcraft cases, and gravely assures us that very large and fat women had been found to weigh only thirteen or fifteen pounds;[1060] but even this will scarcely explain the modification of the process as employed in some places, which consisted in putting the accused in one scale and a Bible in the other.[1061] Kœnigswarter assures us that the scales formerly used on these occasions are still to be seen at Oudewater in Holland.[1062] In the case already referred to as occurring July 30, 1728, at Szegedin in Hungary, thirteen persons, six men and seven women, were burnt alive for witchcraft, whose guilt had been proved, first by the cold-water ordeal and then by that of the balance. We are told that a large and fat woman weighed only one and a half drachms and her husband five drachms and the rest varied from a pennyweight to three drachms and under. One of the victims was a man of 82, a local judge, who had previously borne an unblemished character.[1063] The use of the Bible as a counterpoise is on record even as lately as the year 1759, at Aylesbury in England, where one Susannah Haynokes, accused of witchcraft, was formally weighed against the Bible in the parish church.[1064]
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE ORDEAL OF THE CROSS.
The ordeal of the cross (judicium crucis, stare ad crucem) was one of simple endurance and differed from all its congeners, except the duel, in being bilateral. The plaintiff and defendant, after appropriate religious ceremonies and preparation, stood with uplifted arms before a cross, while divine service was performed, victory being adjudged to the one who was able longest to maintain his position. An ancient formula for judgments obtained in this manner in cases of disputed titles to land prescribes the term of forty-two nights for the trial.[1065] It doubtless originated in the use of this exercise by the Church both as a punishment and as a penance.[1066] Of its use as an ordeal the earliest instance which I have observed occurs in a Capitulary of Pepin le Bref, in 752, where it is prescribed in cases of application by a wife for dissolution of marriage.[1067] Charlemagne appears to have regarded it with much favor, for he not only frequently refers to it in his edicts, but, when dividing his mighty empire, in 806, he directs that all territorial disputes which may arise in the future between his sons shall be settled in this manner.[1068] An example occurring during his reign shows the details of the process. A controversy between the bishop and citizens of Verona, relative to the building of certain walls, was referred to the decision of the cross. Two young ecclesiastics, selected as champions, stood before the sacred emblem from the commencement of mass; at the middle of the Passion, Aregaus, who represented the citizens, fell lifeless to the ground, while his antagonist, Pacificus, held out triumphantly to the end, and the bishop gained his cause, as ecclesiastics were wont to do.[1069]
When a defeated pleader desired to discredit his own compurgators, he had the right to accuse them of perjury, and the question was then decided by this process.[1070] In a similar spirit, witnesses too infirm to undergo the battle-trial, by which in the regular process of law they were bound to substantiate their testimony, were allowed, by a Capitulary of 816, to select the ordeal of the cross, with the further privilege, in cases of extreme debility, of substituting a relative or other champion, whose robustness promised an easier task for the Divine interference.[1071]
A slight variation of this form of ordeal consisted in standing with the arms extended in the form of a cross, while certain portions of the service were recited. In this manner St. Lioba, Abbess of Bischoffsheim, triumphantly vindicated the purity of her flock, and traced out the offender, when the reputation of her convent was imperilled by the discovery of a new-born child drowned in a neighboring pond.[1072]
The sensitive piety of Louis le Débonnaire was shocked at this use of the cross, as tending to bring the Christian symbol into contempt, and in 816, soon after the death of Charlemagne, he prohibited its continuance, at the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle;[1073] an order which was repeated by his son, the Emperor Lothair.[1074] Baluze, however, considers, with apparent reason, that this command was respected only in the Rhenish provinces and in Italy, from the fact that the manuscripts of the Capitularies belonging to those regions omit the references to the ordeal of the cross, which are retained in the copies used in the other territories of the Frankish empire.[1075] Louis himself would seem at length to have changed his opinion; for, in the final division of his succession between his sons, he repeats the direction of Charlemagne as regards the settlement of disputed boundaries.[1076] The procedure, however, appears to have soon lost its popularity, and indeed never to have obtained the wide and deeply-seated hold on the veneration of the people enjoyed by the other forms of ordeal, though there is extant a formula for confirming disputed titles to real estate decided in this manner.[1077] We see little of it at later periods, except the trace it has left in the proverbial allusion to an experimentum crucis.
In India a cognate mode is adopted by the people of Ramgur to settle questions of disputed boundaries between villages. When agreement by argument or referees is found impossible, each community chooses a champion, and the two stand with one leg buried in the earth until weariness or the bites of insects cause one of them to yield, when the territory in litigation is adjudged to the village of the victor.[1078]