'When the combatants who shall have mutually pledged themselves to the combat present themselves, they must appear on the appointed day on foot, between six and nine o'clock in the morning, before the palace of the lord, and call him, being clothed and equipped as above, having also several shields and swords borne before them, in order that, on entering the place of combat, they may select what they need.
'And then the lord shall cause all the weapons to be examined by his court, so as to know whether they are in order; and if one lance is longer than the other, he shall shorten it, and he shall have the two combatants well watched as they go to the place of combat, that neither may run away; also that they receive no bodily injury or annoyance, and be not insulted or derided; for the lord must protect them against all this, since they are in his keeping. When they shall have entered the place of combat, the feudal lord shall station some of his people to watch the place, and one of these shall say, in the presence of the others, to each of the combatants: 'Select your weapons which ye desire in order to finish the combat.' This they shall do, and the weapons selected shall be kept in the place, and the rest carried away. Then shall each combatant be made to swear that he carries about his person neither talisman, nor charm, nor witchcraft, that he has had no such provided for this combat, and that no other person has done this with his knowledge, that he has neither given nor promised anything to any one to procure the making of talisman, charm, or witchcraft, in order to aid himself or damage his antagonist in this contest, and that he bears about him no other weapons than those seen by the court.
'Then shall they bring the combatants together upon the place of combat, where there shall be a copy of the gospels. The accused shall first swear upon his knees with his right hand upon the gospels, and shall say: 'As I have not murdered the deceased, so help me God and the holy gospel.' The complainant shall say that he lies, and that he takes him up as a perjured person, and shall then take him by the thumb, and shall swear: 'So let God and his holy gospel help me, as the accused murdered the deceased.' And then shall the guards station the combatants, one at each end of the place, and the proclamation shall be made at all the four corners of the field, that no one of whatever rank shall do or say anything by which either party can be helped or hindered, and in case any one shall do so, his person and goods shall fall to his feudal lord. And if the corpse of the murdered person is present, it shall be so placed as to be seen over the entire place of combat, and the complainant, whether man or woman, in case of being represented by a combatant, shall be there bound so as neither to benefit nor injure either of the parties by word, or deed, or bearing, and shall only pray to God, but not so as to be heard by either combatant. * * * And the guard shall so arrange that the sun cannot shine more in the face of one than of the other; and one of the guards shall then say: 'Shall the command now be given? We have made all ready.' And the lord shall answer: 'Let them come together.' And they shall let them come together, and shall withdraw themselves; and if one fasten upon the other, and they wrestle and fall, the guards shall go to the place and as near to them as they can, in order to be able to hear in case one shall cry for grace; and if one cry and they hear, they shall say to the other, 'Cease; it is enough.' And then shall the lord cause the conquered party to be taken to the gallows and hanged by the neck' (a grace scarcely worth crying for), 'or his corpse, in case he had been killed without crying for grace. The weapons of the vanquished man and those which the victor threw away belong to the lord. Should it appear in the course of the contest that one of the parties had other weapons than those which had been seen by the court, the guards shall seize him, and the lord shall pronounce sentence upon him as a murderer.
'And if any one, who is no knight, is accused of murder, it shall be done as above, only that the combatants shall be armed otherwise than as knights.'
If the vanquished man did not fight for himself, but as a substitute, his lot was subject to some variation; if he fought for a woman, then not he, but the woman, was to be hanged; if he fought for a witness who had been accused of perjury in a civil suit, then the champion was to be hanged and the perjured man merely lost his right of testifying on oath; in case of representing any of the principal parties in a criminal process, a vanquished champion and the person whom he represented were both to be hanged; and in case of representing a witness in a criminal case, the vanquished champion the witness, and the complainant were all hanged.
It is easily perceived that in such single combat the judgment of God was not upon the main question, but upon the question which of the two had committed perjury. So in case of the application of the single combat in civil suits, which, however, could take place only when the amount claimed was at least one mark.
Whoever prosecuted a claim must establish it by at least two witnesses; and if he brought these, the defendant could not establish the contrary by better witnesses or documents, but must either submit, or convict the witnesses of perjury. This was done as follows: When the first witness, kneeling, had taken the oath, the defendant stepped forward, took hold of the witness' thumb, and raised him up, declaring him a false and perjured witness, and that he was ready to maintain this with his life. Then followed the judicial combat as above.
The procedure was similar when any one would contest a judgment already rendered. The court itself must be solemnly accused of falsehood; the complainant must fight with all the associate judges of the court, or have his tongue cut off as a calumniator. Whoever in such case did not vanquish all the judges of the court, and that, too, on the same day, must be hanged.
The obvious remark in relation to all the processes above described is, that unless hanging was much more honorable then than now, however numerous the capital crimes committed, probably few complaints were entered, very few witnesses accused of perjury, very few combatants cried for grace, even in the most desperate struggle, very few judicial decisions were contested, and very few injured husbands used their right of punishing the unfaithful wife and her accomplice, since all parties, innocent and guilty, stood about equal chances of being hanged at the end.
The Crusades furnish the subject of frequent popular disquisitions and, sketches, but the laws by which the Crusaders lived in their promised land have rarely, if ever, been popularly sketched in this country. This brief notice may do something toward supplying this desideratum, and at the same time toward reconciling the most poetic reader—the greatest admirer of the institutions of chivalry—to having been born in this prosaic age, nearly a thousand years later. It may make such persons feel that even 'the glorious uncertainty of the law' has some advantages over the judicial processes of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
But I must not close my article, as some in similar cases have done, without informing the reader to whom he is indebted mainly for it. I have myself often entered that hall in the Royal Library at Munich, and looked with interest upon that manuscript of the Assizes of Jerusalem, but I have never studied it. In the winter of 1858, however, I heard a course of popular lectures on various subjects, by a number of distinguished men, before an audience of invited ladies and gentlemen, at the lecture room of Baron von Liebig's chemical laboratory. One of these was delivered by Baron de Voelderndorff on the Assizes of Jerusalem. On opening my box of books, after my return from Europe a few weeks since, I came across a volume containing the course of lectures to which I have referred. As my eye rested upon this one, I remembered the interest with which I had listened to its original delivery, and resolved that the public should have a chance to feel something of the same. This article is the fruit of that resolution, and though not strictly a translation, may still be regarded as little more or less than such, and the credit given wherever the reader shall deem it due.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Jurors, larceny, theft, murder.