Trial by ordeal

During the early Middle Ages, Christian countries in early medieval Europe carried out the practice of trial by ordeal on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on their behalf.

There was ordeal by fire where the accused had to walk through flames. If the accused managed to come through without major injury then they were judged innocent. However if the flames devoured them then they were guilty.

There was ordeal by water where they were judged by the water. If guilty they rose up to the surface (rejected by the water), if they were innocent they were accepted by the water and sunk. Hopefully they were then fished out in time.

Water-ordeal. Miniature from the chronicle.

The ordeal of hot water required the accused to dip his hand in a kettle or pot of boiling water (sometimes oil or lead was used instead) and retrieve a stone. If innocent, God would stop them burning. The priests who administered this would secretly cool the water beforehand if they thought the defendant was innocent.

Fire was the element typically used to test noble defendants, while water was more commonly used by lesser folk.

One person who had to go through this trial by ordeal was Emma of Normandy, the mother of Edward the Confessor who was accused of adultery with Bishop Ælfwine of Winchester. Her test was to walk on nine red-hot ploughshares without injury. She miraculously managed to walk over the blades completely unscathed and was thus declared innocent. She expressed her thanks to God by giving nine manors to the Church of Westminster.

Priestly cooperation in trials by fire and water was forbidden by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. It was replaced by compurgation, an ancient type of defense where an accused person could call a number of people, who swore to their belief in his or her innocence. The English plea rolls contain no cases of trial by ordeal after 1219, when Henry III of England recognized its abolition.

Ordeal by Fire by Dierec Bouts the Older

Trials by ordeal became rarer over the Late Middle Ages, often replaced by confessions extracted under torture. However, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some kinds of ordeals were once again used in witch-hunts.