Trial by ordeal

Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused is determined by subjecting them to a painful task. If either the task is completed without injury, or the injuries sustained are healed quickly, the accused is considered innocent. Like trial by combat, it was a judicium Dei: a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent.

Abolition

In the common law of England, ordeals began to fall into disuse beginning with the Assize of Clarendon established by Henry II. It continued to be used, either judicially or extrajudicially, in cases where no other proof was thought possible, as in the case of secret and unwitnessed murders or supernaturally concealed crimes such as witchcraft. Another blow was struck against trial by ordeal in 1215, when the Fourth Lateran Council forbade the Roman Catholic clergy from administering the ordeals. Since circumstances suggest that the intervention of the clergy was pivotal in the outcome of the ordeals, this prohibition severely hampered the practice. In obedience to this principle, in 1220, during the reign of Henry III, trial by ordeal was abolished in England, and jury trials were substituted in every case that was formerly tried by ordeal. When the witch persecutions finally died out at the end of the seventeenth century, the last vestiges of ordeal ended with them.

Related Topics:
Common law - England - Assize of Clarendon - Henry II - 1215 - Fourth Lateran Council - Roman Catholic - Clergy - 1220 - Henry III - Seventeenth century

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The trial by ordeal was something different from the peine forte et dure, which involved pressing an accused person who refused to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty with heavy weights until he relented or died.

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