GOD’S JUDGMENT
Thus were called those experiments which were made to depend on the supposed divine intervention and the consequent supposed manifestation of His will, whether to declare innocence or to resolve a civil or criminal dispute. For primitive forms, see ORDALIA.
Forms of G. di Dio are also found among ancient primitive peoples; however, in those cases the divinity invoked or believed to intervene is not the true immaterial God, but any sort of pagan deity (animals, plants, men, natural or artificial things) or even evil spirits themselves. Such forms of G. di Dio are shrouded in the most superstitious rites and are accompanied by propitiatory practices and incantations.
In the West, during the Middle Ages, the use of G. di Dio became particularly widespread under the influence of Germanic customs: it was then believed that the divine will would manifest itself favorably toward the party that was in the truth and in justice, as if divine aid would naturally be directed to it to overcome the trial; whoever failed the trial was considered guilty, precisely because it was thought that he had been abandoned by divine assistance and thus indicated by the deity as guilty. It has been believed that an attestation of the early favor of the Christian milieu toward G. di Dio can be found in biblical memories (recounted in the Ordines and by writers) relating to the three young men in the furnace, the bitter waters, the duel between Goliath and David, and, in the New Testament, the episode of St. Peter walking on the water.
As for the duel in particular, the assistance of divine intervention seemed to be recalled in a letter of St. Augustine to Count Boniface, and the relevant passage, cited in the Pannomnia of Ivo (VIII, 43, de pugna), says: «Gravi de pugna conquisterò. Arripe manibus arma; oratio aures pulset auctoris. Quia quando pugnatur, Deus apertis coelis expectat, et partem quam inspicit iustam, defendit». However, it must be considered that St. Augustine is speaking here of the true and proper battle, and the warning he gives to those who fight for a just cause—that they may be sure of divine aid—is not in itself a probative argument. Judicial duels, in fact, take place between individuals and to resolve disputes, and they proceed as true judicial experiments.
The material test to which recourse was had in G. di Dio to ascertain good right or innocence, and to reveal wrong or guilt, besides the duel could consist in more immediately experienced material proofs on the person, such as the ordeal of hot iron, the passing through or immersion in cold or boiling water, or in boiling oil and the like. There was also the so-called iudicium feretri, by which, with the corpse exposed before the alleged murderer, he was held guilty by divine judgment if the wounds reopened or bled.
G. di Dio were also called “ordalies,” a term that corresponds purely to “sentences” (from the German Urtheil), because precisely from the more or less complete overcoming of the trial the divine decision was inferred, of which the human judge had only to take note. The term G. di Dio is then extended both to the experiment itself, taken as a particular means of proof, and to the decision derived from it, and to the entire procedure that the decision itself required.
In the Middle Ages the use of these G. di Dio is also found among ecclesiastics, and it is not rare to encounter records of litigation in which a monk withdraws the claim advanced, confessing the wrong of his monastery and refusing to undergo the trial so as not to offend the deity and incur perjury. Recourse to the forms of G. di Dio appears very frequent also in cases of uncertainty about the authenticity of documents produced in court or in the absence of other clear and conclusive proof.
The judicial duel (pugna), in particular, is most often resorted to for resolving controversies. It could be sustained either personally or through champions, and not infrequently had an outcome that was anything but definitive. In the face of these strange experiments it is reasonable to believe that confidence in these forms must gradually have declined and that above all the thought must have gained ground of their uselessness in revealing the truth and justice. But also the intrinsic vice of immorality contained in them must have struck people. Hence conciliar decrees and papal letters, the former attested from the 8th century onward, the latter from the following century, began to oppose this barbaric custom, which presumed the continuous intervention of God in favor of the parties; while on the other hand the idea gained ground that failure in the trial could occur because of a lack of physical strength and material resistance, and not because of guilt.
Nevertheless, it is not rare to find, in considerably later times, the act of purgation from an accusation performed by high ecclesiastics with the assumption of the Sacred Species: although here, according to some, it is a matter of canonical purgation. It is noteworthy that synodal courts toward the 8th century took G. di Dio to prove the guilt of servants; while for freemen recourse was had to oaths.
In the famous case of the divorce of Lothar it was admitted that God, by His mercy, concealed the guilt of the accused. Throughout the 10th century, English and Bavarian synods reduced the formalities that were to accompany the ordeals, and later German and Spanish synods established appropriate ordeals for the crimes of adultery and murder. Notable is the Roman Synod of 1078, which authorized the famous trial of Peter of Abano. In the Council of Reims of 1119, G. di Dio was imposed for the accused who was not a knight.
Finally, the Fourth Lateran Council formally forbade ecclesiastics from blessing boiling or cold water, or hot iron, confirming the prohibition of the duel. The anonymous contemporary author of the Chronicon Turonense reports those prohibitions in this way: «Quod iudicium aquae vel ferri vel duellum numquam fieri de cetero permittatur». In the 14th century conciliar dispositions follow that pronounce excommunication on those who resort to ordeals «by which the Deity is tempted and the innocent are exposed to the danger of being condemned».
The reasoning behind this severe measure now clearly expresses how far the path had come in withdrawing faith in the efficacy of those trials. Among the popes, the first to express a clearer condemnatory judgment of the duel and ordeals was Nicholas I.
Stephen V and Alexander II followed, but the provisions issued by them seem to be limited to the prohibition of those forms in ecclesiastical courts. Alluding to G. di Dio, Lucius III declares that the sacred canons forbid peregrina indicia. To Pope Celestine III is traced an explicit condemnation of the duel, while Pope Innocent III seems tolerant, though affirming that the duel takes place iuxta pravam quarundam consuetudinem regionum.
It is due to Honorius III, his successor, the condemnation at least of the ordeal of hot iron with the letter Directe fili, inserted in the Decretals of Gregory IX (V, 35, 3). Yet Innocent VIII still had to work to have the ordeal of hot iron abolished in the kingdom of Maximilian.
As for the duel, the bulls of Julius II (1509) and Leo X (1519) relate to knightly duels and not to judicial ones (see DUELLO).
As regards in particular the attitude of Christian writers towards ordeals, special note must be taken of the appeal made by the Bishop of Lyons, AGOBARD (d. 840), in a letter addressed to the Emperor Louis the Pious, requesting the prohibition of those judicial forms. The letter, which has no title in the manuscripts, was given the title *Liber adversus legem Gundobadi et impia certamina quae per eam geruntur* by Baluze (*Agobardi episcopi Lugdunensis, Opera*, I, Paris 1666, pp. 107-21). Subsequently, Christian writers increasingly aligned themselves in support of the prohibition of ordeals.