JUDGMENT OF GOD. - This was the name given to those trials that made either a declaration of innocence or the resolution of a civil or criminal dispute depend on the presumed intervention of God and the consequent presumed manifestation of His will. For primitive peoples v. ORDEAL.
Forms of the judgment of God are also found among ancient primitive peoples; there, however, the divinity invoked or believed to intervene is not the true immaterial God, but any sort of pagan divinity (animals, plants, men, natural or artificial things) or even evil spirits themselves. Such forms of judgment are wrapped in the most superstitious rites and are accompanied by propitiatory practices and exorcisms.
In the West, during the Middle Ages, the use of the judgment of God became particularly widespread through the influence of Germanic customs: at that time it was believed that the divine will manifested itself favorably toward the party that was in the truth and in justice, as though divine help would naturally turn to that party in order to overcome the trial; whoever succumbed to the trial, on the other hand, was held guilty, precisely because he was thought to have been abandoned by divine assistance and thus pointed out by the divinity itself as guilty. It has been thought to find an attestation of the early favor of the Christian milieu toward the judgments of God in biblical recollections (recalled in the Ordines and by writers), relating to the three youths in the furnace, to the bitter waters, to the duel between Goliath and David, and, in the New Testament, to the episode of St. Peter walking on the waves.
As for the duel in particular, the assistance of divine intervention seemed to be recalled in a letter of St. Augustine to Boniface the Count, and the relevant passage, cited in the Panormia of Ivo (VIII, 43, de pugna), says: « Gravi de pugna conquereris. Arripe manibus arma; oratio aures pulset auctoris. Quia quando pugnatur Deus apertis coelia expectat, et partem quam inspicit iustam, defendit ». Nevertheless it is to be held that St. Augustine is speaking there of battle properly so called, and the warning he gives to one who fights for a just cause that he may be sure of divine help is not in itself probative evidence. Judicial duels, in fact, take place between single individuals and to settle disputes, and are conducted as true and proper judicial trials.
The material proof resorted to in the judgments of God in order to ascertain the rightful claim or innocence, and to establish wrong or guilt, besides the duel could consist of material proofs more immediately experienced on the person, such as the application of red-hot iron, passing through and immersion in freezing or boiling water, or in boiling oil and the like. There was also the so-called iudicium feretri, whereby, when the corpse was exposed before the presumed murderer, the latter was held guilty by divine judgment if the wounds reopened or bled.
The judgments of God were also called "ordeals," a term that corresponds purely to "sentences" (from the German Urtheil), because the divine decision was inferred precisely from the more or less complete passing of the trial, of which the human judge had only to take note. The term judgment of God is then extended both to the trial 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 judgments is found also among ecclesiastics, and it is not rare to encounter records of litigation in which a monk desists from the claim he has advanced, confessing the wrong of his monastery and refusing to submit to the trial so as not to offend the divinity and be guilty of perjury. Recourse to the forms of the judgment of God appears very frequent also in the case 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, was more often followed in order to settle controversies. It could be sustained either personally or by means of campiones, and not infrequently had an outcome that was anything but definitive. In the face of these strange trials it is reasonable to believe that confidence in these forms was bound to fall gradually and that above all the thought of their uselessness for revealing the truth and justice was bound to make headway. But the intrinsic vice of immorality contained in them must also have struck people. Therefore conciliar deliberations and pontifical 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 at the pleasure of the parties; while on the other hand the idea was making headway that succumbing in the trial could occur through deficiency of physical strength and material resistance, and not through guilt.
Nevertheless it is not rare to encounter still, in notably 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 purgatio canonica. It is noteworthy that synodal tribunals around the 8th century adopted the judgments of God to prove the guilt of serfs; whereas for free men recourse was had to the oath.
In the famous question of Lothar's divorce it was admitted that God, in His mercy, concealed the guilt of the accused. Throughout the 10th century, English and Bavarian synods fixed the formalities that were to accompany ordeals, and subsequently other German and Spanish synods established the ordeals appropriate for the crimes of adultery and murder. Memorable is the Roman Synod of 1098, which authorized the famous trial of Pietro d'Abano. At the Council of Reims of 1119 the judgment of God was imposed for an accused who was not a miles.
Finally the Fourth Lateran Council pronounced a formal prohibition for ecclesiastics against blessing boiling or cold water, or red-hot iron, reconfirming 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 coetero permittatur ». There follow in the 14th century conciliar provisions that pronounce excommunication on anyone who has recourse to ordeals « with which the Divinity is tempted and the innocent are exposed to the danger of being condemned ».
The motivation of the grave measure expresses by now with evident clarity how much progress had been made in withdrawing belief in the efficacy of those proofs. Among the pontiffs, the first to express a more clear-cut judgment of condemnation of the duel and of ordeals was Nicholas I.
There follow Stephen V and Alexander II, but the provisions issued by them seem to be restricted to the prohibition of those forms in ecclesiastical tribunals. Alluding to the judgments of God, Lucius III declares that the sacri canones prohibit the iudicia peregrina. An explicit condemnation of the duel goes back to Pope Celestine III, while Pope Innocent III seems tolerant, though affirming that the duel takes place iuxta pravam quarundam consuetudinem regionum.
It is to Honorius III, his successor, that the condemnation at least of the trial of red-hot iron is due, with the letter
There follow Stephen V and Alexander II, but the provisions issued by them seem to be restricted to the prohibition of those forms in ecclesiastical tribunals. Alluding to the judgments of God, Lucius III declares that the sacri canones prohibit the iudicia peregrina. An explicit condemnation of the duel goes back to Pope Celestine III, while Pope Innocent III seems tolerant, though affirming that the duel takes place iuxta pravam quarundam consuetudinem regionum.
It is to Honorius III, his successor, that the condemnation at least of the trial of red-hot iron is due, with the letter
Dilecte fili, inserted in the Decretals of Gregory IX (V, 35, 3). Nevertheless 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 of Leo X (1519) relate to the chivalric duel and not to the judicial one (v. DUELLO).
As regards in particular the attitude of Christian writers toward ordeals, particularly noteworthy is the invocation of the bishop of Lyon, Agobard (d. 840), in the letter he addressed to the emperor Louis the Pious, to request the prohibition of those judicial forms. The letter, untitled in the manuscripts, was given by Baluze (Agobardi episcopi Lugdunensis, Opera, I, Paris 1666, pp. 107-21) the title Liber adversus legem Gundobadi et impia certamina quae per eam geruntur. Subsequently Christian writers aligned themselves even more in support of the prohibition of the judgments of God.
Bibliography
Antonio Rota