Medieval Cynicism
Thursday, October 19, 2017
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| Image via Wikimedia Commons. |
Capitalize on ignorance and rig the result:
... Did you catch the trick? Because of your belief in iudicium Dei, the spectre of the ordeal leads you to choose one way if you're guilty -- confess -- and another way if you're innocent -- undergo the ordeal -- revealing the truth about your guilt or innocence to the court through the choice you make. By asking God to out you, the legal system incentivises you to out yourself...The piece goes on to elaborate on how the instruction manual for the priest who ran the "trial" should proceed:
A "miraculous" result was thus practically assured. For example, in the early 13th century, 208 defendants in Várad in Hungary underwent hot-iron ordeals. Amazingly, nearly two-thirds of defendants were unscathed by the "red-hot" irons they carried and hence exonerated. If the priests who administered these ordeals understood how to heat iron, as they surely did, that leaves only two explanations for the "miraculous" results: either God really did intervene to reveal the defendants" innocence, or the priests made sure that the iron they carried wasn't hot. [minor format edits]So the Church found a way to both preserve its credibility by delivering a fair verdict often enough for that purpose -- and yet to maintain complete control over the result of any given trial. Even if, as the author claimed, this yielded "improved criminal justice," it served its true purpose, of maintaining the power of the Church over society, far better. The superstitious rabble were kept from utter lawlessness and any uppity heretics were put on notice, too, even if they saw through the ruse. Clever.
-- CAV
2 comments:
Yo, Gus, you write: "Essentially everyone believed in eternal damnation for the unrepentant, but that wasn't always an effective deterrent to actual crime. At the same time, a perceived inability on their part to render reliable verdicts would cast doubt on them as cognitive and moral authorities. The Church needed a way to achieve some level of certainty about innocence or guilt, but the priests knew on some level that they weren't going to get any help from their imaginary friend. What to do?"
It's a good little article; it's similar to our discussions in the different courses on the history of medieval law I took back in my undergrad days. The context is worth going into briefly. The different trials by ordeal were Germanic customs (and common enough in many other parts of the world), and the inclusion of the Church in them was part of the long-term romanization of the Germanic kingdoms, which was a fascinating and very diverse process. In a nutshell: Under the Germanic kings, there was personality of law--Romans were governed by Roman law, Germanic citizens by Germanic law, and the king administered both. However, as Roman law was systematic and in many respects preferable to less codified customary law, Roman provisions expanded into Germanic law as it was written down and issued, and then reissued with changes by succeeding kings. At the same time, you had an expansion of the authority of the Church, which being governed by canon law was the major receptacle of Roman law, especially after the growth of the law schools at the first universities from the later 10th century on (Bologna and Paris especially). You thus had the concurrent processes of greater involvement of clergy in the law (and in the state, as clerics served as clerks more and more) and of the Church moving to romanize and standardize law and make the penalties much less harsh (there was a strong belief that the Church should not be involved in dealing out the death penalty). This varied widely across Europe at any time, of course, depending on such matters as how closely the secular power (and supremacy of local nobles versus kings was another issue) had control over the local churches and appointments to office, etc., and so you also have to keep in mind that the Church was far from uniform in its views--Rome often had to exert massive efforts to keep its underlings in line with doctrine (which was also the case in the witch mania of the early modern period, the 1470s to 1680s, roughly, where the higher in the hierarchy, the less likely a churchman was to support widespread witch trials, and also the severity of witch trials varied enormously across Europe which reflected local custom and, to some extent, the stresses of Catholicism versus Protestantism at a given time). The big event in any case was the Fourth Lateran Council, which prohibited clerics from participating in trials by ordeal: They were not allowed to pronounce or perform the death sentence, judge major crimes, or participate in trials by ordeal. That was the beginning of the end of the institution since, after all, what's the point of appealing to God's judgment if His little helpers are staying well out of it? --Though you also had the growth of the centralized state rendering justice in royal courts at the same time as another such factor, which outside of England was increasingly shaped by Roman Law and inside England by common law. So, there's half a semester of the introductory course in very bare-bones outline for you, sir.
Interesting as always. Thanks for the comment.
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