PRAISE FOR TRIAL BY ORDEAL.

PRAISE FOR TRIAL BY ORDEAL. Professor Peter Leeson has an article in the Boston Globe which praises the medieval system of trial by ordeal. He says that: “Although the system is considered to be “an icon of medieval barbarism and backwardness….The ordeal system worked surprisingly well. It accurately determined who was guilty and who was innocent.” The ordeals involved plunging a hand into boiling water or carrying red hot iron. If the hand was undamaged three days later, the defendant was innocent. A variant was a cold water ordeal where the defendant was tied up and thrown into water. If they sank, they were innocent. Leeson’s theory is based on a population that all believed that the result of the ordeal was the judgment of God; God would intervene to signal whether the defendant was innocent or guilty. Leeson theorizes that only the innocent would submit to the ordeal. The guilty knew what God would say and plead guilty, settle or get out of town. What about the innocent? Leeson argues that the priests who administered ordeals had a great deal of discretion and so: “Priests knew that only innocent defendants would be willing to plunge their hands in boiling water. So priests could simply rig trials….” For example, the water or the iron might not be hot enough to do damage. It will have occurred to you that people would have caught on if the defendant always passed the test. I’ll give you some statistics tomorrow. (link via Instapundit),