This was threefold: by the pyre, by coals, and by iron, that is, by ploughshares or bricks, or by glowing plates or gloves. Innocence was proved if someone went away unharmed; if not, he was held guilty. I find this sometimes voluntarily undertaken, sometimes imposed on the one challenged.
Concerning glowing iron, this still holds today among the Japanese, as our letters teach. One letter of Father Luis Froes, written in the year 1595, narrates a distinguished miracle that happened at Omura, to this effect:
[margin: Letters of the Jesuit fathers from Japan; Father Luis Froes’s letter of 1595 on the Omura hot-iron ordeal]
A certain Christian dwelling among the Gentiles had been accused of theft; and because this crime is most severely punished in Japan, so that one convicted of it, however slight, is punished by death with no hope of pardon, and yet they could not truly convict this Christian, behold, the Gentiles immediately beset him, and, when they can do nothing else, they importunately compel him to give an oath in the rite customary among them. This was that on a sheet of written paper he should write the thing to be sworn, then, with the sheet placed in the palm of his hand, should put glowing iron on it, and by closing his hand should call down vengeance and the wrath of Chamis upon his own head if he were guilty of the crime charged. But if the hand by chance is burned, they say it is proved by experience that he is guilty; if, however, it remains free from injury together with the sheet, he is innocent.
Therefore when this Christian had been brought into these straits, since he had either to swear or, if he rejected the oath, by which he made himself guilty, to undergo danger to his life, trusting in his innocence he said that it was not lawful for him, as a Christian, to swear by the false god Chamis, but only by the true God. The Gentiles agreed that he swear by his own God. He therefore, having expressed the sign of the cross on the sheet, and the glowing iron having been placed upon it, because he was compelled to do this, clasped the iron in his hand with great confidence of mind. A marvelous thing: neither the hand nor the sheet was burned. And so he was released not only from the punishment with which the Gentiles threatened him, but also from the fault which they falsely fastened on him.
Thus far the letter published in Latin at Mainz in the year 1598. Plainly this was an old and very celebrated purgation. But in France it was lawful only in secular cases, as is gathered from Ivo’s letters 91 and 251. I find that this glowing iron was called “the Judgment”; I think this name was common to all the instruments of these vulgar probations. Peter Le Loyer offers us this formula from the archives of Saint Maurice of Angers:
[margin: Ivo of Chartres, letters 91 and 251; Peter Le Loyer, On Specters, book 2, chapter 7, preserving the Saint Maurice of Angers formula]
We, however, sufficiently fortified, were often offering in the hearing of all who stood there the narration and discussion of this case, and we were always declaring ourselves ready for every justice. When behold, a certain man from the men whom Berlaius was claiming, Theobald the Furrier by name, rose up on his own side, without our knowledge and with justice in no way dictating it, and not by our counsel, and of his own accord offered that he would carry the Judgment with his hand. His uncle, Rainald Pepardus, had told him this, and that this true appearance had been made concerning his ancestors, between the canons of St. Maurice and the ancestors of that Berlaius, as was contained in our charters. And as Theobald offered, so he was ready, and by his hand in the church of St. Denis at Doue, with many looking on, both from our side and from the side of lord Berlaius, whose names are noted below, he carried the Judgment. After the Judgment had been carried, that Theobald, God being propitious, appeared wholly unharmed and sound. Almost all the men and women of Doue, and several of the men of lord Berlaius, saw either the Judgment being carried or the hand being examined according to custom on the third day, witnesses of the Judgment carried and of the man, by God’s mercy, wholly saved and freed.
Here you see that they were accustomed to add the cause which moved them, or to express what they wished to prove by carrying the Judgment. You also see clerics protesting so that they might escape irregularity and the censures to be incurred if they themselves had urged the man to this and mutilation or death had followed.
[margin: Radevicus on the military law under Frederick; Lombard law and Frankish capitular/legal titles on hot-iron purgation and homicide accusations]
Various northern laws mention this, all passed after Italy and Gaul were occupied by the barbarians. In Radevicus there is mention of a military law by which a slave, not caught in theft but accused, was ordered to purge himself either by his lord’s oath or by the judgment of glowing iron. Frankish and Lombard laws ordered a man accused of homicide to purge himself by nine glowing ploughshares. After the Slavs embraced the true religion, they ceased to swear by trees, springs, and stones; the practice was received that suspected persons were examined by priests with glowing iron or ploughshare. Philip, count of Flanders, also passed this law in the year 1164: “If anyone imputes to another a wound received at night, if it seems fitting to the aldermen, the accused shall excuse himself by glowing iron; if he flees, he shall lose his hand. Likewise, if someone summoned as a thief is accused, he shall excuse himself by glowing iron; if he remains culpable, he shall be hanged.”
[margin: Helmold, History of the Slavs, chapter 84; Meyer, Chronicle of Flanders, on Philip of Flanders’s 1164 law]
In this judgment there was no fixed number of ploughshares, nor was any fixed kind or weight of iron prescribed, as is clear from the variety of Judgments. I think the Franks generally used, according to custom, the following consecration or imprecation over the iron:
God, just judge, who are the author of peace and judge equity, we humbly ask you that you deign to bless and sanctify this iron ordained for making a just examination of any doubt, so that if one innocent concerning the aforesaid cause for which purgation is sought takes this glowing iron into his hands, he may appear unharmed; and if he is culpable and guilty, may your most just power be in it to declare him with power, so that justice may not be dominated, but iniquity may be subjected and falsehood to equity. Through our Lord.
In Sophocles’s Antigone, the guards of Polynices’ body, accused of negligent custody, say that they are ready to prove their innocence both by handling glowing iron and by walking through a pyre and by oath: “to lift glowing metal in their hands, or to creep through fire, and to swear by the gods.”
[margin: Bavarian Annals, book 4; Sophocles, Antigone, is cited for the Greek parallel to handling glowing metal, passing through fire, and swearing]
In the Council of Tribur we are taught that this probation in Germany was not for nobles, for whom the sworn attestation of twelve freeborn men sufficed, but for the ignoble. But histories testify that nobles also often underwent it: sometimes by a plate, sometimes by a glove, sometimes otherwise. In the year 1215, or thereabouts, Conrad of Marburg, the apostolic inquisitor, if those accused of heresy denied the charge, tested them by the judgment of glowing iron; and if they were burned, he further committed them to the pyre. This was wrongly done by him against the canons, if it was done. For Stephen V had already prohibited it, as we shall say afterward. Richardis, wife of the emperor Charles III, was accused of adultery, but cleared the charge by glowing iron. It is certain that Kunigunde, wife of Henry II, purged herself in this way; yet the historians differ in this, that some want her to have trodden ploughshares with bare feet, others to have carried six ploughshares in her hands. Unless you say that successively she carried them with her hands and trod them with her feet, Crantzius must necessarily disagree with himself. George Pachymeres records that in his youth several others carried a glowing mass in unharmed hands. Polydore writes that Emma, queen of England, walked with bare feet over glowing ploughshares to attest her chastity.
[margin: Council of Tribur, chapter Nobilis, 2, question 4; Trithemius, Chronicle, chapter 22, on Conrad of Marburg; Bavarian Annals, book 4; Fulgosius, book 8, chapter 1; Crantzius, Saxon Chronicle, book 4, chapter 32, and Metropolis, book 4; George Pachymeres; Polydore Vergil, English History, book 8]
More remarkable is what Saxo the Dane writes. In Rugen, converted to the faith, a certain matron was unjustly accused of adultery by her husband. When for the sake of purging infamy she put her hand toward the glowing plate, suddenly the iron which she was about to receive, as though fleeing the touch of an innocent hand, rose aloft, neglecting its weight, and, with hanging motion, accompanied the woman’s step as she walked; and when it was to be thrown before the altar, among the religious admiration of those standing by, it fell to the ground by its own impulse.
[margin: Saxo, Danish History, book 14 in some divisions, on the Rugen matron and the hovering glowing plate]
Two spouses, counts of Modena, under the emperor Otto III, exhibited to us an example worthy of eternal history and a memorable proof of conjugal fidelity. The empress, of slippery faith and no conscience, like a new Phaedra, tried to draw the count of Modena into her embraces. When she was repelled, she turned to fury, and, inflamed with hatred of the man whom she had loved without restraint, she threw her own crime back upon the innocent man. The deceit did not escape the count. On one side love for the emperor, on the other his own honor, pressed him. Honor yielded to love, because he placed Caesar’s honor before his own life. Yet he disclosed to his wife, a most prudent woman and, what is rare, a brave one, the empress’s attempts, his own answer, that woman’s calumnies, and his own danger. He said that it had been decreed for him to undergo a thousand most bitter deaths rather than bring into light so great a disgrace to his emperor, born from the empress’s incontinence and perfidy. Therefore, if he had ever deserved anything well of her, he begged her to forget her sex and marriage with masculine constancy and to bear the sentence of shameful death which was hanging over him; and, when her husband had been slain, to resume his spirit and memory and with fearless mind free her husband’s name from ignominy.
Not long afterward the count paid for the empress’s fault with his head, condemned by the judgment of a credulous Proetus. Then, when an imperial assembly had been established at Roncaglia, on the day when justice was being administered to widows, the woman came forward and before the assembly, by the law of the emperors, called Otto to the penalty of retaliation because he had unjustly removed her husband from the midst. Otto marveled and said: “But by what means will you prove the innocence of your husband which you proclaim?” “By a glowing plate,” she replied. At Otto’s order iron well heated was brought. The widow, with all looking on, took the iron when brought and held it without harm. The miracle terrified the emperor, so much that he confessed himself worthy of punishment, but asked for some delay before undergoing it. “I defer the triple recognizance,” she replied. “I ask only the punishment of the queen, whose wicked calumny deprived me of a husband, you of a most faithful soldier, and the commonwealth of a vigorous citizen.” It seemed to all that she was asking what was most equitable. The emperor praised her highly and, in place of the recognizances delayed for himself, gave her four castles in Tuscany. But he ordered the empress, who had burned badly with the fire of Venus, to be cast by the hand of the executioner onto a pyre and consumed by just flames.
[margin: Godfrey of Viterbo’s Chronicle and Crantzius, Saxon Chronicle, book 4, chapter 26, are cited for the Modena spouses and Empress Maria story]
When Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, was trying by wickedness to seize the lands of Louis, king of the Germans, from his nephews, the Germans first begged off violence; and, after the Franks were called to the judgment of glowing iron, when the Germans returned unharmed and could obtain nothing fair or good from the ambitious king, they took up arms and compelled him again, with many losses and the matter unfinished, beyond the Rhine. This Judgment favored these men; on the contrary, the same Judgment of twelve ploughshares betrayed the killers of Count Christian of Oldenburg in Saxony and sent them to the wheel.
[margin: Paul Emilius, Annals/History of the Franks, book 3; Crantzius, book 7, on the Charles the Bald example; Crantzius, Vandalia, book 8, chapter 30, on the Oldenburg/Saxon example]
In the Saxon town of Wittenburg also, the crime of having started a public fire was fastened on a certain man. He proved himself innocent both by oath and by the Judgment. For when he had carried the glowing iron in his hand over a long path and had thrown it unharmed to the ground, behold, the iron fled from the eyes of all. But almost a year later, when another man who had been aware of the fire was paving a public road in the town with flints, the iron hidden in the sand came forth and strongly burned his hand. All wondered, recognized that ploughshare, and dragged the guilty man to the judge. When torture had been applied, the judge drew out the truth and, with his legs broken, set the guilty man on the wheel.
Another equally marvelous story is found described in Caesarius, book 10 of the Miracles, chapter 35, in these words:
[margin: Crantzius, Vandalia, book 8, chapter 30, and Caesarius of Heisterbach, Miracles, book 10, chapter 35]
Lord Bernard of Lippe, at that time abbot, used to report that he knew a fisherman in the diocese of Utrecht who for a long time had fornicated with a certain woman. Because his sin was very notorious, when he feared that he would be accused at an approaching synod, he immediately came to the priest and confessed the sin, more, as it later appeared, from fear of punishment than from love of justice, and sought and found counsel. “If,” said the priest, “you have a firm purpose never to sin with her, you will be able safely to carry the glowing iron and to deny the sin itself. I hope that the power of confession will free you.” This was done, to the astonishment of all to whom the fact was known.
He was not then injured by the fire. But afterward, when he fell back into a relapsed will to repeat the sin and boasted that he had not been more burned by that glowing iron than by the water of the river on which he was then sailing, and when he drew up water with his hand, the cold water took the place of glowing iron and burned his hand, the whole skin being stripped away.
In the following chapter the same author narrates about a certain very wicked hypocrite who covered crimes under the cloak of pilgrimage. Having been hired with money by another wicked man, he burned the house of the host by whom he had been kindly received. Twice he was received; twice, in return for kindness, he set the fire. The terrified master denounced many persons whom he suspected, and all of them, free from fault, purged themselves unharmed by glowing iron. When the house had been built a third time, the iron lay cast aside in a certain corner of the house. After some time that false traveler came and was a third time humanely received. He saw the iron and asked, “For what do you use this?” He heard from the host what had been done with it. “Why,” he said, “do you not use it henceforth for others, lest it lie idle?” At the same time he grasped it with his hand; but it suddenly grew hot and strongly burned his hand, and he threw it away with a howl. The host, struck with wonder, deservedly suspected that this man was guilty of the two burned houses. Therefore he seized him and brought him before the judge; the judge brought him to the rack. The incendiary confessed everything and was driven onto the wheel. So admirable are God’s judgments.
But someone may ask whether this purgation never deceived. Indeed I remember that St. Ivo held it uncertain. For in letter 74, treating this proof by glowing iron, he denies that the cautery on the soldier whose hand had been burned gave any certain proof of adultery: “The soldier’s cautery gives you no certain argument, since through examination by glowing iron, by God’s hidden judgment, we see many guilty men freed and many innocent men often condemned. Moreover, since such an examination is a tempting of God, it is no wonder if by divine judgment he is deserted when it is undertaken rashly and without judicial sentence by someone.” But Ivo held it uncertain only when it was undertaken by private authority; then also he believed it illicit, as he openly teaches in letter 254, when it is done without counsel, as he says, and without a preceding judicial accusation. But he wanted it to be lawful when, after ordinary accusation, human testimonies are wholly lacking and one has nothing else to do for the inquiry into truth; and in this case he openly professes in letter 251 that he would use it as judge.
[margin: Ivo of Chartres, letters 74, 254, and 251, on uncertainty, private authority, and the proposed judicial use of hot-iron proof]
But Ivo plainly conflicts with the canons, the very canons which he cites, because they absolutely assert that one must abstain from such inquiry, and that crimes are to be punished only from the confession of the accused and the assertion of witnesses; nor is judgment to be presumed about many things, but those matters are to be left to God the judge. But you will object Ivo’s argument from similarity: swearing was altogether prohibited by the law, yet is permitted by St. Paul for ending lawsuits; so also what is prohibited by the canons can, for the same cause and when human unbelief requires it, be done. I answer that the cause is unlike. For the law never prohibited an oath in court; indeed the old law expressly prescribed it. But the divine law has always prohibited all superstitious inventions as evil in themselves; and Pope Stephen most clearly defined these purgations to be such, as we shall show in the following question. I also wonder that Ivo in letter 91 does not receive it in ecclesiastical cases, as though in lay or secular cases there is not the same danger on one side of tempting God, and that alleged necessity of finding the truth does not equally occur in ecclesiastical cases. Plainly in this matter he was more like one hesitating and doubting than one teaching or defining. Let us proceed to the remaining narratives.
[margin: Ivo’s argument from oaths and Paul; visible marginal cues to letter 251 and letter 91; Del Rio’s reply anticipates Stephen V and the later canonical prohibition]
I shall therefore add another story from the same urn of Crantzius, fruitful in marvels, concerning Rollo, duke of the Normans, who was afterward called Robert. He knew that his people were prone to robberies, thefts, and plunder. For this reason he made severe laws about these things; and, promising himself the security of all through fear of those laws, he ordered peasants to leave the instruments of rustic work fearlessly in the fields.
[margin: Crantzius’s Norman material on Rollo, later called Robert, and his laws against theft; Del Rio quotes the Rollo-law theft story in the running text]
One of the farmers returned home. When his troublesome wife asked why he did not bring the tools, he set before her the duke’s command. But she secretly removed the tools from the field and hid them, in order to make her husband more cautious. The man returned into the field, and when he did not find what he had left, he reported the matter to the local prefect. The prefect reported it to the duke. The farmer, summoned by the duke, received the price of the things lost. The prefect was ordered, after purgation by fire had been applied, to investigate the thief. The first attempt was useless, for the fire did not reveal the thief, although all the rustics had undergone the examination. Then the duke turned to the bishop and said: “The God of the Christians, if he is aware of secrets, why does he not reveal the thief?” The bishop did not correct one not yet well confirmed in religion, but gave the pretext that the fire had not yet touched the thief. The prefect was ordered to inquire more diligently, even in neighboring villages. Nor was anyone found in this way. The farmer, summoned by the duke, was asked whether he had told anyone that the thing was in the field. He answered that he had told no one except his wife. The wife, when questions were applied, confessed the theft. Then the duke secretly called the husband and said: “Did you know that your wife was thievish, or not?” “I knew,” he said. To him the duke said: “Why then did you either not punish her or not denounce her?” Therefore he ordered both to be killed by hanging. And by this severity he sanctioned the law.
I also remember the deed of a Catholic Spaniard who challenged an Arian Goth in the time of Leovigild to the proof of fire. When he accomplished nothing by words and reasons, he said: “There is a gold ring on my finger. I throw it into the fire; you collect it when it is glowing.” He allowed the ring thrown among the coals to be seized by the fire, so that it was seen to glow fiercely; and turning to the heretic he said: “If your prosecution is true, take it from the fire.” But when the man resisted, he said: “Immense Trinity, one God, if I believe anything unworthy of you, show it; certainly if my faith is right, these savage fires will in no way prevail against me.” And he held for a very long time in his palm the ring taken from the fire and was injured in nothing. These things Gregory narrates word for word in the book On the Glory of Confessors, chapter 14. But this was an attestation of sincere faith, not a judicial inquiry.
[margin: Gregory of Tours, On the Glory of Confessors, chapter 14, on the Catholic Spaniard and Arian Goth under Leovigild]
Still, in truth, not without cause this expurgation always pricked the consciences of good and God-fearing people. For we read about Robert, bishop of Canterbury, that when he had persuaded King Edward to compel his mother Emma to purge herself in this manner because of suspicion of fornication committed with Alwine, bishop of Winchester, and she remained unharmed by the fire, he was immediately struck with fear, fled from England, and there shortly wasted away from grief of mind.
[margin: Polydore Vergil, English History, book 8, on Emma, Edward, Alwine of Winchester, and Robert of Canterbury]
Not unlike this was judgment by coals, which they either threw into the bosom, carried in the hand, or trod. Leontius narrates concerning a certain monk, who, in order to save the prostitute Porphyria and commend her to some monastery, feared nothing in leading her away with him, and on account of this fell into the mockery and execration of all, as though he consorted with the prostitute. When he was sick and perceived death approaching, he ordered, before many, a censer full of glowing coals to be brought, and he received the coals and poured them into his bosom, saying with all hearing: “Blessed be the Lord, who once preserved the bush unburned. May he be my faithful witness: just as this fire has not touched my garments and has no power of burning them black, so neither have I touched a woman in the whole time of my life,” and so forth.
[margin: Leontius, Life of Blessed John the Almsgiver/Eleemosynarius, in the June saints material, on the monk and Porphyria]
Blessed Brice, successor of St. Martin in the see of Tours, underwent the same judgment in Gaul. The people charged him with fornication committed with a woman professed to religious life, who was accustomed to wash the bishop’s linens and had given birth by some other wicked man. Brice ordered the infant himself, not yet a month old, to be brought into the midst; and before the people he asked whether he himself was the infant’s father. The infant answered that he was not, but another whom he did not name. This happened by divine power, but the people ascribed it to the working of a demon. Therefore Brice filled his cloak with glowing coals and carried it unharmed throughout the whole city; thus he professed himself alien to the shameful deed of carnal lust, just as the garment was untouched by the flames. Yet he did not persuade the raging people, but was driven from the episcopate.
[margin: Gregory of Tours, History, book 2, chapter 1; Sabellicus, examples; Fulgosius and Marulus on Brice and related coal ordeals]
Harald of Ireland, son of Magnus, king of Norway, who had harried Ireland with war, also proved himself by walking with bare feet over burning coals. This examination held not only in a human body, but also in other things. For a palm basket thrown into the fire and remaining unharmed absolved the monk Eulalius from suspicion of crime. Moreover, an apostolic bishop sent to the Russians by the emperor Basil persuaded them of the truth of the Catholic faith when, at their request, the book of the Gospels was sent into a burning furnace, left there for many hours, and finally, when the fire had been extinguished, was found whole and touched by no heat. The annals of Toledo record not dissimilar things about the Mass of St. Isidore, or, as they call it, the Mozarabic Mass. John Mariana writes about the matter thus:
[margin: Saxo, Danish History, book 13; Crantzius, Norway, book 5, chapter 6; Marulus, Examples, book 1, chapter 4; Zonaras, tome 3, and Cedrenus on the Gospel-book ordeal; Villegas and Mariana, On Spanish Matters, book 9, chapter 18, on the Gothic/Mozarabic and Roman rites]
By common consent there was action to abolish the Gothic manner of prayer. This had indeed been attempted several times, yet had not succeeded. After some things had passed, it seemed good to commit the controversy to the judgment of fire. Such were the customs of that age, rude and rustic, and not sufficiently weighed by the rule of Christian piety. A pyre having been kindled in the square, each book, the Roman and the Gothic, was cast into the fire. The Roman immediately sprang out of the fire; the people interpreted this as victory. For the other book, long remaining under the flames and fire, was found unharmed. With the king as judge, nevertheless the people were persuaded that both manners of praying pleased the heavenly powers, since each book had escaped the conflagration unharmed.
I find many who entered a pyre for the sake of proving innocence; for Sophocles too, as I said, recognizes the custom. Peter of Marseille, a priest suspected of heresy, at Antioch on the very day of Parasceve, carrying in his hand the most holy lance of Christ the Lord, with naked body, passed unharmed through the burning pile of heaped wood and through the midst of the fires. Poppo, a Danish priest, for the proof of the Christian faith, smeared a garment first with abundant wax; clothed in it, he brought himself into the flame in the middle of the circle of people and remained there without any sense of pain, as he indeed affirmed, until the whole garment around his body had been reduced to ashes while his skin was untouched by the flames. Moved by this miracle, the Danes, with purgation by duel removed, introduced purgation by fire. Perhaps another repeated deed of the same Poppo also moved them. For at another time, when words did not have sufficient force for persuading the Danes to become Christians seriously, he asked them whether, if they saw his hands untouched at the touch of glowing iron, they would consent and believe. When all shouted that they would, he ordered iron forged in the shape of a glove and brought glowing. The iron was red with fire; nevertheless, undaunted, he put his hand in up to the elbow and carried it to the appointed place. When he had thrown it there at the feet of King Sweyn, the assembly yielded its hands conquered, voluntarily undergoing the bath of regeneration.
[margin: Antioch/Peter of Marseille example; Paul Emilius, History of the Franks, book 4; Crantzius, Metropolis, book 3, chapter 43; Saxo, Danish History, book 10, on Poppo and King Sweyn; Saxo again in the same place, Widukind, book 3, and Crantzius, Denmark, book 4, chapter 24, for the repeated Poppo material]
Theodoric the Reader reports a history of this kind: in the time of Marcian, two bishops, one Catholic and the other Arian, first disputed by words concerning a disputed dogma of the faith. Then the Catholic proposed this condition to his opponent: that empty disputations be set aside and that he enter with him a pyre of fire, and that each should prove the truth of his faith by this sign, with God as witness. Finally, the Arian declined to enter; the orthodox bishop, without delay, entered and discoursed at length to many from the pyre itself, and went out not harmed in the least. The narration is true, but the matter happened not under Marcian but under Anastasius, as Cedrenus and Nicephorus more accurately hand down. Savonarola boasted that he would undergo this judgment. When the matter came to the point, he substituted another in place of himself. Nor did the Franciscan accuser decline this; he objected only that Savonarola should not carry the most holy Eucharist with him, which in reality was no obscure sign of distrust.
[margin: Theodoric the Reader, Collectanea, book 2; Cedrenus and Nicephorus, book 15, chapter 23, correcting the chronology from Marcian to Anastasius; Guicciardini, book 3, Volaterranus, and Philippe de Commines, book 8, chapter 19, on Savonarola]
Fulgosius says that Peter, archbishop of Florence, was condemned of simony by John Gualbert’s challenge to judgment by a kindled pyre. But it is more true that this was done by Peter, bishop of Albano, who for this reason was called Igneus, the Fiery, as Urspergensis testifies in the Chronicle, though before he was yet made bishop. I shall set down the whole matter from the life of Gualbert himself, believed to have been written by Blasius Melanesus with wholly intact fidelity. After he has narrated that Peter of Florence was often accused of simony by the monks of St. John Gualbert, and that his supporters were challenged to the judgment of fire, he finally adds:
[margin: Fulgosius on John Gualbert and Peter of Florence; Urspergensis in the Chronicle on Peter Igneus, later bishop of Albano; Blasius Melanesus, Life of John Gualbert]
Therefore the place and day on which this was to be done was fixed, so that whoever wished could look on in person. The fixed place was in the monastery of Septimo, which then belonged to the aforesaid order but now belongs to the Cistercians. The day was the fourth feria of the first week of Lent. The manner of probation was this: that in a public place two piles of wood should be made next to one another, each ten feet in length, five in breadth, and four and a half in height. Between the two piles there was to be a path, a cubit in breadth, covered with burning coals, through which one of the monks would pass. When the appointed day and hour came, Bishop Peter was invited by his people to come and see the experiment of so great a matter, lest the city of Florence be vexed by so long a quarrel. But he utterly refused; indeed, if any held him dear, he forbade them to go there. But all the people of both sexes and a very great part of the clergy hurried there.
The supporters of the bishop promised that if the probation should obtain its effect, so that any of the brothers should pass unharmed through the fire, they themselves would vote with them and withdraw from the bishop. Therefore litanies and other prayers were made by the monks, and the sacrifice was solemnly celebrated by the abbot of that institute, with clergy and monks assisting. When it came to the Agnus Dei, one of the monks took blessed water for sprinkling, another the censer for burning incense, a third torches for setting the wood alight, and a fourth the image of the crucified. The Lord Jesus Christ and his most holy Mother were invoked aloud by all, that the truth of the matter might be declared. When the sacrifice was completed, the abbot who had sacrificed put off the chasuble and carried the cross in his hand. This Peter also was so called. When the litanies had been completed, one of the abbots was chosen to explain in a clear voice to the people the condition of the petition and promise.
Then Abbot Peter, with the cross which he carried in his hand, while St. John meanwhile stood before him and prayed, entered through the midst of the globes of fire, with flame rising on high, and trod the burning coals which lay in the path between the burning piles of wood. But before he entered, with all hearing, he prayed thus: “Lord Jesus, true light of all who believe in you, I ask your mercy, I beg your clemency, that if Peter of Pavia, who is called bishop of Florence, has occupied the Florentine see by money, you, Son of the eternal Father, you my salvation, in this dreadful judgment, hasten to help me and preserve me unharmed without any marks of burning, as once you preserved the three boys in the Babylonian furnace.” When these things had been said, he pierced through the midst of the fires, with no mark of burning adhering either to body or garments. And when he wished to turn himself and return the same way through the flames, he was held back by the people, since the truth of the matter had already been plainly taught.
Please see, reader, how admirable God is in his saints, and how divine wisdom, as it were, performs varied and manifold plays to excite admiration and veneration in our hearts. Iron flies and hangs in the air and follows the hand of one innocent person; it flees another and, its heat preserved, after many months finds and punishes the guilty. To Poppo the glove is of glowing iron, as if it were made of soft leather imbued with sweet ointments; the devouring force of flame burns the garments placed around his body while the body is unharmed. But against Abbot Peter, who was afterward bishop of Albano, so that simony might be uncovered, it does not even have this power, but renews the Babylonian spectacle.
Compare these things with what happened to heretics. This power of God is as far from them as true faith is removed from their mind. Caesarius the Cistercian narrates two histories. “At Cambrai,” he says, “an episcopal city, within these five years several heretics were seized, all of whom through fear of death denied their perfidy. A cleric was sent by the bishop to examine the deniers by glowing iron and to sentence the burned as heretics. All were examined, and all were burned. When they were being dragged to punishment, one of them, a man noble by blood, was reserved for life by the cleric, if perhaps he could in any way bring him back to repentance. The cleric said to him: ‘You are a noble man; I pity your origin and have compassion on your soul. I ask and warn you that even now you come to your senses from so great a perfidy and return from error to truth, lest through temporal death you incur eternal death.’ To this he replied: ‘By experience I have learned that I have erred. If late repentance could profit me, I would not refuse to confess.’ When the cleric said to him that true repentance is never late, he called a priest. The man confessed his error, promising God from his whole heart satisfaction if life should be granted. But so that the pious Lord might show the power of confession, as soon as the penitent began to confess his sins, the burn itself in the penitent’s hand began little by little to diminish; and as much as the confession advanced, so much it decreased. When half the confession had been completed, half the wound was healed; and when he had completed the whole confession, the very power of confession erased the burn as much in color as in pain, and the hand received its former health. The man was called by the judge to the fire; the cleric said to the judge, ‘Why do you call him?’ ‘That he may burn,’ he said, ‘because he was burned in the examination.’ Then the cleric, showing his wholly healthy hand, freed him from the penalties, while the rest were consumed by fire.”
[margin: Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum or Miracles, book 3, chapter 16, on the Cambrai and Strasbourg heretic stories]
When Master Conrad had heard this, he answered the abbot: “And I shall tell you a similar thing, which I remember happened a few years ago at Strasbourg. Ten heretics were seized in that city, namely Strasbourg; and when they denied, they were convicted by the judgment of glowing iron and sentenced to be burned. On the appointed day, as they were being led to the fire, one of those accompanying said to one of them: ‘Wretch, you are condemned; do repentance even now by confessing your sins, lest after the fires of the body, which are momentary, Gehenna’s fire burn your soul eternally.’ When he said: ‘I do consider that I have erred, but I fear that repentance under so great a necessity is less acceptable to God,’ the other answered: ‘Only confess from the heart. God is merciful and will receive penitence.’ A marvelous thing: as soon as the man confessed his perfidy, his hand received full health. When he delayed in confession and was called by the judge to punishment, his confessor answered the judge: ‘It is not just that an innocent man be condemned unjustly.’ Since no trace of burning was found in his hand, he was sent away.
“The same man had a wife dwelling not far from the city, wholly ignorant of the things that had been said. When he came to her rejoicing and said, ‘Blessed be God, who today freed me from the destruction of body and soul,’ and explained the cause, she answered: ‘What have you done, most wretched man? What have you done? Why, because of momentary pain, have you withdrawn from your sound and holy faith? You ought rather, if it could be done, to subject your body a hundred times to burnings than to withdraw once from so proven a faith.’ But whom does the serpent’s voice not seduce? Forgetful of the benefit divinely conferred on him, forgetful of the manifest miracle, he agreed to his wife’s counsel and resumed his former error. But God, not forgetful of vengeance for so great an ingratitude, wounded the hand of each. The burning was renewed in the heretic’s hand; and because his wife had been the author of the resumed error, she was made a partner in the revived pain. The burning was so vehement that it penetrated the bones of the hands; and since they did not dare to utter cries in the village, which the force of pain drew out, they fled into a neighboring wood, there howling like wolves. Why should I dwell on words? They were betrayed, brought back into the city, cast together into the fire not yet fully extinguished, and reduced to ashes.”
What, I ask, is this matter? Is flame to heresy what shadow is to body? Is burning by flames so due to heresy that, with the flight of error, the force of burning departs, and with returning error, burning accompanies inseparably?
What of the fact that by another plainly stupendous event God also proved this, and used a possessed man as executioner in punishing a heretic? Let truth stand in the mouth of two witnesses. These are Bernard of Luxembourg in the catalogue of heretics under the letter E, and Thomas Brabantinus, older than he. I shall set down his words:
[margin: Bernard of Luxembourg, Catalogue of Heretics, letter E, and the older Thomas Brabantinus on Eligius Boogris]
There was around Cambrai a certain very crafty heretic. Fearing to be investigated and burned by the Preaching Friars, who at that time were burning very many in the diocese of that city, he pretended to be seized by a demon; and on account of this he was led bound by friends to St. Aicardus in Aspera, powerful to cure the possessed, so that in him one would think not exposed heresy but madness. And when a certain cleric possessed by a demon and bound heard that Eligius Boogris, for so the bound man was called, namely that heretic, as is clear from Bernard, was placed in the place, on the following night the same possessed cleric was loosed by divine nod, and, gathering mats and straw and the church benches, piled them upon the bound heretic, Eligius. The man, thinking this a game and madness, pretended until the cleric, taking fire from a lamp, began to burn the heretic. Then the heretic cried out. At his voice the guards awoke, and when they tried to extinguish the fire, the cleric, seizing a sword which by chance he found near the bed, violently drove all away and burned the heretic in the fire. Without delay, when divine judgment had been exacted, the cleric appeared freed from the demon and wholly sound.
Thus he writes in the Good of the Universe, book 2, last chapter.
[margin: Thomas Brabantinus, Bonum universale, book 2, final chapter]
Plainly this purgation was once full of miracle; and therefore it was removed not unjustly, because to demand miracles when they are not necessary is to tempt God. But who forbade it? It is certain that Frederick II forbade it in book 2 of the Neapolitan Constitutions, chapter 31. From Gratian’s Decree Gregory the Great may seem to have done so. Take care not to be deceived: this is the deed of Gratian or the ignorance of copyists. Gregory wrote nothing of the kind. Read that whole letter to Brunhild, queen of the Franks, which survives, and you will see a straw border sewn onto a purple cloak. The bishop of Chartres did not recognize it as Gregory’s, nor, so far as I know, did anyone older than Gratian. But Stephen V prohibited it, writing to the archbishop of Mainz:
[margin: Frederick II, Neapolitan Constitutions, book 2, chapter 31; Gratian’s Decree, chapter Menna, 2, question 5; Gregory the Great’s Register, book 11, epistle 8 to Brunhild; the bishop of Chartres/Ivo’s Decree reference at chapter 5 after the middle; Stephen V to the archbishop of Mainz]
The sacred canons do not judge that a confession is to be extorted from anyone by the examination of glowing iron or boiling water. And what has not been sanctioned by the teaching of the holy fathers must not be presumed by superstitious invention. Public crimes have been committed to our rule to judge, with the fear of God before our eyes, by voluntary confession or by proof of witnesses. But hidden and unknown things are to be left to him who alone knows the hearts of the children of men.
To these words Gratian adds that not only these two kinds of purgation which he names here, but any similar kinds as well, seem to be prohibited, because in any such things the reason which the pontiff added is understood to proceed equally. This is said openly in the last words of that chapter, where we read: “Finally, the vulgar law, supported by no canonical sanction, namely that of boiling water or cold water, or the touch of glowing iron, or of any popular invention whatever, because these things were all made by envy as contriver, we do not wish you either to exhibit or in any way to demand; indeed by apostolic authority we most firmly prohibit it.” These last words indicate one of two things: either, if Gregory wrote them, which I do not think, his register today survives mutilated, and Ivo too fell upon a mutilated copy in which so great a part of that letter was lacking; or, which pleases me more, since this fragment was a portion of a rescript of some other pontiff, Gratian confused it with Gregory’s words; or by injury of time the title which he had prefixed in Gratian’s book to this second rescript wholly perished, and so copyists made one out of two. For these last words are taken from a letter of Alexander II to Rainald, bishop of Como, and seem to be joined at the end of the cited chapter. Therefore this was prohibited by Alexander II; but it was also again prohibited by apostolic authority by Honorius III, who expressly testifies that the judgment of glowing iron is utterly interdicted, as one in which God seems to be tempted, and he commands by ecclesiastical censures that the Templars, who were compelling the Livonians to undergo this judgment, be forced to abstain. I have thought it good to pursue these things a little more fully, because afterward in the following section we shall have to use them against certain novices who defend cold water.
[margin: Gratian’s addition to Stephen V; chapter consuluisti, 2, question 5; chapter in libro, 2, question 4; chapter Menna; Alexander II to Rainald, bishop of Como, joined near chapter super causa, 2, question 5; Honorius III and chapter dilecti filii on vulgar purgation, against Templars compelling Livonians to undergo the hot-iron judgment]