Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1999 (3. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Mentalităţi
6 Mária Makó Lupescu ordeal represents an important category of medieval mentalities.5 Others, mostly legal historians have challenged the idea of a major shift in attitudes toward intention by denying that the early medieval codes reflected the values of this society. In their view, “the reliance on physical circumstances for assessing degrees of culpability resulted from the difficulty of weighing the internal workings of the mind.”6 They also add that “ancient law could not discuss the question of intent because it had not the machinery wherewith to accomplish the inquiry.”7 Admittedly, the early Middle Ages lacked sophisticated means of judicial proof, but ordeals and other “judgments of God” were eminently suitable for determining questions of intention. A believer in ordeals could conceivably argue that in such cases recourse to divine judgment was preferable to the use of human reason, since God could know intention and men could not. There is, moreover, little sign that people then had serious doubts about the oaths and ordeals they used. Some ethnographers have found that contemporary societies that use ordeals place great confidence in the results, and medieval courts sometimes rejected rational proofs that were available in the favor of ordeals.8 Recent scholarship has seized the challenge and a series of historians have attempted to examine the ordeal as a key for understanding social processes and social changes in the medieval period. Éven its disappearance is explained by a major social change.9 Clearly, the explanation of the abandonment of the ordeal is as problematic, and holds as much promise, as the characterization of the practice itself. Obviously, the two enterprises are related: no satisfactory answer can be given of the demise of a practice unless it is clear what the practice is. Throughout history, the ordeal has been approached almost every time from a judicial point of view. I have to add that this was a totally normal method, because the ordeal indeed served as a judicial process, as a kind of proof. While being alien to twenty century minds, this proof was quite acceptable for those who lived during the twelfth-thirteenth centuries. The ordeal has many definitions,10 and every type of trial by ordeal has its own definition.11 Ordeals of fire and water have 5 Charles M. Radding, “Evolution of Medieval Mentalities: A Cognitive-Structural Approach,” The American Historical Review 83(1978): 580-81. 6 Hermann Nottarp, Gottesurteilstudien (Munich, 1956), 233. 7 Mfichael] Bateson, Borough Customs, vol. 2 (London, 1906), xl. 8 Several Carolingian capitularies strictly limited the use of witnesses, and Louis the Pious provided for recourse to judicial duel if contradictory testimony were produced. Franţois L. Ganshof, “La preuve dans le droit franc,” La Preuve 17(1965): 85-87. 9 Brown, “Society and the Supernatural,” 143. 10 According to Bunyitay, ordeals were samples of medieval people’s lives, reflecting their mentality and character. They believed in God as in the most just judge who will not abandon the innocent. Thus, ordeals were appeals from an earthly fallible judge to the heavenly infallible one. Vincze Bunyitay, A váradi püspökség története alapításától a jelenkorig (The history of Oradean Bishopric from its foundation to the present time), vol.l (Oradea, 1883), 69. For Solymosi, ordeal was the enforcement of the heavenly decisions in those disputable cases where human knowledge could not pass judgement. László Solymosi, “Guden magánoklevele másodlagos pecsétjének eredete” (The origin of the secondary seal of Guden private-charter), Veszprémi Történelmi Tár 1(1989): 103. 11 Bunyitay established nine types of ordeal: the trial by oath, by fire, by water, by battle, the trial of the holy mouthful, of the casting lots, of the cross, of the holy host, and of the bier. There were also different types of ordeal in the sense of different modes of trial, hot iron and walking on hot
