RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Opzoomer Ordeal
sacrament, pilgrimages, fasting, almsgiving, and the like. But they do not strike to the heart of the Reformation movement, and issue with little result of a permanent character. The participants remained loyal members of the Roman Catholic Church. They assembled, some fifty or sixty in number, at Trastevere, in the Church of St. Dorothea. A similar society existed at Verona, in the circle of Bishop Giberti. The Roman Oratory appears to have reached its termination during the assault and plundering of the city, in 1527; but an Archiconfraternitas Divini Amoris, transferred from St. Dorothea to St. Andrew, in 1750, is yet in existence. The significance of the Oratory rests not upon its direct results, which were slight, but rather on the fact that the experience of one of its individual members, Gsetano of Thiene, furnished the vital impulse for the founding of a separate order (see Theatines). K. Benrath.
Bibliography: The chief source is A. Caraeciolo, Vita Pauli IV., p. 182, Cologne, 1612. Consult further: Miss Tucker, in the English Historical Review, xviii. 6, pp. 27, 66; K. Benrath, Bernard Ochino, p. 58, Brunswick, 1892.
ORATORY, PRIESTS OF THE. See Neri, Philip, Saint, and the Oratorians.
ORDEAL.
Definition and Character (§1).
The Fire Test (§ 2).
Water (§ 3).
Other Ordeals (§ 4).
Among Primitive Peoples (§ 5).
In Non-Christian Codes (§ 6).
In the Old Testament (§ 7).
In Christianity (§ 8).
Official Ecclesiastical Position (§ 9).
The ordeal is a form of trial to determine guilt or innocence, in which trial superhuman intelligence is supposed to control the operation and to guide to right results. The word is Anglo-Saxon (ordel or ordal, " judgment "), and it occurs in cognate form in Old Saxon, Old Friesic, Dutch, i. Defini- Old High German; Germ. Urtheil; the tion and phrase used for the idea in German Character, well brings out its distinctive character— Gottes-Urtheil, "judgment of God." The essence of the ordeal is an appeal to deity to give a decision in a doubtful case; it assumes that God will bring innocence to light, if need be even by a miracle. It arose in an evident desire to do justice, and in a recognition of the fallibility of human knowledge and discernment. These same human faculties are, of course, the cause of the prevalence and continuance of what science shows to have been a superstition. It is to be noted that the fatal consequences which so often attended the test were not derived from a punitive intent, since punishment was never the essential element. The process had its roots in the animistic stage of religious development, in which the belief was held that the innumerable spirits thought to exist were interested in and affected the lot of human beings. It persists in the barbaric stage, often leaving only relics in a higher stratum of practise, but it frequently recurs as a relic in advanced civilizations. It has affiliations with magic, since many of the means used to forecast or influence the future were employed in the ordeal. The Oath (q.v.) common in
judicial processes in Christian lands is a distinct relic of the ordeal; its essential character being the appeal to deity either symbolically by the raising of the hand or the kissing of the Book or verbally in the formula " So help me, God! " The principal ordeals employ fire, water, earth, or a combination of these substances or forces with others, and also employ many other means which have a symbolic or magical force.
In the case of fire, very persistent is the method of walking with bared feet over burning coals, or between fires fiercely burning. Not infrequent is the putting of the hand into the fire, or the leaping into or through the flames. But much more usual
is the use of hot iron, very frequently
2. The in the shape of plowshares (seven or
Fire Test, nine or ten or twelve — sacred numbers)
heated to redness, the subject either walking blindfold — when chance directs the issue — or treading on each one, the decision then depending upon the degree of injury inflicted. Fully as common is the carrying in the hand (sometimes after the latter has passed through a ceremonial which may or may not lessen the susceptibility to damage by heat) of a heated iron, sometimes of nondescript shape, or it might be a plowshare, or a ball of fixed or of undetermined weight, a stated distance and either casting it down or placing it in a definite spot or receptacle. In rare cases the iron was applied to the tongue. After carrying the iron, generally the hands were bandaged and sealed by the officials conducting the ordeal, and the bandages were removed on the third or a later day and an inspection of the injuries made. The extent, or presence or absence, of injury determined the guilt or innocence of the suspects. According to Indian, Norse, and Christian legend, sacred relics were subjected to the test by fire and came out unharmed, thus establishing their genuineness. It is an interesting fact that in Christendom the abbeys were often the guardians of the iron used, which had often received episcopal benediction. Altogether unusual was the test by molten metal which appears only in Zoroastrian circles (see below).
The tests by water were exceedingly numerous and diverse, this substance naturally lending itself to a variety of forms of use. Thus it was employed cold, after invocation or imprecation was pronounced over it by the religious or judicial official;
it was given pure as a potion, the im- 3. Water, precation being supposed to bring evil
on the recipient in case of guilt; or it was mixed with some substance innocuous in itself but supposed to work evil in the case of guilt (so in the Hebrew water of jealousy; see below), just as when the water was drunk pure as above; or a poison was added, the idea then being that superhuman powers would protect the innocei-t from harm. Or the suspect was lowered or thrown into a lake or river, the underlying assumption being that water as a pure and purifying element rejects those whom guilt has rendered impure; sometimes the principle of the counterbalance was employed, the suspect being enclosed (bound) in one sack and a stone in another, the two being tied together and thrown into the water; if the man floated, he was
Ordeal