Ordeal (A.S. ordēl, ordūl, the prefix or- meaning 'out,' and dēl, dūl, 'a dealing;') cognates are the Dutch oordeel, and Ger. Urtheil, ('judgment'), a practice which has prevailed largely among various widely-separated nations, of referring disputed questions, particularly such as relate to the guilt or innocence of an individual, to the judgment of God, determined either by lot or by the success of certain experiments. And there need be no doubt that it is often successful in the detection of a criminal whose trepidation before the dreaded ordeal betrays him, conscious of his guilt, and more than half afraid of the occult influences he is about to outrage. Of its existence among the ancient Jews we have an instance in Numbers v., where a Hebrew woman, accused of adultery, is required to drink the waters of jealousy as a test of innocence; a similar ordeal for incontinence is still in use among the natives of the Gold Coast of Africa. Compurgation of accused persons by fire, as existing among the Greeks, is referred to in the Antigone of Sophocles. Among the Hindus the ordeal has been in use to be practised in nine different ways—by the balance, by fire, by water, by poison, by the cosha or drinking water in which images of the sun and other deities had been washed, by chewing-ree, by hot oil, by red-hot iron, and by drawing two images out of a jar into which they have been thrown.
Livingstone describes the practice of ordeal as common among all the negro races north of the Zambesi. 'When a man suspects that any of his wives have bewitched him he sends for the witch-doctor, and all the wives go forth into the field, and remain fasting till that person has made an infusion of the plant (called goho). They all drink it, each one holding up her hand to heaven in attestation of her innocence. Those who vomit it are considered innocent, while those whom it purges are pronounced guilty, and put to death by burning. The innocent return to their homes and slaughter a cock as a thank-offering to their guardian spirits.' The women themselves eagerly desire the test on the slightest provocation; each is conscious of her own innocence, and has the fullest faith in the muavi ('the ordeal') clearing all but the guilty. There are varieties of procedure among the different tribes. The Barotse pour the medicine down the throat of a cock or dog, and judge of the innocence or guilt of the person accused by the vomiting or purging of the animal. The Calabar Bean (q.v.) is also used for the ordeal; as was Tanghiuin (q.v.) in Madagascar.
Throughout Europe in the dark ages the ordeal existed under the sanction of law and of the church, and was closely related to the oath. The most prevalent kinds of ordeal were those of fire, water, and the wager of battle. Fire ordeal was only allowed to persons of high rank. The accused had to carry a piece of red-hot iron for some distance in his hand, or to walk nine feet barefoot and blindfolded over red-hot ploughshares. The hand or foot was bound up and inspected three days afterwards; if the accused had escaped unhurt he was pronounced innocent; if otherwise, guilty. Under such a judicial system there were probably few acquittals; but there can be little doubt that in the severer kinds of ordeal precautions were taken by the clergy to protect those whom they wished to clear from suspicion. And the feats of modern jugglers suggest possibilities of official trickery which may at once have saved the credit of the ordeal and cleared those meant to be acquitted. Queen Emma, mother of Edward the Confessor, when suspected of a criminal intrigue with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester, triumphantly vindicated her character by walking unhurt over red-hot ploughshares. Water ordeal was the usual mode of trial allowed to bondsmen and rustics, and was of two kinds—the ordeal of boiling water and of cold water. The ordeal of boiling water, according to the laws of Athelstan, consisted of taking a stone out of boiling water, where the hand had to be inserted as deep as the wrist; what was called the triple ordeal deepened the water to the elbow. The person allowed the ordeal of cold water—the usual mode of trial for witchcraft—was flung into a river or pond; if he floated without any appearance of swimming he was judged guilty; while if he sank he was acquitted. The wager of battle was a natural accompaniment of a state of society which allowed men to take the law into their own hands. The defeated party, if he craved his life, was allowed to live as a 'recreant,' that is, on retracting the perjury which he had sworn to.
Other kinds of ordeal were practised in particular circumstances in different parts of Europe. In the ordeal of the bier, a suspected murderer was required to touch the body of the murdered man, and pronounced guilty if the blood flowed from his wounds. Undoubtedly this touched a primitive time, when death was not fully understood, and the lifeless body was supposed still capable of thought and action. And to this day English peasants expect every one who sees a corpse to touch it to show that he bears the dead no ill-will. The ordeal of the eucharist was in use among the clergy: the accused party took the sacrament in attestation of innocence, it being believed that, if guilty, he would be immediately visited with divine punishment for the sacrilege. A somewhat similar ordeal was that of the corsned, or consecrated bread and cheese: if the accused swallowed it freely he was pronounced innocent; if it stuck in his throat he was presumed to be guilty. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, when accused of the murder of the king's brother, is said to have appealed to the ordeal of the corsned, and been choked by it. There can be no doubt that the popular English asseveration 'May this bit choke me if I lie!' is a distinct survival. An early form of ordeal, abolished by Louis le Debonnaire in 816, was that of the cross: the accuser and accused stood upright before a cross, and he who first fell, or shifted his position, was pronounced guilty. It was done away with as being irreverent towards the mystery of the cross. Besides these, there was the ordeal by lot, dependent on the throw of a pair of dice, one marked with a cross, the other plain.
Trial by ordeal at first carried with it the sanction of the priests as well as of the civil power, though the clergy in the course of time came to discountenance it. In England it seems to have been continued till the middle of the 13th century.
On the Continent it was, generally speaking, abolished rather earlier, although as late as 1498 we find the truth of Savonarola's doctrine put to the test by a challenge between one of his disciples and a Franciscan friar to walk through a burning pile. In Scotland in 1180 we find David I. enacting, in one of the assemblies of the frank tenantry of the kingdom, which were the germ of parliaments, that no one was to hold an ordinary court of justice, or a court of ordeal, whether of battle, iron, or water, except in presence of the sheriff or one of his sergeants; though, if that official failed to attend after being duly summoned, the court might be held in his absence. The first step towards the abolition of this form of trial in Saxon and Celtic countries seems to have been the substitution of compurgation by witnesses for compurgation by ordeal. The near relatives of an accused party were expected to come forward to swear to his innocence. The number of compurgators varied according to the importance of the case; and judgment went against the party whose kin refused to come forward, or who failed to obtain the necessary number of compurgators. To repel an accusation it was often held necessary to have double the number of compurgators who supported it, till at length the most numerous body of compurgators carried the day.
See the articles BATTLE (WAGER OF), DIVINATION, and MAGIC; also the works of Bastian, Grimm, Tylor, and Waitz passim; Tylor's article, 'Ordeals and Oaths,' in Macmillan's Magazine for 1876; H. C. Lea's Superstition and Force (Phila. 1866; new ed. 1878); and George Neilson's Trial by Combat (1890).