prohibited by Louis the
Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a
legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a
late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these
barbarous methods of discovering truth--the duel and the ordeal; nothing
can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from
Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampere,
Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant
who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the
dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampere
gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly
against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age
that was ill-inclined to hear him.

[521] Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the
law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet,
t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the
stories we read, wherein accused persons have passed triumphantly
through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is
safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a
writer in the Archaeologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen
of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by stepping
_between_, as Blackstone imagines, but _upon_ nine red-hot ploughshares.
But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any
contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is
related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave
rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known,
that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire.
This phenomenon would pass for miraculous, and form the basis of those
exaggerated stories in monkish books.

[522] The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in
1211, when a multitude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly
composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose
of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany,
and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which
their imperfect knowledge of geography had not anticipated, they soon
dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Marseilles,
where part were murdered, part probably starved,