ORDE'AL, an ancient mode of tidal, in which an appeal was made to God to manifest the truth, by leaving nature to its ordinary course, if the accused were guilty ; by interposing a miracle if inno cent. This mode of distributing justice in criminal charges prevailed, during the middle ages, throughout almost the whole of Europe; and it is still practised in some parts of the East In Eng land it existed from the time of the Con fessor to that of _Henry who abol ished it by declaration ; while it lasted, the more popular modes of resorting to it were those of fire (or the hot iron,) and of stater; the former for freemen and people of rank, the latter for peasants. The method of administering the ordeal by fire, in England, was by placing nine red-hot plough-shares in a line, at certain distances from each other, and requiring the person accused to walk over them barefoot and blindfold. If his feet always alighted in the spaces between the shares, so that he passed over them unhurt, his success was deemed a divine assertion of his innocence; if on the contrary, he was burnt, the disaster was an oracular proof of his guilt. The ordeal by staler was of two kinds; either by plunging the bare arm to the elbow in boiling water, or by casting the person suspected into a river or pond of cold water, and if lie floated without an effort to swim, it was an evi denco of guilt, but if he sunk he was ac quitted. There were also ordeals by lot,
as by the casual choice between a. pair of dice, one marked with a cross and the other blank, mentioned in the laws of the Prisons. The famous trial of the bier, in which tho supposed perpetrator was re quired to touch the body of a murdered person, and was pronounced guilty if the blood flowed, may be regarded as a spe cies of ordeal, although founded more on usage than legal enactment ; as this form of superstition did not become prevalent until later times, when ordeals were no longer a recognized part of the law. To the same head may be referred the vari ous absurd and cruel methods which were adopted in different countries to try sus pected witches. Ordeals are of common use in the judicial practice of various heathen nations, especially of the Illn dons.