If the accused succeeded in producing the required number of compurgators, and they took the oath in a satisfactory manner, the defendant was usually declared to be innocent and the case was dropped. If, however, the compurgators were not forthcoming, or there appeared some irregularity in their part of the procedure, resort would ordinarily be had to the ordeal. The ordeal was essentially an appeal to the gods for decision between two contending parties. It was based on the belief that the gods would not permit an innocent person to suffer by reason of an unjust accusation and that when the opportunity was offered under certain prescribed conditions the divine power would indicate who was in the right and who in the wrong. The ordeal, having its origin far back in the times when the Germans were pagans and before their settlements in the Roman Empire, was retained in common usage after the Christianizing and civilizing of the barbarian tribes. The administering of it simply passed from the old pagan priests to the Christian clergy, and the appeals were directed to the Christian's God instead of to Woden and Thor. Under Christian influence, the wager of battle (or personal combat to settle judicial questions), which had been exceedingly common, was discouraged as much as possible, and certain new modes of appeal to divine authority were introduced. Throughout the earlier Middle Ages the chief forms of the ordeal were: (1) the ordeal by walking through fire; (2) the ordeal by hot iron, in which the accused either carried a piece of hot iron a certain distance in his hands or walked barefoot over pieces of the same material; (3) the ordeal by hot water, in which the accused was required to plunge his bared arm into boiling water and bring forth a stone or other object from the bottom; (4) the ordeal by cold water, in which the accused was thrown, bound hand and foot, into a pond or stream, to sink if he were innocent, to float if he were guilty; (5) the ordeal of the cross, in which the accuser and accused stood with arms outstretched in the form of a cross until one of them could endure the strain of the unnatural attitude no longer; (6) the ordeal of the sacrament, in which the accused partook of the sacrament, the idea being that divine vengeance would certainly fall upon him in so doing if he were guilty; (7) the ordeal of the bread and cheese, in which the accused, made to swallow morsels of bread and cheese, was expected to choke if he were guilty; and (8) the judicial combat, which was generally reserved for freemen, and which, despite the opposition of the Church, did not die out until the end of the mediaeval period.