Like War in our day, its justice and fitness as an arbitrament were early doubted or condemned. Liutprand, a king of the Lombards, during that middle period neither ancient nor modern, in a law bearing date A.D. 724, declares his distrust of it as a mode of determining justice; but the monarch is compelled to add, that, considering the _custom_ of his Lombard people, he cannot forbid the _impious law_. His words deserve emphatic mention: "_Propter consuetudinem gentis nostræ Langobardorum_ LEGEM IMPIAM _vetare non possumus_ ..."[43] The appropriate epithet by which he branded Trial by Battle is the important bequest of the royal Lombard to a distant posterity. For this the lawgiver will be cherished with grateful regard in the annals of civilization. [43] Liutprandi Leges, Lib. VI. cap. 65: Muratori, Rerum Italic. Script., Tom. I. pars 2, p. 74. This custom received another blow from Rome. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, Don Pedro of Aragon, after exchanging letters of defiance with Charles of Anjou, proposed a personal combat, which was accepted, on condition that Sicily should be the prize of success. Each called down upon himself all the vengeance of Heaven, and the last dishonor, if, at the appointed time, he failed to appear before the Seneschal of Aquitaine, or, in case of defeat, refused to consign Sicily undisturbed to the victor. While they were preparing for the lists, the Pope, Martin the Fourth, protested with all his might against this new Trial by Battle, which staked the sovereignty of a kingdom, a feudatory of the Holy See, on a wild stroke of chance. By a papal bull, dated at Civita Vecchia, April 5th, 1283, he threatened excommunication to either of the princes who should proceed to a combat which he pronounced _criminal_ and _abominable_. By a letter of the same date, the Pope announced to Edward the First of England, Duke of Aquitaine, the agreement of the two princes, which he most earnestly declared to be full of indecency and rashness, hostile to the concord of Christendom, and reckless of Christian blood; and he urged upon the English monarch all possible effort to prevent the combat,--menacing him with excommunication, and his territories with interdict, if it should take place. Edward refusing to guaranty the safety of the combatants in Aquitaine, the parties retired without consummating their duel.[44] The judgment of the Holy See, which thus accomplished its immediate object, though not in terms directed to the suppression of the _custom_, remains, nevertheless, from its peculiar energy, a perpetual testimony against Trial by Battle. [44] Sismondi, Hist. des Français, Part. IV. ch. 15, Tom. VIII. pp. 338-347. * * * * *