Soon after the death of Charlemagne, in the year 816, Louis-le-Debonnaire, at the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, prohibited the continuance of the ordeal of the cross,[22] because it had a tendency to bring the Christian symbol into contempt and his son, the Emperor Lothair also issued a similar edict against the use of this ordeal, after he assumed the reigns of government.[23] Among the early Saxons, the ordeals by fire and water were practiced, for we find that the _ordale_ signified _judicium aequum, justum, indifferens_, “an upright, just and indifferent judgment.”[24] Tacitus tells us that the ancestors of our Saxon forefathers, during pagan times, were addicted to divination and risked certain results upon the flying of birds, the neighing of horse and trial by combat.[25] And trial by ordeal was used by them in both civil and criminal cases, to determine the issues later solved by the testimony of witnesses, or the oaths of compurgators.[26] The ordeal of hot water appears in the laws of Ine,[27] who began his reign in the year 710, and the ordeals by fire and water had become so common by the time of King Athelstan, that we find the procedure governing such trial, fully covered by his Constitutions,[28] by which they were considered in the light of religious ceremonies: “Concerning ordeal, we command, in the name of God, and by the precept of our archbishops and bishops, that no man enter into the church after the fire is brought in, wherewith the judgment is to be made hot, except the priest, and he who is to undergo the trial; and let there be measured nine feet from the stake unto the mark, according to the measure of the foot, who is to come thus to judgment. And if the trial be by water, let it be made hot, till it boil, in a vessel of iron, brass, lead, or clay; and if it be single, let his hand be put therein after a stone or stock up to his wrist; but if the accusation be threefold, then to his elbow; and when the judgment shall be prepared, let two men be brought in on either side, to make experiment, that it be as hot as is afore expressed.