Superstition and Force: Essays on the Wager of Law, the Wager of Battle, the Ordeal, TortureLea, Henry Charles
History
Superstition and Force: Essays on the Wager of Law, the Wager of Battle, the Ordeal, Torture
Lea, Henry Charles
Ordeal; Torture; Wager of battle; Wager of law
A somewhat noteworthy exception to this tendency on the part of the
municipalities is to be found in Moravia. There, under the laws of
Ottokar Premizlas, in 1229 the duel was forbidden between natives
and only allowed when one of the parties was a foreigner. Yet his
son Wenceslas, some years later, confirmed the customs of the town
of Iglau, in which the duel was a recognized feature enforced by an
ascending scale of fines. If the accused compounded with the prosecutor
before the duel was ordered he paid the judge one mark; after it was
adjudged, two marks; after the lists were entered, three marks; after
weapons were taken, four marks; and if he waited till the weapons were
drawn he had to pay five marks.[694]
* * * * *
All these were local regulations which had no direct bearing on general
legislation, except in so far as they might assist in softening the
manners of their generation and aiding in the general spread of
civilization. A more efficient cause was to be found in the opposition
of the Church. From Liutprand the Lombard to Frederic II., a period
of five centuries, no secular lawgiver, south of Denmark, seems to
have thought of abolishing the judicial combat as a measure of general
policy, and those whose influence was largest were the most conspicuous
in fostering it. During the whole of this period the Church was
consistently engaged in discrediting it, notwithstanding that the local
interests or pride of individual prelates might lead them to defend the
vested privileges connected with it in their jurisdictions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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