In the earlier periods of European law, the burning iron was reserved for cases of peculiar atrocity. Thus we find it prescribed by Charlemagne in accusations of parricide;[920] the Council of Risbach in 799 directed its use in cases of sorcery and witchcraft;[921] and among the Thuringians it was ordered for women suspected of poisoning or otherwise murdering their husbands[922]—a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. In 848 the Council of Mainz indicates it specially for slaves,[923] while the Council of Tribur, in 895, orders it for all cases of accusation against freemen.[924] Among the Anglo-Saxons the accuser had the right to select the ordeal to be employed,[925] while at a later period in Germany this privilege was conferred on the accused.[926] In England it subsequently became rather an aristocratic procedure as contradistinguished from the water ordeals.[927] On the other hand, in the Assises de Jerusalem the hot iron is the only form alluded to as employed in the _roturier_ courts;[928] in the laws of Nieuport, granted by Philip of Alsace in 1163, it is prescribed as a plebeian ordeal;[929] and about the same period, in the military laws enacted by Frederic Barbarossa during his second Italian expedition, it appears as a servile ordeal.[930] In the Russian law of the eleventh century, it is ordered in all cases where the matter at stake amounts to more than half a _grivna_ of gold, while the water ordeal is reserved for suits of less importance.[931] In the Icelandic code of the twelfth century it is prescribed for men, in cases in which women are required to undergo the hot-water ordeal;[932] while the reverse of this is seen in an English case occurring in 1201, where six men and a woman were accused of burglary; the men were ordered to the water ordeal and the woman to red-hot iron.[933] A specially severe form was provided for women in Ireland, who, when accused, were obliged to lick with the tongue a bronze axe-head heated to redness in a fire of black-thorn.[934]