condemned with his accomplices, in spite of his earnest protestations of innocence.[1026] Although the cold-water ordeal disappears from the statute-book in civil and in ordinary criminal actions together with its kindred modes of purgation, there was one class of cases in which it maintained its hold upon the popular faith to a much later period. These were the accusations of sorcery and witchcraft which form so strange a feature of mediæval and modern society; and its use for this purpose may apparently be traced to various causes. For such crimes, drowning was the punishment inflicted by the customs of the Franks, as soon as they had lost the respect for individual liberty of action which excluded personal punishments from their original code;[1027] and in addition to the general belief that the pure element refused to receive those who were tainted with crime, there was in this special class of cases a widely spread superstition that adepts in sorcery and magic lost their specific gravity. Pliny mentions a race of enchanters on the Euxine who were lighter than water—“eosdem præterea non posse mergi ne veste quidam degravatos;”[1028] and Stephanus Byzantinus describes the inhabitants of Thebe as magicians who could kill with their breath, and floated when thrown into the sea.[1029] To the concurrence of these notions we may attribute the fact that when the cold-water ordeal was abandoned, in the thirteenth century, as a judicial practice in ordinary cases, it still maintained its place as a special mode of trying those unfortunate persons whom their own folly, or the malice and fears of their neighbors, pointed out as witches and sorcerers.[1030] No less than a hundred years after the efforts of Innocent III. had virtually put an end to all the other forms of vulgar ordeals, we find Louis Hutin ordering its employment in these cases.[1031] At length, however, it fell into desuetude, until the superstitious panic of witchcraft which took possession of the popular mind caused its revival in the second half of the sixteenth century. In 1487, Sprenger, while treating of every possible detail concerning witchcraft and its prosecution, and alluding to the red-hot iron ordeal, makes no reference whatever to cold water or to the faculty of floating possessed by witches, thus showing that it had passed completely out of remembrance as a test in these cases, both popularly and judicially.[1032] In 1564, Wier discusses it as though it were in ordinary use in Western Germany, and mentions a recent case wherein a young girl falsely accused was tested in this manner and floated, after which she was tortured until the executioner himself wondered at her power of endurance. As no confession could be extracted, she was discharged, which shows how little real confidence was reposed in the ordeal.[1033] Twenty years later, Scribonius, writing in 1583, speaks of it as a novelty, but Neuwald assures us that for eighteen years