The sensitive piety of Louis le Débonnaire was shocked at this use of the cross, as tending to bring the Christian symbol into contempt, and in 816, soon after the death of Charlemagne, he prohibited its continuance, at the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle;[1073] an order which was repeated by his son, the Emperor Lothair.[1074] Baluze, however, considers, with apparent reason, that this command was respected only in the Rhenish provinces and in Italy, from the fact that the manuscripts of the Capitularies belonging to those regions omit the references to the ordeal of the cross, which are retained in the copies used in the other territories of the Frankish empire.[1075] Louis himself would seem at length to have changed his opinion; for, in the final division of his succession between his sons, he repeats the direction of Charlemagne as regards the settlement of disputed boundaries.[1076] The procedure, however, appears to have soon lost its popularity, and indeed never to have obtained the wide and deeply-seated hold on the veneration of the people enjoyed by the other forms of ordeal, though there is extant a formula for confirming disputed titles to real estate decided in this manner.[1077] We see little of it at later periods, except the trace it has left in the proverbial allusion to an _experimentum crucis_. In India a cognate mode is adopted by the people of Ramgur to settle questions of disputed boundaries between villages. When agreement by argument or referees is found impossible, each community chooses a champion, and the two stand with one leg buried in the earth until weariness or the bites of insects cause one of them to yield, when the territory in litigation is adjudged to the village of the victor.[1078] CHAPTER VIII. THE CORSNÆD. The ordeal of consecrated bread or cheese (_judicium offæ, panis conjuratio, pabulum probationis_, the _corsnæd_ of the Anglo-Saxons) was administered by presenting to the accused a piece of bread (generally of barley) or of cheese, about an ounce in weight,[1079] over which prayers and adjurations had been pronounced. After appropriate religious ceremonies, including the communion, the morsel was eaten, the event being determined by the ability of the accused to swallow it. This depended of course on the imagination, and we can readily understand how, in those times of faith, the impressive observances which accompanied the ordeal would affect the criminal, who, conscious of guilt, stood up at the altar, took the sacrament, and pledged his salvation on the truth of his oath. The mode by which a conviction was expected may be gathered from the forms of the exorcism employed, of which a number have been preserved.