The oath naturally formed an integral portion of the ordeal. Even as in the battle trial both parties, on entering the lists, were compelled to swear to the truth of their assertions, so in the other ordeals the accuser and accused took an oath immediately prior to the administration of the test.[1172] Sometimes, however, the oath of the accused was regarded as a sufficient ordeal in itself. We have seen above how, among many and diverse races, disculpatory oaths are administered with ceremonies which render them practically ordeals in view of the popular belief that misfortune will follow perjury. The anthropomorphic mythology of Hellas presents this idea in its most concrete form by the most solemn oath of the gods, taken on the water of Styx brought in a vase for the purpose, perjury on which was followed by a year of stupor and nine years of segregation from all fellowship with the brother immortals.[1173] We have also seen (pp. 29 sqq.) that in Christendom the Church set little store by simple oaths, but reckoned their obligation by the holiness of the material objects on which they were taken; and when these were relics of peculiar sanctity they were held to have the power of punishing the perjurer, thus rendering the oath administered upon them an absolute ordeal. This belief developed itself at an early period in the history of the Church. St. Augustin relates that at Milan a thief, who swore upon some holy relics with the intention of bearing false witness, was forced irresistibly to confess himself guilty of the offence which he designed to fasten upon another; and Augustin himself, when unable to decide between two of his ecclesiastics who accused each other of revolting crime, sent them both to the shrine of St. Felix of Nola, in the full expectation that the judgment of God would bring to light the truth as between them.[1174] Gregory the Great shows the same belief when he alludes to a simple purgatorial oath taken by a bishop on the relics of St. Peter in terms which expressly convey the idea that the accused, if guilty, had exposed himself to no little danger, and that his performance of the ceremony unharmed had sufficiently proved his innocence. Gregory, moreover, in one of his Homilies, assumes that perjury committed on the relics of the saints is punished by demoniacal possession.[1175]