Heaven could also be directly appealed to without the intervention of the hot iron or boiling water. A question of much importance to northern Italy was thus settled in the tenth century, when Uberto of Tuscany, driven into exile by Otho the Great, returned after a long absence, and found his wife Willa with a likely boy whose paternity he refused to acknowledge. After much parleying, the delicate question was thus settled. A large assembly, consisting principally of ecclesiastics, was convened, in which Uberto sat without anything to distinguish him. The boy, who had never seen him, was placed in the centre, and prayers were offered by all present that he should be led by divine instinct to his father. The prayers were promptly answered, for he rushed without hesitation to the arms of Uberto, who could no longer indulge in unworthy doubts, and in time Ugo became the most powerful prince of Italy.[1204] There would appear to have been a form of ordeal known as the judgment of the Holy Ghost, but its details are unknown. Pope Stephen VII. employed it for the condemnation of the body of his predecessor Pope Formosus, in 896. The corpse was dug up for the purpose, clad in papal vestments, and brought before a synod of bishops; after condemnation, the three fingers used in benediction were cut off, and it was cast into the Tiber. After the murder of Stephen in 898, John IX. assembled another council which annulled the condemnation and forbade such proceedings in the future, for the unanswerable reason that a dead body cannot vindicate itself, and the judgment was still further discredited when the corpse was fished out of the river, and on being brought into St. Peter’s all the sacred images there bowed to it. Whatever may have been the judgment of the Holy Ghost it naturally became obsolete.[1205] Perhaps the simplest and at the same time one of the most barbarous of ordeals is prescribed in a MS. of the eleventh century for Jews unlucky enough to be involved in controversies with Christians. The Jew was made to stand up and his knees were closely bound together; a collar made of brambles was placed around his neck, and a switch of brambles, five cubits long and well furnished with thorns, was smartly dragged between his thighs. If he escaped without a scratch he was acquitted.[1206] In the crazied effort to detect the all-pervading and secret crime of witchcraft, a number of superstitious observances found currency among the people which practically assumed the position of ordeals. Thus in the latter half of the sixteenth century it was believed that a fragment of earth from a grave, when sanctified in the Mass and placed on the threshold of a church door, would prevent the egress of any witch who might be within; and a similar power was attributed to a splinter of oak from a gallows, sprinkled with holy water and hung up in the church porch.[1207] CHAPTER XV. CONDITIONS OF THE ORDEAL.