a provision prohibiting the administration of the ordeal in the smaller churches, and reserving the privilege to the cathedral seats and other important establishments.[1325] According to a grant from Péregrin de Lavedan to the monastery of Saint-Pé, in Bigorre, the fee for administering the hot-water ordeal was five crowns, of which two were paid to the monastery, two to the cathedral at Tarbes, and one to the priest who blessed the water and stone.[1326] By the laws of St. Ladislas of Hungary, in 1092, the stipend of the officiating priest for the red-hot iron was double that which he received for the water ordeal;[1327] in Bohemia the laws of Otto Premizlas in 1229 give the priest a fee of fourteen deniers for the latter.[1328] How rigidly these rights were enforced is shown in a case related by Peter Cantor in the twelfth century. A man accused of crime was sentenced to undergo the ordeal of cold water. When stripped and bound and seated on the edge of the tank, the prosecutor withdrew the suit, but the official of the court refused to release the accused until he should pay fees amounting to nine livres and a half. A long wrangle ensued, until the defendant declared that he would pay nothing, but would rather undergo the ordeal, and, after establishing his innocence, would give fifty sols to the poor. He was accordingly thrown in and sank satisfactorily, but on being drawn out was met with a fresh claim from the officiating priest, of five sols, for blessing the water.[1329] As these fees were paid, sometimes on conviction and sometimes on acquittal, there was danger that, even without direct bribery, self-interest might affect the result. Thus by the acts of the Synod of Lillebonne, in 1080, a conviction by the hot-iron ordeal entailed a fine for the benefit of the bishop;[1330] and it was apparently to prevent such influences that the Swedish code, compiled by Andreas Archbishop of Lunden early in the thirteenth century, made the successful party, whether the prosecutor or defendant, pay the fee to the officiating priest—a regulation sufficiently degrading to the sacerdotal character.[1331] But besides these pecuniary advantages, the ordeal had a natural attraction to the clergy, as it afforded the means of awing the laity, by rendering the priest a special instrument of Divine justice, into whose hands every man felt that he was at any moment liable to fall; while, to the unworthy, its attractions were enhanced by the opportunities which it gave for the worst abuses. From the decretals of Alexander III. we learn authoritatively that the extortion of money from innocent persons by its instrumentality was a notorious fact[1332]—a testimony confirmed by Ekkehardus Junior, who, a century earlier, makes the same accusation, and moreover inveighs bitterly against the priests who were wont to gratify the vilest instincts in stripping women for the purpose of exposing them to the ordeal of cold water.[1333]