This apparent inconsistency is only a repetition of what we have seen in the Persian and Indian institutions, where torture was superfluous in the presence of other forms of proof, and in Greece and Rome where it makes its appearance in the absence of those forms. Though there was no theoretical objection to torture as a process of investigation, yet there was no necessity for its employment as a means of evidence. That the idea of thus using it in matters of great moment was not unfamiliar to the men of that age is evident when we find it officially stated that the accomplices of Bernard, King of Italy, in his rebellion against Louis le Débonnaire, in 817, on their capture confessed the whole plot without being put to the torture.[1504] Such instances, however, were purely exceptional. In ordinary matters, there was a complete system of attack and defence which supplemented all deficiencies of testimony in doubtful cases. Sacramental purgation, the wager of battle, and the various forms of vulgar ordeals were not only primæval customs suited to the feelings and modes of thought of the race, but they were also much more in harmony with the credulous faith inculcated by the Church, and the Church had by this time entered on the career of temporal supremacy which gave it so potent a voice in fashioning the institutions of European society. For all these, the ministrations of the ecclesiastic were requisite, and in many of them his unseen agency might prove decisive. On the other hand, the humane precepts which forbade the churchman from intervening in any manner in judgments involving blood precluded his interference with the torture chamber; and in fact, while torture was yet frequent under the Merovingians, the canons of various councils prohibited the presence of any ecclesiastic in places where it was administered.[1505] Every consideration, therefore, would lead the Church in the ninth century to prefer the milder forms of investigation, and to use its all-powerful influence in maintaining the popular belief in them. The time had not yet come when, as we shall see hereafter, the Church, as the spiritual head of feudal Christendom, would find the ordeal unnecessary and torture the most practicable instrumentality to preserve the purity of faith and the steadfastness of implicit obedience.