When the Othos governed the Italian dominions, it was at the urgent request of the Italian nobility, that Otho II, in an assembly at Verona in 988, re-established the practice of duelling in all its vigour, not even exempting from the obligation the clergy, or women; and while personal combat had to decide between the guilty and the innocent, trials by ordeal, similar to those already detailed, were constantly resorted to. George Acropolites relates the case of an Italian archbishop, who recommended one of his deacons to submit to the trial by fire; to this the priest did not object, provided the red-hot iron was handed to him by his diocesan, who then thought it advisable to decline the ordeal on the plea that it was sinful to tempt God. The progress of civilization in the rude manners of the times, which resulted from the discovery of the pandects at Amalfi, did not prove sufficiently powerful to check this ancient practice; and we find Charles Tocco, a celebrated Neapolitan professor, maintaining that the practice of duelling ought to be kept up, however condemnable in principle. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Italian press teemed with works on the noble nature of the science of duelling, which was held out to the admiration of the world in the most elegant language, although in the eleventh century the establishment of municipal corporations materially checked these chivalric excesses. It was in the thirteenth century that we see Mainfroi, natural son of Frederic II, murdering the Emperor Conrad, and killed in turn by Charles d’Anjou, who usurped the throne of Conradin, a young prince whom we find casting his gauntlet to defy the usurper, who ordered his head to be struck off in a public square at Naples. A knight had the boldness to take up the gauntlet, and carried it to Peter III, King of Arragon, who avenged the death of Conradin by the massacre of the Sicilian vespers, while he renewed the challenge of the ill-fated prince, and defied Charles d’Anjou, although sixty years old, to single combat: a challenge which was accepted, notwithstanding the King of Arragon was only forty years of age. The personal conflict, however, was avoided in the following manner:--Peter sent a message to Charles, to settle the point with each other at the head of a hundred chosen knights. Charles, despite the injunctions of the Pope, rashly accepted the proposal, and our Edward I. appointed the field at Bordeaux, the day being fixed on the 1st of July 1282. Trusting to the faith of Peter, Charles raised the siege of Messina. The Pope fulminated his anathema from the Vatican, and excommunicated the Arragonese prince, who, however, treated his wrath with sovereign contempt. The day of the meeting, Charles, faithful to his engagement, entered the field at the head of his hundred knights, and remained there from sun-rise to sunset, awaiting his adversary, who did not make his appearance until