Ordeals In The Middle Ages

In the mid-seventeenth century there was a great increase in the number of witchcraft accusations, more precisely in a little country located in southern Europe called Malta. At this time in Europe there was a system of tribunals, a court of justice, created by the Catholic Church called the Roman Inquisition (Carmel. 1993: 316-317). According to Caramel Cassar, the purpose of these tribunals at first was to keep the Catholic faith alive and to eliminate the spread of the Protestant faith (Carmel. 1993: 316-317). Unfortunately at the start of the seventeenth century the Catholic Church had a bigger

Even though these laws were written to be fair to all, the magistrates and clergy delegated punishment by who was being punished. This type of reasoning was typical in New England, and set the stage for the witch trials.

In Medieval times determination of guilt and innocence was unfair and people relied on God to be the determinant of guilt or innocence. Trial by ordeal was a practice that was used to decide whether you were guilty or innocent (thefinnertimes.com).Trial by ordeal was made up of 3 trials – trial by water, trial by fire and trial by combat. These trials all have different negative features; trial by water was when the accused and accuser get tied up and thrown into the water, if someone floated they were guilty and if they sunk they were innocent. Trial by fire was when you either had to walk barefoot on fire or you had to hold a red-hot bar for a certain amount of time, if when the accused came back after 3 days and their hand hadn’t started to heal, they were declared guilty (yesnet.yk.ca). Trial by combat was undoubtedly the most unfair trial out of them all.

Before the English Civil War began, the legal system included justices, judges, magistrates, and lawyers. King James I, according to author Malcolm Gaskill in his works Witchcraft and Evidence in Early Modern England, had a great influence in the court systems. Before the English Civil War, the witch trials were broken up in two parts. The first being that a Justice of the Peace would examine the accused, then the second was an actual trial would occur. In those trials according to Gaskill, “English trials followed common- law principles: lay jurors had to be persuaded by lay witnesses.” Many trials during this time period demanded more solid proof before the accused could be convicted. Gaskill, also writes that the court systems prior to the Hopkins’ witch trials, people began to question intangible evidence coming from the accusers and the witnesses. This shows that before the English Civil War, the courts where yes, being tried for witchcraft, but the courts were also demanding solid evidence against the accused person. During the late sixteenth century and early years of the seventeenth century, many trials were being questioned by

According to Clear, Cole, and Reisig, (2013, p. 28 & 29) during the middle ages various forms of punishments were imposed on the body of the offender. Authority of government grew, and the criminal law system became more fully developed. Other forms of sanctions were applied due to the rise of trade, the breakdown of feudal order, the emergence of a middle class. In Europe before the 1800s fines and five punishments were common: galley slavery, imprisonment, transportation, corporal punishment and death. Each

During the trials, if someone was identified as a witch or a warlock from the society, they would be taken to court (which is a while wait due to the amounts of people waiting also) to be decided if they are guilty or not. It is easy be be found guilty in this case because they couldn't really prove if someone was a witch or not. They would just say, "She's a witch!", and that would do to prove guilty. If found guilty of accused on being a witch, they were to be hung. If they say they were a witch, they would stay in jail for the rest of their lives because they were being truthful and that's a big part of their religion.

It seemed if you slighted the beliefs of the court even a little bit, you would be charged of contempt of court or witchcraft. In the end, the religious prejudice of the court condemned tons of innocent

In the roman times crucifixion was the punishments. Nails are driven through the wrists and ankles, you are then left to die in agony. Death takes hours and hours. Another punishment was being fed to lions in the morning, but in the afternoon it was man against man. The fighters had nothing to protect them from the animal - no helmets or shields. The crowd would shout KILL HIM, FLOG HIM AND BURN HIM.

In New England the legal system changed dramatically as an effect of the witch trials. A conflict occurred which led to social damaging in a community believed to be plagued with suspected spiritual enemies. Even when such instances occurred the system that was used would be a relatively reasonable one especially when it came to deciding if someone was guilty or innocent was determined by the fate of the suspected witches’ lives.

The punishments in the Middle Ages were severely brutal.For stealing you would get your right hand cut off and for rape you would be quartered. One of the most severe punishments in the middle ages was Impalement. It worked by forcing your victims to sit on a sharp and thick pole. The pole was then raised upright and the victim was left to slide further down the pole by his or her own weight. This was among the most brutal of punishments ever imagined and practiced by humans. Theft was considered a petty crime. But even though it was considered petty your right hand was still chopped off.If you were drunk in public you would get a fine. Victims were sawed in half, they did this because it was a cheap way to torture and kill a victim accused

The Christian religions rise to supremacy in the middle ages was the result of several factors. Christians had long been persecuted by the Roman Empire because the Romans felt that Christianity challenged and offended the Greco-Roman Gods and the Christians were prone to revolt against Roman rule. Christianity survived because it had many teachings that appealed to the downtrodden in Roman society, these teachings being that even though they were suffering they would gain equality and possibly superiority in the next life, Christianity gave them hope.

This court would even allow serfs to sue if they thought it was unfair. Manor courts were like a village meeting, most of the villagers would attend. Witnesses were very important because the villages decided who won the case, and if you lied you would get a hefty fine. Representatives

They tortured people to gain confessions. The church handled all confessions, however could not witness the bloodshed that they caused to get the accused to confess. All punishments were vary physical two of the most infamous were the strappado and aselli. The strappado, meaning pulley, was a device containing ropes to strap a person down from their arms and legs and weights were attached on the ropes. The person would be raised and their body would stretch causing mass amounts of pain and sometimes-immediate death. The aselli was a water torment. A person would lie down and be drowned rapidity until it looked like their veins would explode.

William the Conqueror introduced the jury system into England in 1066 after the battle of Hastings. It wasn’t until the 14th century when their roll came to determiner of fact in a case.

The Medieval Ages that descended upon the Europeans following the deconstruction and devolution of the formerly grand institutions of the Roman Empire left a world darkened to the eyes of history. The world lost touch with simple concepts to a modern history student of writing, economy, culture, and government—the mainstay of that which we cannot see ourselves without—civilization. What was left of Europe was a state of chaos. In all other periods of human history I have studied there were similarities among them from which I could draw conclusions upon the condition of the respective times. The Text helped to give order to the progression of European history from the ancient to the modern drawing