Ordeal by fire
The ordeal by fire is an archaic element of the judiciary, in which a statement is confirmed by fire, which does not cause severe burns with divine help. In the course of history, this element and with it the meaning of the word was lost in the western world - the term was instead increasingly used as a synonym for a test that no longer takes place in a set training environment, but rather describes the test in actual use. In some regions of the world, the ordeal by fire is still practiced today.
Judgment of God
The trial by fire was one of the divine judgments of the Middle Ages , through which the guilt or innocence of a defendant was established. One possible area of application was as a chastity test . The ordeal by fire should not be confused with torture , the purpose of which was to induce a defendant to confess.
The ordeal by fire, like other judgments of God, was already common among the Teutons , the Anglo-Saxons and generally in the Viking Age . After the Christianization of Scandinavia, it was to be carried out under the supervision of the bishop.
There were different variants at the trial by fire:
- The accused had to walk barefoot over six or twelve red-hot plowshares;
- the accused had to carry a red-hot iron over a distance of nine feet or more;
- the defendant had to put his hand into a fire.
If the accused remained unharmed, the injury healed within a short period of time (usually three days) or his injury did not fester, his innocence was considered proven; otherwise he was punished.
Like other divine judgments, the ordeal by fire disappeared in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was replaced by secular (secular) jurisdiction. Pope Innocent III wrote around 1213 in a decretal to the Archbishop of Nidaros that canon law rejects the iron test. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 forbade the iron test and other divine judgments. However, it was still used, for example by Inga, Håkon Håkonsson's mother , who proved her son's noble origins with the iron test in 1218.
Practical test
The term acid test in late feudal times means a special form of practical test in action , which became a basic requirement for an officer to be able to be elevated to the knighthood. While it was still possible in many places in the increasingly specialized armies to be enfeoffed with a knight's title after thirty years of service in the imperial army, in later class systems one had to have also been in a battle, which here was actually a firefight with firearms. Officers in rear service could not reach knighthood in this way. However, as wars became rarer, and were mainly accompanied by interruptions that lasted for decades, it was less common at the transition to civilian times to have officers who had already passed the acid test of their military training. This conceptual formation of the knightly trial by fire was then transferred to non-military training.
Colloquially, the term fire test is used today as a synonym for practical test, ie as the first real use after completing all tests or exercises under real conditions (e.g. in technical systems) (see also pudding test , moments of truth ).
See also
literature
- Salim Alafenisch : The significance of the acid test in the customary law of the Bedouins of the Negev , Berlin 1982.
