Note 4 — Chapter IV · Trial by Battle.
Reading edition
The Mirror (C. 3, Par. 23) states that the trial by battle was allowable upon the warranty of the combat between the Shepard King of the Israelites and the Giant of the Philistines, but Pope Nicholas I. quite seriously decides this precedent to be inconclusive. (Decret. Par. 2, Caus. 2, qu. 5, c. 22.)
The belief that the Deity would interfere on the side of the right, in these combats, originated with the institution itself, for we are told, that when King Gundobald, in the year 501, decreed the trial by battle as an antidote to perjury, he replied to the remonstrances of the churchmen by the argument that “The event both of national wars and private combat is directed by the judgment of God and Providence awards the victory to the juster cause.” (II. Gibbon, ch. 38; Esprit des Lois, book 28, ch. 17; Neilson’s Trial by Combat, p. 6.)
Neilson rejects the suggestion that trial by battle was divinely instituted when David, with his Sling, slew the mighty man of war of the Philistines, as did Pope Nicholas First, in the year 867. Neilson’s “Trial by Combat,” p. 2.