Note 1253 — Chapter XV · CONDITIONS OF THE ORDEAL.

The severity of the ordeal, when the sufferer had no friends among the operators to save him, may be deduced from the description of a hand when released from its three days’ tying up after its plunge in hot water: “inflatam admodum et excoriatam sanieque jam carne putrida effluentem dexteram invitus ostendit” (Du Cange, s. v. Aquæ Ferv. Judicium). In this case, the sufferer was the adversary of an abbey, the monks of which perhaps had the boiling of the caldron.