Note 726 — Chapter VIII · DECLINE OF THE JUDICIAL COMBAT.
Reading edition
Nous deffendons à tous les batailles par tout nostre demengne, més nous n’ostons mie les clains, les respons, les convenants, etc.... fors que nous ostons les batailles, et en lieu des batailles nous meton prueves de tesmoins, et si n’oston pas les autres bones prueves et loyaux, qui ont esté en court laye siques à ore.—Isambert, I. 284.
Laurière (Tabl. des Ordonn. p. 17) alludes to an edict to the same purport, under date of 1240, of which I can nowhere else find a trace. There is no reference to it in the Tables des Ordonnances of Pardessus (Paris, 1847).
It is a curious illustration of the fluctuating policy of the contest that in his struggle to enforce the supremacy of the royal jurisdiction as against the prelates of the province of Reims, one of the complaints of the bishops at the Council of Saint-Quentin in 1235 is that he forced ecclesiastics in his court to prove by the duel their rights over their serfs—“Item, supplicat concilium quod dominus rex non compellat personas ecclesiasticas probare per duellum in curia sua homines quos dicunt suos esse de corpore suo” (Harduin. VII. 259).