Note x — Chapter IX · [a]

Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was prohibited by Louis the Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these barbarous methods of discovering truth—the duel and the ordeal; nothing can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampère, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampère gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age that was ill-inclined to hear him.