Bill Ryan's Other Blog

In today’s Boston Globe, Peter Leeson discusses the medieval practice of Trial By Ordeal to secure justice.  Most modern societies consider this practice backward to say the least and our founders were particular contemptuous of it.  So you’d expect any analysis of the practice to be negative.  Not in this article.  Leeson actually argues that it was a fairly good way of handling things.

I’m the last person to dismiss something as academic or ivory tower, but this article fits the bill perfectly.  His premise as I understand it is that while the ordeals are brutal and seemingly arbitrary, expectations come into play.  Innocent people believed that b/c they were innocent, God would save them.  The guilty by extension, knew they were guilty and assumed that an all knowing God would see that they were punished.  And in theory, it sounds great.

But think about it for a second.  For this to even be remotely plausible, you have to assume that the actors were thoroughly religious.  Not only that, but they believed in a very specific morality.  I’d counter that if they were guilty and believed this strongly in God, they wouldn’t have done it in the first place.  And if they did, they’d cop a plea and fess up.  Think about how tortured this would be.  I’m a criminal and I’m going through an ordeal. I believe God is going to see things through so I’ll fail the ordeal b/c of his intervention.. So I do and that’s that.  If I believed this strongly in God, why would I have committed the crime in the first place?  And assuming that I did but got cold feet, why would I continue sinking by lying about it?  It’s an interesting read but I’m not buying it, any of it.

[tags]Trial By Ordeal, Peter Leeson[/tags]