n, reason requires that he should be hanged.'

We can see from this assize that a law sometimes effects the opposite of
that which was intended, and unreasonable provisions oppress the patient
instead of the physician. Amalrick I fell sick, and felt that he needed
an aperient, but the Syrian physicians refused to prescribe such. He
sent for the European physicians, and they also declined to take the
hazard of prescribing. To obtain the prescription there was no
alternative but to issue a royal rescript absolving the physicians
beforehand from the provisions of this assize. In the mean time,
however, the favorable period passed by and the king died.

In regard to marriage--the most important of social institutions--the
provisions of the canon law are mainly reproduced, with the genuine
German practice of joint possession of the property, as expressed in the
passage: _Saches que nul home n'est si dreit heir au mort come est sa
feme._ ('No one so properly as the wife inherits the property of a
deceased husband.')

Still, however, oriental views left their traces upon this institution.
This appears in the facility with which a man could obtain a divorce
from his wife, and in the jealous strictness in regard to conjugal
infidelity. Vitry says:

'The pullans'--a name analogous to that of creole in the West
Indies, given to the descendants of the Crusaders in the
Orient--'have gone so far in their oriental zeal, that they no
longer allow their wives to go to church, to processions, or to any
religious exercises.'

When the council of Neapolis had provided cruel and barbarous
mutilations for persons unfaithful to the marriage vow, King Amalrick
issued the assize that 'the man who should detect his wife in the
commission of such offence, might without guilt kill both parties;' but
he added the very nice distinction, that 'if he killed _one_ party and
spared the _other_, he should, as a murderer, be hanged without grace.'
Perhaps this law may have been a device to save both parties; for a man
would naturally hesitate to undertake a work, failure to _complete_
which would cost him his life.

The last means everywhere for establishing truth was the judicial
combat. There are found, by way of exception, in the assizes of the
burghers' court, cases of the judgment of God by the fire test, in which
the defendant is acquitted of the charges against him, by holding in
his hand, without injury, for a given