oked in this manner.[53]

[53] An ordeal very like this is still practised in India.
Consecrated rice is the article chosen, instead of bread and
cheese. Instances are not rare in which, through the force of
imagination, guilty persons are not able to swallow a single
grain. Conscious of their crime, and fearful of the
punishment of Heaven, they feel a suffocating sensation in
their throat when they attempt it, and they fall on their
knees, and confess all that is laid to their charge. The same
thing, no doubt, would have happened with the bread and
cheese of the Roman Church, if it had been applied to any
others but ecclesiastics. The latter had too much wisdom to
be caught in a trap of their own setting.

When, under Pope Gregory VII., it was debated whether the Gregorian chant
should be introduced into Castile, instead of the Musarabic, given by St.
Isidore of Seville to the churches of that kingdom, very much ill feeling
was excited. The churches refused to receive the novelty, and it was
proposed that the affair should be decided by a battle between two
champions, one chosen from each side. The clergy would not consent to a
mode of settlement which they considered impious, but had no objection to
try the merits of each chant by the fire-ordeal. A great fire was
accordingly made, and a book of the Gregorian and one of the Musarabic
chant were thrown into it, that the flames might decide which was most
agreeable to God by refusing to burn it. Cardinal Baronius, who says he
was an eye-witness of the miracle, relates, that the book of the Gregorian
chant was no sooner laid upon the fire, than it leaped out uninjured,
visibly, and with a great noise. Every one present thought that the saints
had decided in favour of Pope Gregory. After a slight interval, the fire
was extinguished; but, wonderful to relate! the other book of St. Isidore
was found covered with ashes, but not injured in the slightest degree. The
flames had not even warmed it. Upon this it was resolved, that both were
alike agreeable to God, and that they should be used by turns in all the
churches of Seville.[54]

[54] _Histoire de Messire Bertrand du Guesclin_, par Paul Hay du
Chastelet, liv. i. ch. xix.

If the ordeals had been confined to questions like this, the laity would
have had little or no objection to them; but when they were in