Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/336

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SELECT HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.

sins of the perfidious and the blind; so that, against their will, they may perceive, what willingly they would not,—that Thou, living and reigning from ages to ages, art the judge of the living and the dead. Amen.

C. THE JUDGMENT OF BOILING WATER.

Having performed the mass the priest shall descend to the place appointed, where the trial itself shall be gone through with; he shall carry with him the book of the gospels and a cross, and shall chant a moderate litany; and when he shall have completed that litany, he shall exorcize and bless that water before it boils.—After this he shall divest him (the accused) of his garments, and shall clothe him or them with clean vestments of the church—that is, with the garment of an exorcist or of a deacon—and shall cause him or them to kiss the gospel and the cross of Christ; and he shall sprinkle over them some of the water itself; and to those who are about to go in to the Judgment of God, to all of them, he shall give to drink of that same holy water. And when he shall have given it, moreover, he shall say to each one: "I have given this water to thee or to you for a sign to-day." Then pieces of wood shall be placed under the cauldron, and the priest shall say .... prayers when the water itself shall have begun to grow warm.—And he who puts his hand in the water for the trial itself, shall say the Lord's prayer, and shall sign himself with the sign of the cross; and that boiling water shall hastily be put down near the fire, and the judge shall suspend that stone, bound to that measure, within that same water in the accustomed way; and thus he who enters to be tried by the judgment shall extract it thence in the name of God himself. Afterwards, with great diligence, his hand shall thus be wrapped up, signed with the seal of the judge, until the third day; when it shall be viewed and judged of by suitable men.

D. TEST OF THE COLD WATER.

Consecration to he said over the man. May omnipotent God, who did order baptism to be made by water, and did