TRIALS BY FIRE AND FIRE-JUGGLERS. 645 



which may be used to heal disease or alleviate pain, but it is a far 

 grander and nobler task to teach the people how to live so that dis- 

 ease and pain will not come upon them. 



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TEIALS BY FIKE AND FIRE-JUGGLERS. 



By M. A. De EOCHAS. 



IN his very interesting lecture on witches, Dr. Regnard has men- 

 tioned that insensibility to suffering was, in the middle ages, con- 

 sidered evidence of diabolical relations. By a singular contradiction 

 of the human mind, this same insensibility was also under certain 

 circumstances attributed to divine intervention ; and that which, in 

 one case, brought death upon the accused, was good for his acquittal 

 in another case. 



Trial by fire, by means of which Heaven was appealed to for proof 

 of innocence, appears to have originated in India. The Vedas men- 

 tion it, and travelers still find it in use in all the East. The Greeks 

 also were acquainted with it. " We are ready to hold red-hot iron 

 and walk through flames to prove our innocence ! " exclaimed the 

 Thebans in the " Antigone " of Sophocles, who were accused of hav- 

 ing abetted in the theft of the body of Polynice. 



The first authentic trial of this kind recorded among Christians is 

 related by Gregory of Tours, in the case of Saint Sulpicius, Bishop of 

 Autun. This saint, who lived in the fourth century, was made a 

 bishop, although he was married. His wife could not make up her 

 mind to leave him, but resolved to live with him under a vow of 

 chastity taken according to the laws of the Church. Having learned 

 that the faithful accused them of not observing their vow, the woman 

 had fire brought to her publicly on Christmas-day, and, having held it 

 in her dress for nearly an hour, gave it to the bishop, saying to him, 

 " Take this fire, which will not burn you, so that they may see that 

 the fire of lust has no more effect upon us than these coals have upon 

 our clothes." 



Saint Brice, Bishop of Tours, made use of a similar trial to prove 

 his innocence of a crime that was imputed to him. The chronicles, 

 beginning from this epoch, have preserved numerous examples of 

 these 'trials. They were employed, not only to discover heretics, but 

 also to distinguish genuine relics from false ones. The Council of 

 Saragossa, in 592, ordered that only those relics which the fire had 

 respected should be venerated. The multiplication of these trials in 

 Gaul was probably due to the influence of the conquering race, with 

 whom the custom seems to have been established from time immemo- 

 rial. In an addition to the Salic law made by Kings Childebert and 



