Originally published as parts I and II of Lea's major historical work Superstition and Force, this volume discusses the limitations in the Middle Ages of what modern jurists would term private law, or civil cases, and the concept of imminent justice through divine intervention in determining the verdict.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.