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Offers a broader, more contextualized understanding of the function
of ordeals in medieval literature and society. Medieval judicial
ordeals, especially trial by fire or battle, conjure up vivid
pictures in the modern imagination. Yet popular perceptions of the
Middle Ages leave the reader without a context in which to
understand these most drastic of medieval judicial remedies. This
book analyzes literary texts that provide some of the most vivid
and detailed accounts of the medieval ordeal: the dramatic treason
trials in late medieval Charlemagne epics. The two epicschosen --
Stricker's Karl der Grosse and the Karlmeinet -- treat trial by
battle as the living legal reality it was in those times, yet
display very different attitudes toward feud and punishment in
their respective(13th- and 14th-century) societies. Gottfried's
Tristan contains an ordeal by battle, of which the author approves,
and an ordeal by fire, of which he does not, reflecting a common
position of the intelligentsia of the time. Well after the
condemnation of ordeals by the Fourth Lateran Council, the
Kunigunde legend preserves the ordeal by fire much as it was
portrayed in the mid-12th-century Richardis legend, while
Stricker's short secular burlesque"The Hot Iron," written in the
mid 13th century, makes sport of this formerly serious legal
proceeding, reflecting its sudden abandonment as a legal proof
following the council's decision. The study brings extensive
background material in legal and cultural history to bear on
literary texts, helping both medievalists and general readers
understand the function of the ordeal in the texts as well as in
the larger society for whom these works were written. Vickie L.
Ziegler is professor of German and Director of the Center for
Medieval Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
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