The laws of the Burgundians and of the Anglians were more severe than those of the Germanic race, for they granted to the disputants trial by combat.  After having employed the ordeal of red-hot iron, and of scalding water, the Franks adopted the judicial duel (Fig. 300).  This was imposed first upon the disputing parties, then on the witnesses, and sometimes even on the judges themselves.  Dating from the reign of the Emperor Otho the Great in 967, the judicial duel, which had been at first restricted to the most serious cases, was had recourse to in almost all suits that were brought before the courts.  Neither women, old men, children, nor infirm persons were exempted.  When a person could not himself fight he had to provide a champion, whose sole business was to take in hand the quarrels of others.

[Illustration:  Fig. 301.—­Judicial Duel.—­Combat of a Knight with a Dog.—­Fac-simile of a Miniature in the Romance of “Macaire,” of the Thirteenth Century (Library of the Arsenal of Paris).]

Ecclesiastics were obliged, in the same maimer, to fight by deputy.  The champion or substitute required, of course, to be paid beforehand.  If the legend of the Dog of Montargis is to be believed, the judicial duel seems to have been resorted to even against an animal (Fig. 301).

In the twelfth century Europe was divided, so to speak, into two vast judicial zones:  the one, Southern, Gallo-Roman, and Visigoth; the other, Northern and Western, half Germanic and half Scandinavian, Anglian, or Saxon.  Christianity established common ties between these different legislations, and imperceptibly softened their native coarseness, although they retained the elements of their pagan and barbaric origin.  Sentences were not as yet given in writing:  they were entrusted to the memory of the judges who had issued them; and when a question or dispute arose between the interested parties as to the terms of the decision which had been pronounced, an inquiry was held, and the court issued a second decision, called a recordatum.

As long as the King’s court was a movable one, the King carried about with him the original text of the law in rolls (rotuli).  It was in consequence of the seizure of a number of these by the English, during the reign of Philip Augustus in 1194, that the idea was suggested of preserving the text of all the laws as state archives, and of opening authentic registers of decisions in civil and criminal cases.  As early as the time of Charles the Bald, the inconvenience was felt of the high court of the count being movable from place to place, and having no special locality where instructions might be given as to modes of procedure, for the hearing of witnesses, and for keeping the accused in custody, &c.  A former statute provided for this probable difficulty, but there seems to be no proof that previous to the twelfth century any fixed courts of justice had been established.  The Kings, and likewise the counts, held courts in the open air at the entrance to the palace (Fig. 302), or in some other public place—­under a large tree, for instance, as St. Louis did in the wood of Vincennes.