Emma of Normandy's trial by ordeal is a mix of reality and fantasy, with the earliest surviving chronicle coming from the Annals of Winchester. The Archbishop of Canterbury convinced King Edward the Confessor to charge his mother, Emma of Normandy, with adultery.
Emma maintained her innocence and was willing to go through the torture of hot iron to prove it. The Archbishop accepted, but on strict conditions. Emma walked nine paces on nine red-hot ploughshares; her feet were checked and discovered to be unharmed.
During this period in history, the experience was one of the more common kinds of ordeal. The Catholic Church adopted ordeals with devotion in the ninth through eleventh centuries as Latin Christianity spread over Europe.
The Church additionally understood the necessity of paying priests to oversee the ordeals, which had a relatively high exoneration rate.
The final decision on whether the wound healed sufficiently to prove innocence can be a question with no obvious answer, and a bribe may influence the final outcome.
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