18 the witchcraft cases, but now converted part of the emerging Roman-canon law of proof as circumstantial evidence, or indicia.-^ There was great variation as to the types of crimes for which ordeals were employed and to the modes they assumed.’"^ The ordeals were used, in their heyday, for all kinds of cases: adultery, paternity, heresy and more ordinary crimes such as thefts. The use of ordeals was not, however, limited to cases considered “criminal” today; they were also utilized in “civil” cases, such as cases involving disputes over property or status.^^ However, it is important to note, as Bartlett does, that medieval legal procedure was not “based” on ordeals in the sense that recourse to themwould have been taken at every possible instance. On the contrary, ordeals were a resort which was used only should no other means of discovering the truth be available.^6 In recent research, the “dinggenossenschaftlich” character of medieval legal procedure has been emphasized. The termrefers to a consensual mechanismof decision-making where legal procedure is geared to producing a decision approved by all parties and the court; this is not to say that the decision reached would necessarily, in a neutral and equitable manner, represent the interests of all sides. The consensual decision-making could, however, facilitate the execution of the decision.^^ In medieval law, several other methods of proof were in by far more frequent and common-place use than ordeals; should convincing evidence not be available othervvdse, the ordeal would step into the place of other, more easily applicable modes of proof. Ordeals and oath-taking thus formed a “system” in which the actual ordeal was reserved for cases difficult to decide otherwise. In the history of judicial proof, the first major transformation was the shift from ordeals to legal proof.-*^ Several different explanations have been given for the change. For instanceJean-Philippe Lévy and R. C. van Caenegemhave On the Indizienlehre in German witchcraft cases, see Schormann 1981 pp. 42-52 and Oestmann 1995 pp. 37-38. For Sweden, see Ankarloo 1984 pp. 67-71 and Sörlin 1993 pp. 50-53. For Norway, see Naess 1982 p. 190. Johansen 1989 (for Denmark) and Nenonen 1993 (for Finland) do not mention ordeals. In Sweden, ordeals were probably not used after the fourteenth century. See Letto-Vanamo 1995 pp. 113, 132; cf. Sjöholm 1988 p. 58. -■* For a good general picture of the regional varieties of ordeals in the archaic legal orders and in the medieval world, see the articles in La Preuve 1965. Bartlett 1988 pp. 1-33. Ibid. p. 26. On “dinggenossenschaftlichkeit,” see Weitzel 1985 pp. 89-106; Letto-Vanamo has applied the term to describe the Finnish-Swedish medieval law (1995). The concept was originally introduced by Weber (1956 pp. 405—108). In Sweden, however, it seems that the period of ordeals was followed by a long interimperiod, from the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, during which neither ordeals nor the Roman-Canon legal theory of proof were in use. See Letto-Vanamo 1995 pp. 113, 232.
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