21 did not provide for material truth, nor were they intended to do so. Put simply, ordeals belonged to a world with no central authority strong or capable enough to declare the truth in a judicial matter. Before the appearance of a hierarchical court structure, a professional judiciary. Increased reliance on written legislation and a formal science of law, the means of reaching material truth and imposing it on the parties from“up above” were nieager^^; instead, a court’s function was reduced to overseeing and declaring the result of a much more consensual legal discourse. Thus it is only with the growth of the two central authorities of the Middle Ages, together with related phenomena - the renaissance of Roman Law, the professionalization of the judiciary, the founding of universities, the spreading of ins commune - that it became possible for a court to act as an umpire between the parties; mcire efficiently than under the system of ordeals, the court could now pronounce sentences and decisions regardless of whether they were consensuallv approved by the litigants. From the twelfth century onwards, the courts were increasingly dependant on their superiors, on the hierarchically more elevated courts, and on central authorities — the church or a secular power. It was not until the twelfth century that these powers had acquired positions strong enough to rid the system of the ordeals and impose, from the point of view of an efficient judicial system, a more workable law of proof. But in what way, from the point of view of a ruler aiming at central authority, was the theory of legal proof so much better than the old lawof proof? Indeed, the statutory theory of proof seems to have offered certain advantages. First, the outcome of the process was more certain in the newsystem; from the point of view of control and of ensuring the judicial solutions deemed appropriate by the church, this was an obvious benefit. The statutory theory of proof was more efficient as a method of finding material truth and implementing material law.'^^ Legal rules of proof, when compared to judicial ordeals and Also Bartlett admits that “The centralization and svstemization of the hierarchy, and the growth of the effective bureaucrac^' and delegation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were as much conditions for the end of the ordeal as the change of mind of the clerical elite.” For Bartlett, “As an alliance formed between the Roman Church, the reformers, and the leading schoolmen, an alliance reinforced b\’ a common training Romano-canonical law and common high church or Gregorian attitudes, so this curial-scholastic elite forged and exploited new legal and administrative forms to implement its decisions.” Bartlett 1988 p. 100. As Berman shows, however, the abolition of ordeals and the consequent adoption of the legal theory of proof contributed significantly to the effectiveness of the ecclesiastic and secular legal systems. Weitzcl concludes his study on the dinggcnossenschaftlichkeit of medieval law' by stating that “court” and “book” {Gcricht and Buck) cannot both stand in the focal point of legal life. Neither can oralitv be successfullv combined with a written mode of procedure; to a certain extent, one of them has to yield, ^'eitzel 1985 pp. 1474-1475. The expressions “material” and “immaterial” seem inadequate when used to mark essential differences between the aspirations of systems of proof. Instead, it seems preferrable to me to
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