ABSTRACT
A remarkable trial was held in Rothenbach in the Black Forest in 1485. A woman suspected of witchcraft was arraigned before the seignorial court of the Count of Fürstenberg. Instead of relying on human judgment to determine the verdict, the Count decided to place the matter in the hands of God. The suspected witch was subjected to “the trial by red-hot iron”. This procedure required the accused person to take an iron from a furnace and carry it for three paces. Their hand would be bound for three days and then the wound would be inspected. They were declared innocent if the wound had healed cleanly, but condemned if it was found to be weeping or discoloured. The accused woman submitted to the ordeal with impressive confidence. According to one account, “she carried the red-hot iron not only for the stipulated three paces but for six, and offered to carry it even farther”. She was eventually acquitted and freed. The case later reached the attention of the Dominican friars Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger, who condemned the verdict in their influential treatise on witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum (1486). They claimed the decision was unsafe because the ordeal was open to demonic manipulation. The devil, as a master of natural science, may have protected the woman’s hand “by invisibly interposing some other substance” between her skin and the iron. This led them to warn judges in future cases to avoid the ordeal.1
