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008			240301b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
022			_a00222186
040			_aMSU _bEnglish _cMSU _erda
050			_aHB73 JOU
100	1		_aLeeson, Peter T. _eauthor
245	1	0	_aOrdeals _cby Peter T. Leeson
264			_aChicago _bUniversity of Chicago Press _c2012
336			_2rdacontent _atext _btxt
337			_2rdamedia _aunmediated _bn
338			_2rdacarrier _avolume _bnc
440			_aJournal of law and economics _vVolume 55, number 3
520			_aI argue that medieval judicial ordeals accurately assigned accused criminals’ guilt and innocence. They did this by leveraging a medieval superstition called iudicium Dei (judgments of God). According to that superstition, God condemned the guilty and exonerated the innocent through clergy-conducted physical tests. Medieval citizens’ belief in iudicium Dei created a separating equilibrium in which only innocent defendants were willing to undergo ordeals. Conditional on observing a defendant’s willingness to do so, the administering priest knew he or she was innocent and manipulated the ordeal to find this. My theory explains the peculiar puzzle of ordeals: trials of fire and water that should have condemned most persons who underwent them did the reverse. They exonerated these persons instead. Boiling water rarely boiled persons who plunged their arms in it. Burning iron rarely burned persons who carried it. Ordeal outcomes were miraculous, but they were miracles of mechanism design
650			_aChristianity _xCriminals
650			_aEternal condemnation _xGuilt
650			_aInnocence _xLegal innocence
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1086/664010
942			_2lcc _cJA
999			_c164022 _d164022