In a Monty Python skit, they mocked the idea of Trial by Ordeal. In this skit, a mob of medieval peasants bring an irritated looking woman who was wearing a false nose to a leader of a town. The townspeople ask the leader if they can burn her as a witch. The leader asks how do they know the woman is a witch, and the townsfolk look confused. They start offering reasons like she looks like she is a witch, and that she turned one of them (who looks like a person by the way) into a newt. After talking for a few minutes, they decide the best way to test if she is a witch is see if she weighs the same as a duck. If she does she is clearly a witch.

This type of bizarre reasoning is actually what the ideology of Trial by Ordeal is about. People had to go through some sort of ordeal to prove they were not what they were accused of being or doing. Most often, the test that the individual had to go through were arbitrary and torturous.

Just a heads up my spooky friends…today we will be talking about torture. Listener discretion is advised.

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