Compurgation
idea · 2 works · 4 mentions · 8 anchored passages
compurgation · oath of purgation · oath with oath-helpers · twelve-handed · wage his law
in the texts
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John
The ancient mode of proof by oath-helpers, in which a litigant's friends swore to support his claim, one of the limited early tests of a case's validity.
In Anglo–Saxon times, these were mainly compurgation, ordeal, witnesses (whose functions were, however, widely different from those of witnesses in modern law), and charters.
The litigant to whom “a law” was appointed had rather the “privilege of proof,” and usually won his case—especially in compurgation, and even in ordeal if he had arranged matters properly with the priest who presided.
More frequently it took the form of “an oath with oath–helpers,” the plaintiff bringing with him eleven or twelve of his trusty friends or dependents to swear after him the words of a long and cumbrous oath, under risk of being punished as perjurers for any slip in the formula.
An Essay on the Trial by Jury
An older mode of trial by oath-swearing witnesses, discussed as a precursor to or contrast with jury trial.
Juries were accustomed to ascertain the truth of facts, by the defendant’s oath of purgation, together with that of his compurgators.
“When we read of a certain number of freemen chosen by the parties to decide in a dispute—all bound by oath to vote in foro conscientia—and that their decision, not the will of the judge presiding, ended the suit, we at once perceive that a great improvement has been made in the old form of compurgation—an improvement which impartial observation can have no hesitation to pronounce as identical in …