In the year 1386, in front of the abbey of Saint Martin in Paris, two iron-cladded knights fought
in one of the last judicial duels held in France. Under the eyes of the King of France, the grandest
nobles of the Realm, and the citizens of Paris, Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris fought to
determine if the latter had raped Marguerite, wife of de Carrouges, or if the couple had slandered
Le Gris. The practice of trial by combat, or judicial battle, is one of the more romanticized
customs of medieval Europe, with knights fighting to the death for their innocence; but where does
it come from and how did it take place, will be the questions we will answer in this video.
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The trial by combat is a judicial practice that took place, particularly in Medieval Europe. It
could occur in a civil or penal trial, where the allegations of the accusers were hard to be proven
or where testimonies could not be trusted or were lacking, and so statements or evidence
could not be trusted. To resolve this problem and to determine if the defendant was guilty,
the two sides could agree on a judicial battle, a duel between the two parties that was sanctioned
by the judge. The idea was that God would look favourably on whoever was in the right and would
thus favour that party, and grant a victory in a duel that would be enough proof for the trial.
This is how they generally took place, but of course, elements of it could differ in various
periods and places. To clear up any confusion, this practice was different from a duel of honour,
the classic duel between two men fighting for their honour,
or the splendid duel to exercise that took place at tournaments,
to show off one's strength and valour, both of which we will not cover in this video.
The origins of the trial by combat can likely be traced back to Germanic tribal rules,
as Roman sources mention that the Germanic people on their borders would often settle disputes with
a show of force and arms. We also have testimonies of Goths and Scandinavian peoples partaking
in these duels. To strengthen this thesis, no example of this norm can be found in Roman law
or in other European, North African, or Middle Eastern legislations, from where they might have
been influenced. This is not to say that trials by ordeals were exclusive to the old Germanic people:
the ordeal, or iudicium dei, was a proceeding where a deity was called to manifest its will
in a controversial fact and was present in many different cultures: it combined the divine,
the moral and the judicial, which was perceived as indistinguishable at the time.
The Germanic people had many other examples of ordeals, such as the ordeals by fire,
by heated metal, or by water, where the outcome of a test determined the innocence of a person,
but the duel was peculiar to them. The first legal code that mentions the
judicial duel is the Lex Burgundionum: the laws had been enacted in the year 501 by Gundobad,
King of Burgundy, who was probably influenced by the Visigoth’s code of laws now lost to us. The
Burgundian had been an important figure in the last years of the Roman Empire
where he had been patrician, de facto king, and emperor-maker in Rome. After his father died
he had returned to his people who had settled the lands of modern-day Savoy and ruled them.
During his reign he enacted the customs and law for both his Germanic and Roman subjects,
drawing elements from both. The Lex Burgundionum influenced nearly all the
other Germanic law codes, and so the judicial duel was codified in the rest of the continent.
It seems that the purpose of its codification was to speed up trials and to avoid perjury, in
a time where the old imperial bureaucracy in Gaul was crumbling, and also to limit the power of the
Christian clergy who had quite a lot of power in the judicial system as it had been based on oaths.
The Church, in fact, would in all its history have a controversial relationship with the duels,
as they took from elements of the old pagan traditions, but on other hand,
it was also a show of strong faith, and most of the times the duel was preceded by mass,
oaths sworn on relics and nights spent in Church. One of the first recorded examples we have
can be found in a testimony of the Frankish chronicler Fredegar: the Lombard queen Gundeberga,
daughter of Agilulf and Theodelinda, had married the duke Arioald making him king.
During their reign, around the year 624, she refused the advances of the courtier Adalulf.
To cover himself, knowing that his life was in peril after his reckless attempt,
Adalulf went to king Arioald and accused the queen of conspiring against him,
to remove him and to kill him. Arioald believed him and imprisoned his wife in a castle, but
an embassy of the Franks came to inquire of the situation and proposed that the truthfulness of
the claim be tested in a judicial duel. The king accepted and ordered Adalulf to participate, while
a certain Pitton volunteered for the queen as her champion. In the clash, Adalulf was slain and
thus the innocence of Gundeberga was proven, and she was freed after three years of imprisonment.
In Lombard Italy, the practice would slowly fall out in favour as the old Roman system of
testimonies and documents became the preferred method since the royal power preferred this
system. However, the conquest of northern Italy by the Franks and later the Ottonid Saxons,
where the judicial duel was still v ery present, consolidated it again in the region. In England,
it seems that it was brought in by the Normans, as the Anglo Saxons had lost the custom.
It was limited in origin to only the free men in society, which with the evolution of feudal
society in Europe meant that only the men who bared arms, the aristocrats, would participate,
and thus by the twelfth century the nobility had a monopoly over the practice, that had also
been sanctioned by the law in many kingdoms. However, the duel became also quite popular
among the free city-states of Italy, the Comuni, where richer members of society also partook.
How the duel functioned depended on the customs of where and when it took place,
but some elements of the duel could include the requirements of the parties to pay for the
organization and the staff of the event, while the judges had to be nobles or city consuls.
Sometimes the charges that could be disputed in a trial by combat
were limited by local laws, and it could require the approval of a judge to take place.
In France, it was necessary that the accuser declared that there was no other way to prove
the charge, and then he had to throw a symbolic object on the ground, often a glove or a gauntlet,
that had to be picked up by the opponent to accept the duel. Some places, like Bologna in Italy,
hired professional champions that had to duel, where the participant would not know for what
they fought for. Before the battle religious ceremonies took place and oaths were taken,
often in front of the king or his representative, while the weapons used and the use of horses was
decided by the judge. The duels could take more than a day if the participant had the stamina
and the outright death during the duel was rare, as one usually lost or surrendered by
exiting the fence delimiting the battlegrounds, or by touching the ground with one’s head.
By the twelfth century, the judicial duel began to fall out in favour of a more robust legal
system that characterized the first attempts of centralization of power by the monarchs.
Emperor Frederick the Second condemned the duels and limited them to only a few exceptions, such
as in case of death by poison or of lese-majesty - insult of the sovereign. It was also criticized
and disciplined by the French kings Louis the Ninth and Philip the Fourth, and by the Castillian
King Alfonso the Tenth, though not banned as there was still strong popular support for it.
It is in the following century that the most scathing critiques of the duels emerged,
as the jurists of the newly founded European universities examined them, on a basis of
Roman and canonical law. The most important work on the subject was the Summula de pugna
by Roffredo Beneventano, where both the juridical side and the customary side were looked at.
The opposition on the matter was even stronger in the Church, after having been more lenient
in the early middle ages: many clerical scholars outright condemned the practice,
as did both Pope Nicholas the First and Gregory the Ninth who also forbade clergymen to partake
and did not allow men who had participated to be barred from religious functions unless
given permission to by the local bishop. Their reasoning was that it was an affront to God,
as the parties basically demanded a miracle from God, and if one partook only because he
was confident in his martial abilities then the religious element of the trial lost its meaning.
One of the last trials by combat that took place in the Kingdom of France has become the stuff of
legends for its protagonist and charges: in the second half of the fourteenth century,
the knight Jean de Carrouges and the squire Jacques Le Gris were vassals to the count of
Perche and duke of Alencon, Peter of Valois. They had been friends in their youths and were both
highly regarded in their liege’s household, but as they grew up friction arose between the two.
Carrouges was jealous of his friend who was favoured over him at the court in Argentan:
after the death of his first wife and son, he went to fight in the Hundred Years War.
At his return, he married Marguerite de Thibouville, a daughter of a Norman knight,
but more importantly claimant to estates that had been given to Jacques Le Gris,
exacerbating their relationship even more and losing the favour of his liege. In winter 1386,
after having campaigned in Scotland, de Carrouges went to Paris to settle some affairs.
While he was away, Jacques le Gris visited his castle on the 18th of January: it seems that their
relationship had improved in the previous year and since le Gris was an important servant of the
duke, he was welcomed by Marguerite. While showing him the castle alone, le Gris locked themselves
into a room and professed his love for her, mixing promises of gifts and harassments. As Marguerite
refused the advances, Le Gris allegedly raped her. She kept silent until the return of her husband,
where she broke and recounted the events: enraged, but not blaming his wife, de Carrouges took his
adversary to court, but as Duke Peter was the judge of the case, he dismissed the claims against
his favourite, as the testimony of a woman was not enough evidence for any conviction.
The couple, who had not attended the trial as they already knew the outcome, appealed to the King
in Paris, hoping for a fairer trial. Since the word of a woman was weak evidence for the time,
de Carrouges challenged le Gris to a judicial duel to let God determine who was in the right.
Although by the time the duels were rare, the court in Paris was fascinated by such
an occurrence and let the appeal begin in the Parliament of Paris in the summer. Here once again
the accusations and the request for a duel were made, with both men and their entourages present:
witnesses were called on both sides, but the court could not reach a final verdict
so the judicial duel was allowed to take place, as both parties accepted it.
It would take place on the 29th of December 1386, after having been postponed for a month
so the King could be present: the battleground was set up at the abbey of Saint Martin in Paris, and
thousands of Parisian citizens and other people coming from far away attended as an audience,
not to mention the king himself, his family and many other nobles of the realm. Both men were
fully armed and on horseback: at the given signal they charged against each other a few times: after
an initial blow dealt by Le Gris’ lance to his opponent's thigh, they dismounted and continued
the combat on foot. Both excellent men at arms, they continued their duel until de Carrouges
overcame la Gris and pinned him to the ground: he asked for his surrender, which Le Gris refused.
With his opponent not yielding, de Carrouges trusted his sword through Le Gris’ chest,
killing him and winning the judicial duel. He thus obtained vindication for the rape of his wife,
who was also risking her life in the duel as she would have been burnt at the stake if her husband
lost. The victor approached the king and was rewarded with monetary compensation and a position
among the royal guards, where he carried out his duty with distinction until his death in 1396.
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the trial by combat definitely lost its prominence:
it’s hard to pinpoint exactly the last occurrence of a duel,
but in England and in Italy, we have our last mentions on the topic in that period, while it
survived another century in Scotland and Ireland. We have more videos on Medieval History on the
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