Boh spravodlivosti – Boh milosrdenstva: ordál ako skúška božej vôle
God of Justice – God of Mercy: Ordeal as the Test of God’s Will

Summary/Abstract: God’s judgments, respectively ordeals, belong to noticeably specific practices of medieval society, of which rarity has always meant an interpretation problem. Taking into account religious, social and legal-historical background, a lot of different attitudes discussing the motifs of people who enormously physically suffered in the effort to prove their innocence has been formed. However, a common feature of all these interpretations was an agreement with the presence of the faith that meant the immanent justice, of which originator was only God himself in medieval Europe. He was in the centre of all happenings and interested parties, onlookers and representatives of secular authority expected his undeniable judgement. Having considered previous arguments, the paper focuses on the perception of God in an ordeal as the active judgement and presents a result of a trial as the reflection of his two main qualities – justice and mercy. Currently, this intention is represented through medieval Hungariansources and attempts to outline understanding of God’s judgments also in these remote parts of medieval Christian Europe. The main protagonist of this article is God himself. His perception is described in a way which may be found in the sources. The most frequent image is god as the omniscient judge, who rectifies a wrong human’s judgement and whose judgement is fully respected by contradictory parties. Nevertheless, his intervention could been disrupted by nothing – no magic, protective herbs, curing burns and even previous experience of fi ghters in combats. Another part of the study deals with possible explanations of ordeals’ outcomes which were in a sharp contrast with general rational thinking. From the analysis of sources it is evident that similarly as a belief in the infallibility of God’s judgment was present, also a belief in his mercy was apparent there. His mercy was invoked before a trial started and also its result was explained such as a consequence of that. More and more prevailing response to a disputable outcome of an ordeal was a conviction about God’s will to give a wrongdoer the second chance. And on the contrary, the innocent was finally condemned because of a different reason. The God’s judgment did not have been perceived suchas a decision about a concrete case but rather more such as a verdict on the whole existence of the interested persons. The aim of this short study is rather to discuss this topic and to present it as a possible point of view on the issue Boh spravodlivosti – Boh milosrdenstva: ordál ako skúška božej vôle 55of medieval ordeals. For that reason, the future debate over the interpretation possibilities of God’s judgments could not continue without consideration of the religious life of medieval society.

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