The trial by ordeal outperformed torture as a guilt-detection technique

Evidence

For us moderns, the trial by ordeal seems like the epitome of medieval inefficacy and backwardness. Economic historian Peter Leeson disagrees. He points out that the practice of ordeal worked surprisingly well. It was, in fact, a far superior technique than extracting confessions under torture, a surviving practice that is as unreliable as it is cruel. Ordeals might have cleverly determined who was guilty and who was innocent with reasonable accuracy, without need for actual divine intervention. How did ordeals work? — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 62

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the modern intuition that premodern justice was uniformly irrational — a useful corrective when reading how the fumi-e, dismissed as superstition, could still function as a diagnostic instrument.