The Anatomy of Melancholy

We read in Nicephorus that Cunigunde, wife of the emperor Henry of Bavaria, was suspected of adultery: “accused of adultery, she passed unharmed over heated ploughshares.” She trod on red-hot plough blades and suffered no injury. We find another such story in Regino, book 2; and in Aventinus and Sigonius, concerning Charles III and his wife Richardis in the year 887, who was similarly cleared by hot irons.

Pausanias says that he once witnessed such a miracle at Diana’s temple: a maiden walked upon burning coals without any harm at all. Pius II, in his Description of Europe, chapter 46, reports likewise that at Diana’s temple women commonly walked barefoot over hot coals to test their chastity.

Pliny, Solinus and many writers mention Feronia’s temple; and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 3, mentions Memnon’s statue, which were used for this purpose.

Tatius, in book 6, tells of Pan’s cave—much like old St Wilfrid’s Needle in Yorkshire—where they used to test whether maidens were chaste. When Leucippe entered, “a most delightful sound began to be heard.”

Augustine, in The City of God, book 10, chapter 16, relates many such examples, all of which Lavater, On Spectres, part 1, chapter 19, contends were performed through the deception of devils, although Thomas, in question 6 of On Power, and so on, attributes them to good angels. Some, Augustine says, compel their wives to swear that they are chaste, as if perjury were a lesser sin than adultery; some consult oracles, as did Phaerus, that blind king of Egypt.

Others offer rewards, as the ancient Romans used to do: if a woman was content with one man, “she was given a crown of chastity”—a crown of chastity was bestowed on her.

When none of this is enough, says Alexander Guagnini in chapter 5 of his Description of Muscovy, the Muscovites, if they suspect their wives, will beat them until they confess. If that does not work, they divorce them at will, like those wild Irish, or else knock them on the head and kill them, as the ancient Gauls did in former ages.

For more about this tyranny of jealousy, read Parthenius’s Love Stories, chapter 10; Camerarius’s Miscellaneous Hours, chapter 53 and the second hundred, chapter 34; Cælia’s Epistles; Thomas Chaloner’s On the English Commonwealth, book 9; Ariosto, book 31, stanza 1; Felix Platter’s Observations, book 1; and so on.