Legal transformations wrought by the Church abolished "trial by ordeal". What replaced "trial by ordeal"? In the continental Europe, "confession under inquisiti

Legal transformations wrought by the Church abolished "trial by ordeal". What replaced "trial by ordeal"? In the continental Europe, "confession under inquisition"; in England, "jury trail" "Between 1050 and 1250, a 200-year stretch in the Common Era, the European legal system underwent a remarkable transformation. In continental Europe, trial by ordeal was replaced by confession under inquisition; in England, it was the beginning of the jury trial. In the first case, the judge could appeal to the precise and procedural nature of the law, which ‘dictated’ his judgement; in the second case, the judge could refer to peer judgement to defend his own decision. In both cases, the reasons that led to the transformation were the same: the reluctant witness, who refused to come forth and testify against persons suspected of committing a crime. Let us first get a better grip on this issue. In order to accuse a person of some crime, one or several witnesses were needed; the judge (whether a civil magistrate or an ecclesiastical authority) could then appeal to legal provisions to pronounce a sentence. But the problem the judges faced was the reluctance of witnesses to come forth and do what was required. There were, to be sure, many reasons for this state of affairs--one chief reason being a scriptural injunction. Being a witness, one risked either lying (‘perjury’), an act forbidden by Scripture (‘thou shalt not bear false witness’) whose violation would send the believer on his way to hell; or one risked blood guilt, that is, carrying the blood of another human being on one’s hands. Despite many subtle attempts by theologians to solve this dilemma, it remained a huge concern; continental Europe and England took different routes to solve this problem." (p.110 of SN Balagangadhara's "Cultures Differ Differently" (Routledge, 2022).