In the boiling-water ordeal, the burn was judged as it healed

In the medieval “ordeal of God,” an accused person might plunge a hand into boiling water and retrieve an object from a cauldron. But the test did not require the person to emerge completely unburned: the hand was bandaged and examined three days later. Under the contemporary rule, a cleanly healing wound was treated as a sign of innocence, while a festering wound signaled guilt. The Church withdrew from administering ordeals after the Fourth Lateran Council’s ruling in 1215. The illustration is AI-generated and does not depict a specific event.