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The Bizarre Importance of Bleeding Bodies in Medieval Trials

The Bizarre Importance of Bleeding Bodies in Medieval Trials

The history of criminal justice and forensic science is really interesting because of all the absurd rituals and superstitions courts relied on to determine guilt or innocence right up until the 19th century. Before the advent of blood tests, fingerprint analysis, and DNA testing, many cultures used various trials by ordeal to help decide a suspect’s guilt. To prove a murderer was guilty, for example, many European courts relied on a type of trial by ordeal that involved a “bleeding” corpse.

A trial by ordeal is an ancient method of ascertaining guilt or innocence and can be found in cultures all over the world (Roth 2010 and Primm 2013). Societies that used a trial by ordeal believed that a god or gods would protect the innocent from harm and punish the guilty. They were used for crimes like murder, heresy, and witchcraft (Roth 2010).

There were various kinds of ordeals that a court could use to test the innocence of a suspect. During a trial by fire, the accused had to walk across hot coals or pick an object out of a fire. If he or she did not emerge unscathed they were found guilty. In a trial by water, a suspect was bound then submerged in water. If they were innocent, they would sink; if guilty, they would float (Roth 2010).

One ordeal, dating to the end of the Roman Empire, was reserved for accused murderers (Brittain 1965). The bier-right, or cruentation, was based on the belief that the body is still able to hear and act a short time after death, so that if a murderer approached or touched the corpse of their victim then the corpse would bleed or froth at the mouth (Roth 2010 and Brittain 1965). Bier-right got its name from the stand or barrow, called a bier, which held or carried a corpse or coffin. Cruentation comes from the Latin word cruentatio meaning staining of blood or cruentare meaning to make bloody (Brittain 1965).

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Funeral bier in St.Helen's church, Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire, Great Britain. ( CC BY SA 2.0 )

In Cruentation: In Legal Medicine and Literature (1965), Brittain discusses how a cruentation was performed.

“…the suspect was placed at a certain distance from the victim who had been laid naked on his back. He approached the body, repeatedly calling on it by name, then walked around it two or three times. He next lightly stroked the wounds with his hand. If during this time fresh bleeding occurred, or if the body moved, or if foam appeared at the mouth, the suspect was considered to be guilty of murder.”

The substance that these people were likely seeing was purge fluid, or decomposition fluid. Purge fluid, which drains from the mouth, nose, and other orifices during putrefaction, looks a lot like blood and is often mistaken for it (DiMaio & DiMaio 2001).

The bier-right was so well-known that the ritual made its way into poetry and plays. The best example is probably in Shakespeare’s Richard III, in Act I, Scene II (Fitzharris 2011). During the funeral of King Henry VI, Lady Anne confronts Gloucester, the man who murdered Henry:

“Foul devil, for God’s sake hence, and trouble us not;
For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O! gentlemen; see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh.
Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells:
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God! which this blood mad’st, revenge his death;
O earth! which this blood drink’st, revenge his death;
Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide, and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood,
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!”

David Garrick as Richard III. (c. 1745) By William Hogarth.

England stopped using the bier-right at the end of the 17 th century, and German courts abandoned the cruentation at the end of the 18 th century (Fitzharris 2011 and Brittain 1965). But there are still records of courts in the U.S. using it until 1869 (Lea 1878).

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In New Jersey in 1767, a bier-right was used to discover the murderer of Nicholas Tuers, despite the fact that the coroner thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

“In 1767, the coroner’s jury of Bergen County, NJ, was summoned to view the body of one Nicholas Tuers, whose murder was suspected. The attestation of Joannes Demarest, the coroner, stated that he had no belief in the bier-right, and paid no attention to the experiment, when one of the jury touched the body without result. At length Harry, a slave, who had been suspected without proof, was brought up for the same purpose, when he heard the exclamation ‘He is the man,” and was told that Tuers had bled at being touched by Harry. He then ordered the slave to place his hand on the face of the corpse, when about a tablespoonful of blood immediately flowed from each nostril, and Harry confessed the murder in all particulars (Lea 1878).”

In Philadelphia in 1860, a body was actually exhumed for a bier-right after being buried for weeks.

“In 1860, the Philadelphia journals mention a case in which the relatives of a deceased person, suspecting foul play, vainly importuned the coroner, some weeks after the internment, to have the body exhumed, in order that it might be touched by a person whom they regarded as concerned in his death (Lea 1878).”

‘Bier-Right’ (1879) by Jenő Gyárfás.

Last, but not least, probably the largest bier-right ever performed happened in 1869 in Lebanon, IL.

“…in 1869 at Lebanon, IL, the bodies of two murdered persons were dug up, and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past them, each of whom was made to touch them in the hope of finding the criminals.”

Featured image: Detail from a n illustration of a body in its coffin that starts to bleed in the presence of the murderer during a cruentation 1497. Source:

The above article, originally titled ‘ The ordeal of the bleeding corpse by Dolly Stolze was originally published on her blog ‘ Strange Remains ‘ and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.

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    Phlebotomy aimed to maintain or restore the humoral balance in the body by removing a moderate amount of blood. We know today that losing a small quantity of blood is usually not harmful, but nor is it beneficial. In the Middle Ages it was recognised that it was dangerous to draw blood from the elderly or the very sick, and that excessive bleeding, through injury or another cause, needed to be staunched.



    These magical remedies were not without benefit, since they sometimes incorporated medicinal plants and other therapeutic substances – and they could serve to reassure the patient. Nonetheless, the treatments usually contained fewer beneficial components than comparable non-magical recipes.


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    Family planning

    Herbal treatments based on plants such as sage, rue and pennyroyal were administered to women seeking to induce an abortion, often in the form of a drink. Several of the plants in question are known today to act as stimulants, and to promote menstruation. It is known that a high dosage of pennyroyal can bring about an abortion.


    Couching for cataracts

    Medieval surgeons treated cataracts by using a needle to dislodge the cloudy lens from its position in front of the pupil of the eye. People recognised that the procedure could be dangerous, and that specialist skills were required for it to work. Today, couching is seen as an ineffective method of treating cataracts that often results in blindness.



    Apothecaries compounded medicines using a wide array of substances. While some materials were probably ineffective or even dangerous, others, such as ginger and senna, are used today for their medicinal properties. The pages of medieval pharmaceutical manuscripts may in fact contain remedies of which the benefits are asyet unknown to modern medicine.


    Counterfeit cures

    Rogue practitioners sometimes marketed counterfeit medical remedies, especially during times of heightened anxiety about plague. These treatments prevented sick people from seeking more beneficial advice, and could prove dangerous, especially if a poisonous substance was sold to a patient.



    Doctors paid attention to the movements of the planets and the signs of the zodiac to determine the appropriate time to treat specific ailments. The Zodiac Man image (shown above left), widely copied in medieval manuscripts, shows the signs of the zodiac associated with particular parts of the body. Ideas still exist today about the influence of celestial bodies, especially the Moon, on menstruation and other aspects of health. However, scientific research seems to have disproven such ideas.


    Hospital care

    Although medieval hospital patients were unlikely to be treated by a physician or surgeon, they benefited from the expertise of nursing staff, who were often women. Hospitals offered basic bodily care, in the form of food, drink and shelter. While this care did not encompass specialised treatments, it enabled the sick to regain strength towards their recovery.



    This remedy, in which plant extracts were ground up with the flesh of vipers and other substances, was held as a powerful antidote to poisons, and believed to have many other healing properties. However, although theriac was expensive and highly sought-after, it is difficult to discern how this medicine would have proved effective or beneficial.



    Examining urine was one of the only ways in which the medieval doctor could assess the internal state of the body. The urine was collected in a flask, and its colour, smell and consistency were assessed. Medieval medical manuscripts often contain diagrams showing the different qualities of urine and how these related to diseases and states of health. Urine samples are still analysed by doctors today.

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    St Paul’s Potion for epilepsy, catalepsy and stomach problems








    For burns and scalds




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    For gout



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    For him that has quinsy [a severe throat infection]



    To treat a cough



    For the stomach





    Her books, all published by Amberley, include Everyday Life in Medieval London: From the Anglo-Saxons to the Tudors The Medieval Housewife & Other Women of the Middle Ages and her latest book, Dragon’s Blood & Willow Bark: The Mysteries of Medieval Medicine, which is out now.

    Health and Medicine in Medieval England

    Health and medicine in Medieval England were very important aspects of life. For many peasants in Medieval England, disease and poor health were part of their daily life and medicines were both basic and often useless. Towns and cities were filthy and knowledge of hygiene was non-existent. The Black Death was to kill two thirds of England’s population between 1348 and 1350.


    “Cause the human faeces and other filth lying in the streets and lanes in the city to be removed with all speed to places far distant, so that no greater cause of mortality may arise from such smells.”

    No one knew what caused diseases then. There was no knowledge of germs. Medieval peasants had been taught by the church that any illness was a punishment from God for sinful behaviour. Therefore, any illness was self-imposed – the result of an individual’s behaviour.

    Other theories put forward for diseases included “humours”. It was believed that the body had four humours (fluids in our bodies) and if these became unbalanced you got ill. Doctors studied a patient’s urine to detect if there was any unbalance.

    Astronomers blamed the planets going out of line

    As important, no-one knew how diseases spread – the fact that people lived so close together in both villages and towns meant that contagious diseases could be rampant when they appeared as happened with the Black Death.

    Physicians were seen as skilled people but their work was based on a very poor knowledge of the human anatomy. Experiments on dead bodies were unheard of in Medieval England and strictly forbidden. Physicians charged for their services and only the rich could afford them. Their cures could be bizarre though some cures, including bleeding and the use of herbs, had some logic to them even if it was very much a hit-or-miss approach. One of the most famous physicians was John Arderne who wrote “The Art of Medicine” and who treated royalty. He was considered a master in his field but his cure for kidney stones was a hot plaster smeared with honey and pigeon dung!

    Physicians would have had their own ideas as to what caused illnesses.

    Those who blamed bad smells developed a ‘cure’ to make the bad smells go away.

    Those who blamed bad luck would use prayers and superstitions.

    Those who blamed the body’s four humours used bleeding, sweating and vomiting to restore the balance of the four humours.

    When by some luck, a patient got better or simply improved, this was a sure sign that a cure worked. It also meant that the cure used would be used again. If it did not work on the next patient, this was the fault of the patient rather than of the cure.

    Operations were carried out by ‘surgeons’. In fact, these men were unskilled and had other jobs such as butchers and barbers. The traditional red and white pole outside of a barber’s shop today is a throwback to the days in Medieval England when barbers did operations. The red stood for blood and the white for the bandages used at the end of an operation.

    Operations could end in death as post-operative infections were common. Instruments used in an operation were not sterilised – as there was no knowledge of germs, there was no need to clean instruments used in operations. Patients might recover from small operations, such as a tooth extraction (though this could not be guaranteed), but operations that included a deep cut through the skin were very dangerous.

    Some monasteries had cottage hospitals attached to them. The monks who worked in these hospitals had basic medical knowledge but they were probably the best qualified people in the country to help the poor and those who could not afford their own physician. By 1200, there may have been as many as 400 hospitals in England.

    Cures from Medieval England :

    Take a candle and burn it close to the tooth. The worms that are gnawing the tooth will fall out into a cup of water held by the mouth.

    The cause of the Black Death according to Guy de Chauliac, a French doctor:

    Three great planets, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, are all in close position. This took place in 1345. Such a coming together of planets is always a sign of wonderful, terrible or violent things to come.

    For evil spirits in the head:

    For this, surgeons used trepanning. This was where a surgeon cut a hole into the skull to release evil spirits trapped in the brain. The operation might also include cutting out the part of the brain that had been ‘infected’ with these evil spirits. Incredibly, people are known to have survived operations such as these as skulls have been found which show bone growth around the hole cut by a surgeon – a sign that someone did survive such an operation if only for awhile.

    For general illnesses:

    People were told that a pilgrimage to a holy shrine to show your love of God would cure them of illnesses especially if they had some holy water sold at the place of pilgrimage. After the death of Thomas Becket in 1170, Canterbury Cathedral became a place of pilgrimage which brought even more wealth to the city. However, more people coming to the city also increased the risk of disease being brought in.

    This was when blood was drained from a certain spot in your body. The idea behind this was similar to trepanning in that it released bad blood from your body. The use of leeches was common for this but dirty knives were also used which only increased the risk to the patient.

    Leeches used on royalty

    This was where a physician identified that a certain part of your body was ill and it was cured by having red hot pokers put on it.

    Astrology played an important part in many cures. For fever, one medicine book stated “A man suffering from fever should be bled immediately the moon passes through the middle of the sign of Gemini.”

    38. Bad Blood

    Bloodletting was a common medical practice in Middle Ages, which was meant to let ‘bad blood’ out of the body. Medieval Europeans were so into it, they had texts advising which saints’ days were best for bloodletting, and charts showing which parts of the body were best to bleed according to the zodiac.


    Medieval Law and Order







    The Manorial Court (Trial by Jury)

    The manorial court dealt with all but the most serious crimes. It was held at various intervals during the year, and all villagers had to attend or pay a fine. All men were placed in groups of ten called a tithing. Each tithing had to make sure that no member of their group broke the law. If a member of a tithing broke a law then the other members had to make sure that he went to court.

    The Lord’s steward was in charge of the court. A jury of twelve men was chosen by the villagers. The jury had to collect evidence and decide whether the accused was guilty or not guilty and, if found guilty, what the medieval punishment should be.

    The Bizarre Importance of Bleeding Bodies in Medieval Trials - History

    "Each had in his right hand a scourge with three tails."

    Although prevalent on the European continent, the Flagellants did not achieve popularity in England. However, a large contingent of the sect crossed the English Channel in 1349 and converged on London. The following description of the Flagellants comes to us from Sir Robert of Avesbury who witnessed their ritual:

    "In that same year of 1349, about Michaelmas (September, 29) over six hundred men came to London from Flanders, mostly of Zeeland and Holland origin. Sometimes at St Paul's and sometimes at other points in the city they made two daily public appearances wearing cloths from the thighs to the ankles, but otherwise stripped bare. Each wore a cap marked with a red cross in front and behind.

    A Contemporary View
    of the Flagellants, ca 1350




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