SOURCE: "Ordeals, Privacy, and the Lais of Marie de France," in The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1994, pp. 1-31.

In the following essay, Bowers defines the medieval method of judgment by ordeal and asserts that Marie's Lais critiques the era's shift from trial by ordeal to "more efficient" ways of violating people's privacy and personal freedom.

Marie de France wrote during the period c. 1170-90 when England was in transition from a feudal society toward a state-nation under Henry II. It was an era when the Church was also redefining its regulatory power over the laity under a series of strong popes culminating with Innocent III. Dealing exclusively with the secret relations between men and women—typically a clandestine love affair in some secluded place—Marie's lais brought into sharp definition one of the human values most at stake in these pervasive restructurings of...