About AD 630, Gundeberga, wife of the Lombard King Arioald (626–636), is supposed to have been accused by a disappointed lover of a plot to poison the king and take another man. King Arioald consented that her innocence should be tested by single combat between her accuser and a nobleman who undertook to defend her. The accuser having been slain, Gundeberga was declared innocent.Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, Book 4., Chapter XLI. This was the first instance of a trial by combat in the history of Italy.The Encyclopædia Britannica, or, Dictionary of arts, sciences, and general literature, Volume 13, Adam & Charles Black, 1857, p. 640. In the 730s, the Lombard king Liutprand (712–744) had lost confidence in the likelihood that the trial by battle would provide justice.Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, University Press, 1909, p. 50.Katherine Fischer Drew, Magna Carta, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 165. He knew that the practice was subject to abuse.Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice: Literary Reflections of Legal Crises, Princeton University Press, 2018, p. 74.
