Demonologists varied in their explanations as to why trial by water would be effective, although spiritual explanations were most common. Some argued that witches floated because they had renounced baptism when entering the Devil's service. King James VI of Scotland claimed in his Daemonologie that water was so pure an element that it repelled the guilty. Jacob Rickius claimed that witches were supernaturally light and recommended weighing them as an alternative to dunking them; this procedure and its status as an alternative to dunking were parodied in the 1975 British film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
